Four years ago, in an effort to understand why I found so many of the design decisions in the 4^th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons antithetical to what I wanted from a roleplaying game, I wrote an essay about “Dissociated Mechanics”. At the time, I was still struggling to both define and come to grips with what that concept meant. I was also, simultaneously, quantifying and explaining my reaction to 4^th Edition (which had just been released).

Ultimately, I hit on something that rang true. I had found the definition of something that was deeply problematic for a lot of people. The term “dissociated mechanic” caught on and became widely used. (And not just in discussions about 4^th Edition.)

As a result, hundreds of people are linked to the original “Dissociated Mechanics” essay every month. They come looking for an explanation of what the term means.

Unfortunately, the original essay is not particularly good.

I say this both as a matter of self-reflection and as a matter of empirical evidence: The essay is unclear because I was still struggling to understand the term myself. And because it was written as a reaction to 4^th Edition, it immediately alienates people with a personal stake in the edition wars. The result is that a lot of people come away from the essay with a confused, inadequate, or completely erroneous understanding of the term.

Which is why links to the original essay are being redirected here: I’m attempting to provide a better and clearer primer for those interested in understanding what dissociated mechanics are, why they’re deeply problematic for many people, and how they can be put to good use.

If you’re interested in reading the original essay, you can still find it here.

A SIMPLE DEFINITION

An associated mechanic is one which has a direct connection to the game world. A dissociated mechanic is one which is disconnected from the game world.

The easiest way to perceive the difference is to look at the player’s decision-making process when using the mechanic: If the player’s decision can be directly equated to a decision made by the character, then the mechanic is associated. If it cannot be directly equated, then it is dissociated.

For example, consider a football game in which a character has the One-Handed Catch ability: Once per game they can make an amazing one-handed catch, granting them a +4 bonus to that catch attempt.

The mechanic is dissociated because the decision made by the player cannot be equated to a decision made by the character. No player, after making an amazing one-handed catch, thinks to themselves, “Wow! I won’t be able to do that again until the next game!” Nor do they think to themselves, “I better not try to catch this ball one-handed, because if I do I won’t be able to make any more one-handed catches today.”

On the other hand, when a player decides to cast a fireball spell that decision is directly equated to the character’s decision to cast a fireball. (The character, like the player, knows that they have only prepared a single fireball spell. So the decision to expend that limited resource – and the consequences for doing so – are understood by both character and player.)

METAGAMED AND ABSTRACTED

Dissociated mechanics can also be thought of as mechanics for which the characters have no functional explanations.

But this generalization can be misleading when taken too literally. All mechanics are both metagamed and abstracted: They exist outside of the character’s world and they are only rough approximations of that world.

For example, the destructive power of a fireball is defined by the number of d6’s you roll for damage; and the number of d6’s you roll is determined by the caster level of the wizard casting the spell.

If you asked a character about d6’s of damage or caster levels, they’d obviously have no idea what you were talking about. But the character could tell you what a fireball is and that casters of greater skill can create more intense flames during the casting of the spell.

The player understands the metagamed and abstracted mechanic (d6’s and caster levels), but that understanding is directly associated with the character’s understanding of the game world (burning flames and skilled casters).

EXPLAINING IT ALL AWAY

On a similar note, there is a misconception that a mechanic isn’t dissociated as long as you can explain what happened in the game world as a result.

The argument goes like this: “Although I’m using the One-Handed Catch ability, all the character knows is that they made a really great one-handed catch. The character isn’t confused by what happened, so it’s not dissociated.”

What the argument misses is that the dissociation already happened in the first sentence. The explanation you provide after the fact doesn’t remove it.

To put it another way: The One-Handed Catch ability is a mechanical manipulation with no corresponding reality in the game world whatsoever. You might have a very good improv session that is vaguely based on the dissociated mechanics you’re using, but there has been a fundamental disconnect between the game and the world. You could just as easily be playing a game of Chess while improvising a vaguely related story about a royal coup starring your character named Rook or narrating what your character sees on their walk from Park Place to Boardwalk.

REASSOCIATING THE MECHANIC

The flip side of the “explaining it all away” misconception is the “it’s easy to fix” fallacy. Instead of providing an improvised description that explains what the mechanic did after the fact, we instead rewrite the ability to provide an explanation and, thus, re-associate the dissociated mechanic.

In practice, this is frequently quite trivial. To take our One-Handed Catch ability, for example, we could easily say: The player activates his gravitic force gloves (which have a limited number of charges per day) to pull the ball to his hand. Or he shouts a prayer to the God of Football who’s willing to help him a limited number of times per day. Or he activates one of the arcane tattoos he had a voodoo doctor inscribe on his palms.

These all sound pretty awesome, but each of them carries unique consequences. If it’s gravitic force gloves, can they be stolen or the gravitic field canceled? Can he shout a prayer to the God of Football if someone drops a silence spell on him? If he’s using an arcane tattoo, does that mean that the opposing team’s linebacker can use a dispel magic spell to disrupt the catch?

(This is getting to be a weird football game.)

Whatever explanation you come up with will have a meaningful impact on how the ability is used in the game. And that means that each and every one of them is a house rule.

Why is this a problem?

First, there’s a matter of principle. Once we’ve accepted that you need to immediately house rule the One-Handed Catch ability, we’ve accepted that the game designers gave us a busted rule that needs to be fixed before it can be used. The Rule 0 Fallacy (“this rule isn’t broken because I can fix it”) is a poor defense of any game.

But there’s also a practical problem: While it may be easy to fix a single ability like One-Handed Catch, a game filled with such abilities will require hundreds (or thousands) of house rules that you now need to create, keep track of, and use consistently. What is trivial for any single ability becomes a huge problem in bulk.

REALISM vs. ASSOCIATION

Another common misunderstanding is to equate associated mechanics with realistic mechanics.

This seems to primarily arise because people struggling to explain why they don’t like dissociated mechanics – often without a firm conceptual grasp of what it is that they’re dissatisfied with – will try to explain, for example, that it’s just not realistic for a football player to only be able to make a single one-handed catch per game.

That may or may not be true (I haven’t actually done a statistical analysis of how often receivers make one-handed catches in the NFL), but it’s largely a red herring: Our hypothetical One-Handed Catch ability is infinitely more realistic than a fireball, and yet the latter is associated while the former is not.

Conversely, of course, just because something is magical doesn’t mean that the mechanic will automatically be associated. And it’s fully possible for a dissociated mechanic to also be unrealistic. My point is that the property of associated/dissociated is completely unrelated to the property of realistic/unrealistic.

WHAT IS A ROLEPLAYING GAME?

All of this is important, because roleplaying games are ultimately defined by mechanics which are associated with the game world.

Let me break that down: Roleplaying games are self-evidently about playing a role. Playing a role is making choices as if you were the character. Therefore, in order for a game to be a roleplaying game (and not just a game where you happen to play a role), the mechanics of the game have to be about making and resolving choices as if you were the character. If the mechanics of the game require you to make choices which aren’t associated to the choices made by the character, then the mechanics of the game aren’t about roleplaying and it’s not a roleplaying game.

To look at it from the opposite side, I’m going to make a provocative statement: When you are using dissociated mechanics you are not roleplaying. Which is not to say that you can’t roleplay while playing a game featuring dissociated mechanics, but simply to say that in the moment when you are using those mechanics you are not roleplaying.

I say this is a provocative statement because I’m sure it’s going to provoke strong responses. But, frankly, it just looks like common sense to me: If you are manipulating mechanics which are dissociated from your character – which have no meaning to your character – then you are not engaged in the process of playing a role. In that moment, you are doing something else. (It’s practically tautological.) You may be multi-tasking or rapidly switching back-and-forth between roleplaying and not-roleplaying. You may even be using the output from the dissociated mechanics to inform your roleplaying. But when you’re actually engaged in the task of using those dissociated mechanics you are not playing a role; you are not roleplaying.

And this brings us to the very heart of what defines a roleplaying game: What’s the difference between the boardgame Arkham Horror and the roleplaying game Call of Cthulhu? In Arkham Horror, after all, each player takes on the role of a specific character; those characters are defined mechanically; the characters have detailed backgrounds; and plenty of people have played sessions of Arkham Horror where people have talked extensively in character.

I pick Arkham Horror for this example because it exists right on the cusp between being an RPG and a not-RPG. So when people start roleplaying during the game (which they indisputably do when they start talking in character), it raises the provocative question: Does it become a roleplaying game in that moment?

On the other hand, I’ve had the same sort of moment happen while playing Monopoly. For example, there was a game where somebody said, “I’m buying Boardwalk because I’m a shoe. And I like walking.” Goofy? Sure. Bizarre? Sure. Roleplaying? Yup.

Let me try to make this distinction clear: When we say “roleplaying game”, do we just mean “a game where roleplaying can happen”? If so, then I think the term “roleplaying game” becomes so ridiculously broad that it loses all meaning. (Since it includes everything from Monopoly to Super Mario Brothers.)

Rather, I think the term “roleplaying game” only becomes meaningful when there is a direct connection between the game and the roleplaying. When roleplaying is the game.

It’s very tempting to see all of this in a purely negative light: As if to say, “Dissociated mechanics get in the way of roleplaying and associated mechanics don’t.” But it’s actually more meaningful than that: The act of using an associated mechanic is the act of playing a role.

Because the mechanic for a fireball spell is associated with the game world, when you make the decision to cast a fireball spell you are making that decision as if you were your character. In making the mechanical decision you are required to roleplay (because that mechanical decision is directly associated to the character’s decision). You may not do it well. You’re not going to win a Tony Award for it. But in using the mechanics of a roleplaying game, you are inherently playing a role.

USING DISSOCIATED MECHANICS

Ultimately, this explains why so many people have had intensely negative reactions to dissociated mechanics: They’re antithetical to the defining characteristic of a roleplaying game and, thus, fundamentally incompatible with the primary reason many people play roleplaying games.

Does this mean that dissociated mechanics simply have no place in a roleplaying game?

Not exactly.

First, dissociated mechanics have always been part of roleplaying games. For example, character generation is almost always dissociated and that’s also true for virtually all character advancement systems, too. It’s also true for a lot of the mechanics that GMs use. (In other words, dissociated mechanics are frequently used – and accepted – in the parts of the game that aren’t about roleplaying your character.)

Second, people often have reasons for playing and enjoying roleplaying games which have nothing to do with playing a role: They might be playing for tactical challenges or to tell a great story or to vicariously enjoy their character doing awesome things. Mechanics that let those players scratch their itches can be great for them, even if it means they have to temporarily stop roleplaying in order to use them. Games don’t need to be rigid in their focus.

An extreme example of this are people who play roleplaying games as storytelling games: Their primary interest isn’t roleplaying at all; it’s the telling of a story. (In my experience, these players are often the ones who are most confused by other people having an extreme dislike for dissociated mechanics. After all, dissociated mechanics don’t interfere with their creative agenda at all. For a lengthier discussion of this issue, check out “Roleplaying Games vs. Storytelling Games”.)

In short, this essay should not be seen as an inherent vilification of dissociated mechanics. But I do think it important for game designers to understand what they’re giving up when they use dissociated mechanics; and to make sure that what they’re gaining in return is worth the price they’re paying.

Right off the bat, I want to note that these are literally my first impressions of the D&D Next playtest rules. I haven’t actually played a session with them and it may be awhile before I get the opportunity (if I ever do).

In order to help you understand my perspective on these rules, I want you to understand a couple of things about where I’m coming from.

First, I have come to realize over the past few months that 5^th Edition will have a tough time selling itself to me. I have an immense amount of time, expertise, and money invested in 3^rd Edition. In order to overcome the inertia of that investment, 5^th Edition would need to radically improve on 3^rd Edition. But the reality is that I am overwhelmingly satisfied with 3^rd Edition as a ruleset. Yes, there are a few problem areas, but I’ve been able to fix most of these with less than 8 pages of house rules. 5^th Edition needs to show me a radical improvement; but there just isn’t that much room to improve.

Second, I want the game bearing the “Dungeons & Dragons” trademark to have the fundamental gameplay that Gygax and Arneson created in 1974. I’m very comfortable with the game gaining an accretion of new mechanics – something which can be seen in every edition of the game from 1974 to 2008. But once you start fundamentally altering the core elements of D&D’s gameplay, you’re going to have a very tough time selling me a product with “Dungeons & Dragons” on the cover.

So, bearing those things in mind, here are my first impressions of the D&D Next playtest.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

(1) As I mentioned in “The Design History of Saving Throws” a few months back, 4E inverted the facing of the mechanic. I’m glad to see the playtest document revert this decision.

(2) I’m tentatively supportive of the decision to replace the Reflex/Fortitude/Will triumvirate with saving throws based directly on the ability scores (so that you have a Strength save, a Dexterity save, and so forth). Like 3^rd Edition, this offers a universal system.

However, it does potentially reintroduce the hierarchy problem that AD&D eliminated way back in ’78. And you can actually see this in the playtest document. For example, Wisdom saves are used to “resist being charmed” while a Charisma save is used to “resist certain magical compulsions, especially those that overcome your sense of self”. (You might think that Wisdom applies to non-magical charming, but you’d be wrong: Both charm person and command are specifically resisted with Wisdom saves.)

(3) The advantage/disadvantage concept seems like a really valuable tool. Basically, if you have advantage you roll 2d20 and keep the highest. If you have disadvantage on a roll, you roll 2d20 and keep the lowest. Not only does it provide a really useful mechanical hook that you can hang things on, it gives both the players and the DM a firm concept to aim for: “I’m going to try to get an advantage on my attack roll by swinging on the chandelier and dropping on him from above.” or “I take extra time to cover my tracks, hopefully disadvantaging anyone trying to follow me.”

(4) Similarly, the “hazard” concept seems like a great tool. Essentially, if you fail a roll by 10 or more you suffer the hazard. This immediately gives you a consistent mechanical framework for all kinds of stuff: Fail a climbing check and you don’t make any progress; but if suffer a climbing hazard you fall. Fail a check to disarm a trap and you didn’t disarm it; but if you suffer a hazard on the check you’ve actually triggered the trap. And so forth.

(5) I suspect that loosening up a character’s turn during combat will be very advantageous. You can start your move before taking an action and then complete your move afterwards. In addition, all sorts of incidental actions (like drawing a sword or opening an unlocked door) are just assumed to happen “during the round” without need to take an action. I suspect the combination will make it a lot easier for people to improvise, take chances, and generally keep combat more dynamic.

(6) There are dissociated mechanics all over the place. The rogue’s Knack ability (you’re really good at doing something, so twice per day you can choose to be good at it) is a good example of this.

If there’s one thing that I would absolutely, 100% qualify as a complete dealbreaker for 5^th Edition it would be ubiquitous dissociated mechanics. So this does not bode well.

(7) On a similar note, the healing mechanics are essentially identical to 4^th Edition’s approach, except they’ve replaced the term “healing surge” with “hit dice”. I’ve never liked the dissociation of this system. I also don’t like the fact that it allows you to fully recover your hit points after a rest (suggesting that the designers are still fixated on a tactics-only version of D&D play instead of embracing a balanced mixture of tactical and strategic play). And I’m also not a fan of appropriating terms from previous editions and applying them to completely different mechanics in an effort to appeal to nostalgia.

(8) There’s quite a bit of math in the playtest document that looks really questionable to me. I understand it’s a playtest and the whole point is to find stuff to fix, but some of this stuff seems really self-evidently broken.

For example, both splint armor and banded armor cost 500 gp. Splint gives you AC 15 + half Dex modifier, whereas banded gives you AC 16 and a -5 feet speed penalty. If you’ve got a +2 Dex modifier or better, splint is obviously better. And, at best, banded is giving you a +1 bonus to AC. Is a +1 bonus AC really worth a -5 feet speed penalty? Probably not.

Consider, also, studded leather vs. ringmail. Studded leather is cheaper and gives you AC 13 + Dex modifier. Ringmail is more expensive and gives you AC 13 + half Dex modifier. If you have a -1 penalty to Dex, ringmail is superior. But in all other circumstances, the studded leather is strictly better.

(9) As a note of incredibly minor interest and consequence, flasks of acid are inexplicably nerfed even more. This is part of a long trend line of nerfing acid, but we’ve reached the point where it no longer makes any sense at all: Acid in the playtest document is a ranged weapon with one use that deals 1d4 damage. It costs 10 gp. By contrast you can buy a sling for 5 sp and deal 1d6 damage.

(Alchemist’s fire also gets slightly nerfed compared to 3E, but not as severely.)

(10) Spellcasters can now cast cantrips and orisons as often as they like. It’ll be interesting to see how this feels in playtest, but based on the pregenerated characters it feels to me like straight fighters really are actually getting screwed from Day 1 for the first time in the history of D&D.

(11) It appears that absolutely nothing scales with level: Not attack bonuses, not skills. Nothing. It will be interesting to see what accumulating abilities without a commensurate increase in basic capability feels like in play. But I wasn’t a fan of 4E picking a “sweet spot” and locking it in for everybody, and this seems to only be making that even more explicit. At the very least, it’s tickling my “this doesn’t play like D&D” reflex pretty heavily.

MY MOMENTARY CONCLUSION

There’s some innovative and interesting stuff to see here. But I’m not seeing the knockout punch that convinces me that 5E is offering something worth abandoning the time, money, and expertise I have invested in 3E.

In addition, the infestation of dissociated mechanics I’m seeing are a complete poison pill. There’s no way I’m playing 5E if they stick around: They are, as I’ve said before, completely antithetical to everything I want from a roleplaying. They are antithetical to the act of roleplaying itself.

Finally, the system currently feels a lot more like D&D than 4E did. On the other hand, all we’re seeing is a very minimalist, very stripped-down version of the rules. If you similarly stripped 4E down, you’d also end up with something that feels a lot more like D&D than 4E did. And even what we’re seeing is distinctly “not D&D” in a lot of key ways.

So my first impression is one of skepticism leaning towards disappointment. Take that for what it’s worth.

The ocular tyrant is a bulbous ball of floating flesh dominated by a large, central eye which protrudes from its circular bulk. Five smaller eyes extend on thickly-veined eyestalks in a penumbral crown above it, while a dangling array of five psychic tendrils hang in a thick mass below it.

DESIGN NOTES

The first goal of the ocular tyrant is to provide an OGL alternative to a well-known beastie that remains unavailable because it was declared product identity. Their progenitor is fairly self-evident, and the ocular tyrants are happy to become part of that proud family which includes luminaries like the gazers from Ultima. (Or, at least, as happy as these cynical, narcissistic creatures can ever be.) The main innovation here are the psychic tendrils, which initially occurred to me as a lark and are now growing on me quite a bit.

The second goal was to tweak the power list of the progenitor to improve it. Whether you use the original creature or the ocular tyrant, I hope you’ll give some thought to swapping in the power list below. Let me explain why.

Original List of Eyes: charm monster, charm person, disintegrate, fear, finger of death, flesh to stone, inflict moderate wounds, sleep, slow, telekinesis

This list presents three problems.

First, duplicate powers. Does it really need both charm person and charm monster? Similarly, although disintegrate was revised in 3.5 to resolve a little differently, both it and finger of death are basically slightly different ways of saying “save or die”. Speaking of which…

Second, two of its powers are type 4 save-or-die effects (save or you’re dead); four are type 3 (save or you’re out of the encounter); and one is a type 2. I don’t necessarily think all save-or-die effects need to be nerfed out of existence, but the massive lethality of seven save-or-you’re-gone abilities being unleashed every round has certainly made me hesitant about using these guys over the years.

The other problem is that these save-or-die abilities make the ocular tyrant too dangerous. The only way to make the creature at all workable is to nerf its hit points so that the PCs can take it out quickly. But the result turns it into a super-swingy paper tiger: PCs who get the drop on it will often wipe it out before it can even take a shot. PCs who don’t are likely to be completely devastated. There’s no way to have any kind of substantial confrontation with the monster the way that it’s currently designed.

Third, because sleep has been nerfed so many times over the years it’s now effectively useless to the creature: It’s a CR 13 creature, but sleep isn’t effective against any creature with more than 4 HD.

Some of this stuff just has to go.

The Culling: charm monster, —, disintegrate, fear, —, flesh to stone, inflict moderate wounds, greater sleep, slow, telekinesis

This list eliminates the duplicates and bumps sleep up into being an effect that will actually be meaningful in CR-appropriate encounters (see below).

The next thing I’m going to do is take the two severe save-or-die effects (disintegrate, flesh to stone) and modify them: I don’t want to eliminate these effects from the tyrant’s arsenal, but I will soften them up a bit so that I can use ’em with heartless glee as a DM.

Finally, I need to replace the two abilities I removed entirely.

The Replacements: confusion, force missile

Confusion feels like a good replacement for charm person: It’s got a similar role in combat (turning friends on friends), but does it in a unique way that doesn’t duplicate charm monster.

Force missile is an original spell I developed a couple years back. It’s similar to magic missile, but it’s going to give the ocular tyrant the ability to shove people around the battlefield. I think it’ll complement telekinesis and really let this guy throw his weight around.

THE NEW SPELLS

These are the new spells I’m using.

SLEEP, GREATER
Enchantment (Compulsion) [Mind-Affecting]
Level: Bard 3, Sorcerer/Wizard 3
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: Standard Action
Range: Medium (100 ft. + 10 ft./level)
Area: Several living creatures within a 15-foot-radius burst
Duration: 1 minute/level
Saving Throw: Will negates
Spell Resistance: Yes

As sleep, except that you roll 4d6 to see how many Hit Dice of creatures are affected.

FORCE MISSILE
Evocation [Force]
Level: Sorcerer/Wizard 3
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Medium (100 ft. + 10 ft./level)
Targets: Up to 5 creatures, no two of which can be more than 15 ft. apart
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Fortitude partial (see text)
Spell Resistance: Yes

Force missile is similar to magic missile, but each missile inflicts 1d6+1 points of force damage. In addition, a target struck by a force missile must make a Fortitude save or be forced back 5 feet per 3 caster levels. (So a creature struck by a 6th-level caster would be forced back 10 feet.) Forced movement is in a straight line directly away from the caster.

THE OCULAR TYRANT

OCULAR TYRANT (CR 12+1*): 152 hp (16d8+80), AC 23, ranged touch +21 (eyestalks), Save +15, Ability DC 21, Size Large

Str 10, Dex 14, Con 18, Int 18, Wis 15, Cha 14

All-Around Vision immune to flanking

Darkvision 60 ft.

Fly 20 ft. (perfect)

Antimagic Eye (Su): The ocular tyrant’s main eye emits a continual 160-ft. cone in which magic items, spells, spell-like abilities, and supernatural abilities (including the tyrant’s eyestalks and psychic tendrils) have no effect. Spells or effects brought within the area are suppressed, but not dispelled. Summoned creatures and incorporeal undead wink out of existence within the area, but reappear in the same spot when the tyrant’s gaze moves away. (Time spent within the area counts against the suppressed spell’s or summoned creature’s duration.) The ocular tyrant can redirect the gaze of its main eye as an immediate action.

Eyestalks (Sp): As a full action, the ocular tyrant can fire any number or combination of its eyestalks and psychic tendrils. The tyrant’s eyestalks require successful ranged touch attacks (unless otherwise noted below). The maximum range is 160 ft. The effective caster level is 11^th.

Disintegrating Ray: A thin, green ray which inflicts 2d6 points of Constitution damage (or 5d6 hit points on a successful Fortitude save). If this damage kills the target, it is entirely disintegrated. When used against an object, the ray simply distintegrates up to one 10-foot cube of nonliving matter. The ray even affects objects constructed entirely of force energy.

Flesh to Stone: A dull gray ray which inflicts 2d6 points of Dexterity damage (Fortitude save negates). If this damage reduces the target’s Dexterity to 0, the target, along with all its carried gear, is turned into a mindless, inert statue.

Inflict Moderate Wounds: A black ray coruscated with silver, inflicting 2d8+11 points of damage.

Force Missiles: The eye emits five missiles of force energy, which can be directed independently at multiple targets. Each missile unerringly strikes its target and inflicts 1d6+1 points of force damage.  In addition, a target struck by one or more force missiles must make a Fortitude save or be forced back 15 ft. directly away from the ocular tyrant. (This movement does not provoke attacks of opportunity.)

Slow: An orange-red ray which drastically slows the target (Will save negates). The victim moves at half speed, can only take a single standard action each turn, and suffers a -1 penalty to attack rolls, AC, and Reflex saves.

Psychic Tendrils (Sp): The ocular tyrant can fire any number or combination of its eyestalks and psychic tendrils as a full action. Each psychic eyestalk affects a single target (unless otherwise noted below). The maximum range is 160 ft. The effective caster level is 11^th.

Charm Monster: The target considers the ocular tyrant to be its trusted friend and ally. The charm effect lasts for 11 days. (Will save negates; +5 bonus on the saving throw if the ocular tyrant is currently attacking the target or its allies.)

Confusion: The target becomes confused for 11 rounds (Will save negates).

Fear: The target must make a Will save or become panicked for 11 rounds. On a successful save, they are shaken for 1 round.

Greater Sleep: This psychic tendril causes 4d6 HD of creatures to fall unconscious for 11 minutes (Will negates). It can affect multiple creatures within range, with those closest to the ocular tyrant succumbing to the effect first. Wounding a sleeping creature awakens them, but normal noise does not. Allies can use a standard action to slap a victim awake.

Telekinesis: Using this tendril, the ocular tyrant can apply a sustained force (moving objects weighing 275 pounds or less up to 20 feet per round; creatures can negate the effect on an object it possesses with a Will save), perform a combat maneuver (bull rush, disarm, grapple, or trip without provoking attacks of opportunity, using a +14 bonus for any required action checks), or make a violent thrust. During a violent thrust, the tyrant can hurl up to 11 objects or creatures (all within 10 feet of each other and weighing no more than a total of 275 pounds) towards any target within 10 feet of the objects. The tyrant makes an attack roll for each object, dealing 1 point of damage per 25 pounds (for less dangerous objects) or 1d6 points of damage per 25 pounds (for hard, dense objects). Hurled creatures and creatures holding hurled objects get a Will save to negate the effect.

* CR adjustment due to multiple attacks each round.

FINAL NOTES

The stat block here is designed for Legends & Labyrinths, but can be used in 3.5 without modification. (That’s the whole point of L&L, after all.) Alternatively you can just grab the eyestalks and psychic tendrils and slap ’em onto the stat block in the MM.

This material is covered under the Open Game License.

Tagline: The classic dungeon crawl designed by the master of dungeon crawls, Gary Gygax.

The Tomb of Horrors module is one of the great classics in our little industry. It would be truly surprising to me if someone who has been playing RPGs for more than a handful of years would not have heard of this module, if not played in it or run it themselves.

The Tomb of Horrors was first released in 1978, as one of the first modules available for the AD&D game, after being used for the Official D&D tournament at the very first Origins convention. Recently it has been re-released as part of The Return to the Tomb of Horrors boxed set and can be obtained there if you can’t track it down through the used section of your local game store.

At the time it was published this was a fairly innovative product. In addition to the “map and key” presentation which was standard at the time, Tomb of Horrors also came with a pamphlet of forty illustrations – each presenting some part of the module which could be shown to the players at the appropriate time. This was cutting edge stuff at the time. Honest.

By all merits this should be an absolutely awful product by current standards – substandard writing, sub-par art, and a linear plot. Okay, I take that last one back: There is no plot, just a bunch of rooms full of traps and monsters.

Despite all this, though, there’s something about the Tomb of Horrors which still tantalizes me. Part of it is the fact it’s a classic. Like Queen of the Demonweb Pits it’s one of those things which “every” gamer has experienced at some point. There’s a sense of history to it, which adds to the experience. The other part of this is that sometimes you just gotta kick up your heels and take a brief detour visit back to your youth. In other words: Hack ‘n slash can be fun if you’re looking for hack ‘n slash.

The Tomb of Horrors was and remains a classic not because it dots all the i’s and crosses all of the t’s of what the current popular consensus of roleplaying is (or even of the type of roleplaying I enjoy most of the time), but because it accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do.

So when you’re looking for a quick one-shot relax from your normally roleplay-intensive campaigns, you might want to look back at an old classic once in awhile. It can’t hurt anything. Actually, I’m thinking about adapting it to FUDGE for a quick run sometime real soon. See you there.

Style: 2
Substance: 3

Author: Gary Gygax
Company/Publisher: TSR / Wizards of the Coast
Cost: n/a
Page count: 50
ISBN: 0-935696-12-1
Originally Posted: 1999/02/17

This review is another example of how 3rd Edition and the OSR have rehabilitated first D&D and then old school D&D in the RPG community. There are, of course, still haters out there. (There are always haters.) But even I occasionally have difficulty appreciating just how much “D&D Sucks” was the received wisdom of the online RPG community pre-2000.

I was no exception (nor am I now): AD&D is a terrible game and there are many, many reasons why I stopped playing it. But I did recognize that there was a fun game hiding away inside of AD&D, and this review was basically an attempt on my part to say, “Hey! There’s fun to be had over here!”

Several years later, my own adaptation of Tomb of Horrors to 3rd Edition became one of the earliest additions to the website. Check it out. It’s still a ton of fun.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

Take a moment to consider this:

A four-legged pigeon is the size of an apatosaurus, and in combat a display of feathers rises behind the creature’s head. (…) At will, the giant pigeon can shape-shift into a giant yellow spider.

If that sort of thing — along with 7′ tall parrots who are always on fire and 12′ long blue jays without legs — sounds interesting and useful to you, then you’re going to love Isle of the Unknown. If it doesn’t, however, then you’re probably going to be struggling to find much utility between its covers.

Isle of the Unknown presents an interesting contrast to Carcosa (Geoffrey McKinney’s other deluxe hexcrawl product from Lamentations of the Flame Princess). Unlike the bland and boring key entries for Carcosa, Isle of the Unknown — which describes an island roughly 150 miles wide — is generally specific, clever, and creative. Unfortunately, it presents a very different set of problems which, nevertheless, cripple the product for me.

First, there are the monsters. Although occasionally spiced with some interesting abilities, they really are giant pigeons all the way down: Pick a random animal. Make it bigger than normal. Randomly determine the number of limbs it possesses. Now, randomly combine it with another animal; light it on fire; have it ooze pus; or give it a random spell-like ability. Ta-Da! You’ve re-created the vast majority of the monsters in this book.

Second, although in a hex-to-hex comparison Isle of the Unknown is much improved compared to Carcosa, in totality it ends up being just as bland by over-saturating its themes.

Let me explain: I think themes are very important in creating interesting hexcrawl or dungeoncrawl keys. Themes give a location its identity and make it memorable. Without a proper theme, a ‘crawl turns into a random funhouse. But if a theme is too narrow and relied on too heavily, then it becomes repetitive. (For example, enchanted vales which remain perpetually in springtime regardless of the weather outside simply stop being magical when there are something like a dozen of them scattered around the island.)

In the case of Isle of the Unknown, McKinney describes the scope of his key like this:

To aid the Referee, only the weird, fantastical, and magical is described herein. The mundane is left to the discretion of the campaign Referee, to be supplied according to the characteristics of his own conceptions or campaign world. Detailed encounter tables (for example) of French knights, monks, pilgrims, etc. would be of scant use to a Referee whose campaign world is a fantasy version of pre-Colombian America. Similar considerations led to the exclusion of most proper names.

Couple important things to understand about this: First, it’s untrue. The key includes a lot of “mundane” detail (most notably all the major communities on the island). Second, it’s nonsense. You can’t say “if I don’t give this guy a proper name, then it’ll be easy to slot him in as a pre-Colombian American” and then describe him as “a robust and jovial man of middle years with blue eyes and curling reddish hair and beard (…) he loves nothing so much as the hunt, save perhaps his dozen Scottish Deerhounds”.

What McKinney really means is that 95% of his hex key is going to be broken down into three categories: Monsters, Magical Statues, and high-level Magic-Users/Clerics who all live by themselves as bucolic hermits.

And on an individual level, most of this content is at least interesting. But if you attempted to actually run a hexcrawl using this hex key, the result would be incredibly boring due to its repetition: “Magic statue, bucolic hermit, bucolic hermit, giant parrot, magic statue, humanoid bluejay, magic statue, magic statue…”

So, ultimately, I’m forced to conclude that the book is not very useful in its intended function as a hexcrawl. However, it may have some value as an inefficiently organized bestiary and the like… but only if you like giant, flaming parrots.

In closing, it must be noted that, once again, Lamentations of the Flame Princess have created a book which is both beautiful and useful. Although completely different in its aesthetic from Carcosa, Isle of the Unknown is nevertheless gorgeous: Excellent illustrations, rich lay-out, high-quality paper, durable binding. (My only caveat would be that the map of the island, while very pretty, does not clearly identify the terrain type in each hex. From a utility standpoint, that’s a fatal flaw in a hexcrawl product.)

Style: 5
Substance: 3