Last year I began a series of posts regarding my reactions to the original 1974 edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Recently a post on Delta’s D&D Hotspot tweaked me to comment on one of the issues I didn’t discuss in the original series: The timekeeping and movement rules.

Here’s the most pertinent passage from Volume 3: Underworld & Wilderness Adventures:

THE MOVE/TURN IN THE UNDERWORLD:

In the underworld all distances are in feet, so wherever distances are given in inches convert them to tens of feet.

Movement (distances given in Vol. 1) is in segments of approximately ten minutes. Thus it takes ten minutes to move about two moves — 120 feet for a fully-armored character. Two moves constitute a turn, except in flight/pursuit situations where the moves/turn will be doubled (and no mapping allowed).

[…]

Melee is fast and furious. There are ten rounds of combat per turn.

I have now introduced close to two dozen people to the OD&D rules. This almost always involves walking them through the major cruxes of the rules, but even in cases where a more rapid acclimation is called for, I still make a point of reading this passage to them: That way they can fully appreciate the archaeological reconstruction of the rulebooks necessary to actually play this game.

What can we conclude from this passage?

2 moves = 4 flight/pursuit moves = 1 turn = 1 segment = 10 rounds = 10 minutes

The fact that “turn” and “segment” are used interchangeably is somewhat confusing, but what makes the passage really tricky is that they actually aren’t used interchangeably. If you can move the “distance given in Vol. 1” in one segment of 10 minutes, what does it mean that you can also make two moves in a turn of 10 minutes?

Making this even more confusing is the phrase “120 feet for a fully-armored character”. The phrase “fully-armored” means absolutely nothing in the context of the rules and the default speed for a character is 12″ = 120 feet. So if you interpret that passage to mean that a character with a 12″ movement moves 120 feet in two moves that take 1 turn, then it follows that a “move” (in the context of this passage, anyway) actually equals 1/2 the character’s speed. Which would mean that:

1 move = 1 segment = 0.5 turns

But that’s probably not what it means. What “fully-armored” probably means is the “speed of an Armored Footman (6″/turn) which is referenced as part of an example in Volume 1. (Which is not, actually, the speed of a character fully-armored character unless they’re also carrying a bunch of other equipment. Unless, of course, you decide to interpret this example as a new rule that actually implies that armor alone — separate from weight carried — can affect the speed of a character.).

But that still doesn’t clear up how:

1 segment = 1 move = 10 minutes

and

1 turn = 2 moves = 10 minutes

Can both be true. (They obviously can’t.)

MOVE TURNS vs. MELEE TURNS

But we’re not done yet.

Although the title of this section as it appears on page 8 of Volume 3 is THE MOVE/TURN IN THE UNDERWORLD, on the table of contents for this volume it appears as “The Move Turn in the Underworld”.

This separate coining of the phrase “move turn” could probably be safely ignored, if it wasn’t for Supplement 1: Greyhawk. In this supplement, Gygax casually introduces the term “melee turn”. For example, on page 6 the duration of the Monster Summoning I spell is listed as: “Duration: 6 melee turns”.

Furthrmore, on page 18 of Supplement 1, giant snakes are given damage of “2-8/turn of constriction”. The use of the term “turn” here can’t possibly mean 10 minutes, can it?

TURNS vs. FULL TURNS

And then we come to Supplement 2: Blackmoor, which was written by Dave Arneson. On page 1, in describing the abilities of monks, he writes: “…has a 75% chance of stunning the opponent for from 3-12 turns”. Much like the giant snake from Supplement 1, it seems unlikely that Arneson means that the monk can stun opponents for 30 to 120 minutes.

And this suspicion seems confirmed when, on the next page, he writes that 5th level monks can “perfectly simulate death” for a duration of time equal to “a six sided die x level for the number of full turns”.

Should we interpret “full turn” to mean something different than “turn” from the previous page? Context certainly seems to suggest it.

It’s therefore tempting, I think, to suggest that Arneson was using “turn vs. full turn” in the same sense that Gygax was using “round vs. turn” or “melee turn vs. move turn”.

If this were actually the case, it would go a long way towards explaining why this terminology is so hopelessly confused in OD&D: You had at least two different authors using the term “turn” with at least two completely inverted meanings.

Perhaps the central crux can be found when we hit Arneson’s description of the giant squid (page16): “Squids tire easily; there is a 50% chance that they will withdraw after three rounds of melee, with a 5% increase each turn thereafter.”

Here Arneson displays knowledge of the term “round”, but does his use of the term “turn” in immediate juxtaposition indicate that he’s using the terms interchangeably? To my eyes it seems almost certain, but perhaps others would disagree.

NO METHOD IN THE MADNESS

But perhaps I’m simply trying to impose rationality onto something which is fundamentally irrational. There’s certainly a fair degree of evidence that Arneson and Gygax simply used the term “turn” to mean whatever the hell they felt like it should mean. For example, on page 43 of Blackmoor:

There is a 1 in 6 chance that when entering passages marked with a dashed line or when crossing one of the bridges that 1-3 trolls will be encountered. Any fighting will bring an additional 1-3 trolls every turn the fight exists.

Arneson surely can’t have meant that 1d3 new trolls should endlessly show up every single round, right? There’s no way such a combat could ever end.

Similarly, on page 18 of Volume 3 we can read as part of the rules for large party movement:

Turn: Each move will constitute one day. Each day is considered a turn.

Which is, at the very least, suggestive that they considered “turn” to be a useful catch-all phrase and that its proper meaning is supposed to be intuited from context. (For another example of the same, consider dungeon levels, character levels, and spell levels.)

And all of this analysis ignores that neither Gygax nor Arneson were the sole authors contributing to the supplements.

HOW I PLAY

Every so often I’ll see someone praise the “elegance” or “simplicity” of OD&D. Whenever that happens, I think about passages like this and I laugh and laugh and laugh.

Here’s how we’ve been playing these rules:

1 turn = 10 minutes = 10 rounds = 2 moves

1 segment = 5 minutes = 1 move

(This matches the definition of “segment” to mean 1 move, but obviously contradicts the definition of “segment” to mean 10 minutes. We picked this interpretation because having a second term synonymous with turn didn’t seem useful, but there’s potential utility in having a term that means basically “half a turn” or possibly “an interrupted turn”.)

Speed is defined in inches according to the encumbrance table (which has its own interpretative issues, but let’s ignore those for now):

1 move = speed x 10 feet

1 turn = 2 moves = speed x 20 feet

Running = double speed

Now comes the tricky question of how far you can move in a single round. The logic here seems pretty clear: A round is 1/10th the length of a turn, ergo you can move 1/10th as far. Which mean that total movement in a round is:

1 round of combat = speed x 2 feet

In practice, we say that people get two moves per round (just as you get two moves per turn), so:

1 round = 2 combat moves = speed x 2 feet

1 combat move = speed in feet

Further, we concluded that you could either move twice or move and attack, because why else would the rules give you two smaller moves instead of just one big move? There must be some reason why you can split them up like that. As an alternative solution, we briefly played with the idea of giving each player two “actions” which they could either use to move or attack, but eventually decided against it.)

How have others interpreted these rules?

HOLMES: Holmes’s revision/clean-up of the rules in 1977 used the same values for turn-based movement. But he radically revised combat. The 1977 Basic Set states, “Each turn is ten minutes except during combat where there are ten melee rounds per turn, each round lasting ten seconds.” (Or is that not a revision after all? Assuming that there’s a “combat turn” which lasts for one minute and is divided up into 10 rounds of 6 seconds each would be another way of resolving the inconsistent use of the term “turn” in the OD&D manuals and supplements.) This has a minimal impact on how far characters can move in a single round, but the exact values are no longer calculable from the base values: “Movement (if any) is usually at a sprint; an unarmored man can move 20 feet per melee round, a fully armored man only 10 feet.”

SWORDS & WIZARDRY: This retro clone of OD&D oddly chooses to explicitly contradict the OD&D movement rules by stating that a walking character (traveling at speed x 20 feet) cannot map or observe their surroundings carefully. It instead creates a new half-speed category where mapping is permitted. It also fails to provide any clarification of whether or not one can move and attack in a single combat round. It defines walking speed in a round as being equal to 1/10th walking speed in a turn, but it also defines a “combat” movement rate equal to 1/20th the walking speed in a turn (which would be equivalent to 1 combat move in my interpretation above).

(Looking through both Swords & Wizardry and Swords & Wizardry: White Box, I’m actually really surprised at how many rules they just make up out of wholecloth. Even more surprising are the number of rules which are just flat-out wrong. I often talk about how open to interpretation the OD&D rules, but S&W routinely ignores the stuff that isn’t open for interpretation. And even some of the stuff that is open to interpretation is instead rendered in some completely different way lying far outside the gray area of the original rules. I just always assumed that the retro clones would look more like clones and less like cousins.)

Back to Reactions to OD&D

Many moons ago, James Maliszewski of Grognardia put up a short post summarizing the total page count of various editions of D&D:

OD&D (LBBs only): 56 full pages (112 half-sheets)
OD&D (LBBs + 4 supplements): 183 full pages (366 half-sheets)
Holmes Basic: 48 pages
AD&D 1e (PHB, DMG, MM): 470 pages

To this post, I responded by saying:

It would be interesting to do a page comparison between editions without taking into account:

(1) Monsters
(2) Spells
(3) Classes
(4) Races

The theory being that adding more options within these categories is not necessarily adding bulk to the actual rules of the game.

(To that list I would also like to add “magic items”, “sample scenarios”, and “indices”.)

Basically, my thought was that you could take AD&D and strip out all the monsters, spells, magic items, classes, and races that weren’t found in the original OD&D and you would still have a completely playable game. In fact, someone observing you playing that game would have no way of knowing that you were doing anything other than playing 100%-by-the-book AD&D. (Unless, of course, you told them that you had limited the size of the menu.)

In other words, having those extra options doesn’t meaningfully increase the complexity of the actual rules of the game.

I intended at the time to eventually put together such a post, but got distracted by other concerns… until now. So, without further adieu, and for whatever use it may be, the total “rules only” page count for various editions of (A)D&D:

OD&D (LBBs only): 29 full pages (58 half-sheets)
OD&D (LBBs + 4 supplements): 64 full pages (128 half-sheets)
OD&D (including Chainmail): 86 full pages (148 half-sheets)
Holmes Edition: 19 full pages
Moldvay Edition (Basic + Expert): 64 full pages
BECM: 163 full pages
BECMI: 221 full pages
Rules Cyclopedia: 142 full pages
AD&D 1e (PHB, DMG, MM): 192 full pages
AD&D 2e (PHB, DMG, MM): 223 full pages
D&D 3e (PHB, DMG, MM): 257 full pages
D&D 3.5 (PHB, DMG, MM): 294 full pages

NOTES

For more information on the different editions of the game you can check out my Nomenclature of D&D Editions.

The BECM entry total include only the Basic, Expert, Companion, and Master Rules. The BECMI entry includes the Immortals boxed set.

The 2nd Edition entry is based on the original 1989 rulebooks.

I’m not including either the Unearthed Arcana variant of 1st Edition, nor the Players’ Option variant of 2nd Edition.

First Impression: It’s interesting watch the slow, inexorable expansion of the game.

Second Impression: The relative pointlessness of the entire exercise is indicated in the comparison between the BECM and Rules Cyclopedia page counts (which are the same rules, except the former is bloated somewhat by the need to repeat and reintroduce information four times over). It’s also indicated in the comparison between 3.0 and 3.5 (where the expansion was largely due to the WotC’s ever-increasing font sizes).

Go to Part 1

For our third OD&D session in the Caverns of Thracia, we had four new players. Two of these players were completely new to RPGs; one had spent most of her time playing in the original World of Darkness; and the last had once played in a D&D campaign where the other players didn’t bother explaining the rules to her and she had basically watched while somebody else played her character for her.

This last player was particularly leery about giving D&D another try. In fact, I’m not sure if she would have shown up at all if it hadn’t been for the fact that OD&D was only one of the options for what we might play that night (the other was Arkham Horror). When the group decided on OD&D by a single vote, however, she joined the rest of us in rolling up a character.

I’m going to spoil the ending here: All five of the new players had a great time and all of them were eager to play again, including the player who had suffered such a sub-par experience the last time that she’d tried to play.

The new characters were: Greenwick the Halfling, Brennan the Fighting-Man, Howard the Magic-User, and Bob the Fighting-Man.

The spiel for introducing the rules and walking everyone through character creation took a little longer than in previous sssions because of the complete neophytes at the table, but we all had a good time of it. Howard’s player, in particular, glommed onto the OD&D rule that all weapons deal 1d6 points of damage and decided that, instead of buying a weapon, he could just convert a gold piece into copper and then throw the copper coins at people.

WHEN LAST WE LEFT OUR HEROES…

We also had two returning characters: Reeva (who had missed the second session) and the halfling Thalmain, who had now catapulted himself all the way to 3rd level (despite suffering an XP penalty from his low prime requisite).

At the end of the previous session, Thalmain had gotten himself cursed while opening a chest. Making a ruling based on the costs for creating a magical scroll, I decided that getting the local priest to cast remove curse would cost him 200 gp.

Fortunately, Thalmain’s share of the loot from the previous session had tallied at 240 gp.

This also gave us a nice hook for the new session: While the other PCs from the previous session were carousing with their loot, Thalmain found his own personal purse considerably lighter. Thus he had a motivation for rounding up a likely group of rag-tag treasure hunters (i.e., the other PCs) and returning to the ruins ASAP.

It was around this point, as the group was gearing itself up for the expedition, that Thalmain’s player asked for the map they’d made in the previous session.

I grinned my evil DM grin and said, “Herbert was the one mapping.”

And, of course, Herbert wasn’t there.

After a bit of haggling, I decided that Herbert would be willing to sell the map to Thalmain. Thalmain had 40 gp left, so I grabbed 2d20 and rolled… two natural 20’s.

Thalmain decided that he didn’t particularly want to go completely broke, so he decided to instead steal the map. This proved easy enough, since Herbert was cavorting at the local tavern with his wealth.

THE GRAND TOUR

As Thalmain led them into the Caverns of Thracia, he was able to act as a bit of a tour guide for the new players/characters. (“Here’s where the bridge almost burned down… Don’t open that door… Here’s the pit trap I heroically saved the party from… Here’s the place where I roasted lizardmen…”)

Eventually, however, they began pressing on into unexplored territory. A short while later, they found themselves descending broad stairs of stone…

And that’s when things got epic.

In the Caverns of Thracia, there is a room keyed thusly:

The Burial Crypt of the Cult of the Dark One: The reek of decaying flesh permeates the air here. Lying in ordered rows are rank upon rank of corpses. Most are long decayed and in skeletal form, but many are still fairly fresh, not having been dead for more than a few weeks (if you can call that fresh!). […] If the southernmost pair of columns is approached within 5′ or if the columns are passed between or to either side, 1-4 skeletons will animate and begin to attack intruders. Each additional melee round 1-4 more skeletons will animate as long as there are living intruders to fight, up to a total of 400 skeletons. Skeletons, AC: 7, Move: 12″, HD: 1, Damage 1-6, HP 3.

I decided that the Thanatos cultists that they had killed before would have been moved down here, so there were also about a dozen bodies laid out directly before the leading into this large chamber and covered with fresh linen. (This creeped them out because, of course, it implied that there had been somebody around to move the bodies.)

Inevitably, of course, the PCs moved far enough into the room to trigger the undead guardians. As the corpses began to stir and wrench themselves free from the cordwood-like stacks of the dead, the party fell back to the entrance.

The two halfings — skilled in ranged weaponry — picked off the first wave. (Aided by the occasional coin-toss from Howard.) But more and more of the dead were beginning to stir, and they realized it would only take a few unlucky die rolls for the skeletons to reach their defensive position.

(Actually, I don’t think I’ve discussed this previously: Halflings are described in OD&D as having “deadly accuracy with missiles as detailed in CHAINMAIL”. These sessions are being run with the conceit that I don’t “have” Chainmail, so we decided that halflings would simply get a +1 bonus to damage while using ranged weapons.)

Against the eminent risk, they quickly rearranged their lines. Brennan and Reeva took the front line. Greenwick switched from ranged attacks to a polearm in the second rank. And then Howard, Thalmain, and Bob lined up in back using their ranged attacks to thin the undead ranks before they reached the melee fighters.

But, more importantly, they also started spreading oil in front of their defensive position. And as soon as some of the undead got close enough, they lit the oil.

Based on my interpretation of the room key, the undead would just keep coming. Each undead had 1d6 hit points. Those that survived the ranged attacks would enter the oil, suffer 1d6 hit points, and frequently die before they even threatened the melee fighters.

After a couple of rounds, it was clear that the 1d4 skeletons per round were just never going to pose any kind of credible threat: The defensive position they’d created was too strong. And while the oil would only last for 1d6 rounds, they had stocked up on it (in large part due to Thalmain’s success with a similar tactic during the last session).

THE MASSACRE

I was in the process of trying to figure out how to make the encounter more interesting (since wittling through 400 undead 1d4 at a time wasn’t particularly exciting) when the PCs made it easy for me:  They decided to try proactively eliminating the undead before they could rise. They tossed a flask of oil onto one of the piles of corpses and then fired a flaming arrow into it.

I ruled that the resulting conflagration was successful in destroying a large number of potential undead… but it also had the effect of rousing them. I rolled 1d10, got a result of 8, and went from rolling 1d4 to rolling 8d4 for the number of undead animating each round.

As the undead rose en masse, the piles collapsed — sending the dead cascading across the floor of the chamber.

It’s a testament to the strenght of their defensive position that they managed to hold out for several more rounds against the larger waves of undead without sustaining any injury. I was literally rolling fistfuls of d6’s to calculate the skeleton’s hit points while the players rolled a fistful of d6’s to calculate the damage wrought from the wide moat of fire they had laid down. They would read off the results and I would toss d6’s aside or lower their totals to reflect the current hit points of the skeletons.

Unfortunately, many of them were just 1st level characters. Eventually the law of averages worked against them and one of the skeletons emerged from the flaming oil and with a howl of undead rage managed to rip out Brennan’s throat.

Around this same time, my d4’s rolled high and a wave of 22 skeletons started heading towards them. At that point, they decided that discretion might be the better part of valor. But they weren’t done yet: Howard moved up to the melee line and they held the position for another couple of rounds.

As the wave of the 22 skeletons got close, however, they fell back.

But they weren’t done yet. See, Brennan had been the one carrying most of their (very large) supply of oil. So before they retreated, they rolled Brennan’s body into the flames.

1… 2… 3….

KA-BOOM!

Surprisingly, a couple of the skeletons managed to actually emerge from the far side of the inferno and pursue them a couple of steps up the stairs. (I say a couple of steps, because Thalmain and Bob put arrows through their skulls before they got any further.)

When it was all said and done, I tallied up the dead:

They had killed 76 skeletons.

Killed? It’s probably more accurate to say “slaughtered” or “massacred” on a scale that a bunch of 1st level characters (with the exception of the 3rd level Thalmain) should really not be capable of dealing out.

Of course, they weren’t 1st level any longer. Everybody not only leveled up, but also maxed out their XP for the next level, bumping into the “thou shalt not get enough XP for two levels” ceiling. (Well, except for Thalmain, who bumped into the “thou shalt not advance past 4th level” ceiling for halflings.)

76 skeletons.

It isn’t the largest single-battle slaughter I’ve ever seen in a D&D game, but it’s almost certainly the most impressive. The only battles that rival it in terms of sheer number involve groups fighting large hordes of significantly weaker opponents.

Smart play. Very smart play.

Admittedly, if the skeletons had been smarter they wouldn’t have continued marching into the flames. But, on the other hand, I’m not sure how much difference it would have made: The skeletons had no access to ranged weapons and any possibility of a retreat was cut off by the chasm to the north. Even if they had hung back, they would have simply been picked off by the party’s ranged attacks.

To be continued…

Go to Part 1

I’m continuing the account of our second session of OD&D in the Caverns of Thracia.

FIRST TRAVAIL: FUN WITH PIT TRAPS

The pit trap in this section of the dungeon also led to some hilarity: After detecting its presence, Thalmain spent the better part of 15 minutes working out massively elaborate and overwrought work-arounds for trying to get across it… having missed the fact that there were 1-foot wide walkways to either side of the pit that could be easily walked across.

The funny part was that the other players had heard that information just fine. They, like me, just waited for Thalmain to finish his various exertions with ropes and acrobatics. When he was finished, Herbert calmly walked around the pit trap and patted him on the shoulder. “Can we go now?”

INTERLUDE: SLEEP AND SLEEP ALIKE

Following their first forays into the dungeon, the Thanatos death cultists had retreated to this chamber. This was going to be a tough encounter in any case and the PCs, unfortunately, alerted the cultists by talking loudly as they approached the heavy wooden doors.

This allowed the cultists to entrench their positions. When the PCs finally battered their way through the doors they found 8 well-accoutered guards in full plate; 2 cultist priests; and a trained black bear awaiting them.

Which is when I was forcibly reminded of just how powerful the sleep spell used to be:

Sleep: A Sleep spell affects from 2-16 1st level types (hit dice of up to 1 + 1), from 2-12 2nd level types (hit dice of up to 2 +1), from 1-6, 3rd level types, and but 1 4th level type (up to 4 +1 hit dice). The spell always affects up to the number of creatures determined by the dice. If more than the number rolled could be affected, determine which “sleep” by random selection. Range: 24″

At low levels it is, effectively, an encounter-ending ability. It was significantly neutered in 2nd Edition and then further neutered in 3.5 to the point where I almost never see it cast any more. But it quickly became apparent why it used to be a staple of the Magic-User class (along with magic missile and fireball):

Trust cast his first spell… and the entire room (except for the black bear) fell asleep. The bear was quickly taken down and a mass throat-slitting ensued.

There was much cheering and general approbation.

I had poetic justice a few minutes later, however, when the party triggered the sleep gas trap on one of the chests in the room. Everyone except for Thalmain was knocked out.

SECOND TRAVAIL: FUN WITH FLAMING OIL

Here we had another fun twist: Earlier in the session, several characters had been afflicted by a paralytic effect. Thalmain had been among those who had tried (unsuccessfully) to wake them. They had been forced to wait for the better part of an hour before the effect wore off. Left all alone, Thalmain now assumed that the sleep gas was, in fact, another paralytic effect.

When Thalmain decided to move their unconscious forms to the far side of the room, I was initially going to declare that the disturbance of being moved was sufficient to wake them up. But then Thalmain’s player specified, out of the blue, that he was moving them very carefully — and I decided that such careful ministrations would not be sufficient to wake them.

This nearly proved their undoing when, a few minutes later, a patrol of lizardmen showed up hoping to parlay with the cultists. Thalmain had spiked the door shut and even tried to bluff them into going away, but the lizardmen weren’t having it. They managed to batter the door open, although Thalmain’s cleverly placed iron spikes managed to wedge it in a position where they could only come through single-file.

But, nevertheless, it was still Thalmain the Halfling against an entire squad of lizardmen.

This would have probably ended badly if it wasn’t for Thalmain’s pyromania: He had, with great forethought, doused the floor in front of the doors with oil. As the lizardmen started to pour through the gap between the doors, he fired a flaming arrow into the middle of it and turned the entrance into a pyre.

A few lizardmen managed to leap through the flames largely unharmed… only to be struck by a second flask of oil that Thalmain had kept in reserve, spreading the inferno even further. The remaining lizardmen tried to pull back… only to be taken down by Thalmain’s archery.

It was a complete rout.

Shortly thereafter, Thalmain realized he could wake the others up by simply slapping them on the cheeks.

On this triumphant note, the characters retreated from the dungeon and the players retired for the evening.

Session 3 – Coming Soon!

Go to Part 1

Christopher B. encouraged me in a post over at Grognardia to prioritize these session summaries of my Caverns of Thracia mini-campaign using OD&D. In Part 5 I wrapped up the end of the first session, which turned out to be such a success in the eyes of my players that several players asked for a follow-up.

Ergo, session two.

For this session, the player roster was shuffled a bit: The player for Reeva couldn’t make it, but we added two new players. We glossed over the escape from the dungeon and moved everybody back to the logging village on the edge of the jungle containing the ruins.

Herbert the Elf had been rescued at the end of the last session and he volunteered to return to the complex to wreak vengeance (and loot treasure). He was joined by the core of the previous party (Thalmain, Trust, and Warrain), as well as new recruits in the form of Dominic and Thaxter.

Thaxter, it turned out, proved to be one of the two main highlights of the evening. Thaxter was an elderly gentleman who presented himself to the party as a worldly and experienced knight. The party was eager to have such an experienced swordarm as part of their expedition.

Unfortunately, Thaxter was nothing of the sort. It turned out that he was, in fact, the chef from the local inn. He’d seen the gold rush adventurers profiting left and right from the various ruins of the Thracian Empire and wanted in on the action.

The truth came out shortly after they had ventured back down into the dungeon complex: As they were crossing one of the rope bridges over the subterranean chasms, a giant bat swooped out of the darkness… Thaxter panicked and cowered like a little child, tossing his torch aside wildly and screaming in terror.

(The torch ended up landing on the rope bridge itself, and started burning one of the ropes. A couple of the players — realizing that they weren’t carrying any water — dropped their trousers and peed on the fire to put it out. This was not their noblest hour…)

In short, Thaxter — as a character concept — was brilliant, clever, funny, and memorable. When he eventually perished (after finally conquering his fear and bravely plugging a hole in the line when Trust was knocked unconscious in a fight against a band of lizardmen), he was applauded by the entire group.

Ironically, the players’ appreciation of Thaxter was not matched by Thaxter’s son — Quinton — who showed up shortly thereafter looking for his father. Quinton proved to be nothing but critical of his father’s (many) shortcomings, which led to this short exchange:

Thalmain: “Okay, look. We’re going to ask you a couple of, umm… hypothetical questions.”

Dominic: “Right. Hypothetical questions.”

Thalmain: “Hypothetically speaking, if you were suddenly faced by a giant bat, what would you do?”

Quinton: “… my father ran away like a little coward, didn’t he?”

Thalmain: “Umm… Yes. Uh… Hypothetically, anyway.”

(UN)FUN WITH MAPPING

For this OD&D mini-campaign, I’m not using any kind of battlemap. I’m also (a) strongly encouraging the players to keep a map and (b) requiring that, if they’re mapping, then their character is mapping. (In other words, they need to have pen and parchment; they need to be carrying them in their hands; and the map itself is a physical item.)

On the first level of the Caverns of Thracia there is a room that looks like this:

It looks easy enough. But attempting to communicate verbally what this room looks like proved to be really confusing. (And I had several opportunities, because the exact same issue came up again in the third session when somebody else was keeping the map.)

“There’s a platform jutting out over a chasm. Directly in front of you, on the far side of the platform, there is a semi-circular protrusion with an altar. Columns lead off to your right, ending in a stone bridge that leads towards a tunnel in the far wall of the chasm.”

At one point I even whipped out a small piece of paper and sketched the shape of the room. The map still got screwed up in ways that weren’t reasonable for characters actually standing in the room and looking at.

This reminded me why I eventually drifted away from this particular conceit in my regular campaigns. Having the characters keep a map can lead to a lot of fun gameplay: Analyzing the map for clues on where to explore next (or where some secret passage might be hidden). Losing the map. Getting lost due to poor mapping. Chewing up valuable time trying to make the map accurate. Using the map to re-orient yourself after getting forcefully lost.

But on the flip-side, the metagame complexity and pace dragging of trying to communicate any kind of non-standard passage or room shape can be incredibly frustrating. It also strongly encourages the design of relatively uniform floorplans (square rooms, straight corridors) to avoid the headache. But, of course, this uniformity ends up undermining the very type of gameplay that this type of mapping is supposed to enable.

I’m still not sure what the best solution is for this. Or if there is one.

Continued…