The Alexandrian

Posts tagged ‘reactions to OD&D’

From Volume 1: Men & Magic, pg. 5:

Number of Players: At least one referee and from four to fifty players can be handled in any single campaign, but the referee to player ratio should be about 1:20 or thereabouts.

From Volume 2: Monsters & Treasure, pg. 3:

Monster TypeNumber Appearing*
Men30 - 300
Goblins/Kobolds40 - 400
Orcs /Hobgoblins/Gnolls30-300

* Referee’s option: Increase or decrease according to party concerned (used primarily only for out-door encounters).

OD&D Volume 3And from Volume 3: Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, pg. 16:

Large Party Movement: Parties numbering over 100, including pack or draft animals, will incur a 1 hex penalty. Parties over 1,000 incur a 2 hex penalty.

These passages, colletively, refer to a style of gaming quite distinct from the modern standard in which a “campaign” refers to a stable group of roughly half a dozen players. And, in point of fact, they refer to a style of gaming quite distinct from that found in most of the published modules from TSR.

OPEN TABLE: The first distinction of classic play is the open table. When Arneson and Gygax talk about a single campaign involving fifty players, they don’t mean that they lived in mansions with massive gaming tables where 50 players could huddle around a battlemat.

Under the open table model of gaming, the adventuring party was fluid. This Saturday your companions might by Bob, Steve, and Lucy. Next Tuesday it might be Steve, Suzanne, Ben, and David. And then on Wednesday you might get together with the DM for some solo play.

This kind of mass participation in a single campaign had a significant impact on how scenarios were designed: The dungeon complex was never designed to be “cleared” or “won”, because if you cleared the dungeon complex where was Tuesday’s group going to go?

And this extended beyond dungeon play. The entire campaign world was a limitless sandbox made interesting not only through the creative faculties of your DM, but also through the actions of your fellow players.

OPEN DMING: Both Arneson’s Blackmoor campaign and Gygax’s Greyhawk campaign featured co-DMs who would run adventures within the same setting and for the same players. For example, Rob Kuntz, who receives special thanks on the title page of Men & Magic, is known for having become Gygax’s co-DM for Castle Greyhawk and co-designing several levels of that infamous dungeon.

It was also common for characters to adventure in both Arneson’s campaign (which was based in Minneapolis) and Gygax’s campaign (which was based in Lake Geneva). And this kind of “campaign visitation” was common.

In fact, my gaming buddies and I used to do the same thing when we started playing: We each had our stable of personal characters, and these characters would be used interchangeably in all of the campaigns we would run (and we all had our own campaigns).

(On a tangential note: Some people ascribe this style of play as having been lost in the mists of time, but I’m not sure that’s actually true except on a personal level. Certainly as I started to place a higher value on verisimilitude and coherent character arcs, the “illogical” nature of campaign-swapping meant that I abandoned this style of play. But on those rare occasions when I’ve seen younger players, they often have the same carefree style of freeform gaming that I used to have.

So if this is something that you miss or that you want to have again, consider simply embracing it anew.)

MULTIPLE CHARACTERS: Part and parcel with all this is that it was apparently fairly typical for players to have more than one character playing in the same campaign. Sometimes they would be playing them simultaneously, but it was also quite typical for you to be playing one set of characters on Wednesday and a different set of characters the following Monday.

BEYOND DUNGEON-CRAWLING: You know what I’m tired of hearing? That D&D is a game about “killing things and taking their stuff” and nothing else.

Has combat and treasure-hunting always been a part of the game? Sure. But the game is about a lot more than that, and it always has been. For example, here’s the description of the fighting-man class from Men & Magic:

Fighting-Men: All magical weaponry is usable by fighters, and this in itself is a big advantage. In addition, they gain the advantage of more “hit dice” (the score of which determines how many points of damage can be taken before a character is killed). They can use only a very limited number of magical items of the nonweaponry variety, however, and they can use no spells. Top-level fighters (Lords and above) who build castles are considered “Barons” (see the INVESTMENTS section of Volume III). Base income for a Baron is a tax rate of 10 Gold Pieces/inhabitant of the barony/game year.

The idea that successful characters were destined for more things than dungeon-crawling was part and parcel of the game. There are rules in OD&D for stronghold construction, political assassination, the hiring of specialist tradesmen, baronial investments (in things like roads, religious edifices, and the like), assembling a naval force, and so forth.

And when you realize that this type of “realm management” play was an integral part of the original gameplay of D&D, then tables in which “40 – 400” goblins were capable of appearing begin to make sense: Sometimes you were a bunch of 1st level nobodies trying to root out the local goblin gang that had taken root in hills north of the village. And sometimes you were a band of nobles riding forth at the head of your host to wipe out the goblin army marching on your barony.

Now take a moment, if you will, and consider the type of game that arises when all of these elements are true: Some of the PCs have become the local nobles. Others are still lower level dungeon-delvers. And the entire world is developing and evolving as a result of their cumulative actions.

OFFICIAL SUPPORT

Ironically, this style of play never received any meaningful support from TSR. Not even in its earliest days. Have you ever seen a module with 400 goblins in it? There are a few glimpses of it here and there — in the Wilderlands campaign setting from Judges Guild or B2 Keep on the Borderland. But for the most part, the type of game being played by Arneson and Gygax — the type of game that led to the codification of the D&D rules — was not the type of game that was being supported through published modules.

Partly this is because that style of game is organic in its nature. You can’t actually capture the essence of the Greyhawk or Blackmoor campaigns, for example, because they were always evolving. (When Wizards of the Coast published Jonathan Tweet’s Everway, a member of the company memorably said something to the effect of, “If we could just include a copy of Jon in every box, we’d sell a million copies.” They couldn’t and they didn’t.)

But, on the other hand, that shouldn’t stop you from publishing the raw material from which a rich sandbox campaign could be played. But the Wilderlands campaign from Judges Guild is probably as close as we’ve ever gotten to that.

What stood in the way? Well, partly the resources. Publishing such a product in a single volume would have been a huge investment. And by the time TSR was capable of pursuing such an investment, that style of play was already becoming “outdated”, Arneson was long gone, and Gygax was already beginning to lose his control of the company.

And even if the resources had been available, such an undertaking would constitute an incredibly large and complex project. Gygax himself spent 30+ years trying to get Castle Greyhawk into print. It has never happened.

So what got published instead? Tournament modules. The earliest TSR modules — stuff like the A series, G series, and S series that we now think of as classics and defined the concept and format of what a “module” is — were all designed for tournament play. And tournament play is almost precisely the opposite of the type of game that Arneson and Gygax were running: The scope is limited (because you have to finish it within a single convention slot), the outcome premeditated (because the next round of the tourney was already designed), completion anticipated (so that scoring could be done), and the impact to the wider world nonexistent (because there was no wider world that could be effected).

For better or for worse, those were the modules that the gamers at home were buying. And they became the models around which their games were fashioned.

And, hand-in-hand with that, the mechanical support for those styles of play were purged from the rulebooks. 3rd Edition — designed by old school grognards working for a company which was, at the time, run by another grognard — saw a return of some of that lost mechanical support. But 4th Edition, of course, has reversed course once again.

The designers of 3rd Edition understood the value of open-ended, fully-supported play. You can see it in Ptolus (the campaign setting Monte Cook used to playtest the 3rd Edition rules). The designers of 4th Edition, on the other hand, openly proclaimed that the game was all about killing things and cited that getting back to those “roots” was one of their primary design goals.

Talk about your false premises.

Back to Reactions to OD&D

OD&D Volume 1If you came to D&D with 3rd Edition, chances are you don’t know what “prime requisites” are.

In OD&D each of the three classes — fighting-man, magic-user, and cleric — had an ability score as a “prime requisite”. These prime requisites served two purposes:

(1) In order to change classes, you needed to have an unmodified prime requisite score of 16 or better in the class you wanted to change to. (Although this rule was “not recommended”, except for elves who had the racial ability to freely switch at will between fighting-man and magic-user at the beginning of each adventure. It is open to interpretation whether elves needed to have the necessary prime requisites in order to do that. There is also the oddity that magic-users cannot change into clerics and vice versa… but nothing stops them from first changing to fighting-men and then changing to the other. But I digress…)

(2) If you had a high prime requisite score in your class you earned additional XP. If you had a low prime requisite score your XP was penalized, as described on the “Bonuses and Penalties to Advancement due to Abilities” table:

Prime requisite of 15 or moreAdd 10% to earned experience
Prime requisite of 13 or 14Add 5% to earned experience
Prime requisite of 9 - 12Average, no bonus or penalty
Prime requisite of 8 or 7Minus 10% from earned experience
Prime requisite 6 or lessMinus 20% from earned experience

In later editions, certain classes also had minimum ability scores and prime requisites that had to be met. For example, in the 1st Edition of AD&D in order to “become a paladin a character must be human, have a strength of not less than 12, a minimum intelligence of 9, a wisdom of 13 or more, a minimum constitution of 9, and not less than 17 charisma”.

GYGAXIAN BALANCE

In the currently predominant culture of gaming — where the fetishization of balance is, at best, barely lurking out of sight — this entire design schema is impossibly alien. It’s practically anathema. Why would you take a PC who was already more powerful than the other PCs (because they have higher ability scores) and make them even more powerful (by giving them XP bonuses)?

And when you get to classes with minimum ability score requirements, things seem to become even less comprehensible. Many of these classes were just flat-out better than the other classes. So now you’re taking powerful characters, making them more powerful by giving them access to better classes, and then allowing them to advance more quickly to even more power by giving them XP bonuses.

I’ve seen people point to this as an example of Gygax being “incompetent”. These people annoy me because they’re missing the point: Gygax didn’t fail to balance character vs. character. That just wasn’t one of his design goals. He was trying to accomplish something very different.

The first thing you’re seeing here is Gygaxian naturalism. Why are the guys with better ability scores able to access more powerful classes? Because they’re more talented.

There is a balance being modeled here, but it’s subtler than the mechanical equivalence at the beginning of a Chess match.

Basically Gygax was saying: “Look, Character A has more talent than Character B. The ability scores tell us that. So that means that Character A can get into major league baseball and Character B is going to be stuck in the minor leagues. And that means that Character A is going to earn more money.”

At this point modern afficionados of “balance” will protest, “But if Character A is in the major leagues and Character B is in the minor leagues, then they’ll never get to play on the same field!”

And Gygax would say, “Look, kid, you’re abusing the metaphor.”

Because, at this point, we need to understand the other fundamental underpinning of OD&D play: Darwinian attrition.

DARWINIAN ATTRITION

In OD&D it was assumed that PCs would die. In fact, it was assumed that the vast majority of PCs in the campaign would end up dead.

This had two important impacts on the way the game was played and, thus, the way the game was designed:

(1) On the one hand, if your character “sucked” compared to the other PCs, it didn’t really matter all that much. After all, he was probably going to be dead sooner rather than later. Dungeons were dangerous places.

(2) On the other hand, the mere act of survival was something to be lauded. Longevity was an achievement. And achieving that longevity with a “sucky” character? Ah, that was something to be lauded even more! It was like playing with a handicap.

This is something that gamers familiar with the modern paradigms of design sometimes struggle to understand, so let me try to explain by way of analogy. Imagine that you’re playing Name That Tune:

Me: I can name that tune in 8 notes.
You: I can name that tune in 6 notes.
Me: I can name that tune in 5 notes.
You: I can name that tune in 4 notes.
Me: Name that tune!
You: Aw, man! I have to name that tune in only 4 notes, while you could name it in 5 notes! It’s not fair! My character is much less powerful than yours!

Okay, the analogy kinda broke down there somewhere, but hopefully the point is clear: Yeah, that guy over there has better ability scores. Are you going to whine about it, or are you going to show him that you can play the game better than he can, scores or no scores?

CHARACTER GENERATION AS GAME

Of course, the argument can be made that the random generation of ability scores has nothing to do with the skill of the players involved. But so what? Were you under the illusion that craps is a game of skill?

See, part of the trick here is that character creation was considered part of the gameplay.

It was gameplay that was fundamentally different from the gameplay that happened once the dungeon exploration actually began, but it was still an important and integral part of the game. Like the rules for setting up terrain in a wargame. Or the bidding in a game of Bridge.

The game that, in my opinion, best understood that character creation was part of the game (and, consequently, is most misunderstood by many modern gamers) is the original Traveller.

In Traveller, all newly created characters start at 18 years of age. You could then attempt to enlist in one of six services: Navy, Marines, Army, Scouts, Merchants, or Other. Successfully enlisting required a successful roll of the dice (some services were more difficult to join than others). Each term of service lasted for 4 years and carried with it the chance of injury or death (determined with another dice roll — some services were more dangerous than others). Depending on what service you had joined, you would gain different skills and training during your term. And once a term was completed, you could opt to re-enlist, join another service, or end your career and start play.

Wait a minute… did I just say that your character could die during character creation? Yes. I did.

I’ve seen lots of people describe that system as crazy. But the concept really shouldn’t be that hard to grasp: Mechanically, character creation in Traveller is a gambling game. You’re gambling the risk of death, injury, or debilitation from age against the possibility for better skills and training.

And the brilliant part of it, frankly, is that Traveller used the gambling mechanics to encourage players to create characters with interesting and intricately detailed backgrounds. What did you do during that term of service? Why did your character choose to re-enlist? What did you do to learn those particular skills?

The original Traveller rulebook may have summed up this approach to game design best when it said:

The Solitaire Game: One player undertakes some journey or adventure alone. He or she handles the effects of the rules as the situation progresses. […] In addition, there are many aspects ideally suited to solitaire consideration. A single player can spend time generating characters, designing starships, generating worlds and subsectors, planning situations, and mapping out ideas to use in later group scenarios.

Under this design philosophy, rolling up characters was more than just a means to an end: It was meant to be fun in and of itself. There’s a little bit of gambling — a little bit of excitement — in that moment when the dice fly and the fate of your character is shaped before your eyes.

THE MODERN PARADIGM

Of course, in most modern gaming character attrition is low. The goal of “survival” has taken a backseat to the development of character, exploration of world, and the telling of stories. And, as a result, some of the necessary elements that make Gygaxian balance work no longer exist.

But I still think we can learn some valuable lessons from Gygaxian balance. There is more to a roleplaying game than mechanical equivalence.

It’s also important to remember that, given the open-ended nature of roleplaying games, true mechanical equivalence can only be achieved by artificially narrowing both the range of potential characters and the breadth of possible or expected gameplay. (4th Edition, notably, does both.)

There’s something to be said for characters with long lives and the long arcs of development that those lives make possible. But there’s also something to be said for the capricious whim of fate that makes victory meaningful because failure is always an option.

And for Arneson and Gygax, both of these things could be true at the same time.

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Reactions to OD&D: Ranged Combat

February 27th, 2009

OD&D Volume 1Let’s start this essay with a couple of quotes from Volume 1: Men & Magic regarding ranged combat. First, from the Alternative Combat System attack matrices on page 20:

Missile hits will be scored by using the above tables at long range and decreasing Armor Class by 1 at medium and 2 at short range.

To put this rule in context for those who aren’t familiar with OD&D, allow me to explain: Both melee and long-range missile attacks use the same attack matrices. But at medium distances missiles receive a +1 bonus and at short ranges they receive a +2 bonus to hit.

Compare and contrast this with 3rd Edition. Here both melee and ranged attacks use the same Base Attack Bonus, but at medium and long ranges the missile fire suffers penalties.

One critique of 3rd Edition is that ranged combat specialists are at a significant disadvantage compared to melee combat specialists. How many of those complaints would disappear if you implemented an OD&D-style system of giving bonuses for close range missile attacks instead of penalties for distant missile attacks?

(And how many more would disappear if you took the equally radical step of giving ranged attacks a Dex-based bonus to damage like the Strength-based bonus that melee attacks receive? All of them. But I digress.)

(EDIT: It has been pointed out that the word “decrease” might actually mean that Armor Class is improved against missile attacks at medium and close ranges. I hadn’t really considered that possibility because it seems natural to me that the closer something is, the easier it is to hit with a missile weapon, but it’s certainly true. This, by the way, is why I don’t miss the “lower AC is better” days in the least. Is that +2 a bonus or a penalty? Only her stylist knows for sure.)

And here’s another quote from “Men & Magic”, this one from the “Bonuses and Penalties to Advancement due to Abilities” table (which, like many things in OD&D, is only partly about what it says it’s about):

Dexterity above 12Fire any missile at +1
Dexterity below 9Fire any missile at -1

To understand the importance of these entries, you first have to understand one other thing: There are no equivalent bonuses (or penalties) for melee attacks.

So, once again, we see OD&D giving a significant advantage to ranged combatants compared to their melee brethren. In doing so it stands in contrast with 3rd Edition (where ranged combatants require special equipment, class abilities, and/or feats to even begin equalizing with melee combatants).

It stands in even starker contrast with 4th Edition, where ranged combat has been completely nerfed for the convenience of the miniatures game. And this is slightly ironic because I suspect one of the reasons that OD&D is so friendly to ranged combat is because of its roots in the Chainmail wargame: Chainmail needed to cope with the reality that charging ranged attackers Agincourt-style is, historically speaking, a really dreadful idea. One that people have been willing to repeat time and time again throughout history (World War I, I’m looking at you), but a really dreadful idea nonetheless.

PALIMPSEST INVERSION

Of course, all of this goes out the window if you interpret the OD&D rules slightly different. Here’s a quote from Volume 2: Monsters & Treasure:

Attack/Defense capabilities versus normal men are simply a matter of allowing one roll as a man-type for every hit die, with any bonuses being given to only one of the attacks, i.e. a Troll would attack six times, once with a +3 added to the die roll. (Combat is detailed in Vol. III.)

This little paragraph is incredibly confusing for many reasons: First, the basic combat system is largely detailed in Volume 1. It is not meaningfully discussed in Volume 3 (only Aerial Combat and Naval Combat are given any substantive treatment there).

Second, based on its formatting and context the passage appears to be referring to an “Attack/Defense” entry on the table immediately preceding this text… but no such entry is to be found. It’s actually referring to Hit Dice. (A troll has 6 + 3 HD, hence the +3 bonus it receives.)

Third, the most literal interpretation of the paragraph is “monsters attack like men once for every HD they have”. There are two problems with this: First, the Alternative Combat System has separate attack matrices for men and monsters — so if monsters end up attacking “as a man-type”, what’s the point of the attack matrix for monsters? Second, the text only refers to monsters… which means that monsters get 1 attack per HD, but the PCs don’t. I don’t really see any way for that to be viable, do you?

For the most part, as far as I can tell, this passage is almost universally ignored. Or used only when the Chainmail rules are used for mass combat.

But one way in which it has been interpreted is that everyone (monsters and men alike) get 1 attack per round per HD.

However, by combining that with certain rules from Chainmail, another interpretation also arose: Everyone (monsters and men alke) get 1 attack per round per HD… but only when engaged in melee.

Which, of course, immediately shifts the pendulum of power away from ranged combat and places it rather firmly and definitely in favor of melee combat.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

In lump sum, therefore, OD&D serves — in its many-faced way — as excellent fodder for a discussion of how ranged and melee combat should relate to each other.

But this also speaks to one of the broader themes in these reactions to OD&D: There are many who like to talk about “old school” gaming as if it was some sort of unified style of play, but could there be any larger bifurcation of play styles than those created by the disparate interpretations of the mechanics we’ve seen here?

In one set of mechanics, ranged combat has a distinct edge. Smart use of a sling or bow is strongly advantageous, leading to combats being conducted from the maximum possible distance. (And even when the combat tightens up, there’s still every reason to continue using your ranged weapon if you can.)

But in the other set of mechanics, the melee fighters grind up the battlefield — completely outclassing the damage-dealing capabilities of the ranged combatants through their sheer number of attacks per round.

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Go to Part 1

Caverns of Thracia - Jennell JaquaysReeva woke up before dawn with a stiff and scabrous back. The rest of the night passed quietly and, in the morning, they headed back down the stairs.

Two more guards had been placed at the far end of the rope bridge. But Thalmain and Trust kept them harried with missile fire while the rest of the party rushed across the bridge and engaged them. In short order they were dead.

It turned out that the guards had been standing duty outside of two large wooden doors.  Jorgen grabbed his 10-foot pole and jammed it through the handles of the doors, barring them shut… And just in time, too, as someone tried to open them from within.

“Dmitri! What is it? Are you all right?”

Jorgen tried to bluff them: “Everything’s fine!”

It didn’t work. Everything within fell quiet… too quiet.

Jorgen grabbed one of the broadswords the guards had carried and jammed it through the handles, taking back his 10-foot pole. Then they kicked the guards’ bodies over the edge of the chasm (they head a splash and a sickening crunch from below).

They headed off in a different direction, crossing over another rope bridge through a chasm where they were harried by giant bats. They eventually reached a chapel guarded by more of the ebon-eyed guards.

These guards they killed, but not before Jorgen, son of Karl, son of Nichol was brutally cut down. (And with a Constitution of 5, he wasn’t getting back up.)

Proceeding into the chapel they found a sacrificial altar hidden behind some black drapes. Bound to the altar and gagged was a prisoner: Herbert the Elf!

Caverns of Thrace - Ebon-Eyed Cultists

THAT’S ALL FOLKS!

And that’s where we ended the session. It was a weeknight and people were beginning to wear out. We’d gamed for about 4 hours (including the 45 minutes or so spent on going over the rules and creating characters at the beginning of the night).

Opinions of the evening were split.

The final PC death tally stood at 7. (It would have been 9 without the Constitution-based survival checks I was making.) After the TPK one of the players very visibly checked out of the game — it seemed like they just couldn’t be bothered to care any more. The player of Nichol/Karl/Jorgen/Herbert — while providing some of the best entertainment of the evening with her spontaneous explanation of dwarven mating habits — was becoming visibly pissed off by the end of it.

(As she later put it, “An entire dwarven family was destroyed tonight.”)

Another player later summed up their impression by saying, “OD&D = Death + Math.”

Everyone else seemed to enjoy themselves. At least one of the players seemed eager to continue playing through the scenario. (Given the mixed reactions from the others, I doubt that will happen. But we’ll see.)

From my perspective, I would have liked to see the Caverns of Thracia get a little more thoroughly explored. But on the flip-side, there was something extremely rewarding about watching the dungeon slowly assume that old school aura of terror/respect.

The players were also slowly learning (or re-learning) classic dungeoncrawling skills. They went from more-or-less barging straight ahead to taking a gradually more cautious and clever approach.

I’d also like to take the opportunity to say that the spontaneous coining of the name “anubis” for the dog-faced humanoid they confronted was probably the highlight of the evening for me. It just felt like the perfect Old School moment — like the first time someone referred to an illithid as a “mind flayer” and the name stuck or something — and I could easily see myself statting up a race of dog-faced anubians for a Monster Manual.

Rules mastery also plays a role in the success of a session. I was certainly struggling in several places trying to figure out how to handle certain things. (And the poor organization, layout, and wording of the rulebooks certainly didn’t help matters.) I was beginning to find my groove towards the end and I wouldn’t mind running a few more sessions in the Caverns just to get a feel for what it’s like to run OD&D from a position of having really internalized the system (however kooky it may be).

I have to, once again, beat down the temptation of trying to rewrite, codify, and re-organize the rules into something more useful. It would certainly make the game (much) easier to run, but it would also kill something vital. Decoding the rulebook is part of the experience here.

If I want to play a cleaned up version of this game, I’ve got 3rd Edition. (4th Edition, of course, is a completely different roleplaying game with no clear lineage to OD&D except its trademark.)

On the other hand, it might be interesting at some point to take the OD&D rulebooks and deliberately explore the path that wasn’t taken: Whenever a rule leaves itself open to interpretation or whenever Arneson and Gygax explicitly give us more than one option, take the path that subsequent editions of D&D didn’t take. See what sort of game you end up with and then refine it from there. Call it the D&D Apocrypha if you like.

Well, maybe some day. I’ve already got one game burning a hole in my pocket.

UPDATE: Continued…

Go to Part 1

Caverns of ThraciaWhen Nichol didn’t return to civilization, his explorer’s journal was sent to his son and heir, Karl. Karl hired a group of mercenaries and treasure hunters to accompany him into the jungle, hoping to discover the fate of his father. (This was my way of avoiding the need to generate fresh rumours on the Rumour Table.)

Karl was accompanied by the witches Reeva and Trust, a halfling fighter named Thalmain, and Fientar the Cleric. (The witches were just magic-users. Reeva, as you may already suspect, was run by the same player as Veera. It should be noted that, with this second group, a huge premium was placed on getting the best armor possible. Getting hit was directly equated to being dead, so heavy emphasis was immediately placed on not getting hit.)

Caverns of Thracia - Second EntranceThis time the random 1d8 roll determined that they would be approaching the ruins from the southwest. As a result, they ended up practically stumbling over a short, squat building of gray-black stone that was hidden within a small copse of trees. A rusty gate on one side of the building led to a narrow flight of stairs that plunged down into darkness.

(I kinda regretted that they stumbled over this second entrance to the dungeons. It would have been nice for them to return to the first building they had explored, since (a) I’m sadistic and (b) the minotaur had ordered that the heads of the previous PCs be placed on spikes in the clearing in front of the building as a warning to others.)

Thalmain made some efforts to get the rusty door to open quietly. When that didn’t work he started trying to remove the hinges, but at that point Karl (like his father before him) got impatient and yanked the gate open with a hideous screeching noise.

They lit a lantern and headed down. The stairs bottomed out at a deep chasm. A rope bridge extended across the chasm. Karl inspected the bridge closely — ascertaining that it was of recent construction and in good repair — before starting to walk across.

Half-way across the bridge, a spear came flying out of the darkness. It impaled Karl through the chest. He collapsed.

(Nichol had a Constitution of 9 and survived his first brush with mortality. His son Karl, on the other hand, only had a Constitution of 6 and died instantly.)

Thalmain and Trust fired blindly (and ineffectively) into the darkness. Thalmain then got the idea to light one of his arrows on fire so that they could see what was on the other side of the bridge. The arrow soared over the head of a broadsword-wielding guard dressed in plate armor who was charging towards the bridge. Eerily, the guard’s eyes were solid black.

(The black eyes were my reaction to this passage from the rules (“Monsters & Treasure”, pg. 5):

…it is generally true that any monster or man can see in total darkness as far as the dungeons are concerned except player characters.

I thought this was rather silly. I felt there needed to be some explanation of this discrepancy. And thus the followers of Thanatos were given their ebon-eyed visage.)

Reeva tried to use her dagger to hack through the ropes holding up the bridge, but she was too slow. The ebon-eyed guard sliced open her back as he ran past her off the bridge. She collapsed in a pool of her own blood.

The others rallied, however, and quickly killed the guard without suffering any additional injuries. Worried about possible reinforcements, they grabbed all of the bodies (the guard, Reeva, and Karl) and dragged them back up the stairs and into the jungle. There they stripped the plate armor off the guard, discovered that Karl was dead, and dressed Reeva’s wound.

… AND BACK FOR MORE!

They heard someone approaching through the thick foliage of the jungle. Drawing their weapons they waited anxiously.

A dwarf walked out of the trees.

This was Jorgen, son of Karl, son of Nichol. He had been sent by his grandmother to find his father.

“Okay, we have some bad news for you…”

THE THIRD CHARACTER

Jorgen, of course, was the third PC of the night for the player of Nichol and Karl. His ability scores were absolutely abominable: 9 Strength, 8 Intelligence, 4 Wisdom, 14 Dexterity, 5 Constitution, and 7 Charisma.

While she was waiting for Jorgen to be introduced, the player asked for another character sheet so that she could roll up her next character and “speed things up a bit”. She was clearly embracing the lethality of old school play.

She was less than happy, however, to discover that her next character (Herbert the Elf) would have had the best ability scores of the night: 13 Strength, 15 Intelligence, 17 Wisdom, 9 Dexterity, 12 Constitution, and 10 Charisma. He also ended up with 7 hit points (the maximum possible).

And thus the joking began: Dwarves, it was theorized, were cursed. That explained all the bad ability score rolls for Nichol, Karl, and Jorgen.

More importantly, how had Jorgen even found them with an Intelligence of 8 and Wisdom of 4?

“You hear noises approaching through the wood.”

“Okay, quick. Kill him now before you see him, then I can just switch over to Herbert.”

But no, Jorgen would live and Herbert would (for the nonce, anyway) be shelved.

Jorgen, however, quickly earned the nickname of “Wheezy” — his low Constitution leaving him with a horrible case of asthma and a slightly arhythmic heart. It turned out that Jorgen, son of Karl, son of Nichol was — like all dwarves — the result of horrible inbreeding. Dwarves, it turned out, bred in their underground warrens like rabbits. The tunnels were packed full of them. Which is probably why Jorgen was pushed out the front door and sent on his way. (“Go find your father!” “Didn’t he just leave like an hour ago? For god’s sake woman!” Cough. Cough. Wheeze.)

Okay, you probably had to be there. But by the end of it, we were all nearly dead from laughter. I could scarcely breathe.

Continued…

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