...the fool is obvious as a coal pile in a ballroom.

I like to drag my 1st edition, Dungeon Masters Guide (1979) off the shelf and randomly open it (it always opens to the pages 74-75 because those who know, know) and read.

This time I found myself on page 19. I was reading the THIEF ABILITIES. Hide in Shadows has a paragraph double the length of the others. I thought this was weird. I read it and started laughing. Gary G. cracks me up. Here is what I found.

Hide in Shadows: As is stated in PLAYERS HANDBOOK, this is NEVER possible under direct (or even indirect) observation. If the thief insists on trying, allow the attempt and throw the dice, don't bother to read them, as the fool is as obvious as a coal pile in a ballroom.

BAM! You go Gary. The paragraph goes on, but nothing else compares to the above tidbit. I love that he wants the DM to throw the dice, but don't read them. And basically he's calling the player/character a fool. Seems like Gary must have gotten into an argument about this subject right before he wrote it. I don't know about you guys, but I can lose my keys I was carrying and the aren't hiding in the shadows.

Other interesting takes I discovered when reading the descriptions. And I ALWAYS find new stuff in this book even after having it since '79.

Pick Pockets: Failure allows additional attempts. Up to two attempts at picking a pocket can be made during a round.

Picking pockets was one of those skills that rarely was used. It seemed like you always got caught and then there was the inevitable Benny Hill chase scene.

Climbing Walls: Gary goes into some detail about movement rates. He states it is probably the most abused thief function. He doesn't go into detail other than it requires training and practice. I've never been in a game where climbing movement rate has been calculated...well, in a GURPS game a few times.

My Top 5 Classic Fantasy Adventures

Ckutalik (aka the Cake Crusader) over at Hill Cantons did a blog on his 5 top fantasy adventures and it being a Saturday morning with little gas in my imagination tank I am going to piggy back off of his blog.  So here is my top 5.

1# Tomb of Horrors
Without a doubt Tomb of Horrors get the #1 spot.  It was the first TSR module I bought and played through it until I had memorized nearly every detail.  I think I could have had a 1st level guy go through and survive.  I'm talking about the 1978 version.  The real Tomb of Horrors, not all the other incarnations.  Acererak was a terrible foe, but compared to the rest of the tomb he was a cupcake.  In the original version the tomb was made of mithral and adamantine.  The tomb itself was worth several kingdoms worth of gold. 

#2 Judges Guild's: Dark Tower
This adventure we did not nearly go through as much as the Tomb of Horrors, but it was memorable every time.  I'm not sure if it qualifies as a mega dungeon, but it sure played big and imposing.  Many of the JG adventures at the time had a 'silly' quality about them.  Which was fine, but not what I wanted.  Dark Tower was heavy in atmosphere and consequences.  I'm going off memory here, but I just remember being very impressed by the adventure and the games we had.

#3 Keep on the Borderlands
In the winter of '79 my neighbor told me to come on over and play this new game.  Said it was awesome.  First thing I saw was the purple cover and was immediately not impressed.  But once we rolled up a few characters, raided the Yatzee game for dice (because we had no idea about the special dice) we started to play.  The game was simple, roll a 1 and its a kill (or death for you), roll a 6 and its a wound, two wounds equal death.  We had a blast.  It wasn't long after that my collection of gaming stuff started.  I still have nearly everything I bought from the winter of '79.

#4 Village of Hommlet
Another '79 adventure module makes it on the list.  Of course.  Hommlet was different.  There were some plotlines scattered through the village.  I guess in a way it was my first 'sandbox' experience.  You could go in several directions.  Hommlet lent itself to adventures, but did not force you into one.  Plus, if you were patient enough you could kick the crap out of Rufus and take the tower for yourself.

#5 The Isle of Dread
This module killed more of my characters than any other.  This was an end game module for one of my GMs who would eventually get to a place where he no longer wanted to GM the current cast and sent them to the Isle of Dread.  I could have just walked away from the floating skeletal ship, but I never did.  I couldn't help myself.  It was until the last time I adventured on the Isle of Dread did I finally have a character survive.  After an epic battle with the inhabitants and the other PCs he survived and retired with all his daggers.  I can't tell you much about the adventure because I only got into it once.  Died to fast all the other times. 


Honorable Mentions
G1: Steading of the Hill Giant Chief.  
This module was played a lot.  It was short people knew it and could kill like three or four sleeping kill giants and go from 1st to 3rd or 4th level real fast.  Yes it was a cheat, but a lot did it and no one seemed to care.  We all enjoyed killing the sleeping hill giants.  Some knew the module well enough to get all the treasure without having to get into a fight.  In the auditorium this adventure is the one I used to teach all my fellow football players how to play in secret.  Some were afraid to be known as a D&D player.  Fricking wussies.

U1: Sinister Secret of Salt Marsh
This adventure could easily be a huge snore, but in the hands of a good GM this module was poetry.  I'm going off of memory, but it set a great atmosphere with the mansion and was generic enough that it could be used over and over again.  This was part mystery, part smash and grab.  It made you think.

WG4: The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun
I don't remember much of this adventure.  Not sure if I even went through it.  I just remember buying it, reading it, and liking it a lot.  Still do.

Least Favorite Adventures
C1: The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan
This is one of my very first purchases and I never liked the adventure.  I didn't like GMing it and I definitely did not like going through it.  Do I have any specific reasons?  No.  Just remember being bored. 

 C2: The Ghost Tower of Inverness
See above.  This one I always thought had potential, but just needed some tweaking, but at the time I didn't know how to.  Where as C1 I never liked, C2 I wanted to like, but just didn't.

Q1: Queen of the Demonweb Pits
I can't tell you how stoked I was to get this adventure.  An adventure with a demi-god in it!  The climax of the G-D-Q series.  Then I saw the spaceship.  I hate spaceships in my fantasy.  It is not 'you got peanut butter in my chocolate good', its 'you shit in my bowl of cereal bad'.  I thought the Abyss was lame.  I was very disappointed.

Now all the years later I still have all the original copies of these adventures.  And this post has got me to thinking how they hold up through the years especially the ones I didn't like when I was a teenager.  I'm curious if I would like C1 and C2 now.  I really doubt I will forgive Q1 for crapping in my cereal, but I'm willing to give a shot. 

Have a great Spring Equinox. 

Citadel by the Sea

One of my favorite features Dragon did back in the day was to include adventures in the center of the magazine. Sorta like the centerfold. One of the adventures that stood out for me was the Citadel by the Sea designed by Sid Fisher. It appeared in issue #78 and won 1sr place in the module design contest, category A-1. It combined many of the classic elements without being cliché. Orcs barricaded within a ruins of an old elven fort with a couple of dungeon levels beneath. Mix in some undead, an evil half-orc cleric and an orcish artifact and you got yourself a wang dang doodle of a party. What I appreciate the most about this adventure is the simplicity and the progression of the adventure.

This adventure is very adaptable. How difficult is it to place that setting/situation into a campaign? I have used it four or five times, with small changes. It became a stronghold for one of the players. He tried to capture some creatures during his expeditions to stock his own dungeon and found it was easier to kill the critters than subdue them. There is plenty of room to develop the area for a micro setting, a seed for a sandbox campaign. The village of Awad could easily be mapped out and some of its inhabitants are already detailed. The area has a history that could be altered, but even if the GM decided to use the background it can easily be adapted into an existing campaign.

If you have issue #78 (it's a pretty great one) than dust it off and take a look. I was fortunate to find the first 250 issues on DVD a few years back. There were many great modules tucked into those pages and this one always seems to come back to me. It's like a great late night horror flick you've seen it a dozen times. It's just as good twelfth time as it was the first time.

Good Ugly

Some may argue that Unearth Arcana was the bane of AD&D. I liked having something new introduced into the game, especially the weapon specialization. The classes were nice, but we'd always played with the new classes introduced in Dragon Magazine. But what I liked a lot and thought was necessary for the game was the Comeliness attribute. I don't like the name. It should have just been named Attractiveness.

In AD&D and most fantasy games, Charisma tries to cover that area, but it does a poor job. It's a simple addition and only costs the time of an extra roll. Can Charisma influence appearance...absolutely. It can assist in reaction modifiers when dealing with similar races, henchmen and trying to convince the town guards it wasn't you who burned down the tavern. And now DMs could answer the age old question...how good looking is the barmaid? I know some old schoolers out there are shuttering at the thought of another attribute, but I never saw how it detracted from the game, but added an interesting aspect to it.

I'm curious as what other think about adding Attractiveness as a seventh attribute and of they have used it in their game.

Horror Comes in Small Packages

I'm not sure about all of you out there, but it's the small things that creep me out the most. Zombies have become a 'how many cool ways can we kill them' past time. Skeletons were never very scary to begin with. Vampires get more moody as the years go by and are more annoying than frightening. Dragons are now a staple at arts & crafts shows. Not so scary. And all those goblinoids that make up the majority of the enemies in a fantasy campaign are trees waiting to be chopped down. But what about the small enemies? Enemies small enough that a sword or mace is useless. These are the enemies that crawl inside of you. Become a part of you. They cause the most horrible and agonizing deaths.

I'm talking about the Ear Seekers, small insects that search for a warm place to lay their eggs. Ears are their favorite place, but an open wound will do nicely also. While you sleep they lay 9-16 eggs and in less than a day the eggs hatch and start feast on the flesh around them.

And I'm talking about Rot Grubs. These little beauties burrow into your skin and tunnel through your body until they reach your heart. It takes1-3 turns for these grubs to finish the job giants could not do.

Here is the problem I have. In both cases the MM says both can be rid of by a Cure Disease, but neither is a disease. The PHB describes disease as a parasitic, bacterial or viral nature. Even though both would qualify as parasitic in nature I don't see as they qualify as a disease. The remedy is already give in the MM that rot grubs need to be burned off and some sort of similar thing I believe would need to be done for the ear seekers. A steady handed player with a red hot needle plunging into the infected player's ear.

These creatures are more difficult to deal with because of the harm that comes with defending oneself from them. The difficult part as a GM is using these creatures and having the possibility of having one of the players die because insect eggs in their ear. Depending on the realism you promote in your campaign this might not be an option. Heroic campaigns don't want their heroes dying from disease or infestations, but leading a battle against insurmountable odds. Not dying in their bedroll the night before the battle.

It's good to change up the expectations of the players. Any group can prepare to go against a stronghold of ogres, but have them go against the creepy crawlers and you'll see those same big badass heroes screaming like little girls running for the door.

This is a great comic from http://badgods.com/rotgrubs.html.

Magic Item Selection

Once upon a time there were a million towers infested with orcs, goblins, trolls evil mages or demons and in each tower was a princess that needed saving. In each tower was a chief, boss, elite, dark, grand, giant, master, or lord this or that with a pile of loot. A million adventuring parties went into these million towers and kicked all the orcs, goblins, trolls evil mages or demons asses and slew the chief, boss, elite, dark, grand, giant, master, or lord this and that. Woo hoo. It's time to count the coins and divvy up the magic items. But what magic items are there? How many? Oh yeah, don't forget the princess.

In the 1st edition Monster Manual each monster has a treasure type. Roll on the table and see what is generated. This is an interesting way to do it, but I don't find it an effective system for an ongoing campaign. I still use it to generate ideas. What I will do a lot of times is see what is populating my dungeon, roll on the treasure type table, then pick and choose what I like or alter something if I believe it is too powerful or too weak. Then instead of piling it up at the end or do the kill a monster, grab the treasure thing I try to make it more organic. Example, if I roll that a group of bugbear's in a cavern and they have a +2 sword and a necklace of missiles I would probably give the leader of the bugbears the sword to use and have the necklace on the corpse that fell into a pit trap. If nothing else to give the magic items a variety of discovery.

On pages 92 and 93 in the 1st ed. DMG a small, venomous rant against 'Monte Hall' style games and how the rules dictate there are no rewards for this kind of play. "No reasonable opponents, no rewards, nothing!" Then the next paragraph goes after killer dungeons, "Killer dungeons are a travesty of the role-playing adventure game, for there is no development and identification with carefully nurtured player persona." My favorite line afterwards is how a sadistic referee takes unholy delight in slaughtering hordes of hapless characters. Great line.

So we have the two extremes kinda sorta. To me the extremes would be Monte Haul and Ebenezer Scrooge, who will give you nothing. Again, I speak of this again and again about players expectations. If they expect to be fed a steady diet of magic items to tinker with, then it's important of the GM to provide a balanced way of doing this. Keep the power level of the items consistent with their level of play and risk. But if you have players willing to go for a more realistic campaign then there may be no magic items at all. Well crafted items become the 'magic items'. And if you look at some of the items listed in the DMG they are not magical at all they are just high quality items. Examples given on pg. 116 were boots and cloaks of elvenkind and +3 dwarven war hammer. Even the low level items, like any +1 weapon, could be argued to not be magical at all, but rather just made very well. But magic item creation is another topic for another blog.

I randomly selected two canned dungeons to compare. First there is T1 The Village of Hommlet (I had it out since Bat in the Attic recently did a blog on it) and then I chose a more recent dungeon Dragora's Dungeon. Both are 1st level adventures. In T1 the magic items are owned by experienced adventurers in the village, but all of them own some. Most own three of more items. So this sets precedence that magic items are common. This is a small village yet almost a dozen magic items can be found. And in the moathouse itself there are magical items. Also in Dragora's Dungeon there are a handful of magic items. So if a party of 1st level characters goes through a dungeon successfully then they will leave with a group of magic items in each instance. Two or three adventures and already the players will begin getting choosy in their magic item selection.

Depending on what system and style of play you prefer I think D&D is set up for the Monty Haul scenario. If you are providing a handful of magic items in a 1st level dungeon then the next one will have a few more or a bit more powerful items. Some games I've been in and GMed rely on magic as a form of luxury and technology. In a GURPS fantasy setting, magic items replace technology. The lesser, but useful magic items are affordable even to the lower class. In D&D the magic items are constructed to make a person more powerful.

Then there are games like Pendragon who shun magic items all together. You know that there will be no treasure hordes of magic items, but you may find something so powerful that if the player uses its power the consequences could be vast and devastating.

This is something I believe is vital to decide before a campaign begins, choosing the scarcity of magic items and their use in the community. Game on!