In Which I Play Dwimmermount

So this past Saturday night I was kindly asked by Tavis Allison (of MuleAbides, Adventurer-Conqueror-King-System, Kickstarter-extraordinaire fame) to participate in a sneak-preview playtest of James Maliszewski's Dwimmermount megadungeon setting at a local gaming venue. What an opportunity! Rarely do I get to sit in the player's seat, and man did I need a break from furiously writing math lecture notes all day and night the past few weeks.

Tavis may have more courage than I do, because he had something of an open call out to players, and once we had dinner, piled into the Brooklyn Strategist, and set up to play around the custom gaming table there, he had no less than nine players ready for the session. Sadly I don't think I caught everyone's name, but among the players nearest to me were Pete, Miguel, Ben, and Eric. Paul Hughes was there (the creative force behind the mind-bending dungeon-map-random-dungeon-generator poster, currently on Kickstarter). And so was Stefan Pokorny, master sculptor and founder of Dwarven Forge, who provided an eye-popping array of miniature terrain to play with. And we were all here to pillage Dwimmermount. Now that's a game!

Tavis was pretty generous with how characters were procured, rolled, or flat-out stolen from someone else. On a whim I'd brought my little sheet for a 2nd-level dwarven fighter named Garrick, who previously saw action in a Google+ game run by my gaming-expert friend Paul. Since most PC's were being generated at 4th level, about the first thing that Tavis said to me was, "You can have 4 henchmen, does that appeal to you?" Does it!? (I'm semi-infamous for gleefully playing multiple characters. Here I would get to play a whole crew of 5 dwarven plate-armored fighters. This was a very good sign.) With similar rulings around the table, we had a total of eighteen characters assembled and marching up to Dwimmermount.


On the slopes outside the dungeon entrance, we were trying to negotiate our way over a treacherous rockfall, when part of the cliff above us fell away and we found ourselves facing several frickin' gorgons in a newly-revealed cave. After some not-very-effectual missile fire (and my dwarves not having any long-range weapons at all), some clever soul hooked onto the crumbly cliff face with a grappling hook and brought it down on top of the cave entrance -- which was then locked in place with a web spell. Thus saved, we continued to the entrance and into the dungeon.

An earlier explorer had a pretty complete map of the first level, and it seemed like the area to the east looked promising, so we assembled in good marching order and proceeded in that direction (this was nontrivial with our numbers, but Stefan wrangling terrain and miniatures helped immensely). We traveled through a hall of statues, and broke through an orc-assembly area, lighting an enormous fire to keep the way clear (I think). Then we made our way into a room of seemingly-trapped fixtures on the walls. Here someone points out a corpse that preceded us:


Some of our elven compatriots felt that the lone room to the north should be cleared first (I think they were reading from a book of notes from earlier adventures: "Ack, never trust anything written on paper", says I). So this precipitates a rather hair-raising fight with undead. There is a standard-weapon-immune, energy-draining creature involved: since almost none of the party has magic weapons, Garrick calls for a general dwarven charge to batter the creature and get some desperate licks in with his one silver dagger; meanwhile, a fellow party member pulls out a magic sword and joins in. Unfortunately, more undead attack the party from our other side, and the casting of a web spell goes awry, trapping some of the party and cutting off the rest. What a mess!


The cut-off members of the party try to hold off the undead host, throwing flaming oil at the chokepoints and fighting furiously. Unfortunately, several members are cut down, and our cleric Father Roy is caught up by a gang of them, slain, and then carried off to parts unknown. But his sacrifice allows the rest of us to re-assemble and locate a sizable amount of treasure. (Sorry about the magic item the dwarves smashed in their fury. Our bad!)


We explore some more rooms further south, but hear the sounds of numerous creatures that seem to be stalking us with violent intent. So we turn about and decide to meet them in combat -- and our aggressive posture pays off. Sleep + 5 dwarves rushing in with spears and hammers = totally wiped out group of kobolds.


After this, it was time to head back to town with our treasure, experience, and a map to a discordant subterranean area located near a frontier fortress. A successful exploration! We cleaned up and left the area in the Brooklyn Strategist for the next adventurers who might try it.


A few notes: An immensely enjoyable game run by Tavis, with all the players involved. I'm also pretty happy with how I'm playing these days, actually -- I didn't lose a single one of my dwarven fighting squad, even though they were all 1st level (plus Garrick at 2nd), and composed most of the front two rows of the party (so as protect the rest of the group with their heavy armor, and allow shooting over their heads and whatnot). And we benefited from a most generous split of the treasure (seeing as together we were one-third of the whole party left at the end).

In my short play experience, it seems that James Maliszewski's Dwimmermount is a whole lot freakier than I expected -- and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible. Of course, we were dealing with things like orcs, kobolds, and skeletons -- but no element appeared that wasn't corrupted in some deep and disturbing way. Not even the dungeon doors escaped being of bizarre function and construct. It looks like a very memorable place to adventure.

Initially, I was a little bit worried about presenting pictures and notes from our explorations this weekend (I don't think that James has any idea that I was playing the adventure with Tavis this weekend, nor did he have advance knowledge that I'd be writing this) -- but as I checked his blog today, it turns out that his own players from the prior night explored the exact same part of the ruins that we did, and he even posted a map that they constructed along the way (compare to photos above). So I'm guessing it's okay. High kudos to everyone involved in the production!

Wraiths Through the Ages

Or: When Did Wraiths Become Incorporeal?

Nowadays, Wraiths in D&D are understood to be incorporeal (not physically present or touchable; able to pass through doors and walls, etc.), but that hasn't always been the case. How did it happen? Let's open our dusty tomes of forbidden knowledge and look into the distant past:

Pre-Chainmail Fantasy 

A really interesting article by Gygax appears in the Wargamer's Newsletter from October 1972 (preserved at Grognardia). Here, Gygax describes his games with Tolkien-themed creatures, using the Chainmail rules, and promoting the upcoming expanded release with the Fantasy section. He doesn't yet use the generic word "wraiths"; at this point they're just simply Nazgul:

The Balrog has caused considerable problems, and right now we are using a giant sloth from an assortment of plastic prehistoric animals, which (converted) makes a fearsome looking beast, albeit not quite as Tolkien described it. Nazgul, like the Balrog, are also difficult. Presently we are employing unconverted 40mm Huns on black horses, but we would like to put wings on the steeds and cloak the figures riding them.

Chainmail Fantasy

When Chainmail Fantasy does get published, the text for Wraiths looks like this:

WRAITHS (Nazgûl, etc.): Wraiths can see in darkness, raise the morale of friendly troops as if they were Heroes, cause the enemy to check morale as if they were Super Heroes, and paralyze any enemy man -- excluding all mentioned in the Fantasy Supplement -- they touch during the course of a move (not flying). Paralyzed troops remain unmoving until touched by a friendly Elf, Hero-type, or Wizard. Touch means either actual contact or coming within 1" of. A Wraith can either move normally or fly, remaining in the air for as many turns as desired. They melee as either two Armored Foot or two Medium Horse, and they are impervious to all save magical weapons or combat by other fantastic creatures.

Note the explicit parenthetical sub-name here of "Nazgûl" (this was removed after the second printing of Chainmail). And there's something else pretty interesting if you look closely at the Fantasy Reference Table [CM p. 43]: the listing for the type is given as "Wraiths (mtd)". Which is to say, wraiths are assumed to be traveling mounted on undead horse-creatures -- just as they're described in the Wargamer's Newsletter earlier on ("40mm Huns on black horses, but we would like to put wings on the steeds..."). And of course that's also consistent with the Ringwraiths' alias name of the "Black Riders" or "Dark Riders" in Lord of the Rings. Can Wraiths only fly by means of their (possibly winged) horses at this point? Perhaps so.

Original D&D

Pretty short text here:

WRAITHS: These monsters are simply high-class Wights with more mobility, hit dice, and treasure. Hits by silver-tipped arrows will score only 1/2 die of damage, and magic arrows only score 1 die of damage when they hit. [Vol-2, p. 9]

Of course, Wights and Wraiths now have their feared energy-drain ability, replacing their earlier paralysis capacity in Chainmail (maintained only for Ghouls). While OD&D by convention includes all of Chainmail by reference, there's no mention of the Wraith's mounts in either the text or the monster reference table at this time. While Chainmail gave them movement of 18" (36" flying), here they're reduced to 12" (24" flying), and that's what you'll see in all later versions. Of course, we all know that Wights are corporeal, so when the text here says that "These monsters are simply high-class Wights" we might certainly think that Wraiths are likewise still corporeal. 

Now, we also need to look at the related entry for Spectres here, which reads as follows:

SPECTRES: These monsters have no corporeal body which makes them totally imprevious to all normal weaponry (but can be struck by all magical weapons), including silver-tipped arrows. (The Nazgul of Tolkein now fall into this catagory rather than as Wraiths as stated in CHAINMAIL.) They drain two life energy levels when they score a hit. Men-types killed by Spectres become Spectres under the control of the one who made them.

Just to highlight: (a) they explicitly have "no corporeal body", and (b) the "Nazgul of Tolkien now fall into this catagory [sic]" (this latter reference was removed in printings after the first). But contrast that text with the artwork on the inside cover of the same book -- signed by Keenan Powell in 1973, it's labeled "Nazgul". Note that the creature is depicted with fully-formed head, jaw, clawed hands, legs, and feet, clothed and crowned, and riding its mount. (Again, this label was removed in printings after the first; and likewise, Wights were initially noted as "Barrow Wights (per Tolkien)".) So there are at least some mixed signals about the state of Nazgûl (Spectres) here.

Advanced D&D

When the Monster Manual came out in 1977 (collecting the various D&D monsters, together with optional attacks & damage from the Greyhawk supplement, new art, etc.), there was still to this time, no mention of Wraiths being incorporeal. This is the main text block:

Wraiths are undead, similar in nature to wights, but they exist more strongly on the negative material plane. They are found only in dark and gloomy places, for they have no power in full sunlight. In addition to the chilling effect of its touch (1-6 hit points damage), a wraith drains on life energy at the rate of 1 per hit, just as a wight does. Similarly, the wraith can be struck only with silver weapons (which cause only one-half damage) or weapons which are magically enchanted (which score full damage). [MM p. 102]

Note that the language that they "are found only in dark and gloomy places, for they have no power in full sunlight" seems to prohibit much of the action previously performed by creatures such as the Nazgul (Ringwraiths). Even more important, perhaps, is that the Wraiths entry came with this very evocative piece of art by David C. Sutherland III ("DCS"):

Of course, this looks like a very unusual creature, with no visible features, apart from lamp-glowing eye-spots, and apparently crackling energy-waves throughout the body. It doesn't even have distinct legs or feet -- no way to ride a flying horse, or even walk upon the ground, like that! I suspect that what came later was largely a response to this single, powerful image.

Holmes Basic D&D

Holmes says this, mostly like OD&D:

These monsters are immaterial and drain life energy, 1 level per hit. They are like wights, but have more hit dice and are harder to hit. Silver tipped arrows score 1/2 die of damage. Magic arrows score only normal damage. They are impervious to normal weapons. [Holmes, p. 33-34]

Now here's the first time that anyone has admitted to the key thing about Wraiths: "These monsters are immaterial..." Holmes was first published in 1977, the same year as the AD&D Monster Manual. Was Holmes responding to the Sutherland illustration, or was there some pre-existing consensus in the house that Wraiths should become immaterial? Either way, there's not much by way of an explicit effect given for this observation (except maybe as an explanation for their hard-to-hit quality).

We should also point out the Holmes retains the OD&D shout-outs that Wights are "Barrow wights (per Tolkien)", and Spectres are "[t]he 'Nazgul' of Tolkien", and these were never elided from any later printings.

Cook Expert D&D

Dave Cook writes this in 1981:

A wraith is an undead monster that drains the life-force of its victims. It has no physical body and looks like a pale, manlike almost transparent figure composed of thick mist. It is immune to sleep, charm, and hold spells. A wraith can only be hit by silver or magical weapons, but silver weapons will only do half damage... [Cook Expert, p. X42]

So far, this is definitely the most explicit description of what a wraith's body is like. There's no artwork for the Wraith per se in these rules but the illustration for the Spectre by Erol Otus is memorable and suggestive:

Advanced D&D, 2nd Edition

The Monstrous Manual says this:

The wraith is an evil undead spirit of a powerful human that seeks to absorb human life energy. These horrible creatures are usually seen as black, vaguely man-shaped clouds. They have no true substance, but tend to shape themselves with two upper limbs, a torso, and a head with two glowing red eyes. This shape is a convenience born from the habit of once having a human body... [2E MM]

Now, if that isn't a description of the Sutherland illustration, then I really don't know what one would sound like.

D&D, 3rd Edition

Finally, in 3rd Edition, the aspect of Wraiths' incorporeality is given a full-throated sermon: "incorporeal" becomes a special-ability tag, given a special-handling section in the DMG, and it includes a whole host of simulationist add-on effects. Here it is from the SRD:

Incorporeality: Incorporeal creatures can only be harmed by other incorporeal creatures, by +1 or better weapons, or by spells, spell-like effects, or supernatural effects. They are immune to all nonmagical attack forms. They are not burned by normal fires, affected by natural cold, or harmed by mundane acids. Even when struck by magic or magic weapons, an incorporeal creature has a 50% chance to ignore any damage from a corporeal source—except for a force effect.

Incorporeal creatures move in any direction (including up or down) at will. They do not need to walk on the ground. Incorporeal creatures can pass through solid objects at will, although they cannot see when their eyes are within solid matter. Incorporeal creatures are inaudible unless they decide to make noise. The physical attacks of incorporeal creatures ignore material armor, even magic armor, unless it is made of force or has the ghost touch ability.

Incorporeal creatures pass through and operate in water as easily as they do in air. Incorporeal creatures cannot fall or suffer falling damage. Corporeal creatures cannot trip or grapple incorporeal creatures. Incorporeal creatures have no weight and do not set off traps that are triggered by weight. Incorporeal creatures do not leave footprints, have no scent, and make no noise unless they manifest, and even then they only make noise intentionally. [3E SRD]

Yowza -- that's of a lot to keep track of for Wraiths and their ilk! But at any rate, at this point they're truly incorporeal, with all that goes along with that. There's even an illustration in 3E of wraiths flying out of a wall to attack your friendly neighborhood cleric (before he gets a chance to turn them, perhaps):

Open Questions

At what point do you think the best Wraith was presented? Do you like them to be incorporeal to the extent of flying through walls & floors to attack? Was it, at least initially, a good model for Tolkien's Nazgul? Do you think it was the Sutherland illustration that convinced writers to make them "immaterial", or were there other contributing factors?

[Top photo by San Diego Shooter under CC2.]

New Ghoul Poll

As a follow-up to Monday's post, I've added a new poll in the sidebar for this week: "Ghouls should get how many paralysis attempts per round?"

This is in response to several different ideas in the comments, all of which result in ghouls only getting a single attempt at paralyzing per round (this being distinct from the number-of-attacks question). This would include suggestions such as:

1. Keep ghouls at one attack per round as in OD&D (Delta)
2. Just one save needed no matter how many attacks hit (Paul)
3. Paralysis only applies to the bite attack (RedHobbit, et. al.)

What do you think?

Ghouls Through the Ages

As I've unburied myself in the last week (from a combination of sick, cyber-crash, and work avalanche), I thought it might a good time to look at some undead issues that I've wanted to investigate for a while. It's also on my mind because my good friend Paul ran several iterations of AD&D module A1, Slave Pits of the Undercity, at a tournament last week; and in his writeup, it sounds as if the most critical element to party success is how they fare in a certain fight against ghouls (or more specifically: does the party cleric succeed in their turn check or not?).

I'm not terrifically surprised about that, because ghouls are a really hideously dangerous opponent in D&D; they punch way above their normal weight class (as indicated by hit dice). Even though the higher-HD types with energy drain get more of the gnashing-of-teeth response from a lot of players, I think that ghouls are really more likely to wipe you out with a TPK than those other types. Here are a few historical notes on them:


Chainmail Fantasy -- Ghouls are in Chainmail, as a sub-category lumped in with Wights:

WIGHTS (and Ghouls): Although they are foot figures, Wights (and Ghouls) melee as Light Horse and defend as Heavy Horse. They cannot be harmed by normal missile fire. Wights (and Ghouls) can see in darkness, and must subtract 1 from any die roll they roll when in full light. If they touch a normal figure during melee, it becomes paralyzed and remains so for one complete turn. A paralyzed figure is considered to be able to strike a blow at the Wight just prior to paralysis taking effect, so melee can occur but only one round. [CM p. 37]

Hey, where did that paralysis come from, anyway? Well, Tolkien describes Barrow-Wights in Lord of the Rings as having an "icy touch" -- and here you see them with a freezing-effect described as "paralysis" against those who they touch. Ghouls just happen to be along for the ride in the same section, and so they (in something of a happy accident -- for them) also get paralysis. In later editions Wights switch to energy-drain, but Ghouls stick with the paralysis.

Original D&D -- And here's what OD&D says, mostly referring back to the preceding:

As stated in CHAINMAIL for Wights, Ghouls paralize any normal figure they touch, excluding Elves. They otherwise melee in the regular fashion and are subject to missile fire. Any man-type killed by a Ghoul becomes one. [Vol-2, p. 9]

Notice the changes: Ghouls can be hit by any weapon type (esp. missiles), and they can spawn new ghouls from their victims. (Some people say that Ghouls are your best choice to replicate movie zombie incursions based on that latter fact, and I think that's a strong argument.)

Of course, ghouls only get one attack for 1d6 damage (as is the default for anything in OD&D). Their paralysis doesn't explicitly permit a saving throw; but one of the save categories is "paralization", and what else could that be used for? And there's no duration except for the "one complete turn" language back in Chainmail, although trying to use that gets you in the standard quagmire of OD&D confusion over exploring turn/ melee turn/ rounds, or what should be indicated by that (esp. since it was actually given in an earlier context where 10-minute turns definitely didn't exist yet).


Supplement-I, Greyhawk -- Now, the OD&D Greyhawk supplement has a section of additions to the combat system, providing weapons-vs-AC modifiers, damage-by-weapon, and different attacks and damage for the core monsters (this was quasi-optional at the time: "If this system is used it is suggested that the separate damage by weapon type and monster type also he employed..." [Sup-I, p. 13]). So you get a little one-line change in respect to Ghouls:

Ghoul (Number of Attacks) 2 claws/1bite (Points of Damage per Attack) 1-3/claw, 1-4/bite [Sup-I, p. 16]

Now, this makes a pretty big difference. Ghouls are the only undead type given more than a single attack at this point -- and not just 2, but all of 3. The other types all get a full die of damage (1d6, 1d8, 1d10, or 1d12), but ghouls have theirs reduced to the order of 1d3 per attack. Normally this would average out to about the same -- except that each of those 3 attacks subject you to the paralysis effect. In theory, a single Ghoul could incapacitate 3 members of your party in a single round of combat; no other type can say the same.

This triple-attacks-with-paralysis was copied into all of the following versions of D&D. Holmes, Moldvay, Advanced, Third Edition, etc., all keep it the same way.


Advanced D&D -- Some extra refinements in AD&D that sometimes escape notice:

Any human killed by a ghoulish attack will become a ghoul unless blessed (or blessed and then resurrected). Ghoul packs always attack without fear. These creatures are subject to all attack forms except sleep and charm spells. They can be turned by clerics. The magic circle of protection from evil actually keeps these monsters completely at bay. [MM, p. 44]

But among the other unique things about Ghouls at this point is that every other undead type got a +1 boost in Hit Dice in AD&D -- with the single exception of Ghouls. (e.g., in OD&D you had Skeletons 1/2 HD, Zombies 1, Wights 3, etc.; while in AD&D it's Skeletons 1, Zombies 2, Wights 4, etc.) On the parallel track, Holmes has it the same as OD&D except for 2 HD zombies; while Moldvay Basic D&D and its descendants have everything up to ghouls boosted, and everything afterward unchanged (Skeletons 1, Zombies 2, Wights 3, etc.).

There are days when if I'm playing AD&D, my instinct is to also boost Ghouls up to 3 HD, thereby keeping the same regular progression for undead HD that you see in original D&D. (Link.)


On Light -- One possibly important issue: Should fighting in light affect ghouls' combat abilities? (Like: during a general land incursion.) There's a general precedent that light affects the undead in D&D, with increasing incapacitation for higher-level types. For example, in AD&D: Skeletons take no effect, Wights "shun bright lights and hate sunlight", for Spectres "Daylight makes them powerless", and Vampires are destroyed [various MM pages].

Now, if you look back to Chainmail Fantasy, it did specify a -1 from any die in combat for Ghouls (or Wights) in full light. This isn't repeated in any later edition; all you get are the flavor-type quotes about the types just not liking light (as for Wights above). As usual, you can ask the question if the Chainmail language was meant to be incorporated by reference (and whether anyone does so).

The only problem is that a -1 on the Chainmail six-sided attack die makes opponents in heavy armor totally unhittable. See the Combat Tables p. 40: the only regular type that ghouls could hit in sunlight would be Light Foot. Against Fantasy types, again, quite a few would be immune to hits.


Book of War -- When I made my suggested Book of War stats for ghouls, I used all the standard assumptions from the OD&D game that I run, namely: 2 hit dice, only 1 attack, -2 to hit in full sunlight, and immune to morale. A few issues with that are that it differs from the 3 attacks given in later editions (although 3 paralysis attacks make them immensely dangerous game-changers), and heavy-armor types are totally unhittable in clear, sunny weather outdoors.

So I'm wondering: What do you prefer in your own Original D&D-esque game? I've got a trio of separate polls in the sidebar on the issues of (1) attacks, (2) light penalty, and (3) morale. I'd be interested in seeing the consensus on those issues.


[Photo by Eyes of New York under CC2. Not me, but a venue I've played at.]

Light Posting

In the last two weeks: (a) I came down with the flu, (b) my computer crashed with a virus, and (c) my school almost tripled my normal workload for the semester starting this week. (And just for fun my desklamp also did a weeklong flickery crash-and-burn while I'm trying to pore over a new-to-me 1400-page math book, something out of a cyberpunk dystopia...)

So: I've got the first two items fixed in the last few days, but unfortunately a big backlog of email to which I just re-acquired access (big apologies to those who sent stuff and are waiting on replies from me). And even though I've got a big list of things that I'm eager to write about and get some feedback on, posting may be light for a few weeks. Fight on!

Damn You, Gygax! Part 3

More of the AD&D-intervention for places where Gygax fell down in the Dungeon Master's Guide. Today: Outdoor Movement.


Advanced D&D, Dungeon Master's Guide: Here's the Outdoor Movement table for AD&D.


Looks okay at first blush -- but try using it directly in-game. The numbers aren't evenly divisible by any common map scale (in fact, they can't be, except for a scale of 1 space = 1 mile). When I was playing with my books as-written all through my teenage years, I was constantly making little dots all over maps, trying to track party movement in fractional-hexes. Like if you were traveling with average gear through the woods of the World of Greyhawk (30-mile hexes), then I was making little 1/3-hex marks for every day of travel. Or if you were exploring the mountain wilds of Gygax's Dungeon Module S4: The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth (3.5 miles per hex) on heavy horses, then I was trying to make a mark every, um, 1.43 hexes or thereabouts. And worse: This doesn't even start to account for crossing multiple kinds of terrain in a single day, which technically would require pro-rating the movement in one region and calculating a proportion for what's left over for the next. Also: The terrain categories are abstracted, and looking at any map you've got a two-step process to convert terrain to general category to movement rate. And the carrying-weight burdens (given after the table) don't even synch up with the regular encumbrance categories seen elsewhere in the rules, either. It's a hot mess, I tell you!

Now let's look for the real origin of these movement rules...


Avalon Hill's Outdoor Survival Game: Lest we forget: Outdoor Survival is part of Original D&D's "Recommended Equipment" (listed even before dice and Chainmail, in fact). It's the basis and presumed adventuring locale for the wilderness rules in OD&D Vol-3. Here's the sheet that comes with that game to display the Mapboard Movement Chart (thanks to BoardGameGeek):


Aha, now that's a lot more useful for gameplay! The terrain types are immediately keyed to what you see on the map, and they're given in whole-number costs to enter a hex. It's so obvious, really. You never need to deal with partial-hex movement, and cross-terrain travel is handled by simply deducting each hex-entry from an overall move-per-day. Very simple and manageable, and scaled to the gameplay at hand.

Two notes: The daily move rate for people afoot in this game starts out at 6 hexes/day (and decreases as health is lost from lack of food/water). And the scale is 3 miles (1 league) per hex -- that's not directly stated anywhere, but it can be inferred from the rules text. ("The mapboard is a representation of approximately 13,200 square miles of wilderness..."; and since the whole board is 34×43 hexes, assuming 3 miles per hex gives us the area of about 102×129 = 13,158 square miles.)


Original D&D Vol-3, Underworld & Wilderness Adventures: Basically, the Original D&D Wilderness rules are built directly on top of Outdoor Survival (and refer and depend on its map and rules throughout). Here are some parts of that:



So the overall mechanic is the same as Outdoor Survival (with some smallish adjustments). All travel is given a daily move-budget, and it's expressed directly in terms of hexagons on the map used in play. "All terrain penalties are as stated in OUTDOOR SURVIVAL", with adjudication done by paying for movement as each hex is entered (although swamp and mountain trail movement are given different values here; and note that no one's mentioned hills yet). Now that's immediately playable.

Also note also that the scale is different ("about 5 miles"), which is likely an intentional change, although it's not explained why (perhaps to cover more territory while adventuring?). It's approximately a doubling of scale, and the man-on-foot travel rate is correspondingly halved (3 hexes, instead of Outdoor Survival's base 6 hexes).


Summary: To come full circle, we can now return to the DMG movement chart and understand what's really happening there. Let's make an alternate view of it: Start with the "normal" move rates, make columns that just divide by 1, 2, and 3 respectively (as per move costs in Outdoor Survival and OD&D above), and then compare:


So those are pretty much the same (i.e., that's where the DMG numbers really come from), excusing some slight rounding in a different direction here and there. With one noticeable exception: The "very rugged" rates for movement on horseback are all further reduced a great deal, which is a fairly realistic handling of how horses fail to be useful for mountain-climbing purposes and the like. (I like this latter point, even though it was left out of later editions like B/X and 3E; I honor the idea in Book of War by doubling all move penalties for mounted troops).

Anyway, good to know that the Outdoor Survival movement costs are still "lurking" under the cover of the DMG (in fact, that's what most of the chart really boils down to). But the AD&D Outdoor Movement table is still not directly usable in-game, because it's not scaled to any particular map that we might use in play. The truth is, Gygax actually acknowledges this, but it's so curt that I always missed it as a young man (plus: it suffers from the table-distracts-from-text problem). Look closely one more time (DMG p. 58):


Right. So the DMG Outdoor Movement table isn't really intended to be used directly in play in the first place. You're supposed to "adapt them to the scale of your campaign maps accordingly. Some variation in movement rate is justifiable..." Or more directly stated: Take this as raw source material, and make your own table by dividing the numbers by your hex size in miles, rounding to the nearest whole number. Wow, that seems super-important now!

Recommended: The AD&D DMG Outdoor Movement table is acceptable as a starting point for wilderness play (it seems in-line with real-world research), but you have to do some derivation work. As we just stated: Divide the numbers by your hex scale and round off. Just do that with the "normal" terrain numbers, and in play assess costs of 2 hexes for rugged terrain (woods/hills) and 3 hexes for very rugged (mountains/swamp); payment is made as each hex is entered. Horses should be further penalized in very rugged terrain, perhaps most simply by just prohibiting movement altogether (unless map hexes are very finely grained).

For example, at the start of this week, I made a large-scale campaign map at a scale of 15 miles/5 leagues per hex (in fact: doing so is what motivated the series for this week). Here are the appropriate derived movement rates: 4 hexes/day for light horse, 3 for medium, 2 for foot/heavy horse/cart or wagon. Movement off-trail into a woods or hills space costs 2 points (i.e., halved; 1 hex on foot etc.). Travel through very rugged terrain -- like mountain climbing or a dread swamp -- is not appropriate at this particular scale, and should be shifted to a more zoomed-in map, with its own characteristic movement table (again taking the DMG table as a starting point).

Damn You, Gygax! Part 2

A continuation of our if-you-love-someone-they-deserve-the-truth critique of some parts of the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide: Let's talk Ships. This one I'll do in reverse order (or rather: the order in which I, and many others, discovered them):


Advanced D&D, Dungeon Master's Guide: The AD&D DMG has a very enticing section on ships. Hot damn, do I love ships! I analyzed this section over and over in my years, looking for ways to play with it. It has real-world historical background, hull values, ship sizes, wind determination, movement, recovery from fires, and some fairly short, general notes on boarding melees. Sounds great. Here are a few sample tables:




Looks good. But when you try to use this information, numerous sticking points arise. Why are the ship speeds given in miles-per-hour? The basic outdoor action in D&D is supposed to be either daily-turn long distance movement, or round-based combat, and this matches neither of them; is anyone running hour-turn action for ships, for some reason? If we want to use this for close-combat action (which is really main attraction, after all), then we'll have to do a bunch of math on these numbers ourselves in order to produce a game-able scale on the tabletop. Or else, if you want to use it for daily long-range travel then you need to add some off-book assumptions about how many hours per day sailing/rowing is possible, and do math in the other direction. And there's no given way for the wind-direction generated to interact with the sailing direction (I wound up doing more math/research on sailing points myself); and there's also a mystery of what to do with all those wind speed categories, when the move table only mentions a single one of them (Strong Breeze). And the ship-size information is somewhat interesting, but it's missing the real main course: How many fighting men can I put on deck? Exactly how many catapults are mounted on those ships? How much cargo/treasure can I sail away with? All those key details for a freebooting adventurer's game are, frustratingly, missing.


Original D&D Vol-3, Underworld & Wilderness Adventures: I open up the OD&D little-brown-book analog to the DMG, and -- holy crap, it's all right there (moves in inches/round, etc.):





There's really not much more to say about it than that. OD&D has concrete, immediately game-able stats for men, movement, maneuverability, etc., scaled the same as the core game; the wind speed and direction tables interface directly with how the sailed movement table is set up; and so on. We now see that the AD&D ship section is a higher-order abstraction, with very general notes on how ships sort-of might function; but they're only fully usable as an add-on and expansion to the real thing that exists in OD&D. Why the OD&D ship-fighting rules weren't included wholesale in AD&D is a tragedy and a mystery that I'm utterly at a loss to explain.


Recommended: Look at OD&D Vol-3 if you want to do ship-to-ship combat in D&D. No ifs-ands-or-buts. It's the best, most coherent and concise group of ship-based rules for D&D ever written (and it even interfaces with Gygax & Arneson's earlier Don't Give Up the Ship! historical game if you look really, really closely). Use that, period.