Spells Through The Ages – Ranges

Starting our "Spells Through the Ages" marathon: Today, a longitudinal study of the core D&D spell ranges, and how they were first birthed, changed, and evolved over time. Below you'll see a table for these core spells across Chainmail Fantasy, Original D&D (LBBs & Sup-I), Basic/Expert D&D Rules (Cook & Moldvay), AD&D 1st Edition, AD&D 2nd Edition, and D&D 3rd Edition (PDF version: link).

Key:

N/S = Not Specified.
Close = 25 ft + 5 ft/2 levels (3E only)
Medium = 100 ft + 10 ft/level (3E only)
Long = 400 ft + 40 ft/level (3E only)
- = Spell does not exist in this edition.

Notes:

One of the things you'll see above is that most spells in Chainmail, and many in OD&D, didn't think to specify any range in the first place ("N/S", not specified). At that point in the books, the presence of "standard spell stat blocks" hadn't been invented yet, so it was pretty haphazard about which spells had those aspects defined (although in OD&D you can see a pattern beginning to emerge, with range & duration more often listed at the end of a spell... and more so the deeper into the book you get). The entries in the table above that say "Personal" for these editions are interpretations by myself based on the narrative spell text.

I'd also say that it's frequently the case that right near the beginning of the OD&D spell list, you tend to see a few novelties before Gygax settled down into a more rational series of design decisions. Like: Detect magic, the very first spell in OD&D, just says "It has a limited range and short duration" (this was updated in Sup-I to [Range 6". Duration: 2 turns.], although read languages and read magic were similarly vague, and not so errata'd). Hold portal, the second spell, has a duration of 2d6 turns, which makes it the only spell whose magical duration is a raw dice-roll (transmute rock to mud lasts 3-18 days, but that's due to natural evaporation, not ending the magic; although I should leave that for a later blog). Charm person, the first spell in the Sup-I list of modifications, gets its unique and complicated table for recurring saves based on Intelligence. None of those oddball mechanics get used again in other spells.

OD&D has only two spells whose range is a variable based on level: detect invisible (1"/level) and locate object (6"+1"/level). You'd say the exact same thing about the B/X line, except that while detect invisible is in Moldvay's list of 2nd-level basic magic-user spells, it's actually missing from the text descriptions (and so no range is visible).

Obviously, Chainmail and OD&D show their wargaming roots by listing ranges in tabletop inches. Cook & Moldvay (and Holmes if you look there) convert almost all of these inches to multiples of 10 feet (as asserted for dungeon exploring, first in OD&D Vol-3). Gygax's AD&D 1E keeps the inches but converts most of those fixed ranges to more variable ranges based on level (something which I don't appreciate, as it needlessly complicates things) -- and then Cook in AD&D 2E makes a different choice thereafter, generally converting all the 1E inches to multiples of 10 yards for 2E (as asserted for wilderness adventures, again first mentioned in OD&D Vol-3). Then 3E goes in yet another direction, back to feet for its units, but generally (although not always) establishing fixed categories of Close, Medium, or Long range -- again variable by level (see the Key above).

A very rough correlation between the editions would be:

• OD&D 6" → 1E ½"/level → 2E 5 yards/level → 3E Close.
• OD&D 12" → 1E 1"/level → 2E 10 yards/level → 3E Medium.
• OD&D 24" → 1E 2"/level → 2E 20 yards/level → 3E Long.

Note that 1E AD&D generates the same values as OD&D if we assume a basis of a Wizard 12th level (one step over name level), as Gygax commonly does in examples within the text of various spells.


Some of the terms that we're accustomed to now weren't invented until fairly deep in the edition cycle. For example, the phrase "Touch" range doesn't appear until AD&D 1E in the list above; the only real equivalent in OD&D, remove curse, is listed as "Range: Adjacent to the object" to be de-cursed. In B/X, equivalent spells are usually listed as just range "0" (zero). And on the same line of thought, note that quite a few spells in OD&D which only refer to use by the caster (which could be N/S in OD&D, "0" in BX-1-2E, or "Personal" in 3E) were transitioned in 1E to being castable on another touched subject, greatly increasing their utility and flexibility (reasonable, because while Chainmail-type wizards were all monstrously robust figures on the battlefield, the new low-level D&D magic-users could be paper-frail and would want to avoid contact with the enemy). The spells altered in this way would include: protection from evil, levitate, fly, protection from evil 10' radius, teleport, etc.

A little funky thing with the low-level door-locking spells: note that in OD&D Gygax did not specify any range for hold portal (1st level) or wizard lock (2nd). But in 1E, he gave hold portal the "long" range category of 2"/level, while the supposedly more powerful wizard lock that refers back to it only gets "touch" range (and this tradition stuck in later editions). Meanwhile, the anti-lock spell knock at the same level had a consistent range of 6" throughout 0-1-2E.

On the subject of D&D 3E range classes (Close, Medium, Long, et. al.): there are just a very few places in the list above where 3E breaks out of keyword-style for these categories. For example: the 1st-2nd level detections, detect magic, detect evil, and detect thoughts (formerly ESP), each having a rule-breaking fixed range of 60' (not dependent on level). Which interestingly seems to be a throwback to original D&D -- two of these spells have ranges of "0" or "1/2 inch/level" in 1E-2E, whereas if you look back at OD&D they indeed started out at 6". The only other 3E rule-breakers like that in our population are at 6th level (anti-magic shell at a fixed 10 ft, repulsion at 10 ft/level, and control weather at 2 miles).


Edit: In the comments below, Zenopus Archives makes the excellent point that you can possibly treat Gygax's Swords & Spells fantasy miniature rules as mid-way between OD&D and the Basic sets (esp. Holmes). It contains a pretty complete "Spell Chart" (p. 12-15) listing Range, Area Effect, and Turn Duration for most of the spells in the game -- filling in many of the OD&D N/S entries, and introducing several common terms for the first time ("touch" range, "personal" area effect... but not "permanent", for which it still uses the wordy "until dispelled"). Holmes uses those updated ranges. Interesting tidbit: the Control Weather spell (which I'm currently wrestling with in my game) has a unique range and area listing of "table" (i.e., the game table itself; druidic predict weather and weather summoning similarly have an effect of "game area"). Thanks to Z.A.!

So, at this time I've edited the table above to include a column for the late-OD&D ranges from Swords & Spells (again, thanks to Zenopus Archives for pointing out how useful that is). Probably the weirdest thing I notice in those rules is the large number of spells which list "Range: touch, Area Effect: personal" (which in later editions would be considered contradictory ranges). This area effect entry of "personal" gets used both in cases where the original spell text indicated it's only usable on the caster him or herself (polymorph self, contact higher plane, shape change, etc.), as well as cases where the spell is only effective when cast on others (strength, suggestion, geas, reincarnation, etc.). Therefore it's unfortunately unclear if there's a deliberate change in S&S to some spells that were originally caster-only but later permitted on other subjects (fly, levitate, teleport, etc.). Note also the oddball listing necessary for the Sup-I extension spells (the entries are literally "matches extended spell....").



Are there any other patterns you can see in the list above that seem interesting?

Spells Through The Ages – Names Redux

For a number of weeks henceforth, I'm planning to go on a jog of new "Spells Through the Ages" posts. Are you ready? (See sidebar to search for prior posts in the series.) Let's start here: Previously I compiled a listing of all the changes to spell names in the core D&D wizard list over the years (treating the OD&D Vol-1 and Sup-I spells as the core; link). At the time, though, I didn't include the spell listings in the Moldvay/Cook Basic/Expert (B/X) rules sets. Actually, I hadn't procured digital copies of those rules until just a few weeks ago; now I'll have a much easier time including them in our historical assessments. Here's the new list (highlighting indicates a name change; click to full-size; or see PDF version, link). More to come later.

HelgaCon VII — Outdoor Spoliation 2

Two years ago at HelgaCon, as the last game of the weekend, I ran a game I call "Outdoor Spoliation" which is basically a wilderness sandbox treasure-hunt, using the old Outdoor Survival game map as demanded by the Original D&D rulebook, and hewing as closely to the wilderness rules in Vol-3 as I can (link). It was kind of a hit -- I got great feedback afterward, and somehow the huge table full of players in the sunny porch on Sunday morning/afternoon, adventuring boldly into the wilderness, seemed to hit just the right note of denouement for our mini-convention. So I decided to run it again this year, and maybe next year as well.

For this game, we had 9 players, and they chose from the same list of pregenerated characters of around the 8th level as last time (link). The goal here is to secure 100,000 sp (gp in the book game) in the time available, which the party approached but did not succeed at last time -- I promise there is in fact that much treasure in places, somewhere. Given the option, they decided to make an alliance with the Lawful Lord of Castle #8 at the northern edge of the map and start from there. In addition to personal mounts, the party elected to take 4 draft horses carrying 20 days of food and water -- a good idea, and still allowing the group to move easily.

On my end I'd done a few things in advance: One is that I'd actually typed up my notes in an easier-to-read format (last time I was just working from three pages of handwritten notes on lined paper), including a simple system for laying out random cave systems with some d6 rolls (any of the ponds shown on the Outdoor Survival map). Also, I'd filled in looted places from last time with other monsters, but very little treasure, so they probably didn't want to explore the same section of the map. Finally, I made a note to myself about Halig Redsaber's intelligent sword, and how best in OD&D to track the possible personality struggle between the two (which gets highlighted as the bearer gets more injured), something I mostly overlooked last time.

The Second Travels

• The party headed straight towards the northern mountains, aiming for the pass that would lead them through to the center of the board. In the cave system at the foot of the mountains, the found a group of about a dozen large bear-like creatures milling about a fire. Besyrwan Birchson, an elven fighter/wizard of Neutral alignment, blasted them with a fireball, which greatly infuriated the half that survived. The "bears" ran at the party and attacked with great vicious claws, and turned out to be immune to any non-magical weapons. It took some very hard fighting, but the party managed to finish them off. Jugs of healing were passed around and the group recovered a bag with four 1,000 sp jewels.
• In the heights of the mountains, a second cave system was explored; in one deep cavern with numerous pillars and stalagmites, the party was actually surprised in an ambush by a dozen ogres, throwing huge spears and then attacking with clubs. Surrounded on all sides, the group was immediately in melee and at a disadvantage for using area-effect spells. The wizard Olezka cast charm monster on one of the ogres, and kept him as a personal bodyguard for the rest of the adventures (naming him Olaf). Again some hard one-on-one fighting, but the PCs managed to turn the tide and defeat the monstrous ogres. A small amount of treasure was retrieved: 100 gp (i.e., 1,000 sp value in OD&D).
• One thing I should mention here is that the party was intent on interrogating Olaf (the charmed Ogre) on the location of any large caches of treasure -- but none of them actually spoke the language of ogres. The other wizard, Deneuro of the Spectral Sands, did know Orcish, and so to be generous I ruled that Olaf knew a very small smattering of the orc language. On the point of treasure, mentally I assumed that Olaf didn't really know anything, and so I started spouting some random gibberish while looking at the map, like, "blar blar blar mighty blar blar blar treasure blar blar blar woods", etc. Which the party took as a positive indication that there was great treasure at the castle in the central woods at area #5 (see map above), and this became their goal for the rest of the game.
• Moving further through the mountain pass, the group turned a narrow corner and confronted a wandering monster encounter: a column of 240 goblins under arms! There was a moment of thought given to parley, and then again a fireball was launched, and then battle en masse was joined. Probably one of the cleverest bits is that Deneuro cast phantasmal force to make a matching column of armed knights appear to be coming around the corner behind the party (of some unknown length out of sight?), causing the goblins to hesitate and be at a penalty for morale checks I was making. Onund, the dwarven fighter, unhesitatingly charged the goblins and lay down enormous mayhem with his great cleave ability -- I think rolling about 14 kills each round before he would miss. Yuri the Bull, already of great strength and here magically empowered to a Strength of 24, climbed into the bluffs and started rolling down huge boulders each round, also flattening a score of goblins each time. Ruric, the elven wizard/thief, took to the air with a fly spell to find the goblin leader and befuddle him with a magical suggestion. Halig (damaged from prior encounters) was actually forced into melee by his intelligent and egotistical sword when he was trying to do something else. Slings and arrows and swords rained down from both sides. 30 goblins were struck by a confusion spell, disrupting the cramped formation and attacking their fellows. According to my notes, more than 100 goblins were actually slain in the pass before the column broke and fled in the other direction.
• The group reached the cave at the end of the mountain pass system, and it being near the end of the day, bedded down a short ways of for rest. Fortunately they posted two guards overnight, because the pair of giant weasels lairing in the cave found them and attacked while most were sleeping. Blood was drained but the guard PCs were successful in defeating them. Also: I think it was Matt M. who had the bright idea of opening up the Monster Manual and noting that giant weasel pelts are worth a significant amount of money. I awarded the group 10,000 sp for this observation, in line with those rules, and actually the greatest value so far.
• Two days later, the group was traveling over the plains towards the castle at area #2 on the map, occasionally scouting from the air (by fly or polymorph). Noting a fairly sizable walled community, the party was approached by a small group of armored knights flying a pennant, who hailed them. The Superhero who was chief of the fortress, Gremian, was at their head, and responded to the party's request for food, trade, and information with a challenge to a joust! My players shouted an excited huzzah! (Or actually, there were mostly groans, considering that last time the PC hero thrown on the first pass). Yuri the Bull took up the challenge (his player, Briana M., was not with the group last time, so I gave her a quick rundown of the Chainmail jousting rules; link). On the first pass, Gremian broke his lance, giving up a point to Yuri! And on the second pass, again -- Yuri was ahead by two points. And on the third pass -- Yuri ducked low, directly into Gremian's lance, hitting him square in the helmet, clear off his horse, and taking damage from the blow. The joust was over with Gremian the victor. To pay off the wager of horse & magical armor, the group turned over the giant weasel pelts (10,000 sp), and were denied information on the wilderness around, but were at least allowed to buy supplies to continue their journey. Said Paul S.: "The next time someone challenges us to a joust, I say we just kill them all."
• The adventurers crossed to river at the ford and plunged into the woods. Another wandering encounter: ambush by seven more of the magical bear creatures, tearing into the PCs angrily from behind a grove of trees (somehow related to the first encounter above?). Several characters were actual thrown down momentarily and rended with multiple claw-attacks, but at least they had the foresight to pass around magical weapons so that all could effectively fight back (in particular, the 9th-level halfling thief Rat Larsson had given Yuri his spare magic dagger +1) . Again, after a surprisingly long and hard fight they prevailed.
• Nearing the end of our session time, the group found the clearing of the castle at #5 and scouted it by means of polymorphing into falcon: a square curtain wall, with a star-shaped central keep and a single huge tower, guards in black armor on the walls, and red-colored pennons waving at all corners. (Side note: I'm using the old Judges' Guild Castle Book I for random castles, which clearly is meant to dovetail and expand on the rules in OD&D Vol-3 very nicely. I got a digital copy from DriveThruRPG -- thanks to P_Armstrong for cluing me into it by comments here from the last time I did this; sadly, no longer available there as of 2020.) The party made a plan to assault the castle from two sides at once, in a desperate gamble for the treasure they needed to win the game. Besyrwan used a potion of plant control to raise several ent-like trees and send them to batter through the north wall; meanwhile Onund and Yuri were dimension doored into the southern gatehouse to raise the portcullis, at which point the rest of the party all invisibly charged through the gate.
• As it turned out, the castle was the stronghold of Zumar the Ruby Sorcerer, who appeared from a balcony atop the tower with his 7th-level apprentice and began raining down fell magics at the party as they appreared in combat. First, Zumar cast a wall of fire outside the north castle wall which mostly burned up the attacking trees there (double damage to fire-vulnerable creatures). His apprentice cast fear which the party mostly saved against. As hand-to-hand fighting broke out in the gatehouse, courtyard, and inside the keep, a great windstorm collected overhead -- a huge air elemental conjured by Zumar to attack the party. The PCs responded elegantly with a fireball that killed the apprentice and ruined Zumar's concentration; next he had to spend a dispel to avoid the elemental attacking him.
• Rat Larsson, the halfling thief, received a haste spell and quite nearly ran up the side of the tower to attack the sorcerer; stepping over the lip of the balcony, he rolled to attack -- a natural "1"; the save to avoid the fumble was failed; and going to the fumble chart he rolled a 35% for the result "trip and fall". So in this unfortunate case he fell back the whole 80' height of the tower, bouncing of various ledges and precipices, and he took 8d6 damage and he died.
• While the fighter-types stormed the keep by foot and started fighting floor-by-floor up the stairs, other PCs tried to follow Rat by climbing (Halig Redsaber) or flying (Ruric the Fox). In this case they got to the balcony and struck -- only to find that among the exotic carvings of the balcony and tower walls were actually 5 gargoyles who came to life and intercepted their blows! Halig was rent in may ways, his sword now fully in control and thrusting him onward. Deneuro cleverly took the opportunity to polymorph into a gargoyle himself and confuse the enemies. Onund and Yuri managed to finally burst into the upper tower chamber behind Zumar, who turned and blasted them with a wand of cold, greatly injuring them. Onund got tripped up in the billowing curtain at the edge of the balcony, but Yuri the Bull grabbed onto the evil sorcerer and struck true, jamming the magic dagger into his throat. Zumar babbled and clutched at Yuri's unyielding, giant-strong arm and finally sank to the floor, defeated.
• Did I have a specific treasure outlined for Zumar's castle, to which the ogre Olaf's confused mutterings had inexorably led the party? Well, no, not whatsoever. But the note was to roll Treasure Type "A", the standard for men, in this case -- one of the best treasure types, and one that could in fact win the whole game for the party if the rolls went right. So we divied up the various cases to different players around the table and had them roll. Some silver and small-valued gems, but no gold and no jewelry, so unfortunately the party did not meet their end-goal. But perhaps next time!

Commentary

• This game is such a challenge and such a joy to play at high level, with lots players, and a big unpredictable sandbox for the players to despoil. My players are great and I hope they enjoyed it half as much as I did.
• One thing I maybe slightly glitched up at the end is allowing the PCs to scout out the castle in the woods by hiding behind trees, and preparing their assault, from just a few moves away. Defensibly, that doesn't make much sense -- a castle would clear a lot more territory around to protect itself in that way. On the one hand, this castle #5 is the only habitation on the Outdoor Survival map in the woods, but I have to be a little more strict on cases like that in the future. If I'd just honored the Castle Book I map as shown on the page (one small grove fairly far off), it would have been more reasonable. (Also, I need to fix a scale on those maps -- none is listed -- likely 10 yards per hex?)
• I should probably at least stat out the wizard castle owners in advance. I was trying to do that on the fly with Zumar and his apprentice, which was a bit hairy as I was trying to generate abilities, magic items, and memorized spells simultaneously with running the 80 soldiers on the walls and gatehouse, and processing player actions around the table. I worked it out okay, but that's one that it would be smart to do some prep for beforehand.
• There's also a bunch of stuff in my turn-sequence house rules that I actually plum forgot about all weekend long, for starters: Not running a 1st round of combat as no-movement and missiles only. Partly this is there to recall the old Chainmail/OD&D sequence that has a missile phase before melee (among the seven total interleaved phases), which works okay for two players in a wargame, but not something I want to touch with a whole party of players in the RPG. I didn't miss it all weekend, and neither did any of my players, so maybe this suggests that I should snip it out of my rules?
• Also: I was rolling for initiative after a surprise round, which my house rules (in accordance with OD&D, Vol-3, top p. 10; so actually not a house rule at all) say I shouldn't do. Since the PCs were mostly getting surprised in this adventure, I felt generous about at least giving them a chance to not get hit twice in a row. Perhaps I should cut this restriction as well -- or if I'd honored the rule above (missiles only, no moving into melee on the surprise round), then that itself would take care of the severity.
• Also: When characters were reincarnated (maybe just Ezniak in the D2 game), I forgot to deduct the level loss that's in my spell description (descended from the 3E SRD material). Now again, that oversight probably made things go smoother at the table (no explanation or recalculations), so arguably I could take that 3E-ism out entirely. Maybe. But I still think for campaign play there needs to be some ultimate threat that PCs don't get recycled from the afterworld indefinitely and without any fear. So perhaps more thought or massaging of the reincarnate rules is appropriate. 
• Also: On the OD&D equipment list, exactly what good is  garlic, belladonna, and wolvesbane? My players were trying to use them in different games all weekend. Here against the "bears" I was giving a hit and then save vs. poison; I recently learned that a J. Eric Holmes rule that got cut from his published book was to mostly do the same and cause the lycanthrope to flee if successful (link). But maybe that's too powerful for an herb that everyone can afford. (?)
• As always, a mind-blowingly intense HelgaCon! I just feel really special and lucky to be where I am in the world coming back from it. If we could do this multiple times a year I'd be there in a heartbeat. Until next year!

HelgaCon VII – The Dangerous Mine

On the second evening of HelgaCon last month (Saturday night), I ran a dungeon adventure of my creation, called "The Dangerous Mine". While I usually run high-level games at convention-type events (I generally just find high-level D&D play to be curious and challenging to run, so I want as many experiments with it as possible), this was a low-level adventure, to give myself some variety and play-test this particular scenario. The introductory text reads as follows:

The Dangerous Mine is an adventuring site suitable for 4 2^nd-level PCs in the OD&D game system. It may be set in the wilderness, miles from an evil temple complex.

PCs may find the mine by means of old map, or an aged prospector telling them of its location, or they may spot it by chance in the wilderness. It is a former dwarven silver mine, played out some 200 years in the past. The entrance is blocked by a stone menhir with dwarven runes (saying “Danger”), but the corner is either dug or clawed open, such that one person at a time can enter. The tunnels inside are dug carefully out of solid stone, 10' high and wide...

For this event, we had 7 players (so I doubled all the monsters and trap damage within), and as usual, supplied them with OED-style pregenerated characters. The group assembled with three bold fighters, three crafty thieves, one eldritch elven fighter/wizard, and an unnamed NPC linkboy to carry a lantern, with whom to try their luck at retrieving treasure from the dangerous mine.

• The very first room featured three exit tunnels and a giant statue straddling the one straight ahead. Fearing a trap, one of the group prodded between the legs with a 10' pole, triggering the statue's weapon to cleave down right where they were standing, instantly killing Libago, the first fighter, to death. (A backup was called in from outside, a guard for the horses & cart, previously unmentioned.)
• The second room had the skeleton of another unfortunate killed by the same trap some time ago. In a bone scroll tube was a cryptic clue to the main treasure deeper within the dungeon. Could the party puzzle it out at the right time? With no other exits in the chamber, the party backtracked and took a second route.
• The group cautiously explored several empty rooms, and then a click and a hissing sound -- invisible gas! Most of the group instantly retreated, but the hobbit fighter was slow and found himself blinded. While the hobbit went gropingly forward, the rest of the party found themselves trapped and attacked between the gas and wandering bandits. Almost all made the choice to cover their eyes and run forward through the gas, but one fighter, Codravian, made the bold choice to stay and fight. He died quickly.
• At this point I should mention that being cut off from the entry room (by gas and bandits), I wasn't handing out replacement PCs at the moment. So Steve B., Codravian's ex-player, started playing the weaponless and unarmored lantern-bearer, calling him "Jack". Someone handed him a hammer to protect himself with.
• The party re-assembled, catching up with the blind hobbit mere feet from an apparently bottomless pit-abyss. Around the corner was a small shelf with a large silvery orb and a coiled rope tied to a hook on the wall. One of the thieves tied on a rope and stepped around the corner to investigate the large silvery orb. I will skip the rather horrifying event that happened next, but fortunately no one died. They did, however, find a secret door nearby and passed beyond.
• The group burst into a dark and decrepit kobold lair with about 20 of the nasty creatures who turned to fight them with slings, rude spears, and nailed clubs. The PCs made a fighting ring around the entry point, suffering sling-shots and low-blow attacks, but generally slaying the unprepared kobolds left and right. Even Jack killed one with a critical hit (and picked up a sling afterward). About 5 of the kobolds fled south, and the party followed.
• Warily, the grouped inspected an opening into the next chamber, and realized it was full of giant webs. Numerous huge spiders began moving at them through the masses, so Jack set them on fire with his lantern, burning several of them. Others burst out of the web and attacked the party with poisonous mandibles, but the armored fighters held them off and stomped on them until they were killed.
• Then the party reached the master chamber of the mine: a large open pit mostly filled with water, a statue pointing down into the pit, and a huge wheel set parallel to the floor, with mostly-rotten rope and buckets trailing from it down into the pit. Here the party was stumped trying to figure out their riddle. They could turn the wheel counter-clockwise, but the rope and buckets were of no use. (Later they returned and replaced the mechanism, which poured water into a nearby sluice, but still made no headway emptying the huge pit.) They checked the statue for traps or mechanisms, but there were none. Finally the party leader Servomel (dwarven thief of the 3rd level) tied on a rope and dove into the pit, where he was eaten by underwater ghouls.
• The party decided to return the way they'd come for reinforcements. Along the way they encountered the body of their companion Codravian, not only stripped bare by the bandits who killed him, but already reduced to a near-skeleton by a sinister group of 6 giant rats! Glacercer, the elven fighter/wizard, cast sleep on half of them, and then the rest of the party was able to kill the rest with swords and hammers. Including Jack, who killed one of them.
• Back at town, the party recuperated over the course of a week, hired on new hands, and resupplied themselves (including picks, buckets, and lots of rope). I offered Steve a new PC, but he declined and continued running the level-less Jack, outfiting him with chainmail and a sword for the next venture. Also, the group took on a new party wizard named Liber.
• Returning to the dungeon and exploring it mostly back-to-front at this point, the group came upon the end of a rail network that terminated oddly at the lip of another deep pit (exploring the bottom they found excavated rubble, broken wood, but nothing else of interest. They proceeded back up the rail-tunnel, and were surprised by a carrion crawler on the roof over one entryway who immediately paralyzed the front-line fighter. The party grabbed him and tried to make a fighting withdrawal, but the aggressive many-tentacled thing was too fast for them. Being forced to fight it, the wizard cast magic missile and everyone desperately attacked it, finally bringing it down. The paralysis wore off and the group continued several more rooms up the rail-tunnel. (From here on, the group scrupulously declared that they were watching the roof in all the rooms, but not always so careful about the floor, which might be trouble later...)
• After fighting off a few wandering kobolds who attacked with slings, the group found the commencement of the rail-tunnel, with one very high-sided cart positioned at the topmost edge against one wall. Tiborus, the normally careful hobbit fighter, clambered up and inside to search it for treasure, and of course this launched the cart rumbling back down the railway system. He received a saving throw in each room it ran through to see if he could jump back out (which in other circumstances might put one right in the grips of the carrion crawler, etc.): the saves were failed, failed, failed, and failed. And so the cart tumbled over the lip into the pit at the end and crashed for 6d6 damage and he died.
• Other areas with pits and a fire trap were explored, as well as another flooded pit that was considered with enormous suspicion. Finally, the group discovered a second kobold lair with another 20 or so of the filthy creatures and no rear exit; attacking boldly, the PCs cast sleep on a half-dozen of them and then laid mayhem left and right (including Jack the lantern-bearer who would routinely score criticals against them). With the last half-dozen surrendering, the PCs threatened them to reveal the nearby treasure, at which point the kobolds pitifully collapsed into a manic-depressive melancholy over the terrible series of life choices which had led them to this point. Bringing the party to the nearby watery pit, the PCs negotiated for the kobolds to explore the area underwater. One said "But we can't swim!" simultaneous with the party leader saying "I push him in", at which point the kobold dropped like a stone and drowned. (It seems sort of terrible as I write this, but a bit after midnight everyone at the table was reduced to tears and hysterics over how funny this was.) Anyway, the party did discover a stone container under the water which was pulled up with ropes, broken open, and revealed a large cache of coins and a magic shield. At last, success!

 Commentary

• Puzzles are a funny thing. I really thought this group with 7 people would figure out the one I had here, but as usual, I was in error on that. At one point they came really close to orbiting around the solution, but the party process didn't quite let it gel. I let myself go hardcore on this one to watch the overall dynamic, as there were other opportunities for treasure in the complex even if the biggest one got missed (contrast this with module S1 where every puzzle is a chokepoint for the rest of the adventure; link) . Still, I take the party missing it as kind of a misfire on my part as dungeon-designer.
• An interesting observation is that the way I run critical hits (link), with a save vs. stone by the target to avoid one after a natural "20", there are actually more criticals landed at lower levels in my games than higher levels (because the saves get missed more frequently). In this game there seemed to be criticals happening almost all the time -- maybe just a bit more than I want for the variation "spice" that I'm looking for. It may not need correction, because it stands in a bit for the crazy magic effects you're dealing with at higher levels, and I don't mind a feeling of "red in tooth and claw" chaos of battle by desperate normal-men. (Shades of Warhammer, anyone?) But it is intriguing that there's a small element of flattening between the levels, with lower levels getting more frequent damage bonuses from the critical-hit effects.
• With all the mined-out pits and shafts in this dungeon, there were a lot of instances of characters being tied off and rappelling up or down, which D&D usually doesn't have explicit rules for. Should this be simply totally safe? Or if you have multiple people lowering one PC into pit, how likely should it be for some catastrophic failure?
• Steve B. was rather new to old-school role-playing and was pleasantly surprised (after his first fighter died quickly after one poor choice) that it was viable for him to run with Jack the lantern-bearer who initially had no stats, skills, abilities, weapons, or armor of any sort. In fact, he did better than over half of the initial PCs who died somewhere along the way, and contributed significantly to many of the party's victories. This was almost too much fun to watch -- clearly Jack is on the path to much greater things. Or else he'll die next time out, who knows?

D-Series Map Mysteries

Speaking of the classic D&D D-series of modules (Descent Into the Depths of the Earth, et. al.), assuming you own a copy, pull the maps out and see if you can answer the following mysteries.

• In the D2 major encounter area (the "Shrine"), what are the three "S" locations near the main entrance?


• In the D3 major encounter area (the "Fane"), on the last level, did you ever notice that the final secret door was misprinted as a location number "5"? (Compare to the text description.)


• In the large-scale map connecting the whole series, note that module D1 has encounter piece maps I, II, and III (although it simply re-uses a single one a few times). Module D2 has encounter pieces IV and V (the river and tunnel nexus). Module D3 has encounter pieces VII, VIII, and IX. So... whatever happened to encounter piece VI? (Note the unusually long passage leading to the Shrine without any encounter areas.)

 

HelgaCon VII — Shrine of the Kuo-Toa

At the recent HelgaCon VII I continued my annual check-in with the classic D&D G/D series modules, now for the fifth year in the sequence -- so that means we're up to module D2, Shrine of the Kuo-Toa. Like anything else, I now run these games using OD&D with my OED house rules. (The first two years I was running module S1, Tomb of Horrors, under regular AD&D rules. Use the search bar if you want to read previous year's writeups.)

Due to the growth of HelgaCon, I was pleased and excited to have fully seven players sitting in on the game. For the first time, there was some lead-up interest in players picking their PCs in advance and doing some amount of party organization and planning (equipment, spells, etc.) prior to game day. Dave G. took the lead on this and helpfully set up a Google Docs spreadsheet for this and my other games, that players could use to claim a PC of their choice in advance -- very efficient. I offer the same PC list I've used in prior years, so some players have grown familiar with certain PC personalities already (link). 

This game was set for the first slot that occurs on Friday night. I spent the early part of the day traveling, and re-reading H.P. Lovecraft's Shadow Over Innsmouth along the way -- later that night, I tried to communicate as much of the smelly, cold, wet, ancient frog-fish-man community as I could. The car ride from New York was actually delayed past our scheduled start time, so when we arrived I pretty much had to jump out of the car and run to the table and start rolling dice. (I walked in the house greeting people with, "Hello, now save versus poison!").

I quickly set up and walked players through my remaining preparation checklist -- read module background, pick leader-equipment-spells, arrange marching order and scouting protocols, hand out the long-range map -- and then play began. Based on events from last year, players began just past the module D1 area, with two mules carrying 60 man-days days of supplies, a lot of rope and spikes, some jugs of healing, and a few doses of mithridate (neutralize poison in my games). Here's how play progressed:

• First of all, Dave G. had planned his use of the fighter/wizard Ezniak of the Myriad Rings carefully -- Ezniak has the polymorph self spell in his book and while I was traveling reading Lovecraft, Dave was poring through the AD&D Monster Manual (which I told him was acceptable), and had hit upon the Androsphinx as a great choice of form. It's within the size limit for the spell, has a human head and voice for spellcasting, AC -2 (better than anything in OD&D), very fast flight of 30", and two heavy attacks for 2d6 each. It also lasts all day under my Book of Spells rules (derived from the 3E SRD). So the plan was to have Ezniak transform into a sphinx and do all his adventuring in that form. I wasn't thrilled about this tonally for my game, but Dave had put the effort into exploring the written rule, so I had to honor that and say "yes" to it. (I'll write more about this later.)
• The first encounter area is a wide underground river that the party must cross. Dave's Ezniak (in sphinx form) took the initiative to fly to the other side and take hold of the barge beached there. Unfortunately, the crazed high-level Kuo-Toan monitor burst out of the darkness in a frenzy, landing on the sphinx's back, and tearing out great and gory clawfuls of his body with 6 attacks in the first round. Ezniak leaped off the barge, and with his incredible flying speed, immediately landed with the frog-man on the other side, where the rest of the party started beating on it. Clearly at risk of death, I made a morale check for the creature to see if he would flee or sacrifice himself for spite -- and he made the check, continuing to tear into the sphinx and actually killing Ezniak on round 2! (Welcome to old-school.) Meanwhile, BJ's character Boris of Briansk rolled a "1" and missed his fumble-save, resulting in a slip and fall into the river in full armor. In the next round he dropped his shield and made a check to grab the riverbank; but meanwhile the whale-sized giant gar roared up out of the river and started biting off his legs. Fortunately, the rest of the party could rally and quickly finish off the first Kuo-Toan and his monstrous creature, and take stock of their situation.
• The party used their one scroll of reincarnation to bring back Ezniak; the way my rules work, he gets a save to come back in his own form -- which he failed. Result: I said he came back as a Sphinx permanently (what I actually rolled behind the screen was a Griffon, but it seemed so close that I felt a "spiritual vibration" had been set for us to play out the sphinx-form for the rest of the game). Side-caves were explored, and with a magic sword that can detect metal, the hidden treasure cache was found, including gold, gems, healing potions, and a magic-radiating clock. Paul S.'s character Jurdan the Red Wizard put it on (Jurdan carrying a wand of fireballs, and frequently being the party hero in earlier games) -- well, it's a poisonous cloak, and by Gygax's rules in OD&D Sup-I or the AD&D DMG, that's instant death, no save. So Paul's artillery wizard was out of the game with no way for the party to bring him back. (Welcome Part 2.)
• The second encounter was a deep tunnel nexus of 3 major connecting arteries and several smaller side-caves. At this point, there was some discussion about pushing on ahead as quickly as possible (many times just what should be prioritized), but Maggie's dwarven fighter/thief Bellinus Blueye insisted on at least a quick search of the side-caves. This brought him face-to-face with a group of some 8 Deep Gnomes who had been hiding, assessing the explorers. Peaceful gestures were made, although the party had no shared languages or way to talk with them. I felt that they hit upon a pretty clever solution: they gestured for the gnome leader to start writing letters in the dirt, cast read languages, and thereby started deciphering key bits of their language Rosetta-stone style. They negotiated a mutual expedition against the Kuo-Toan shrine, with gnomes receiving 1/3 of any treasure found. I handed the pre-made character sheets for Trosli Garnetgetter and the rest of the Deep Gnome brigade over to Paul, who started intently studying their special powers and capabilities.
• A few miles past this point, the party was ambushed by a Drow Patrol of about a dozen male fighters. The wizard leader got in one fireball against the party, scorching about half of them and killing one of the party's pack mules. Lukyan the Trickster responded with a lightning bolt, but the Drow made their spell-resistance, and the stroke passed through them as though the were but dreamy images. The party fighters leaped into the fray, hacking down the low-level warriors left and right; Paul's gnomes threw their darts with deadly precision -- scoring a critical hit against the evil wizard with a follow-up "00" d% roll, i.e., a head hit for instant death! Then the party searched the bodies, taking several of the diaphanous faerie cloaks and weapons, and also considered consuming the pre-cooked mule meat before pressing on.
• The party turned into a narrow side-tunnel which their map and the Deep Gnomes told them led to a secret side-entrance of the Shrine area. A few miles into this area, the front of the party walked onto a huge, hidden Trapper spanning the passage, which instantly folded up on them and started crushing them to death (MM rule: 3 rounds to insta-death for everyone inside). Fortunately the back-half of the marching order had sufficient muscle that they could chop the terrifying creature to pieces and free their comrades.
• A few miles after that, and the party stumbled across a hulking figure apparently gnawing on something at the side of the tunnel. The remaining party wizard used Jurdan's old wand of fireballs to preemptively blast it -- which, being a Xorn, it was entirely immune to. (Weirdly, this was another creature that Dave. G had considered polymorphing into at the start.) The creature came angrily at the party for the interruption to its mineral meal -- but the Deep Gnomes could use their special earth-communication to pacify the creature. They attempted to negotiate an alliance, but instead (reaction roll failing) the annoyed Xorn passed through the tunnel wall into deeper, more inaccessible parts of the Oerth.
• Then the Deep Gnomes showed the party the secret door that led into the back area of the Shrine complex. Within, the walls were intricately carved with ancient alien underwater scenes; the air was filled with a hazy, wet, bone-chilling cold mist; a dim greenness glowed from the roof above; and silence prevailed, except for distant wavelike splashing. On one side of the party's entry was an Armory with hundreds of shields, spears, bows, arrows, nets, etc. The party took a few of these, and used wall of stone to block off access to the whole room before exploring in another direction. 
• In the other direction was a storage chamber filled to overflowing with bales, boxes, barrels, etc., and an overpowering, almost nauseating fishy odor. Two doors led out of the room, which the party checked and then listened at. Opening one, the party found themselves facing the barracks of the high-level Kuo-Toan monitor elites who protected and disciplined the entire complex.
• Combat erupted. Some of the party fighters tried to bar the doors, but the ultra-strong Kuo-Toans battered them in and lashed out with claws and fangs. Thieves hid momentarily in the clutter and then lashed out for backstabs. Trosli threw his special poison gas stone into the next room at the bulk of the Kuo-Toans, only to find out that they're immune. A fireball was launched after it, scorching the creatures but not killing them (I struck out the book vulnerability to fire, as I don't think it makes sense for the permanently-wet creatures). When one Kuo-Toan got very injured, Deep Gnomes would jump on it en masse and smash it underfoot with a fury of hammer-blows. One of the fighters scored a critical, slicing off one Kuo-Toan's arm. After some hard hand-to-hand fighting, the elites of the shrine were defeated (not that the players knew this -- at this point they had the rather horrifying assumption that all Kuo-Toa were level 7+ mega-hasted-monks, and from the Deep Gnomes they knew there were several hundred in the overall Shrine complex).
• The monitor's quarters were spartan. In the next room, one more monitor lay in ambush and struck by surprise from around the corner, but once the party rallied, they quickly slew him.
• Time was running short, but the Deep Gnomes could deduce that based on their entry, one of the primary passages north out of the Shrine had to be close by (one of the game's victory conditions). The party used an arcane eye to scout out the next passage -- a cyclopean hallway 50' wide and high, leading in several different directions including northeast. All of the walls were ringed 20' up by dark arrow slits; and in the center stood a troop of 10 Kuo-Toan guards, these ones armored (!). (The magic also allowed the party to see into the throne area, glittering with untold gems and jewels and various skulking, robed figures.) The party put together a an all-out attack plan, with a whole barrage of missiles, spells, haste, and gas-clouds, using the Deep Gnomes' surprise advantage as a trigger. To their complete amazement, when the first member of the party threw an unknown globe as the first attack, it erupted into a fireball and blew the whole group of low-level guards to pieces. (Which was hilarious -- the players almost tripped all over themselves in chaos, with their attack plan disrupted due to unintentional overkill.) Alarms and croaking calls to arms could be heard, and the party beat a hasty retreat to the north, running away from the shrine area, off into the far darkness. And what occurs there will be a tale for another time.

 Commentary

• Based on the victory conditions I gave the players, they scored a "major victory": (1) they successfully passed north of the Shrine area, (2) they discovered a black Drow medallion of passage in the river monitor's hidden cache, and (3) they allied with dissidents of the Drow (namely the Deep Gnomes). What they did not manage to do was (4) collect at least 25,000 silver pieces in wealth (g.p. for you non-silver-standard DM's). Well done!
• Everyone seemed to have a really excellent play session -- there was a lot of excitement and satisfaction around the table. The scenes with the Deep Gnomes, Xorn, and Kuo-Toa seemed to be really appreciated and give a fulfilling sense of the really weird deep earth setting.
• One thing that's been happening throughout the D-series is that we're actually spending more play time (like 3 out of 4 hours) in the advance long-range passages than the main encounter area map itself. On the one hand, in a limited convention format, we might consider skipping the random encounters and just presenting the highlight set pieces (the G/D series being a sometimes uncomfortable mishmash of tournament and campaign design). But on the other hand, it's very much not a failure -- the players have really been digging the variety and strangeness of the encounters they get in the far-ranging "wilderness" passages. And tactically it's kind of important (as is always the case for wandering encounters) that they be tested on how well they can avoid crippling delays or losses before getting to the goal areas. So really, you could totally go either way with this issue and get really strong (but distinct) games in any case.

Can't wait until next year! The Drow homeland already has some welcoming plans made...

Tournament Jousting

The Gygax & Perren Chainmail Man-to-Man Combat rules (I'm looking at 3rd Edition, 7th printing, April 1979) culminate with a short section on Jousting between knights in a tournament. It's only about four paragraphs, and most of the action is offloaded into a table in the Appendix, as shown below:

Again: Pretty cool. As you can see, the action is decided in a matrix comparing each rider's choice of "aiming point" (column on the left) to "defensive position" (row across the top). I generally like these kinds of mini-games if they're well done, and clearly this gives a very concrete result to the proceedings, so I'd like to use it. However: The system pre-dates the whole concept of levels in D&D, so it fails to incorporate any differences between competitors for fighter level, proficiency adjustments, ability scores, or anything else. Also, I think the allowed defensive positions rule is kind of complicated for players in practice, and I must say that I find the presented scoring system (p. 27) hard to decipher.

A Second Go

Let's consider making a few marginal modifications to this system. First, I'll ignore the "PDP/AP - Possible Defensive Positions Considering Aiming Point", and for simplicity say that players can choose any defensive position they want at any time. (While probably more realistic, this complication doesn't quite seem to fit the "where it does not interfere with the flow of the game" golden rule for realism concerns).

Second, that a result of "U - Unhorsed", which would normally win the joust, simply indicates a possible unhorsed result, that must then be confirmed with an attack roll by the jouster in question. Roll d20 + attack bonuses (level, specialization, Strength, any magic, etc.), and if the total is 20 or more (effectively target AC 0), then the opponent is actually unhorsed and the joust is over.  (A failure to confirm means that the attacker didn't quite succeed at the aiming point, or flinched at the last moment, etc.) This then brings in different D&D attack abilities to secure the win, while keeping the overall flavor of the original system. If an "I - Injured" result is seen, then roll lance damage normally with Strength and other modifiers included (not double damage -- these are competition lances with blunt ends and so forth).

As far as scoring goes, I'll say the same thing that Gygax does (p. 27). Competitors get three "rides" and if one is unhorsed, then the joust is over at that point. Award points of +3 if you knock the opponent's helm off, or +20 if you unhorse them. Subtract -1 if you break your lance or -10 if you get injured. And lay on!

Questions:The Gygaxian joust scoring seems unclear, do you read that differently than I do? Or do you know of other joust scoring systems that seem more suitable?