The New Philosophy

In the comments thread of a post over at BXBlackrazor (where JB has been on a tear of great posts lately), we got into a brief exchange about my past as a Dungeon Master, and how I'm planning to run Dungeons & Dragons going forward.  During that exchange, JB said that it sounds like I'm trying to "re-learn the approach to the game", or "reformulate a new philosophy of D&D".  Which got me thinking... what is that philosophy, and what do I want out of my next campaign?  Why am I delving so far back, and stripping D&D back to its most basic form?

I'll start by writing about my history with the game.  As I've mentioned before, I got the D&D Basic Set (the one written by Frank Mentzer) for my 10th birthday, somewhere during the last week of 1988.  I was already obsessed with the Fighting Fantasy series of gamebooks (and possibly Lone Wolf, though I'm not sure of the timeline there), so the type of fantasy found in D&D was familiar to me, and the "choose-your-own-adventure" intro in that set made for a perfect segue into role-playing games.

My friends and I played D&D (first Basic, then AD&D 2nd edition) a lot during my last two years of primary school, just about every lunch break, and outside of school as well.  This continued through high school, although as I remember it the lunch break session tapered off once we got into years 10 through 12.  We never had a proper campaign as such, or a regular Dungeon Master.  Our games were mostly set in the Forgotten Realms, as filtered through our collective knowledge of the novels (actual game products being relatively scarce in the country town of Ararat where I grew up).  Whoever had an adventure they wanted to run would be DM, and there was rarely any continuity between adventures.  We had a lot of fun at the time, but looking back on it I don't feel like I learned much about how to be a good DM during those years.  My times running the game were too few, and too sporadic, to really build any skills beyond familiarity with the rules.

After graduating high school in 1996, I went to university in Ballarat to study IT, and it didn't take long for me to put together a new group of friends to game with.  Most of these guys had never played D&D before, so I was the permanent DM.  This time, I had my own campaign setting, "The Twin Worlds", inspired in some ways by Warcraft and in others by The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.  I also had a story I wanted my friends to play through.  I was fully on board with the story-path, Dragonlance style of D&D.  It wasn't a total railroad.  I let the players act as they wished, and based subsequent adventures on what had gone before.  But I still had a destination in mind, and story beats I wanted to hit, and I made sure that nothing happened that could derail that train.

These were the years where I felt like I actually learned the rudimentary skills of putting together and running a campaign.  Not just designing my own setting and adventures, but organising sessions and managing the personalities of my players.  This campaign lasted until 2001, when it faded out with a whimper in the form of a Total Party Kill (the first time they got fireballed).  It was a bad end to a game that everyone was invested in, and I'm still torn about how I handled it.  Should I have found a way to save the game, or did I do the right thing by following the rules and letting the TPK stand?  Let's park that question for later, because I think it's relevant to my new way of thinking about the game.

I started a new campaign about a year later, set in the same world a few centuries down the line, and updated for the new and shiny 3rd edition of D&D.  I won't lie, part of me was excited to get the old campaign out of the way so I could start playing 3e.  I was still in story-path mode for my 3rd edition game, but with a lighter touch.  The players had more agency, and I was more willing to roll with the consequences of their actions.  This campaign lasted until 2011, not coincidentally a few years after I got married and had a son.  Despite the frequency of play really slowing down from 2008 to 2011, this one went out with a bang rather than a whimper, a huge blowout against an invading army of orcs.  It was a very satisfying conclusion that wrapped up most of the campaign's loose threads, and to date it's the only successful campaign that I've ever run.

I feel like I learned a lot during that decade running 3e.  Certainly the adventures I was designing were stronger than the ones I wrote earlier for 2e, and I feel like the setting and story I'd come up with were more robust, better able to withstand the vagaries of character deaths and player dropouts.  A lot of what I'd learned was how to adapt my style of D&D to real life, and the ways that real life could interfere with it.  That said, what I'd learned was how to adapt to the lives of a bunch of unmarried guys in their 20s.  I never did figure out how to keep playing and DMing once I was a husband and father.

I had a long gap after 2011 where I barely did any gaming at all.  I tried to continue the 3e campaign circa 2018, following up on a major outstanding plot thread, but I only had two players and it sputtered out after a half-dozen games over the course of several years.  Some of those games were really good, but in retrospect my heart wasn't in it.  Since 2011, I'd delved deeply into the online D&D community, particularly the OSR.  I wasn't all that interested in running story-path D&D anymore.  I was weary of 3e, and had been for a long time.  My D&D muse had moved on to other styles and other editions.

Which brings me to where I am now, planning a campaign using original D&D, with a minimal sandbox setting and not a story-path to be seen.  Going back to basics.  Treating the game as a game.  I return to the question that's been nagging at me since 2001: was I right to let my story-driven 2e campaign end in a disappointing TPK?  Now that my philosophy on the game has changed, I think I have an answer: no, I shouldn't have allowed it.

This might come as a surprise, given that I've come around to treating the game as a game first.  But back then, I wasn't doing that.  I'd set that campaign up as a highly story-driven game, with the promise of a pay-off to the elements I'd introduced.  Prophecies, chosen ones, the end of the world... name a cliche and I'd thrown it in there.  But having set that up, I should have followed through.  I'd built a game where the story and the characters came first, the world second, and the rules third.  But when I allowed that TPK, suddenly I had flipped the paradigm, and the rules were made paramount over the story and the setting.  The promise of the game, albeit one made unknowingly, had been broken.

The thing is, I want to play and run D&D where TPKs are possible, and where they don't run counter to the way the campaign is set up.   I have to flip the paradigm on how I've run D&D in the past, but do so knowingly and deliberately, and before the first game session.  Rather than the importance of game elements being story and character, then setting, then rules, it must be the opposite: rules, then setting, then story and character.  The game must be a game, first and foremost, because I don't ever want a campaign to end in a whimper again.

Steps for Setting Up an OD&D Campaign: What the Booklets Say

If I'm going to set up a campaign exactly as it says to in original Dungeons & Dragons, the first obvious step is to read through the booklets and find out what they say.  I've done this many, many times, so I know exactly where to find things.  There's some general advice at the start of Volume 1: Men & Magic, and some more specific instructions in Volume 3: The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures.  Let's have a look.  (And for those wondering, I'm working from a pdf of one of the earlier OD&D printings, before they cut balrogs and hobbits and other such Tolkienisms.)

 

This introduction doesn't have a great deal to say about the finer details of campaign preparation, but it does advise that the referee begins building their campaign slowly, following the steps outlined in the books.  It's sound advice, especially for a newbie to the game.  Most of us don't have the time or inclination to plan out an entire world before starting a game, so creating the bare minimum is best for novices.  It's also pointed out that doing so allows the campaign to grow at an organic pace.  I'd add that doing it this way means that the interests of the players will influence the areas in which the campaign grows, and this can help with player investment.

Near the end the reader is instructed to read the three booklets in order, so that by Volume 3 they'll have the "prospective" (I think it should be "perspective") necessary to understand the game.  As I said above, I've done this a lot of times.  I'd recommend D&D novices read them at least twice (and if they could read the first D&D Basic Set before coming back to this version for a second read, all the better).

  

 

Page 5 lists the equipment needed to play the game: the original D&D boxed set, a copy of the wargame Chainmail, a copy of the board game Outdoor Survival, some dice; and a bunch of stationery.  It must have been a big ask in 1974 to require someone who just shelled out for your game to buy two more games on top of that.  It's an even bigger ask in 2025.  I own a physical copy of OD&D (a late printing that I bought around 2010, back when such things were expensive but attainable).  A bit of research reveals that a copy of Outdoor Survival will cost around $100-150 AUD (including shipping), while a copy of Chainmail can cost anywhere from $600 to several thousand dollars.  I have a copy of Outdoor Survival on the way; the board is a necessary component for running OD&D as the books direct, and a digital copy won't fill that need.  For Chainmail, at that price I'm more than happy using a pdf.

The dice and stationery I have already, of course (though I'll need to source some more six-siders to hit the recommended amount).  I believe that "Imagination" is in adequate supply, and I'm more than ready to fill the requirement for "1 Patient Referee".  As for "Players", I know enough gamers that I'm confident I can get a campaign up and running (probably a dozen or so folks, not even close to the upper limit of 50 given in the book).  We might have to play on-line, which is a shame.  I'd rather run face-to-face, but unfortunately people have lives outside of the game, and a digital get-together is easier to organise.

It's interesting to note that, despite the game billing itself as "Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures", miniatures are not required.  I do find them useful for helping to keep track of where everyone is in combat, but I also find that they slow down play.  And despite the aesthetic merits espoused by the books, I find that not having the correct figures for a monster can detract from that visual appeal.  Not to mention the costs involved in acquiring such a suitable menagerie...  My current thought is that I'll try to run battles with "theatre of the mind" where possible, only using minis or counters for the more complicated fights.

Finally, we get to "Preparation for the Campaign", which is where the prep advice actually begins.  The burden for prep is placed solely on the referee, who is instructed to map out six levels of the "underworld", and stock them with monsters and treasure.  Six levels might sound daunting to some, but anyone who can't or won't put that work in before the game begins is probably not ready for the continual investment that running such a campaign requires.

That's it for the advice in Volume 1.  Volume 2: Monsters & Treasure doesn't have any such instructions, so we move on to Volume 3.

  

 

Because it's 1974, the prospective referee needs to be told to draw out their Underworld levels on graph paper.  Special attention is given to ensuring that the referee provides plenty of ways for the players to traverse between levels, and that those connections make sense.  Advising that the referee constructs at least three levels at once seems contradictory with the instruction to build at least six to begin with.  Perhaps this is advise for constructing new levels, beyond the original half-dozen.

The author (Gygax, no doubt) recommends that a good dungeon will have at least a dozen main levels, with additional offshoot levels, and new levels always under construction.  The "mega-dungeon" or "campaign dungeon" has an odd place in D&D history.  Here, it's the default setting of the game, but it won't be too long after this that it falls out of favour.  Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, a game fully published by 1979, barely mention the concept.  There was a fascination for mega-dungeons in the early OSR, but I feel like they've fallen out of favour again.  I've never designed or run one, but I'm looking forward to trying to make this kind of campaign work.

I won't reproduce the key for the sample dungeon level above, but I'll note that most of its features are designed to confound map-making, or to drive the PCs into dangerous areas.  Tricks such as barely perceptible sloping passages, rotating rooms, teleporters, endless corridors, and one-way doors abound in original D&D.  Becoming lost or trapped seems to be the primary danger for PCs in this kind of design.  I try to avoid running mazes and labyrinths, as they've resulted in some tedious gameplay for me in the past, but it's exactly the kind of play that the books suggest.  I might try to mitigate that somewhat with my dungeon level designs, but I think that liberal and creative use of the wandering monster tables might be the key to making this style work.

There's more dungeon design and stocking advice on the following pages, including a list of "Tricks and Traps" that continues the trend of fucking with map-makers.  The book recommends that the referee thoughtfully place several of the most important treasures and monsters on each level, then fill out the bulk of the dungeon by random determination.  About one-third of the rooms will be occupied by monsters when using the recommended method.

 

 

Here we get into what's required of the referee to run adventures outside of the dungeon: a map of the dungeon's ground level; a map of the wilderness surrounding the dungeon; and a map of the town or village that the PCs will use as a home base.  The Outdoor Survival board is recommended for "general adventures" in the wilderness.  I take this to mean that it's used as a kind of abstract representation for when you want to run a wilderness adventure with minimal prep.  I have my own ideas for using it in a less abstract way (which I plan to get to in another post).

The "ground level" map isn't extrapolated upon further than what's written above, and it's also all the book has to say regarding city adventures.  I would have thought that a simple list of the goods and services available in town would be enough, but the book recommends a full map.  I'm terrible at city mapping, so I'll probably rely on maps of real-world towns (just as I plan to use the real geography of Australia as a basis for the campaign world).

The guidelines for the "surrounding wilderness map" are given below.

  

I find it odd that this map is unknown to the players.  Would they not know the terrain around their hometown?  Even if it's not their hometown, surely the locals would know.  But because we're treating this as a game, such considerations must be hand-waved or rationalised, and the rules given precedence.  It's the total reverse of how I'd normally treat such things, so it will take some adjustment.

Unless I've missed something, that's the entirety of the game preparation requirements and advice given in the booklets.  The steps I need to take are as follows:

1. Read the damn books.
2. Acquire all of the recommended equipment
3. Design at least six levels of my underworld
4. Design a ground level map of the area above the underworld
5. Map the terrain immediately surrounding the dungeon on hex paper, with a hex being 5 miles across
6. Map the town that will serve as a home base for the PCs

To the above list I would add "fill the gaps in OD&D's combat system".  This is all quite a lot of work, but I'm excited to get to it.  I've already done steps 1 and 2, and I have plans in my head for the rest.  Besides, it's not necessary to complete all of the steps before starting to play; as the book says, you can play your first game after designing some dungeon levels.  I would rather be thorough, so I have plenty of mapping to do over the next few weeks (or months, more realistically).  Time to get to work!

The Game Before the Game

Dungeons & Dragons is a roleplaying game.  I don’t think many people would dispute that, though they may quibble about the exact definition of what an RPG actually is.  Smarter people than me have tried to define it, and I'm not here to do that today. I'm still thinking about what I am here to do, but sometimes I need to let those thoughts flow out of my fingers, through the keyboard, and onto the blog page before I really know what I'm on about. Please bear with me as I work my way through it.

D&D is also the first RPG.  Yes, yes, there was Braunstein, and Blackmoor, and who knows what else… Commence quibbling if you like.  But as far as the world of normal people goes, D&D came first. But it also came in a form that normal people would find - let's be generous - somewhat difficult to interpret. Hell, there are many highly abnormal D&D obsessives who are still puzzled by it, even after decades of internet discussion.

Reading the original booklets again for the umpty-umpth time, particularly in light of the dissection of them that's happening over at Tao of D&D, has made one thing very clear: the original creators were not writing this game as an RPG.  Of course they weren’t, and they couldn't have: the genre didn’t exist, and the term had yet to be coined.  But what’s apparent on a close reading, especially when one tries to throw off assumptions from later iterations of the game, is that what’s written on the page is not an RPG.  Not one as we’d understand the term today certainly.  I don’t even think it much resembles the style of play that was prevalent when I picked up the game in 1988. Whatever game the folks in the Twin Cities and Lake Geneva were playing, it's not the same game that many of us grew up with and are playing today. The more I look into it, the more fascinated I've become with what I call "the game before the game".

The obvious lens through which to look at original D&D is that of wargaming.  The game sprang from that scene after all, as an outgrowth of Chainmail.  Just as wargames are played as individual battles or scenarios, possibly linked as a campaign, D&D is played the same way on a smaller scale.  A game is a single underworld foray or outdoor adventure, in a “scenario” (dungeon or wilderness) set up by the referee/dungeon master, with a campaign being a series of such adventures with a consistency of player characters and world setting. None of this is news to anybody reading this blog, although I gather that the older playstyle resembles a picaresque, or series of short stories with a revolving cast, much more than the ongoing quests and epics favoured by modern D&D.

But there’s more to the original D&D booklets than dungeon and wilderness adventuring, especially once you get to the naval and aerial battle sections of Vol. 3.  I’m starting to feel like original D&D is best understood as a collection of sub-systems, or mini-games.  You have the core game of dungeon exploration in the referee’s “underworld”; ad-hoc wilderness adventures using the board and some rules from Outdoor Survival; the domain game, where players carve out an area of the wilderness to build their castle and rule once they reach “name” level; the medieval fantasy wargame of Chainmail; the naval wargame adapted from Don't Give Up the Ship; and the aerial wargame adapted from Fight in the Skies.  All of these can be interlinked to form a campaign, and even though the rules between them aren’t always fully compatible, and some aspects are far from adequately explained, the framework is just about sturdy enough that it can be made to work.

I’m not really sure where these thoughts are leading me, but I’ve been getting more interested lately in treating the game as a game, and divesting it of the amateur storytelling and theatrics it’s accumulated over the years.  I can see why it went that direction after it got out of the hands of the wargamers and pulp fantasy fans who originated it.  Maybe it was inevitable, especially given that the most popular fantasy fiction over the next couple of decades was chasing after Tolkien, but it doesn’t help that original D&D does a pretty poor job of explaining itself.  The conceptual power is there in those booklets, as evidenced by how quickly the game spread in spite of its shortcomings, but it barely explains how D&D is played, or how the sub-systems/mini-games fit together.  At best, it lays out some rules for dungeon and wilderness adventures, and vaguely gestures at the rest.

I wonder what a version of D&D that could be shelved alongside Monopoly (as Gygax envisioned) and played out of the box would look like.  Certainly the rules would have to be rewritten for clarity (not by Gygax, as much as I enjoy his writing).  And maybe only one of the sub-games would be included, probably dungeon adventuring. The various D&D basic sets did just this, but they still required a lot of pre-preparation by the dungeon master.  Perhaps the game would come with a pre-packaged underworld (or “megadungeon” if you prefer), and stock character types, and play something like a boardgame where only the DM sees the whole board.  There are a bunch of games like that now (and Dungeon! existed back then), but who knows what D&D might look like now had that been done in 1974.

Of course, in many ways this is removing the unique elements and the core appeal of the game.  D&D’s greatest strength, I feel, lies in its freeform nature, the ability for players to take any action and for the DM to improvise based on those actions.  There’s also the personalisation that comes with character creation, and also the crafting of the dungeon and wilderness on the DM’s part. The DM and players can't play without creating characters and an environment to adventure in, and that process builds a strong investment in the game.  I doubt D&D would have lasted without those elements.

In some ways, after all of this writing, I feel like I’ve just gone around in a circle and conceptualised the BECMI line.  You have your boxed game for dungeon adventures (basic set), followed by your wilderness game (expert set), followed by your domain game and war game (companion set), and so on.  But even that version of the game, just a decade later, feels vastly removed from the game that original D&D hints at.

Perhaps I'm just grasping at phantoms here (no save or die effect, thankfully!). We all have our own ideas about what Arneson, Gygax and company were doing back in the earliest days of the game, but only those who were there know for sure. It doesn't really matter to anybody's home game what those guys were doing 50+ years ago, but I still find myself fascinated by it. And I find myself wondering, if I do my best to set up and run a campaign exactly as the original booklets instruct, what will the game look like? Will it be a wargame, or will it be a roleplaying game? Or will it be something in the middle, undefined?

Surprising Changes from the OD&D Draft to the OD&D Boxed Set

I've been going through the draft version of original D&D lately, searching for little bits and pieces that better explain OD&D, or that didn't make it into the final product, or were outright changed.  Despite how raw and unpolished the material is, I constantly find myself going back to this very early material and trying to mine it for insights into the game.  That, and Tao of D&D's excellent dissection of original D&D, have crystalised some thought for me that I might write about down the track.  (Warning: Alexis is very scathing in his criticism of the original booklets, click at your own peril.)  For now though, I just want to highlight a bunch of the interesting things I noticed from Gygax's early draft.

• There are no Hobbits!  This is odd, because they are in Chainmail, but here they're not presented as a PC race at all, and they're not in the monster section.  This does give some credence to Gygax's claim that he reluctantly included some of the Tolkien elements at the urging of others in his crew.  It also makes sense of a few things in the published OD&D, such as Raise Dead only working on men, dwarves, and elves.  Now we can see that it wasn't a deliberate omission, but an editorial oversight as a result of Hobbits being added late in the process.
• For some reason, dwarves get a +10% bonus to experience, meaning that they advance faster than everyone else.  In actual fact, everyone advances faster here, especially fighters and clerics.  Clerics only need 500 experience points to get to second level, which makes 5th edition something of a throwback in this regard.
• Elven multi-classing in OD&D has always been bafflingly worded and open to multiple interpretations, with the elf switching between class from adventure to adventure: In the draft the elf begins as either a fighter or magic-user, progresses as far as possible, then switches to the other class.  It's a little simpler, but still doesn't really explain what happens when the elf suddenly goes from 8th level magic-user to 1st level fighter.  
• Instead of the ability scores being Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Constitution, Dexterity, and Charisma, we instead have Intelligence, Cunning, Strength, Health and Appearance.  Dexterity is nowhere to be seen.  Cunning is the equivalent of Wisdom, being the prime requisite for Clerics (which certainly gives them a different vibe).  Appearance is equivalent to Charisma, but it has no mechanical benefits yet, it's just used as a guideline for what might happen in situations such as being charmed by a witch.
• There is a different list of level titles for the cleric.  Instead of Acolyte, Adept, Village Priest, Vicar, Curate, Bishop, Lama, and Patriarch, we have Acolyte, Friar, Village Priest, Priest, Vicar, Curë, Abbë, and Patriarch.  I don't know why they went with two french terms.  Why not Curate and Abbot?  I also wish they'd included Friar or Abbot, and dumped Lama from the published version, it's always stuck out for me as a bit incongruous.
• The equipment list just casually has the option to buy a pegasus, griffon, hippogriff or roc, right next to the horses.  There are even special saddles and saddlebags for these fantastic steeds.  And right next to them are thoats and zitidars, on loan from the Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoom books.
• They're not on the equipment list, but they are on the list of people you can hire once you have a castle: slaves, with different prices for male and female.  I'm actually listening to episode 68 of Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast right now, which talks about the Atlantic slave trade and is a pretty sobering look into just how ubiquitous slavery has been in human history, so this stuff is on my mind right now.  I'm okay with people using slavery as an aspect of their RPG campaigns, but let's maybe not have it right there in the rulebooks as an option for the players.  Editing it out was a good call.
• The term non-player character (or NPC) has become fairly well-recognised, especially in video game circles.  It even gets bandied about as an insult now and then.  But originally the term was "non-real player", which tickles me for some reason.
• OD&D has anti-clerics as the chaotic equivalent of clerics, and even anti-heroes as the counterpart to 4th level fighters.  But is your game ready for anti-warriors?  Anti-swordsmen?  Anti-myrmidons?  Or even anti-swashbucklers?!  Because they're here in the wandering monster tables, ready to... un-buckle your swash?
• On the subject of wandering monsters, it's a notable omission that OD&D doesn't give the number appearing for dungeon encounters.  The draft does though!  It recommends 2d6 or 2d12 for level 1 monsters, 1d6 for monsters of level 1-4, and 1d4 for monsters of level 5-6.  Of course there's a contradiction for level 1 monsters, it's early D&D!
• There's are some actual guidelines on when to use Chainmail mass combat, and when to use the man-to-man rules.  It also explains why they replaced Chainmail's fantastic combat table with the "alternative system" that will become the cornerstone of D&D combat.  It makes perfect sense, you can't have a cross-reference table system that includes 50-odd monsters.  There's even an explanation of the formula behind the alternative system: if you subtract the target's AC from 20, that's what a normal man needs to roll to hit.  It's a shame they didn't find the space for this in the published game.
• Player characters get bonuses to Armor Class as they advance!  Fighters get +1 at 4th, 8th, 12th and 16th, while the other classes get a +1 at the levels equivalent to Hero and Superhero.  I wonder why this got scrapped.
• Pretty much the entire OD&D monster list is present in the draft, except for the various slimes.  Black Puddings are in the wandering monster tables though.
• There is a slightly better explanation of domain play in the rules, where it comes right out and says that players may want to fight battles against each other.  It also gives a range for the number of people that will live in a PC's barony, which OD&D left out. And magic-users can build strongholds in the draft, an option they're not explicitly given in OD&D.
• There is a long list of spells that are in the published game that weren't in the draft, as well as some other changes:
• Read Magic and Read Languages were originally a single spell
• Sleep was not present in the draft!  The only spell a 1st level magic-user had that could be used offensively was Charm Person.
• Knock is absent from the list of 2nd level m-u spells, but Wizard Lock had a system baked in where any magic-user had a chance to get through based on their level relative to the caster.  Obviously that got taken out and replaced with Knock. 
• From the 3rd level m-u list, Infravision, Slow, Haste, Protection from Normal Missiles, and Water Breathing were not in the draft.  Also, there's no explanation of how much damage a Fire Ball or Lightning Bolt does.  You can find in the section on wands, but it ain't here.
• From the 4th level m-u list: Growth of Plants, Dimension Door, Wizard Eye, Massmorph and Hallucinatory Terrain were not in the draft.
• From the 5th-level m-u list: Pass-Wall, Cloudkill, Feeblemind, and Growth of Animals was not there 
• There were no 6th level spells in the draft, but higher level Wizards could turn flesh to stone, summon an invisible stalker, or use the Animate Dead spell to resurrect the dead.  That last one is a doozy: when the caster tries it, they have to roll 2d10, and if the second roll is higher than the first the dead body is vaporised.  It reminds me of the same thing happening in the computer game Wizardry; I wonder if this somehow filtered out from early drafts into regional variations of D&D, and into that game?
• With no level 6 spells in the draft, there's a long list that are new in OD&D: Reincarnation, Lower Water, Part Water, Projected Image, Anti-Magic Shell, Death Spell, Geas, Disintegrate, and Control Weather.  Move Earth isn't new, but got moved from level 5 to level 6.
• New Cleric spells include Speak with Animals, Sticks to Snakes, Speak with Plants, Create Water, Quest, Insect Plague, and Create Food.  It was also never specified in the draft which spells are cast as opposites by anti-clerics. 
• There are no rules for intelligent swords in the draft, and no mention of artifacts
• Some items get minor but flavorful name changes between draft and publication: the Amulet of Protection becomes a Scarab of Protection, the Djinni Bottle becomes an Efreeti Bottle, the Horn of Panic becomes Drums of Panic; the Gauntlets of Giant Power become Gauntlets of Ogre Power.  Notable are the four elemental control items: in published form they are a censer, a stone, a brazier and a bowl.  In the draft, they're a medallion, a bracelet, a stone, and a gem.  The latter four are mentioned in OD&D in an editorial oversight.
• And finally, be on the lookout for that game-breaking Ring of Endless Wishes!

Filling in the OD&D Gaps: Another Take on Initiative

As I mentioned in my last post, I've scrapped the OD&D/Chainmail hybrid I was working on, and I'm filling in the OD&D gaps with my own rules.  To be honest, OD&D has most of what's needed for a simple fantasy game of dungeon and wilderness exploration.  The basic framework is there, at least.  What's missing is a basic framework for combat.  I think if I work up systems for initiative, morale, and movement, I'll be pretty much good to go, and anything else can be filled in as problems arise at the table.  I've also been looking at the spell list, going through each one and seeing what clarifications and rulings have been made in later editions.  I'll probably do the same for OD&D's monsters as well, and then I can get to the actual campaign prep. 

A few weeks ago I posted the initiative system I'd cobbled together from OD&D and Chainmail.  If you go and look at it you'll see that it's an unwieldy thing, a shambling monstrosity composed of the Turn Sequence from Chainmail mass combat, the rules for "who strikes first" from the Man-to-Man section, and OD&D's suggestion that Dexterity determine who goes first in combat.  I never got to the point of trying it out, but I can already tell it's not the direction I want to go in.

OD&D only has this to say as far as initiative goes: "Dexterity applies to both manual speed and conjuration. It will indicate the character's missile ability and speed with actions such as firing first, getting off a spell, etc."  I'm trying to use the rules and suggestions from OD&D as closely as possible, so I have to keep that in mind while I consider how I want this to work.  I should note that I very much dislike the rule in the Holmes Basic Set, where everyone acts in strict Dexterity order.

The first thing to consider is that I don't like "phases" in D&D initiative.  I'm not a fan of systems that put combat actions in a specific order: movement, then missile fire, then melee, etc.  They work perfectly well for war-games, but RPGs are much looser, with a far wider variety of actions that a character can take in any round.  If, for whatever reason, my character wants to sit down and start carving a pumpkin in the middle of combat... what phase does that go in?  Or, for a less random example, what about something as simple as drinking a potion?  I find phased systems too restricting.

Connected to that, I'm not a fan of systems where everyone has to declare their actions before the round begins.  There's a lack of immediacy there, and in increased reliance on the DM to coordinate things.  This can lead to a huge increase in the cognitive load on the DM, especially when they have a lot of creatures to control.  I much prefer it when actions take place right after they're declared... but I also dislike systems where characters run all the way across the battlefield while everyone else is standing still.

I also have a preference for systems where initiative is re-rolled at the start of each round.  The system in 3rd edition works fine, but it's a little rote when each round progresses in the same order as the ones before it.  I like the swinginess of the re-roll, which for practical purposes necessitates rolling for the whole group each round, not for individuals.  Individual initiative requires too much die rolling. 

So my requirements for an initiative system are as follows:

• Dexterity is a factor in speed of actions 
•  Initiative is re-rolled every round.
• Actions don't have distinct, predictable phases 
• Actions are not declared before the round begins
• Characters can't run all the way across the room while everyone else is standing still

 In basic terms, what I'm thinking of is something like this:

1. Both sides roll 1d6, winning side goes first, draws act simultaneously
2. Winning side takes its actions.  Anything that would happen immediately (such as melee or missile fire) takes place here.  Anything that would be delayed (such as actions after movement) happen at the end of the round.
3. Losing side takes its actions, some immediate and some delayed as above.
4. All movement happens
5. Winning side's delayed actions are resolved, followed by losing side's delayed actions.

It gets most of what I want.  Yes, it's phased, but the phases are less rigid, and more based on speed of action than type of action.  The split between immediate and delayed actions allows me to have the immediacy of actions happening right away, while not having to deal with the silliness of creatures standing still while others move across the battlefield.  It also lets me have spellcasting be interruptible, which is a must.

The only thing missing is that Dexterity doesn't influence this sequence at all.  The easiest solution is to simply give characters with a high Dex (13+) a +1 bonus on the initiative roll, and those with low Dex (8 or less) a -1 penalty.  Monsters can be assumed to be of average Dexterity, because I don't want to be rolling any new stats for them.  I'm keeping the modifiers low to stay in keeping with the rest of OD&D, and also to make less work for the DM.  All I have to remember is which character's are fast, and which are slow, and it won't come up for the monsters unless the party are fighting NPCs. 

Some other things to note:

• Spellcasting begins in the immediate phase and resolves in the delayed phase
• Attacking after movement can only happen on a charge.  In this case, longer weapons will attack first.
• Melee attacks otherwise all happen in the immediate phase
• If a character can fire multiple missile per round, they are split between the immediate and delayed phase 

I think I'm done!  No doubt the system will be tweaked in play, but to me it seems like something I can run at the table without too much fuss.  I can already see that the movement phase is perhaps a little too vague, but I'm resisting breaking things down into segments. Anyway, here it is in full:

INITIATIVE RULES

THE INITIATIVE ROLL

A die (1d6) is rolled to determine initiative at the beginning of each combat round.  Each side rolls, and the side with the highest score has the initiative and will act first.

 

Dexterity Modifier

Characters with a high Dexterity will react faster, and those with a low Dexterity will react slower.  For these characters, modify their initiative roll as follows.  This modifier applies to the character only.  If the modified initiative score is equal to the score of an opponent, the character and opponent will act simultaneously.

 

Dexterity Score	Missile and Spell Initiative Modifier
3-8	-1
9-12	0
13-18	+1

 

Tied Initiative

If initiative rolls are tied, all actions in each phase occur simultaneously.  It is thus possible for two combatants to kill each other in the same round, for example.

 

COMBAT PHASES

A combat round has three phases, the Immediate Phase, the Middle Phase and the Delayed Phase.

 

Immediate Phase

These are actions that take place immediately in a combat round, such as making a melee attack, firing a missile, or using an item that is already in hand.  Spell-casting begins in this phase.

 

Middle Phase

Few actions will take place in this phase.  This is when movement occurs, and actions that take place during movement (such as an elf's split-move and fire).

 

Delayed Phase

Some actions will take place later in the combat round.  Any action taken after moving will happen in this phase, such as attacks at the end of a charge.  All spell-casting ends in this phase.

 

TURN SEQUENCE

1. Both sides roll 1d6.  Note the initiative score for each side.
1. Characters with high or low Dexterity will modify their own initiative score accordingly.
2. Immediate Phase
1. For the character with the highest initiative score:
1. Decide on an action
2. If the action is immediate, resolve in this phase
3. If the action is not immediate, resolve in the Middle or Delayed Phase
2. Repeat 2a for characters with the next highest score, and continue for each participant in the combat
3. Note that creatures with a tied initiative score act simultaneously
3. Middle Phase:
1. Movement and equivalent actions take place during this phase
2. Any elf or mounted archer performing a split-move and fire shoots in this phase
3. In general, movement all happens at the same time.  Creatures will stop if they come within melee range of an opponent.  Use common sense or compare movement rates if timing is important.
4. Delayed Phase
1. Delayed actions are resolved, from highest initiative score to lowest
2. Note that when charging into a melee, weapons with the higher class will attack first regardless of initiative score
5. Check Morale (see Morale for more details)

 

 

Wavering & Waffling

I have a habit of abandoning projects, or changing my mind about them midstream.  It's a recurring pattern: I start a project, I commit to it, and once I'm partway through or near the end, my dissatisfaction with the whole thing grows and I throw in the towel.  True to form, I've reached that point with trying to reconcile OD&D and Chainmail.

I still want to run a campaign that starts with OD&D rules and progresses through to AD&D; I haven't changed my mind about that.  But the more I try to work Chainmail into the mix, the more unsatisfied I become with the results.

Here's the thing: the two really don't fit smoothly together, no matter what some people might try to tell you.  They're two different systems with very different goals, and what I've found in combining the two is that it ends up with a bunch of rules that aren't to my taste, and that don't really mesh with D&D as it will progress.  As expected, the results are very wargamey, and more than a bit clunky.  Seeing them written down, I can already tell they won't survive more than a session or two at my table.

So I'm changing plans to using straight OD&D, and filling in the gaps with my own ideas, ones that I'm more confident will work for my game.  A lot of these rules will probably look like stripped down or simplified AD&D, because if I know I'm headed in that direction I might as well lean into it early and make any rules transitions as smooth as possible.  That's my current plan, anyway...  Time will tell if I waver and change my mind again.

Gary Gygax, World's Greatest Cobbler

 I've been reading and listening to a lot of material about Gygax and the origins of D&D lately: Playing at the World, The Game Wizards, When We Were Wizards...  It's been interesting to learn so much about him, and his creative process (in collaboration with many others, of course, Dave Arneson chief among them) and it's crystalised some thoughts I've had about the man's genius and the nature of it.

I have a tendency to throw words out there pretty lightly, and to make overblown statements without thinking them through (usually for attempted comedy).  But I actually do think Gygax is a genius.  When I think about how far-reaching and influential his work has been, in pop culture in general and video games in particular, it's hard not to come to that conclusion.  Perhaps this is just me in my particular pop-culture bubble, but I feel like I see his fingerprints everywhere I look.

I wouldn't say he's a creative genius.  Certainly he was no slouch in that area, but I think his true genius lay in synthesis, in blending the ideas of others into a workable whole.  When most people think of "fantasy" these days, it's a fair bet they are picturing something akin to a D&D world.  And yes, most of them will look more than a little like Tolkien...  But then most of them will also have monsters from various real world mythologies and folklore, a patchwork historical setting similar to Howard's Hyboria, elements from old pulp novels, from Lovecraft, from Lieber, from Vance...  That was the base, anyway, with more elements being added to the generic fantasy stew as time went on.  But that initial "kitchen sink" fantasy setting, as far as I can tell, was brought into to the world and popularised by D&D and its earliest creators.  I might be overlooking something here, but I don't think so.

I don't think the above is a big secret, or something that wasn't readily understood by most fantasy gamers.  But what's become more apparent of late is how much of a synthesis the original rules of D&D were also.  The discovery of Len Patt's "Rules for Middle Earth", with their obvious influence on Gygax's CHAINMAIL Fantasy Supplement, has thrown this into sharp relief.  The OD&D rules draw on many sources: CHAINMAIL, Len Patt's rules, the wilderness exploration from Avalon Hill's boardgame Outdoor Survival, Dave Arneson's Blackmoor notes, the aerial rules from Mike Carr's Fight in the Skies, the naval rules from Gygax and Arneson's Don't Give Up the Ship...  There are no doubt other things I'm overlooking, or sources that have yet to be discovered.

The takeaway is that, although a genius by my own definition, Gygax's greatest gift wasn't in creating things from whole cloth.  His real skill was in combining his own creativity with that of others, taking bits and pieces from every place and combining them into a compelling whole.  By some it could be called influence, and by others theft - I think it possibly skirts over that line in some cases, although I can't really speak as to the attitude of wargamers of the day when it came to sharing ideas.  Maybe this sort of thing was done by everyone, I have no idea.  Regardless, the results spawned an entire industry, and had far-reaching influences on all kinds of media up to the present day (for good or ill).  Before D&D blew up, Gygax was supporting his family as a shoe cobbler.  You could say that's what he was still doing as an RPG designer: cobbling rules systems and cobbling a whole genre of fantasy.  It turned out that cobbling was what he did best.

A New Thought About Alignment

 Alignment has long plagued my thoughts in the various iterations of D&D.  Specifically, it's that alignment has been used to represent different things across the editions.  In some editions, it's about what "side" you're on in whatever grand cosmic conflict is raging in your campaign.  In others, it represents your character's moral and ethical codes, and acts as a guideline for their behavior.  I've struggled at times to square that circle, but I think now that I've cracked it, at least to my own satisfaction.

Long ago in the elder days of my youth I was obsessed with gamebooks.  Fighting Fantasy, Lone Wolf, Grail Quest, you name it.  They were the perfect blend between fantasy literature and D&D, and aside from video games maybe the best way to experience a solo RPG. One of the lesser-known series' I latched onto was the Cretan Chronicles, a trilogy of books set in mythical Ancient Greece.  In it you play Altheus, the brother of Theseus, and it's your quest to avenge his death at the hands of the Minotaur (that story having gone a little south for ol' Theseus in this version).  They're very good as I recall, a bit more mature in style and theme than most of their contemporaries.  But the aspect that's relevant to today's topic is that of divine favour.

At the start of the series you pick one of the Greek gods as your patron, and it gives you a little benefit.  Ares grants a +1 in combat, that sort of thing.  During your adventure various actions on your part will earn the favour or disfavour of various gods, which can have all sorts of consequences up to and including death.  It does a very good job of modelling the fickle nature of the gods in those stories, and their meddling in human affairs.

Now, we come to D&D alignment, which is often used to define a character's morals and behavior.  But now I'm thinking about it in reverse.  It's not the alignment that defines your actions, but the actions that determine your alignment.  Or, more specifically, your actions define which powers hold you in favour.  Act in a lawful good fashion consistently, you will have the favour of the Lawful Good powers or deities, and the disfavour of those on the opposite side.  The same goes for Chaotic Evil, etc.  Neutrals are those who have managed, through actions deliberate or unknowing, to avoid the favour or disfavour of any particular powers.

Those are my quick thoughts, which I just dashed off at the end of my work shift... I'm sure it's not exactly revelatory, but it makes sense to me in a way that alignment never has before.  Now if I can just wrap my head properly around the problem of alignment languages...

OD&D and Chainmail Combat: Movement Rates for Charging

In CHAINMAIL, different troop types are given a movement rate per round for a normal move, and a charge move.  I'll reproduce the relevant pages below:

 

 

Movement and Charge Moves for Player Characters

Most of the troop types in the initial example can be ignored for the purposes of D&D.  OD&D's "Encumberance" chapter gives us three movement categories: Light Foot, Heavy Foot, and Armored Foot.  From the above pages, we can tell the following:

• Armored Foot movement is 6" normal, and 6" on a charge
• Heavy Foot movement is 9" normal, and 12" on a charge
• Light Foot movement is 12" normal, and 15" on a charge
• What it actually says above is that Light Foot movement is the same as for Heavy Foot.  But there's enough evidence in OD&D Vol. 2 (such as the Berserkers entry) to suggest that lightly armored men have a normal move of 12" per round.  There are also a number of troop types in CHAINMAIL above with movement rates of 12", so I am going with those.

 It should be noted above that a number of creatures have no charge move at all.  Sprites and Pixies number among these, which is fair enough due to their diminutive size.  But Hobbits and Elves having no charge move is fairly significant given that they are player character races.  I'm inclined to go with this restriction, if only to nerf Elves a little.  It's a bit of a blow to Hobbit PCs, but they tend to do more sneaking than fighting in the source literature, so I'm good with it.

Elves, Dwarves, and Hobbits

I should make a note regarding movement rates for elves, dwarves and hobbits here.  The rules tend to assume that all PCs have movement rates of 12".  In Advanced D&D, Elves move faster than they should while wearing chain armour, while dwarves and hobbits move slower than they should given the armour types they wear.  There is some textual merit for giving elves a base move of 15", and giving dwarves and hobbits a base move of 9".  In OD&D, this can be handwaved a bit more, as movement rates depend more on encumbrance than on armour worn.  It's easy enough to say that elves travel light, while dwarves are loaded down.  And Hobbits in CHAINMAIL have a movement rate of 12 anyway.  I'm not entirely decided, but in the interests of simplicity I'm leaning towards giving every PC race a base move of 12.

General Trends from CHAINMAIL

Obviously, the pages above don't cover charge moves for all of the monsters in OD&D.  From the pages above, I have taken the following patterns:

• Particularly small and light creatures (pixies, sprites, hobbits, elves, etc.) do not get a charge move
• Humanoids (at least those up to troll/ogre size) get a +3" bonus when they charge
• Faster creatures with four legs or more (such as horses, wolves and dragons) get a +6" bonus when they charge
• There creatures that might be described as lumbering (ents) or slow-moving (undead wights/ghouls) that can still charge, but get no movement bonus for it

List of Monsters and Their Charge Moves in OD&D:

Using the above trends, I've extrapolated charge movement for every monster in OD&D, using CHAINMAIL and the original D&D boxed set (as well as some forward knowledge of later editions...):

• Animal, Large or Small
• Varies
• Ant, Giant
• normal 18, charge 24
• Ape
• normal 12, charge 18
• Ape, White
• normal 12, charge 15
• Balrog
• normal 6, charge 9
•  Basilisk
• normal 6, charge 12
• Bat
• normal 24, charge n/a
• Bear
• normal 9, charge 12
• Bear, Cave
• normal 9, charge 12
• Beetle, Giant
• normal 6, charge 12
• Black (or Gray) Pudding
• normal 6, charge n/a
• Caveman
• normal 12, charge 15
• Centaur
• normal 18, charge 24
• Centipede
• normal 15, charge n/a
• Centipede, Giant
• normal 15, charge 21
• Chimera
• normal 12, charge 18
• Cockatrice
• normal 9, charge 12
• Crab, Giant
• normal 6, charge 9
• Crocodile
• normal 9, charge 9
• Crocodile, Giant
• normal 9, charge 9
• Dinosaur, Brontosaurus
• normal 9, charge 9
• Dinosaur, Pterodactyl
• normal 3, charge n/a
• Dinosaur, Stegosaurus
• normal 6, charge 9
• Dinosaur, Triceratops
• normal 9, charge 15
• Dinosaur, Tyrannosaurus Rex
• normal 15, charge 21
• Djinni
• normal 9, charge 12
• Doppleganger
• normal 9, charge 12
• Dragons (all)
• normal 9, charge 15
• Dragon Turtle
• normal 3, charge n/a
• Dryad
• normal 12, charge n/a
• Dwarf
• normal 6, charge 9
• Efreet
• normal 9, charge 12
• Elemental, Air
• normal n/a, charge n/a, fly 36"
• Elemental, Earth
• normal 6, charge 6
• Elemental, Fire
• normal 12, charge 15
• Elemental, Water
• normal 6 (18 in water), charge 6 or 18
• Elf
• normal 12, charge n/a
• Ent
• normal 6, charge 6
• Fish
• normal n/a, charge n/a, swim 30
• Fish, Giant
• normal n/a, charge n/a, swim 30-50
• Gargoyle
• normal 9, charge 12
• Geletinous Cube
• normal 6, charge n/a
• Ghoul
• normal 9, charge 9
• Giants (all, inc. Cyclops)
• normal 12, charge 18
• Giant, Titan
• normal 15, charge 21
•  Gnoll
• normal 9, charge 12
• Gnome
• normal 6, charge 9
• Goblin
• normal 6, charge 9
• Gorgon
• normal 12, charge 15
• Gray Ooze
• normal 1, charge n/a
• Green Slime
• normal n/a, charge n/a
• Griffon
• normal 12, charge 18
• Hippogriff
• normal 18, charge 24
• Hobbit
• normal 12, charge n/a
• Hobgoblin
• normal 9, charge 12
• Hog (or Boar), Giant
• normal 12, charge 18
• Horse, Draft
• normal 12, charge 18
• Horse, Light
• normal 24, charge 30
• Horse, Heavy
• normal 12, charge 18
• Horse, Medium
• normal 18, charge 24
• Horse, Mule
• normal 12, charge 15
• Hydra
• normal 12, charge 12
• Insect, Large or Small
• varies
• Invisible Stalker
• normal 12, charge n/a
• Juggernaut
• normal 6, charge n/a
• Kobold
• normal 6, charge 9
• Leech, Giant
• normal 6, charge 6
• Lion
• normal 12, charge 18
• Lion, Spotted
• normal 12, charge 18
• Living Statue or Golem
• normal 9, charge n/a
• Lizard, Giant
• normal 15, charge 21
• Lycanthrope, Werebear
• normal 9, charge 12
• Lycanthrope, Wereboar
• normal 12, charge 15
• Lycanthrope, Weretiger
• normal 12, charge 15
• Lycanthrope, Werewolf
• normal 15, charge 18
• Mammoth
• normal 12, charge 15
• Manticore
• normal 12, charge 18
• Mastodon
• normal 15, charge 18
• Medusa
• normal 9, charge 12
• Merman
• normal 12, charge 15, swim 15
• Minotaur
• normal 12, charge 15
• Mummy
• normal 6, charge 6
• Nixie
• normal 12, charge n/a
• Ochre Jelly
• normal 3, charge n/a
• Octopus, Giant
• normal n/a, charge n/a, swim 9
• Ogre
• normal 9, charge 12
• Orc
• normal 9, charge 12
• Pegasus
• normal 24, charge 30, fly 48
• Pixie (and Sprite)
• normal 9, charge n/a, fly 18
• Purple Worm
• normal 6, charge 6
• Rat
• normal 15, charge n/a
• Rat, Giant
• normal 12, charge 18
•  Rhinoceros, Wooly
• normal 12, charge 15
• Robot, Android or Cyborg
• varies
• Roc
• normal 6, charge n/a, fly 48
• Salamander
• normal 9, charge 12
• Scorpion, Giant
• normal 15, charge 21
• Sea Monster
• normal n/a, charge n/a, swim 12
• Shadow
• normal 12, charge 12
• Skeleton
• normal 6, charge 6
• Snake, Giant
• normal 9, charge 15
• Snake, Giant Sea
• normal n/a, charge n/a, swim 20
• Spectre
• normal 15, charge 15, fly 30
• Spider
• normal 6, charge n/a
• Spider, Giant
• normal 12, charge 18
• Squid, Giant
• normal n/a, charge n/a, swim 12
• Tiger
• normal 12, charge 18
• Tiger, Sabre-Tooth
• normal 12, charge 18
• Titanothere
• normal 12, charge 15
• Toad, Giant
• normal 6, charge n/a (but can hop)
• Troll
• normal 12, charge 15
• Unicorn
• normal 24, charge 30
• Vampire
• normal 12, charge 15
• Weasel, Giant
• normal 15, charge 21
• Wight
• normal 9, charge 9
• Wolf
• normal 18, charge 24
• Wolf, Dire
• normal 18, charge 24
• Wraith
• normal 12, charge 12, mounted 24, mounted charge 30, fly 24
• Wyvern
• normal 9, charge 15, fly 24
• Yellow Mold
• normal n/a, charge n/a
• Zombie
• normal 6, charge 6