Building a Library: What to Do When a PC Decides to Pick a Book Off the Shelf

We've all been there as Dungeon Masters.  The player characters are exploring a library, or a wizard's study, or any other sort of place that might have a shelf of books... and one of them tells you he's going to take a book down off the shelf and read it.  What's the book's title?  What does it look like?  What does it say inside?  These are all questions you can answer off the cuff, but there are bound to be dozens if not hundreds of books in a library, so what's a DM to do if the players just keep going?  (I mean, aside from telling them to stop it and get back to the fucking adventure...)

I've started doing something lately that might provide me a solution to this problem.  Whenever I read a D&D article that I feel like could double as an in-game text, I repurpose it as a book that exists in the game world.  Take Gary Gygax's series on 'Grayte Wourmes', from the Diplomacy fanzine "Thangorodrim".  I did a cut and paste job, tweaked a couple of things here and there, and the following book now exists in the game world: "Grayte Wourmes by Professor S.K. Eltolereth".  It has some lore about the nature of dragons, and some false information too because it was written based on Gary's pre-D&D ideas.  But it's okay for books to have mistakes and inconsistencies; they do in the real world as well, due to faulty research or outdated theories or any number of other factors.

I've adapted "The Battle of Brown Hills", a Chainmail battle report by Gygax.  Is it an actual historical battle in the campaign setting, or is it a fiction?  Maybe nobody knows.  "The Giant's Bag" and "Expedition Into the Black Reservoir" as well, the latter of which could provide the players with clues to what awaits them in the depths of Castle Greyhawk's dungeons.  It's a small selection so far, but I plan on gradually adding to it.  I expect Dragon magazine to be a rich source of material, especially, and I'm already thinking about stuff like the descriptions of the Outer Planes from the AD&D core rulebooks.  2e material, being as lore-heavy as it is, will be rife with potentially usable stuff.  I could provide atlases with maps of various dungeons.  There are loads of possibilities.  And if I create authorial analogues for the various writers of those articles and keep them consistent, then the setting will have recognisable named authors, each with their own style and areas of focus.

There's some effort involved, but not much really.  Just cut and paste the article, do a read-through and clean-up, tweak a few things for setting consistency (which might require more time once the setting grows and becomes more concrete).  Once I have enough, I plan to build a random table, so that whenever a player decides they want to pick a book off a bookshelf, I'll have an answer at the roll of a die.  It's a minor problem, but it's one that I've encountered enough times to be irritating.  I'm happy to be building a solution.

OD&D Conundrums: Hit Points

 In most versions of D&D, hit points aren't a conundrum at all.  You have a certain amount (increasing as you gain levels), you lose some when you get hurt, and when you run out you're incapacitated or dead.  Couldn't be much simpler than that.  Certainly there are quibbles over just what hit points represent, but their mechanical function is about as unambiguous and rock solid as it gets for D&D rule systems.

OD&D is a slightly different story, as a look at this snippet of the Fighting-Man table will show:

1st level is easy enough to figure out: a Fighting-Man of that level gets 1d6+1 hit points.  But then at second, the total is 2d6.  Where did that +1 go?  Ignore the plusses and it's a solid 1d6 per level progression.  But they are there, and they're inconsistently applied.  There's a similar problem with the hit point progressions for Magic-Users and Clerics.

Pretty much every edition of D&D follows the system introduced in Supplement I: Greyhawk.  You roll your hit points at 1st level, that's your total, and you add to it with another roll whenever you gain a level.  There aren't any odd fluctuating bonuses to worry about.

But the rules I'm concerned with are from before Supplement I.  This is primordial D&D, and it requires a little more interpretation.  Of course, greater minds than mine have tackled this problem in the dim dark ages of the OSR.  In a lot of ways I'm retreading ground that's been covered by others, but a lot of that was circa 15 years ago, so I figure someone might find it of value.  And I always find it helps solidify my own thoughts on things when I sit and type them out.  I'm well aware that solutions to this conundrum have been proposed, so I'll run through the ones I'm aware of.

• Add all the bonuses: This one is pretty straightforward.  You just add all of the bonuses as you go, so in the above progression it would be 1+1, 2+1, 3+1, up to 4+1 at 4th level.  Then at 5th level, an extra +1 would be added, and the total is actually 5+2.  By the time you get to 10th level, instead of the 10+1 indicated you'd actually have 10+9.  It's simple, but I feel like it's contradictory to the rules on the page.
• Roll every level: Whenever you gain a level, you roll what's indicated and that's your total.  At 1st level, you have 1+1 hp.  When you gain a level, you roll 2d6 and that's your new hp total, regardless of what you had before.  Oh, your hp total went down?  Sucks to be you, go cry about it.  Again, I don't love this one.  It would average out over time, but I don't like the thought of a high-level character getting stuck with a shitty hp total for a lengthy period of time.
• Roll every level, always increase:  This is basically the previous method, but your hp total always increases when you gain a level.  Some DMs let their players keep rolling until they get a higher total, and some will just give you a 1 hp increase if you roll lower.  I definitely don't love the reroll method, and even the heartless DM in my soul doesn't take much joy from enforcing a 1 hp increase.
• Reroll every adventure:  So with this method, the PC rerolls their hp total at the beginning of each game session.  Whatever you roll, that's what you're stuck with for that game, and you have to survive based on that.  Now this I do like, and I'll get into why at further length below.

As you might have gathered, I'm going with the last method listed.  I like the flavour and the uncertainty of it.  If we consider hit points as a measure of skill, well-being, health, divine favour, and other factors, those things can fluctuate.  Some days you feel great, some days you feel terrible.  Maybe you have the flu, maybe you're hung over, or maybe Gragnaxikull the Axe Lord isn't smiling down at you from his mountaintop today...  Whatever the reason, there'll be days where luck and skill are on your side and it seems like nothing can kill you, and there'll be days when the opposite is true.  That'll be up to my players to explain once the rolls have been made, should they care to.

Of course there are drawbacks.  The first is, how does this work with healing?  You regain hp at a rate of 1 per day (or in OD&D, 1 per other day; I'm still not sure if that's what Gary meant, but it's what he wrote).  But how does that work when your total fluctuates between games?  I'll probably have to record how much damage a character has taken on each adventure, calculate the amount healed between games, and apply any damage still left to their new roll.  Sometimes, a player might actually roll a hp total less than their wounds total, and this will mean their character just isn't up to adventuring.  They're sick, or their wound is infected, or something.  Whatever it is, that character's out and the player will have to use another for this game.  I don't think it's going to be a super-likely occurrence, but I'm sure the dice will make it happen at some point. (They always do...)

There will no doubt be players who will say, "What if we rest another day, or a week?  Do I get a reroll?"  To this I'll have to say no.  Sometimes the game is a game, and that's how the rules work.  I'm even considering not letting them roll until the first time they take damage; talk about uncertainty!  I like the thought of that added sense of mortality, but I also feel like it's unfair on the players.  They have to be able to gauge the level of danger they can take on, or the game becomes too based on random chance.

Another thing I'm thinking of is tying this into a character's upkeep payments.  As written in OD&D, a PC must pay gold pieces equal to 1% of their experience points per month.  (It doesn't actually say per month in the published game, but I'm going with that.)  What isn't written is what happens if a PC fails to pay that amount.  Hit point rerolls are my answer to that, in combination with the 5e disadvantage rule.  So if a PC can't or won't pay their upkeep at the start of a game session, they roll their hp total twice and take the worst total.  I know, I know, bringing 5e rules into an OD&D campaign?  Heresy, blasphemy, abhorrent apostasy...  But what can I say, I like the advantage/disadvantage rules.  They might be the best thing to come out of 5e.

Of course, this whole system probably only works in the kind of game I'm planning, where each session would be a single adventure or dungeon delve.  In games where time gets paused between sessions, it makes less sense for a character to suddenly drop in skill or divine favour or whatever.  But in a game with shorter delves, rotating players and PCs, and time passing between sessions?  I feel like it's going to work really well.  At the moment it's all conjecture, but I'll be reporting on it here when it hits the table.

Perusals & Progressions: Alignment Languages

I've been a bit slack in making new posts, but I've been laid up with the flu.  This has left me with a lot of time for non-brain-intensive activities like reading comics and watching pro wrestling, but not a lot of mental energy for things like writing and working on D&D-related activities.  But I'm back, and today I want to figure out how I'm going to deal with one of D&D's more puzzling elements: alignment languages.  For the most part I'm trying to stick to OD&D and Chainmail when building the rules of my campaign, but because alignment languages have pretty strong setting element implications I want to take a look at how they've been tackled through various editions.  So I'm bringing back Perusals & Progressions, which I used a few times in the past to examine how spells changed through the editions.  I figured I can do the same thing with other elements of the game, so here we go with a thorough look at the history of alignment languages.

Original D&D

"Law, Chaos and Neutrality also have common languages spoken by each respectively. One can attempt to communicate through the common tongue, language particular to a creature class, or one of the divisional languages (law, etc.).  While not understanding the language, creatures who speak a divisional tongue will recognize a hostile one and attack."

This is all that the three OD&D booklets have to say on alignment languages, and if we left it here it wouldn't be a problem at all.  If the war between Law and Chaos is as all-encompassing as the books make it seem, it makes perfect sense that each side would have some sort of common language to enable communication between various races and factions.  And of course the other side would react with hostility upon hearing the opposing language (although I'd be inclined to interpret it a bit more widely that just an automatic attack).  The main point of interest here is that Neutrality has a common language as well, indicating that it's not just an indicator that someone's staying out of the struggle, it's a third faction in that struggle, an active participant in the war that's fighting against both of the other sides.

Supplement II: Blackmoor

Supplement II throws an interesting wrinkle into the mix, with assassins being the only class able to learn new alignment languages.  (Law or Chaos, as assassins in OD&D were always neutral.)  Actually, now that I look at it there's nothing in the rules stopping other classes doing the same thing, but giving this ability to assassins implies that it's a special ability unique to them.  Anyway, it makes sense for their roles as deceptive killers and spies.

Basic Set (Holmes)

The Basic Set uses pretty much the same verbiage to describe alignment languages as OD&D, but because Holmes Basic has an expanded alignment system so too are the range of alignment languages expanded.  Instead of Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic we now have Lawful Good, Lawful Evil, Chaotic Good, Chaotic Evil, and Neutrality.  At this point it's starting to get a little unwieldy for me.  Three sides, each with its own language, seemed quite neat and plausible, but five sides is stretching things a bit.

BX, BECMI and the Rules Cyclopedia

I'm lumping these versions of the game together, because they are generally consistent, and I'm also a little less likely to follow their lead than I am the path of AD&D.  And aside from that, they all say pretty much the same thing, so I can knock 'em all out at once.

For the D&D line, we are back to Law, Chaos and Neutrality as the only alignments.  The rules describe each alignment language as a "secret language of passwords, hand signals, and other body motions" that is known by all PCs and intelligent monsters. They are never written down, and the only way to learn a different one is to change to the same alignment.  If someone does this, they forget their old alignment language and start using the new one immediately.

AD&D 1e Players Handbook

Now we're getting into the real meat of it.  The 1e PHB finally introduces the complete 9-point alignment system, with a different language for each: chaotic evil, chaotic good, chaotic neutral, lawful evil, lawful good, lawful neutral, neutral evil, neutral good, and neutral.  If I thought five alignment languages was a stretch, nine is well past my limit...

A character can only know the language of their alignment, and should they change sides they'll forget the old language (just as in BX and its descendants).  The exception to this is the assassin class, which retains its ability from OD&D to learn other alignment languages.

AD&D 1e Dungeon Masters Guide

As you'd expect, this is where Gygax gives his most detailed treatise on alignment languages.  He begins by justifying their existence in terms of the real-world use of secret languages by various organisations, and the use of Latin by the medieval Catholic church.  He then limits their use in a couple of ways.  The first is by stating in ALL CAPS that the languages are never used in public, and not before making certain the person you're talking to is of the same alignment.  The second is by limiting the use of alignment languages to topics about the precepts of the alignment, and rudimentary communication about health, hunger, thirst, etc.  They supposedly only have a vocabulary of a few score words, so while they exist, it seems that Gygax is doing his best to rein them in to a simple "hey, how are ya?" and the occasional basic ethical discussion.

A whole paragraph is spent on what happens when a character speaks in their alignment language in public.  The best reaction you'll get is to be thought "unmannerly, rude, boorish, and stupid", and even people of your own alignment will give you the old "I don't know this guy".  Those of opposed alignments might mark you out as someone to be dealt with later (which is at least more nuanced than the instant hostile attack you'd get in OD&D).

The section ends with a confusing bit about how not all intelligent creatures automatically know their alignment language.  The example given is that of Blink Dogs, who apparently are instinctually lawful good, and don't speak their alignment language because they have not "intellectually embraced the ethos of lawful good".  Note that they have an Average rating in intelligence, so they're about as smart as humans.  Dragons are given as an example of monsters that do know their alignment language.  Which is helpful to know, but it leaves alignment languages for monsters in a very nebulous state.  Which monsters know their alignment languages?  Before the DMG, I would have said any that are smart enough to be able to talk.  Afterwards, I have no idea, and I guess it's up to each individual DM to work it out.  Cheers Gary!

As in the PHB, changing alignment means you instantly lose the ability to use your alignment language.  You can only sign crudely in the new language.  It's not until you gain a new level of experience that you can fully use the new language, so there's a bit of an adjustment period that comes with an alignment change.

AD&D 2nd Edition

Wait.  Hooooold on a second.  Where is it again?  I'm flicking through the PHB, I'm flicking through the DMG...  Do you mean to tell me that there are no alignment languages in AD&D 2nd edition?  That they got "Zebbed" right outta there?  That is a surprise.  I've read the 2e core books a bazillion times, and I've never noticed this.  It was my edition of choice for a solid decade plus, but because I learned from the Mentzer Basic Set I guess I just brought forward a lot of assumptions from that and never questioned their absence in 2e.  Well, moving right along then!

D&D 3rd Edition and beyond

From this point there's not much to say, because alignment languages aren't a factor in modern D&D.  Which makes sense to me, as in my experience they were rarely used and often house-ruled out of the game.  (Well, I suppose it's not a house rule, as they were never in 2e in the first place.)  What we do have in 3rd edition are some languages from the outer planes that could serve as stand-ins: Infernal, the language of devils and Hell; Abyssal, the language of demons and the Abyss; and Celestial, the language of the Upper Planes.  4e does its own thing (because of course it fucking does), with Supernal (the language of angels, devils and gods) and Abyssal (the language of demons).  And 5e plays it safe (because of course it does, bless its bland little heart) by pretty much going back to what 3e did.

Tying It All Together

This is going to be a tricky one...  I was reasonably happy to go with alignment languages as being developed during the earliest wars for ease of communication, and passed down so that everyone knows at least a little bit of the relevant one.  But for me the big sticking point is the way that characters automatically forget their language when they change alignment.  If that's something I'm going with (and I really am going to try to get to a by-the-book AD&D game) then I can't see a way around the languages being somehow supernatural in nature.

If that's the case, the obvious link would be to tie them to the gods, or the outer planes at the very least.  D&D's planar cosmology is intrinsically tied to alignment as a concept, so linking it with alignment languages would also make sense.  If I look forward to 3rd edition and beyond, each alignment language could be a dialect of Abyssal (Chaotic Evil), Infernal (Lawful Evil), or Celestial (Lawful? Good), although I feel like there needs to be a fourth language in that axis for Chaotic Good...

So anyway, one or more gods in ancient times instilled their followers with the "primordial language of the gods/demons/devils".  But why?  To what purpose?  I keep going back to the origin of my campaign world as cobbled together from planets ruined in a cosmic war as the last refuge for its survivors at the end of time. In that situation, with peoples brought together from a multitude of worlds, there are going to be a lot of communication issues, and communication is something that would be key to surviving such an initially harsh environment.  So maybe whatever being brought that world together also wanted to gift its new inhabitants with a way to bridge the language gap.  And maybe it was too difficult to instil a language that would be understood by everyone, but less difficult to instill the ability to communicate with those of a like ethos.  And thus were born the various alignment languages, supernaturally instilled in every sentient being, and shifting to match a person's ethos and personal alignment.

One last question remains, and that is why some sentient creatures know their alignment language, and others (such as blink dogs) do not.  As for that, my first instinct is to say that maybe these creatures were not sentient in the earliest days of the world, when the language of the gods was instilled.  They developed their intellects and ethos gradually in the centuries that followed, and while they developed their own languages, they have no intrinsic ability to speak their alignment language.  I might have to think about this more, but if I'm being honest I feel like this was a bit of a misstep by Gary in the first place.  I do wonder if it's something he might have developed further in his own 2e, but as it stands in 1e it's making something more uncertain than it needs to be.

So those are my thoughts right now.  I don't love what I've come up with on this first pass, but I don't exactly love alignment languages to begin with.  But as I've said, I want to run O/AD&D in as complete a manner as I can, and play with all of the game's elements as written.  And that means I need to include alignment languages, along with their weird idiosyncrasies such as how they are forgotten when a PC changes alignment.  It also means I need some sort of explanation for why this thing exists in the game world.  I may never tell the players; as far as they're concerned, I'm just going to tell them that alignment languages exist, they work this way, and nobody knows why.  They are "the language of the gods", and that's all anyone knows.  But I have an explanation that works for me, and I can give it to them if they really want to know and go digging.  (And as for the entity who pulled the Last Earth together in the first place?  I have some ideas about that too...)

The Changing World: How to Explain Rules Changes in the Game World

I've mentioned before that my plan for my next campaign is to start with OD&D, and gradually introduce and change rules until I'm running AD&D.  AD&D is ultimately the ruleset I most want to explore, but I'm just as intrigued by the idea of running OD&D, and I'd like to examine each rules element individually as it gets brought in, and experience first-hand how it changes up the game.  It would perhaps be simpler to just begin with the fullness of AD&D, and less confusing for my players, but I'm fascinated by tracking the progression of D&D.  So that's how I'm doing it, and hopefully my players will roll with it as well.

Of course, if the rules of the game change over time, this will be reflected in the game world as well.  Some of these changes will be more organic, such as the introduction of new monsters, spells, and classes.  But what exactly is going on when, say, the rules for initiative change?  Or weapon damage, or ability score modifiers, or any number of other things?  How does this work in terms of the game world?

The easy answer would just be to hand-wave it.  Gesture vaguely at it, change the rules, and say that it hasn't really changed what's going on in the game world.  The rules are the rules, the world is the world, and one has little bearing on the other.  It would be the sane thing to do.  So of course, I have a different idea.

My campaign world, which I'm tentatively calling "The Last Earth", was formed at the end of a grand cosmic war that destroyed almost everything, fused together from elements of various worlds and settings.  It's been thousands of years since that happened, but it's still a place where reality is unstable.  And that reality is affected by the war between Law and Chaos.  What happens in the planes affects the material world, and vice versa.  As above, so below.  So there will be occasional upheavals, and at times reality will be rewritten.

Normally such rule changes would be the purview of the DM, but I want to involve my players in the process as well.  Healthy discussion and consensus would be one way to accomplish this, but I have something a bit more flavourful and setting-specific in mind.  If I may be allowed to indulge in some setting lore... Back in ancient times, there was a war between mortals and the gods, in which the gods were driven from the material plane.  (I already talked about this in my post on clerics and blunt weapons.)  But not all the gods were driven out; many were killed, and their dismembered corpses still litter the countryside.  An eyeball here, a hand there, a still-beating heart half-buried in a mountainside, that sort of thing.  (I'd initially thought of them as being fossilised stone, but it's more fun if they still have some semblance of life.)  The forgotten dead gods, worshipped by few because they no longer have power to bestow on their followers.  But it's said that if you kneel before them and pray, the rest of the dead gods will hear.  And if enough hear and answer, maybe some desired change will be wrought in the fabric of reality itself.

So basically what this is is a way for my players to voice their desire for a rules change by having their character pray at one of the dead gods.  This would happen during downtime between sessions and require a single game day (remember that I'm going to be trying out 1 real day = 1 game day).  So there's a bit of a trade-off there, because it's a day they could otherwise use for healing or training or research or whatever.  But if they really want to emphasize how much they want a rules change, they could pray for multiple days...  And maybe the gods (aka the DM) will hear them.

I'll have to stress that praying doesn't necessarily guarantee the player will get what they want.  I'm going to be reluctant to change rules that haven't been properly engaged with.  For example, I'm pretty sure I'll have players who initially rail against demihuman level limits... But I'd rather not relax those limits until I've played with them for a decent length of time.  I'll also have to be clear that it's ultimately up to me how any rule changes.  In most cases, I'm going to follow the progression through the supplements and into AD&D.  And I want to set a hard and fast rule that I'm not changing more than one thing per game session.  I want the changes to be gradual, and only rarely will I be instituting sweeping changes (such as when I introduce the PHB or other such manuals).

I'm not sure if this is going to work, or if my players will dig it or engage with it.  But I know I dig it, and I like the flavour it adds to the game world.  A broken landscape, littered with dismembered gods, clinging to life just enough that a prayer to them might be able to change reality...  I'm deliberately building a generic world that reflects the D&D manuals, but inevitably some unique weirdness will filter in.  This is why I enjoy trying to answer these questions.

Do All Elves Wear Elven Cloaks and Boots?

Having looked over all the evidence in my last post, I concluded that all elves in OD&D can move about silently and with effective invisibility.  Some sources attribute these stealth abilities to their elven cloaks and boots, which seems fair enough until one remembers that these are valuable and rare magic items.  As much as I'd like to incentivize rampant elf-murder, the players probably shouldn't be finding these on the corpses of every elf they gank.  So before I make a decision, I need to look at all of the evidence.

Chainmail

Chainmail is the origin of the elven ability to turn invisible, but at no point does it specify a reason for the ability.

OD&D Vol. 1: Men & Monsters

Nothing is said here about elven PCs being able to hide or move silently.

OD&D Vol. 2: Monsters & Treasure

"Elves have the ability of moving silently and are nearly invisible in their gray-green cloaks."

AD&D 1e Monster Manual

"When in natural surroundings such as a wood or meadow, elves can move silently (surprise on a 1-4) and blend into the vegetation so as to be invisible (requiring the ability to see invisible objects to locate them) as long as they are not attacking."

Their gray-green cloaks are mentioned in the description paragraph, but not linked to their hiding ability.

AD&D 1e Players Handbook

"If alone and not in metal armor (or if well in advance - 90' or more - of a party which does not consist entirely of elves and/or halflings) an elven character moves so silently that he or she will surprise monsters 66-2/3% of the time."

I also had a look in the 1e DMG, but wasn't able to find anything.  There could be relevant information tucked away in that august tome, but if there is it escaped me.  I don't really care to look ahead further than that; I prefer to stick to Gygax when seeking these kinds of clarifications.

There's an obvious trend above.  The ability starts as invisibility, shifting to silent movement and near-invisibility in OD&D.  This is restricted to natural surroundings in the Monster Manual.  By the time we get to the Players Handbook, there's no ability to turn invisible; elven stealth is entirely attributed to silent movement.  What started as something seemingly magical has gradually become more mundane.

Notably, only one source - OD&D Vol. 2 - links elven stealth to their cloaks.

Cloak and Boots of Elvenkind

Let's take a look at how elven cloaks and elven boots work in OD&D and AD&D.

OD&D: "Wearing the Cloak makes a person next to invisible while the Boots allow for totally silent movement."  So it appears these items exactly duplicate the stealth abilities of elves.  It's entirely plausible that every elf is wearing a set of these.

AD&D: These items are separated in this edition.  The cloak of elvenkind has chameleon-like powers, granting the wearer near-invisibility, with different percentages based on the type of terrain.  The boots of elvenkind allow silent movement, with a 95% chance in the worst conditions and 100% in the best.

So in OD&D these items are useless for elves, duplicating their powers exactly.  In AD&D, the stealth abilities of the cloak and boots seem like they should be better than those of an elf, but that really depends on the link between moving silently, being invisible, and surprise.  This link is never explicitly spelled out in AD&D, at least to my knowledge.

The Decision

I wasn't expecting the evidence to weigh so highly against the prevalence of elven cloaks and boots.  But it's hard to deny that, if Gary intended for OD&D elves to be wearing them, he quickly thought better of the idea.  It makes sense; elven encounters would be numerous enough to ensure that every character would gain these items and abilities before too long.  Like Gary, I'd prefer to restrict this kind of thing.

The text is even worded in such a way as to support this: "Elves are nearly invisible in their gray-green cloaks."  See, it says invisible in their gray-green cloaks, not because of them.  I'll split those hairs if I must.

So no, no elven cloaks and boots for every elf.  Which is a shame, because a reading of Tolkien would support the other argument.  I'm also a little unsatisfied that the cloak and boots in OD&D are useless for elven PCs.  But I guess in D&D they're a different thing, with magic intended to grant non-elves the stealth of elvenkind.  That's a cool enough ability in its own right.

OD&D Conundrum 2: Elves

 Ah, Elves.  Since the dawn of the OSR, and no doubt well before that, the less-than-humble elf has been a source of perplexity to anyone tackling the OD&D rules.  Part of that is due to their scattered nature; some of the elf's abilities are only found in Chainmail, some are in Vol. 1: Men & Magic, and still more are hidden away in Vol. 2: Monsters & Treasure.  There's more to it than that, as even once you've found the rules they can be contradictory or difficult to interpret.  But before I get into that, I'll go through these sources one by one and give a brief outline of what each says (with an eye towards elven PCs rather than "monsters").

OD&D Vol. 1: Men & Magic

• Can be fighters or magic-users, and freely switch between each from adventure to adventure.
• More able to note secret and hidden doors
• Gain the advantages noted in Chainmail when fighting certain fantastic creatures
• Speak the following languages: Orc, Hobgoblin, Gnoll, Elvish
• Can be aligned with Law or Neutrality, but not Chaos

OD&D Vol. 2: Monsters & Treasure

• Of two sorts: those who make homes in woodlands, and those who seek remote meadowlands
• Can move silently and are nearly invisible in their grey-green cloaks
• Elves armed with magic weapons add an extra +1 to damage rolls
• Elves on foot may split-move and fire. Those mounted cannot.
• Not paralyzed by ghouls

Chainmail

• Elves are listed along with "Fairies"
• Split-move and fire as footmen
• Can turn invisible; can become visible and attack in the same turn
• Those armed with magic swords add an extra die in normal combat, and allow elves to combat certain other fantastic creatures
• Troops paralyzed by a wraith remain unmoving until touched by a friendly elf (also true of wizards and heroes, but that's not relevant here)
• Can see in normal darkness as if it were light

Like I said, the rules are scattered.  The major ability of the elf in OD&D is that they can be fighting-men and magic-users; this is also the ability that's come under the most scrutiny because of how it differs from later editions. But I'll tackle that last.  Before I get there, I'll quickly run through some of the other abilities that are of interest.

SUB-RACES

OD&D splits elves into those from the woodlands and those from the meadowlands.  This seems to me like a fair approximation of what we see in The Hobbit: the wood elves would be similar to those from Mirkwood, and the meadow elves would be like those from Rivendell.

In Chainmail this distinction isn't made, but the elf entry does have a parenthetical inclusion of "fairies".  Later books (specifically Supplement I: Greyhawk and the AD&D Monster Manual) will equate fairies with meadow elves, also referring to them as grey elves.  So that answers that pretty succinctly.  As far as rules go, there are no distinct differences in Chainmail or OD&D.

ALIGNMENT

It's not something I often see remarked upon, but OD&D characters are sharply limited in their alignment.  Human fighting-men and magic-users are free to choose any alignment, but clerics must be Lawful or Chaotic.  Dwarves can't be Chaotic.  Hobbits must be Lawful.  And elves can only choose between Neutrality and Law.

In Chainmail, elves are Neutral but with a tendency towards Law, so this fits together quite well.

STEALTH

So here's the question: do elven PCs in OD&D move silently and invisibly by default?  Vol. 1 says nothing about it, but Vol. 2 certainly gives these abilities to elven NPCs, attributing the invisibility to their grey-green cloaks.  Chainmail is consistent with Vol. 2, giving elves the ability to turn invisible.

So it's pretty cut and dried that NPC elves are effectively silent and invisible when they want to be, and that the invisibility is a property of their elven cloaks.  Giving this ability to elven PCs could be a bit unbalanced, but I don't necessarily consider that a bad thing.  The classes in old-school D&D are unbalanced in a lot of ways, but most of those ways are consistent with the flavour of the pulp fantasies it's drawing inspiration from.  Tolkien's elves really are better than everyone else, so it's okay by me for D&D to match that.

When it comes to things that are ambiguous in OD&D, it's always a good idea to look forward to AD&D, because Gary used it to clarify a lot of his intentions.  We can also look backwards now that the pre-publication draft is available, but that doesn't have anything relevant in this case.  AD&D does, because elves have an innate stealth bonus in their 4-in-6 chance to gain surprise.  That pretty much seals it for me, and I'll be allowing any elven PCs to move around with silence and effective invisibility.  Not actual invisibility, just a near-supernatural ability to stay hidden.

GHOUL PARALYSIS

It's consistent in older editions of D&D for elves to be immune to the paralysing touch of ghouls.  (In fact, elves are immune or resistant to most of the things likely to incapacitate a low-level character: ghouls, sleep spells, and charm spells.)  But there's a rule in Chainmail that I've somewhat glossed over in the past: "Paralyzed troops remain unmoving until touched by a friendly Elf, Hero-type, or Wizard".  This isn't a rule that's ever been explicitly brought forward into D&D, but I quite like it.  And I'm trying to bring forward every rule in Chainmail, as long as isn't contradicted or superseded by a rule in OD&D.  It will make elven PCs even more valuable and unique, and maybe serve to lessen the severe lethality that ghouls present to low-level characters.

(I've just remembered that this rule only specifically applies to paralysis from being touched by a wraith. It isn't mentioned in the ghoul entry, but I'd be inclined to say that it counts for both.  Besides, the issue of whether I'll have wraiths paralyse in addition to draining levels is still up in the air...)

MAGIC SWORDS

In OD&D, magic weapons are more effective in the hands of elves than anyone else.  Presumably this is because magic weapons in the stories D&D is drawing on, particularly Tolkien, are almost exclusively of elven make.

In OD&D, they get an extra +1 to damage with any magic weapon.  This is listed under the monster entry in Vol. 2: Monsters & Treasure, and is worded in such a way as to say that they get a flat +1, dealing 1d6+1 with a magic weapon.  There are different ways this could be interpreted, but I'm going with it as an overall bonus on top of whatever magic bonus the weapon already has. This ability is gone by the time AD&D rolls around.

Vol. 1: Men & Monsters says that elves "gain the advantages noted in the CHAINMAIL rules when fighting certain fantastic creatures".  Looking at Chainmail, we see that "elves armed with magical weapons add an extra die in normal combat".  I'd say that's superseded by the flat +1 damage bonus in OD&D.  Elves also get 3 extra dice against goblins, and 2 extra dice against orcs; so we can extrapolate that to say that against orcs and goblins they get a +2 and +3 bonus respectively.  (Kobolds are grouped with goblins in Chainmail, so the +3 bonus can encompass them as well.)

The rest of the Chainmail bonuses are a little harder to figure out.  They apply to the Fantasy Combat Table, which probably requires a bit of explanation for the uninitiated.  In Chainmail, there are three kinds of combat: Mass Combat, which is for clashes between large numbers of troops; Man-to-Man Melee, for one-on-one battles between normal men; and Fantastic Combat, for one-on-one battles between monsters and higher-level characters.  The latter two are pretty much replaced by the "roll a d20 to hit vs. AC" system in OD&D, but the distinction between "normal men" and "fantastic creatures" is still relevant in places.  In Chainmail, a magic sword allows a normal elf to fight on the Fantastic Combat table.

Fantastic Combat is pretty simple: you cross-reference the type of creature attacking with the type defending, and there's a number you need to roll above on 2d6 to score a kill.  (You can see why this was replaced in D&D: with an ever-expanding roster of monsters, the table would have become impossibly unwieldy.)  Since this system was replaced in OD&D, it would be easy for me to just ignore these bonuses for elves and assume that the magic weapon's inherent bonus is good enough.  But I still wanted to look at the numbers by comparing the fighting ability of a Hero and an Elf (both armed with magic swords).  I've given the Hero a +1 bonus to all scores required for wielding a magic sword, but assumed that the +1 is already baked into the elf numbers (as they can't even fight on the Fantastic Combat table without one).

	Hero	Super-Hero	Wizard	Wraith	Wight	Lycanthrope	Ogre	Balrog	Giant
Hero	6	9	10	10	5	7	8	10	10
Elf	9	11	10	8	6	9	7	12	10

Most of these numbers are in favor of the Hero as you'd expect: the Hero is a 4 HD fighter, while the Elf is presumably 1 HD.  I'm happy to leave these as is in the OD&D system, as a 1 HD elf will indeed have a harder time killing such monsters than a 4 HD fighter.  Two comparisons come out even: Wizards and Giants.  It's tempting to give elves a bonus here: in general, a Hero in OD&D has an effective +2 to hit over a 1 HD elf.  So I could go with a +2 bonus.  But then we have the cases where the elf is better at fighting certain monsters in the above comparison: Wraiths and Ogres.  If I'm giving a +2 bonus for those comparisons which came out even, should I give +3 against ogres?  And +4 against wraiths?  I would rather not.  Ultimately it's a bit of a mug's game to try to convert this stuff from Chainmail to OD&D, because they are measuring different things.  Chainmail uses one roll to determine the result of a fight, whereas D&D has many more variables: roll to hit, roll for damage, AC, hit points, etc.  Any mathematical conversion, assuming one is even possible, is well beyond me.

That said, I'd still like to preserve some of the flavour of the above results, so I'll go with the following:

• An extra +1 damage when wielding a magic weapon
• An extra +2 damage vs. orcs, ogres and trolls (trolls are grouped with ogres in Chainmail)
• An extra +3 damage vs. kobolds, goblins, wraiths, and spectres (as spectres inherit the qualities of wraiths in OD&D)

MULTI-CLASSING

This was the topic I actually wanted to write about, because it's the one that usually causes the most consternations when people discuss elves in OD&D.  As usual, this post got away with me, and I veered off onto various other tangents.  But as noted above, elves can advance as both fighting-men and magic-users.  They can't do this at the same time; instead, they choose what class they're playing for each adventure.  It seems pretty simple on the face of it, but there are a lot of ambiguities and unanswered questions.

The main thing that trips people up is that this works very differently than in later editions.  Once you get to AD&D, an elven fighter/magic-user operates in both classes simultaneously, having the abilities of both classes (including being fully armoured while casting spells!).  That's not how things work in OD&D.  You're either a fighter or a magic-user for the current adventure, and the only point of cross-over seems to be that you can cast spells while wearing magic armour.

It's interesting to go back and look at the pre-publication draft here.  That version of the elf is even more restrictive: you pick which class you want to play at the beginning, and then you play that class until you hit the maximum level.  Only then can you switch back to 1st level in the other class, and begin advancing.  I can't find anything that indicates an elf can switch back and forth, although it is said that they can use magic items such as wands as a fighter, and that they can utilize magic weapons and spells at the same time.

As for OD&D class-switching, there are many questions.  Can an elf cast spells in regular armour?  Can they use fighter weapons while acting as a magic-user?  What about hit points?  Saving throws?  Fighting ability? How is experience divided between the classes?  None of this is explained, leaving interpretation up to the referee.

Personally, I think the interpretation that sticks closest to the rules is to go with a complete split.  An elf is either playing as a fighter or a magic-user, and that's that.  They use the hit points, saving throws, fighting ability, etc. of the class they are playing as.  (And I'm going with hit points being re-rolled at the start of each game session.)  When playing as a magic-user, they can't wear armour unless it is magical, and they are restricted to daggers for weapons.  When playing as a fighter, they can't cast spells.  I'm tempted to allow them the use of magic items as in the draft, but that's not in OD&D, so I'm a little torn on it.  Experience points will be applied to the class being played for that session.

(It's just occurred to me that fighters using wands and magic-users wearing magic armour can be quite elegantly combined into one rule: the elf can always use the magic items allowable to both classes.  My only misgiving is that this would allow the elf access to spells and magic swords at the same time.  but it's something to think about.)

There are two things that poke holes in my interpretation.  The first is this line in the elf description: "Thus, they gain the benefits of both classes and may use both weaponry and spells".  It's a vague enough line that it can fit with my interpretation, or the AD&D version of multi-classing, or any number of other ideas a referee may have, so I'm okay with ignoring it.

The second thing is that elves, when encountered as monsters, have high-level leaders who seem to be operating simultaneously as fighters and magic-users.  It would be easy enough to just have them pick one class or the other, but that's not how it looks like it's meant to be played.  It would also be easy enough to hand-wave it, and say that monsters and PCs operate by different rules.  I'm not the biggest fan of that either.  It's true to a certain extent, but I prefer to level that playing field wherever possible.  If the players never question it I'm happy enough to ignore it, but if it comes up I'll tell them that elves can indeed operate in both classes simultaneously, but if they do so they earn no XP for that adventure.  This will give a big boost to those elves that have maxed out both classes, for sure, because they will be able to do this without penalty.

CONCLUSIONS

As I wrote above, this post got away from me.  I'd intended to just tackle the multi-classing issue, but ended up digging into a whole lot of ambiguities regarding elves, and reconciling their many abilities from various sources.  To sum up, elves as I'm running them in OD&D will have the following abilities:

• Switching between fighter and magic-user from adventure to adventure
• If it comes up, they can act as both while gaining no XP for that adventure
• Better at finding secret and hidden doors
• An extra +1 bonus to damage when using magic weapons
• Increase to +2 vs. orcs, ogres, and trolls
• Increase to +3 vs. kobolds, goblins, wraiths, and spectres
• Extra languages: elvish, orc, hobgoblin, gnoll
• Must be Lawful or Neutral in alignment; cannot be Chaotic
• Can move silently and with effective invisibility
• This invisibility is lost when they make an attack
• Can split-move and fire when on foot (but not on horseback)
• Immune to ghoul paralysis, and may remove paralysis from others
• This may also apply to characters paralysed by a wraith, but I haven't decided if a wraith's level-drain ability replaces its paralysis, or if they both apply
• Can see in the dark

OD&D Conundrums: Clerics and Edged Weapons

When devising a D&D campaign, one of the things I'm always compelled to rationalise is why clerics are restricted from using bladed weapons.  There are historical precedents in our world, but these may not necessarily apply in the average D&D campaign setting, especially when most of those settings are heavily polytheistic.  Let's take a look at some history, of the real world variety and also the D&D variety.  (You may find that I'm a bit more fluent with one than the other...)

The first thing to explore is whether clerics had that restriction at all in OD&D.  The text says "Clerics gain some of the advantages from both of the other two classes (Fighting-Men and Magic-Users) in that they have the use of magic armor and all non-edged magic weapons (no arrows!)".  If we're to take the text at its literal word, the restriction only applies to magical weapons.  But of course, OD&D is notoriously inexact, and necessitated a lot of clarification in AD&D and other later editions.  The other classes also give their weapon and armor allowances in terms of magic items, with the sole exception of the magic-user being restricted to daggers.  We know from AD&D that all of these were meant to apply to normal weapons as well, but readers in 1974 wouldn't have known that at all.

(There's an issue of The Strategic Review were Gary gives an angry rebuttal to a critical review of D&D. One of his retorts lambasts the reviewer for playing a spear-wielding cleric, but I dunno Gary, maybe you should have written it in the rules. Just putting it out there.)

Looking forward can give us clarification, but so can looking back now that we have access to the pre-publication draft of OD&D.  In that draft, it's explicit: "In any event, clerics may not used edged weapons (at the referee's discretion)."  The referee gets to choose, but the rule was intended from the start.  I do wonder sometimes what was left out on purpose, and what was left out by accident, and whether Gary could always remember what actually made it to print.  It would be easy to mix it all up in memory.  Regardless, clerics were always intended to be restricted to blunt weapons.

As for why this rule exists... It's all so clerics can't use magic swords.  Magic swords in OD&D are powerful.  They're all intelligent, and a good chunk of them have special powers.  They're intended as an equalising factor for fighters.  Magic-users and clerics can both cast spells, but fighters can't... until they find a good magic sword.  Give those swords to the spell-casters, and this intended balance is disrupted.  How effective this balance was is up for debate; I'd say not very effective at all, because a significant sore point in D&D's development has been the power gap between casters and non-casters.  But the intention was there from the start: casters don't get magic swords, so magic-users are restricted to daggers and clerics can't use edged weapons.

But where is this all coming from?  What was the historical or literary source?  Historically, the main influence would probably be the principle of sine effusione sanguinis, meaning "to shed no blood".  I'm having some trouble researching whether Catholic priests followed this principle, and if they did why, because every article that's popping up is related to D&D.  But it appears that the clergy did fight on occasion, especially in the Crusades, and they may have used maces and other blunt weapons to get around this principle.  "But Nathan," I hear you ask, "would not hitting a man upon the head with a flanged mace or morningstar cause them to bleed?"  To which I reply, of course it would. Profusely.  But people love to get around restrictions on a technicality or a flimsy justification, and priests are certainly no different there.

The main historical source that people point to is the Bayeux Tapestry, and it's depiction of Bishop Odo of Bayeux fighting with a mace.  There's also Bishop Turpin, depicted in The Song of Roland as fighting Saracens, also with a mace.  Turpin is a very likely source, as I believe that he's been specifically name-checked by Gary or one of his crew (although I can't find a source to corroborate that belief).

(This blog post does a much better job than me of laying out the historical precedents, if you're interested.)

Historical or not, clerics in D&D are famously restricted to blunt weapons, and in the interests of sticking close to D&D lore I'll be keeping that restriction as well.  Except, it's not a universal restriction, is it?  When you get into 2nd edition, and possibly even some of the specific pantheons of 1e, there are clerics allowed to use certain bladed weapons depending on their religious beliefs.  Which makes perfect sense, but means that whatever explanation I come up with, it has to be flexible enough to allow for some religions to ignore it.

In my 2nd edition campaign, circa 1997-2000, I explained it like this: there was a god of light (Solarin) and a god of darkness (Malak).  (Yeah, I know, the names were a bit on-the-nose, I was 18.)  These gods fought in the cosmos for a few centuries, until finally Malak stabbed Solarin in the side with his spear.  But this didn't kill him; instead, it sent him hurtling in orbit around the planet, with light spilling from the wound, and this was the origin of the sun.  So clerics of both sides avoided bladed weapons, one side in sympathy for their wounded sun god, the other to avoid their dark master's mistake.  Or some shit like that, it was 26 years ago, but it did the job, and stopped my players asking why they couldn't give their cleric a two-handed sword.  I'll need a different explanation now though.

The obvious one would be to go with the real-world inspiration, since I'm already basing the campaign's major religion on the Catholic church.  I could very easily say that the Church of Law forbids its clerics to shed blood, and they've justified their way around it by hefting dirty great flanged maces instead.  Then, when I later introduce some competing churches I could just have those that are offshoots of the Church of Law using that restriction.  The problem here is Anti-Clerics.  If it's a restriction of the Church of Law, why are these devil-worshippers and dark cultists also similarly restricted?  There's no reason they should be.  So that explanation is out.

I've been tossing up the idea of there having been some kind of primordial war between mortals and the gods in the ancient past, which ended with the gods retreating to the Outer Planes, and mortals ruling the Earth.  Maybe during that war, the gods decreed that "mortals may not take up blades against us", and mortals got around that decree by taking up the mace instead.  So the legends say, anyway...  Now it's less of a restriction and more of a tradition, although certain gods may enforce it more rigorously.  And while clerics may not be literally "taking up blades against the gods", they're always fighting for their deity, and against creatures of an opposed alignment.  And would not fighting a god's servants also be taking up blades against the gods?  I like this.  For some clerics it's a hard restriction, for others a tradition, and there are some who would have abandoned it long, long ago.  But for the Church of Law it's very much a going concern, and in the opening campaign area it will be for Chaotic clerics as well.

The Building Blocks of D&D

I've been reading Volume 1: Men & Magic from the original D&D boxed set, and putting some thought to how I'm going to interpret various rules and tackle some of the setting assumptions that OD&D implies.  To say that OD&D has some rough spots and ambiguities is an understatement; there is a lot of room for DMs (or I should say "referees") to put their own spin on it.  (And oddly, despite how loose and underwritten it often is, it rarely reaches AD&D's levels of Gygaxian incomprehensibility.  I think the reduced page count made Gary put away the thesaurus, and for the purpose of writing rules I consider that a plus.)  So I'm going to start by talking about why I'm choosing to run OD&D, and then I'm going to outline what I think are the basic building blocks of the game, and what they imply for the setting I'm building.  I was going to tackle some thorny rules issues as well, but this post got away from me a bit.  I'll save that for another day.

Why Original D&D?

I've been playing D&D since I was given Mentzer's Basic Set for my 10th birthday, back in the dim dark days of 1988.  (It would have been during the week between Christmas and New Year's Eve, and I can still remember how disappointed my Nan was that the box didn't contain a board... RPGs were hard to explain in those days, and at that point I didn't know anything about them.  But I digress.)  It's been almost 36 years since then.  In that time I've played a bunch of BECMI (well, just the B part), AD&D 2nd edition, and D&D 3rd edition, all more or less by the book.  I know those editions well.  I have zero interest in ever running 4th or 5th edition, and only slightly more interest in playing them.  That leaves OD&D and AD&D 1st edition as the versions I've never played, and as I write this I'm struck by a realization: I've never played properly Gygaxian D&D.  I've read both editions to death, and in my heart I consider them to be the "true" game.  And I want to play them both, as close to by-the-book as I can, and find out what they're like in practice.

If I had to choose between the two, I would pick AD&D as my baseline going forward.  But I don't have to pick, because they're really the same game at different points on a spectrum.  You can trace a direct line from Chainmail to OD&D, on through the various supplements, and then to AD&D and beyond.  And because that's possible, that's how I'm going to play it.  I'll start with OD&D (mixing in elements from Chainmail), and then gradually I'll add elements as I go, moving through the various articles and supplements, until I've reached the Dungeon Masters Guide.  After that... well, after that I plan to be a little more selective.  Fiend Folio and Monster Manual II, yes please.  Unearthed Arcana? I'll take it under advisement...

The Basic Building Blocks of an OD&D Campaign

Bear with me here, this will be rudimentary stuff for all you grognards out there.  But I'm about to reveal the six basic building blocks for any D&D campaign.  These are the elements that, in my opinion, are absolutely vital to D&D.  Get ready, and prepare to have your mind blown.  Here they come!

• Men
• Magic
• Monsters
• Treasure
• The Underworld
• Wilderness Adventures

I promise I didn't plan this ahead of time, but as I was thinking about what to write here it occurred to me that the titles of the three OD&D booklets (Men & Magic, Monsters & Treasure, and The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, of course) really do boil things down to the absolute core elements of the game.  Of course, this being 2024, we should replace Men with Player Characters (and there's a pun about being "PC" that I could make here, were I a lesser person).  But the point stands.  You can strip out all sorts of other things from D&D that have built up over the years, but you can't take out any of these six elements and still retain the core of the game: the characters controlled by the players; the magic at the heart of the game's fantasy elements; the opponents the character's will fight; the treasures they strive for; and the environments they will adventure within.

Let's have a look at each in turn.

Men (er, "Player Characters")

There are four elements at the core of every D&D character, regardless of edition: ability scores, race, class, and alignment.  We've had the same six ability scores with the same 3-18 range through every edition. (Let's just forget about Comeliness, and whatever the hell they were thinking in the 2e Player's Option books.)  The races (men, dwarves, elves, and hobbits) and classes (fighting-men, magic-users, and clerics) from OD&D are the only ones to have made it into every single version of the game.  Call them what you want, but if you're running a proper D&D campaign, you need all six, or at the very least some thinly veiled reskinning of them.  (That's me making an allowance for kender, even though I'd say that most kender need a good reskinning with a +1 dagger if you get my drift.)

Men (as they are called in OD&D, don't shoot the messenger!) are the baseline, the dominant race, and the rules enforce this by limiting the power levels of the other races.  Dwarves, elves, and hobbits aren't described in much detail in OD&D, which generally assumes you're familiar with the source material.  That source material, of course, being Tolkien.  Not the Tolkien of The Lord of the Rings, but the Tolkien of The Hobbit.  Gary often disavowed the influence of Tolkien on D&D, and when it comes to The Lord of the Rings I believe him (aside from a few monsters cribbed here and there (orcs, wights, wraiths, balrogs, ents... I think that's it?)  But the DNA of The Hobbit runs all through OD&D, and especially how it depicts the core races.  Admittedly, dwarves and hobbits have few differences between The Hobbit and LotR.  But the elves of D&D are much closer to those in The Hobbit than the noble, almost angelic beings of LotR.  Of course, you could always default to folklore for Elves and Dwarves., and you'd be fine, because The Hobbit's depictions aren't out of line with that.  I'd almost encourage that, as opposed to following the lore that's built up over decades of D&D.  I honestly feel that D&D is at it's best when emulating mythology, folklore, and literary sources, rather than when it's trying to feel like D&D.

Before I leave this topic, I just want to point out who kills the dragon in The Hobbit.  It's Bard, of the race of Men.  And who's the most powerful wizard around?  Gandalf, also of the race of Men.  (As far as you'd know from reading The Hobbit anyway, where there's not an Istari or a Maiar in sight.)  In D&D, Men are at the top of the power scale, and that's backed up by the literary sources.

Now, on to classes.  Fighters don't require much consideration, as they're a very broad category, and have no abilities that are out of the ordinary requiring explanation.  Magic-users, of course, imply the existence of magic that works.  A little more on that below.  Clerics are a different thing altogether.  Perhaps I've missed something in D&D's pulp sources, but the armour-clad, mace-wielding, divine spellcasting, undead turning cleric as presented in D&D is original to the game.  And its existence implies one thing for the setting: religion.  The OD&D books are pretty explicit about clerics belonging to a church of some sort, especially for those of Lawful alignment.  At the very least, clerics necessitate the existence of god-like entities willing to bestow power upon them.  And if there are entities bestowing this power, they must have a reason for doing so.

Which brings us to alignment.  In OD&D it's a bit simpler than it later becomes, with only three options: Law, Neutrality, and Chaos.  It's not explained a great deal, but at this point it really does just seem to be an indicator of which side you're on.  Which means, of course, there are sides, and there is some kind of war or struggle that's of importance to every creature that exists in the campaign.  The forces of Law vs. the forces of Chaos, and the many neutral creatures who haven't picked a side or lack the awareness or intelligence to do so.  Note that it's not a struggle between good and evil, although it might as well be: one side has balrogs and the other has unicorns, after all.  But we're not conflating alignment with a character's morality or behaviour just yet.  For now, it's enough to know that there's a war on, and it affects everyone whether they're in the fight or not.

Magic

In terms of the rules, magic might be the most well-defined system in the OD&D booklets.  Magic-users have their own spell list, and so do clerics.  Both must "memorise" their spells before an adventure, and once a spell is cast it can't be cast again until it is re-memorised.  It's notable that in OD&D, both Magic-Users and Clerics use spell books, something that won't be true for Clerics going forward.  But, aside from some odd quirks in the spells themselves, it all works very similarly to spell-casting in later editions.

The system described above, as I'm sure I don't have to tell most of you, is inspired by the Dying Earth stories by Jack Vance.  As such, it's often called Vancian spellcasting, and it's intrinsic to the flavour of D&D.  The system has a lot of detractors and critics, and some of the complaints are valid. Yes, it's annoying to find yourself in a situation where you need a spell but didn't memorise it.  But old-school D&D rewards preparation, and in a long-running campaign the players have more scope for researching planned adventures.  The other criticism, which kind of grinds my gears, is that "memory doesn't work like that".  "You can't memorise something and then forget it!" they say.  It was probably a mistake to use "memorisation" as the term for this process.  If I'm remembering my Vance correctly, it's more like the spells are contained in the magic-user's mind, and casting them releases their power. It's much more flavourful, and describing it that way without the whole "memorisation" bit can stave off a lot of complaints.

Magic is important though, because spells (and magic items to a lesser extent) are the main way the players have of circumventing the rules, and getting one up on the DM.  Without magic, it's a fair bet that mortality will catch up to the players sooner rather than later.  With it, they stand a fighting chance, and that's one of the reasons I'm reluctant to nerf spells when players find an exploit or a clever loophole.  Let the players have their resources, and use them to the fullest.

The main consideration when starting a campaign is to think about where magic comes from for clerics and magic-users.  For clerics, it's easy.  Lawful clerics are bestowed their powers by one or more deities, or other higher beings of a similar alignment.  Chaotic clerics (or anti-clerics as they are charmingly referred to in OD&D) get their powers from demons, devils, evil gods, and beings of that nature.  I'm not sure this is ever spelled out directly in OD&D (an edition that doesn't really do "spelling out"), but the implications are clearly there.

Magic-users require a little more thought.  All we know is that they get their spells from spell books, but how do they get them, and how did they gain their power and learning?  OD&D is characteristically silent on the matter.  You could say they draw power from the gods like a cleric, but I'm not a fan of that.  The flavour of their spells is too different, and it just seems pointless to have two classes that serve much the same role in the world.  The usual answers to this question are that there's a magical school or institution (such as Dragonlance's Towers of High Sorcery), or that every magic-user has a master who taught them individually.  I prefer the latter option, especially for my opening campaign area, which I'd like to be less unified as a civilisation.  The main question then remains, what does the master get out if it. Money?  Or perhaps an agreement that the apprentice will share any magical secrets or items they find?  Clerics are somewhat beholden to their church and deity, and it might be interesting to do the same for magic-users and their teachers.

Monsters

If the players are going on adventures, then they will need opponents.  They have to be literal monsters, of course.  You could just as easily have the players fighting people, and you'd still have a perfectly good and functional game.  But the game is called Dungeons & Dragons, so I'd say at least one kind of monster is required.  And if there's one, well... why not as many as possible?  It is a game, after all, and if you want a long-running campaign variety can only help to keep the players interested.

As a game, you can't really "win" at D&D, at least not in the long-term.  The closest you get is accomplishing story goals (either self-directed, or set by the DM), or advancing in power.  Story goals are a little nebulous, so the rules ignore that in favour of giving you two means with which to advance in power: finding treasure and killing monsters.  Killing monsters gives you much lower rewards than treasure in OD&D, but most treasure is guarded by monsters, so it's fairly certain that you'll be doing plenty of both.  So monsters are a reward, but more than that they're the obstacle to greater rewards.  And in a D&D campaign, they should be varied and plentiful.

OD&D has a good selection: 61 distinct types, with some (such as men, dragons, giants, and lycanthropes) split into various sub-types.  The humanoids can be a bit samey; there's not much to distinguish kobolds from goblins from orcs from gnolls, except for their Hit Dice.  Some monsters are from Tolkien, others from more obscure pulp literature (such as Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions), while most are drawn from mythological sources.  There's not a lot here that you could call unique to D&D (maybe purple worms, invisible stalkers, and the various jellies, puddings, slimes, oozes and molds).  Those monsters would come in Supplement I: Greyhawk.  But in addition to those monsters with specific stats and entries, there are still more mentioned in the wandering monster tables (mostly giant animals, dinosaurs, and creatures from Burroughs' Barsoom stories), and even more in the section on naval adventures (dragon turtles, and giant sea creatures).  And beyond that there are suggestions made for salamanders, titans, golems, robots, and the list goes on.  OD&D contains a lot, but it suggests much, much more.

Treasure

As mentioned above, treasure provides the bulk of a character's experience points in OD&D, and this makes finding loads of it the quickest way to advance in power.  As many before me have pointed out, this incentivizes exploration, looting, and adventuring over pure hack and slash combat, and can make for more self-motivated players than a story-based game where the bulk of plot progression rides on the DM.  Thus, a DM needs to make sure that there is plenty of gold out there for the PCs to find (guarded by the monsters mentioned above, naturally).

Not only does there need to be a lot of treasure to find, but there need to be plenty of opportunities for the players to spend all that coin.  After a few levels, a PC will have enough gold to live well for years, so what then is their motivation to adventure (aside from playing the game, of course)?  AD&D solves this problem by requiring exorbitant training costs for level advancement.  3e and 4e let the players buy magic items, which I guess is a solution, but it's not one that I ever liked.  OD&D assumes that characters will be saving up to build a stronghold, but that's a stage of the campaign that players won't hit for a good long while, and not every PC has that particular urge.  JB over at BXBlackrazor posted an excellent article about this recently, highlighting the deficiencies of BX and BECMI in this area.  I suspect that OD&D will suffer in a similar way, but I'll only find that out by playing it.

The main campaign consideration is: where did all of this treasure come from?  Why is it still sitting out there, unclaimed by human hands?  The answer to that last one is easy enough: it's dangerous out there!  Monsters, traps, other assorted hazards and nasties...  Going out looking for treasure is a deadly business.  As for the former, the usual answer is that there was an advanced and incredibly wealthy civilisation. and now it's fallen and its lands have been overrun by the denizens of the various Monster Manuals.  And it's a good answer; I'm yet to find one that better fits with D&D's standard set-up.  You could say that the treasure has been raided from the current day civilisation, but not every monster has the kind of lust for gold or intelligence that would send it out on a pillaging spree.  You can use that explanation sometimes, but not all the time.  A post-apocalypse is the way to go, I think, but how far in the past?  And was it just one, or could your setting be a post-post-post-apocalypse?  You could have any number of fallen civilisations, or different answers depending on the region.  But whatever you choose, the gold has to come from somewhere.

(There is another treasure-related campaign consideration, and that's the economy.  Which is completely broken in most by-the-book D&D campaigns.  But that's not a question I feel qualified to tackle right now.  I said I was sticking to the basics!)

The Underworld:

Remember above, when I was saying that a game called Dungeons & Dragons needs some dragons in it?  The same titular consideration applies here.  The dungeon, or the underworld, or whatever you call it, is vital to the identity of D&D.  It's especially great for beginning players and DMs, as it gives them a bounded area to explore, with plenty of danger and variety and opportunity for adventure (assuming it's been designed well).  The players won't be overloaded with options, and the DM will be less likely to be blindsided by the players running off somewhere he hasn't prepared for.  More experienced players can get a little jaded with dungeons, and it's my experience that campaigns that start with a heavy dungeon focus can often transition mostly to city and wilderness adventures later.

A dungeon can be anything from an underground labyrinth, to a series of caverns, to a mad wizard's castle, to a crashed spaceship, or whatever the DM imagines.  What they actually are is a guaranteed source of adventure (i.e. monsters and treasure) for the players.  And if the dungeon is structured as the OD&D books suggest, with levels that predictably increase in deadliness the deeper you descend, that danger is somewhat under the control of the players.  Want a low risk adventure?  Stick to dungeon level 1.  Want to try for a big score?  Risk death on one of the deeper levels, and hope you make it out with stacks of loot (and don't lose too many comrades or your own life in the bargain).  I don't think every dungeon should be structured like this, of course - some unpredictability is always welcome - but there should be some mechanism for players to make calculated risks, especially if the DM isn't tailoring encounters to their level.

Finally, note that OD&D gives primacy to the term Underworld rather than "dungeon".  This suggests a lot, especially in a mythological sense.  The Underworld is often defined as the resting place of the dead, such as Hades or Hell.  So the further down you go, the less the rules of the natural world apply, and the greater the dangers.  The connection between the Underworld of your D&D campaign and the lands of the dead may not be literal, but it all makes sense on a thematic level, and being a place outside of the natural realm explains a lot of OD&D's rules oddities.

Wilderness Adventures:

Like the Underworld, the wilderness is a place of adventure.  And in may ways it's a lot more deadly, because there is no mechanism for the players to control the level of danger.  It's a big, wild world out there, and the wandering monster tables are not kind.  Even lowly creatures such as kobolds can number in the hundreds, so wilderness adventures are mostly for larger bands and higher-level characters.

Aside from being another place to find monsters and treasure, the wilderness serves as a place for high-level characters to establish their strongholds.  The rules state that plenty of NPCs have already done just this, with fighters being named "barons" by whoever happens to be the local ruler.  Mind you, NPCs in charge of castles seem to be free to demand treasure from passers-by, or hit them with a geas, so it feels like they're fairly autonomous (or at least legally allowed to do whatever the hell they want to anyone passing through).  And characters of all alignments are out there ruling their castles, so the grand cosmic conflict is no factor in who's allowed to rule a patch of land.  To me that suggests that the wilderness is exactly that: wild, untamed, and up for grabs to whoever wants to go out there and stake their claim.  (And note that the demi-human races hit their level limits well before they can rule castles; just another way that OD&D ensures that men are the dominant race of the setting.)

With dungeons to be found, loads of monster lairs, and castles ruled by PCs and NPCs alike, this suggests one thing about the wilderness in OD&D: there's a lot of it.  However civilised the PCs' home base may be, there should be plenty of wild lands nearby.  The "points of light" idea put forth in the 4e era was a good example of this: pockets of civilisation surrounded by dangerous wilds.  It perhaps strains credibility from a worldbuilding perspective (i.e. how does trade happen if the wilderness is so damn dangerous) but that's what adventurers are for.

What This Establishes About the Campaign:

With the basics above laid out, I'm going to go through and talk a bit about what this means for my campaign, at least as I envision it right now.

• The nature of the universe and the world is defined by the war between the forces of Law and Chaos.  This war is being fought by great cosmic forces on higher planes, as well as mortal beings.  Some fight knowingly and willingly, while others serve Law or Chaos with no awareness of the struggle that goes on.  Most creatures, especially those of animal intelligence or less, fight for neither side, but may serve one or the other's purposes from time to time.
• At some point in the past, there was an advanced civilisation that fell into ruin.  I'm thinking that civilisation may have somewhat resembled the Eberron setting, with it's "magic as technology" assumptions.  For whatever reason, that civilisation never progressed past the use of coins as its primary currency, so its ruins will be full of gold, silver and copper pieces. I haven't figured out what might have destroyed that civilisation, but tying it into the Law-Chaos conflict seems like a safe bet.
• Civilisation has built itself back up since then, to a roughly Medieval level of technology.  I'm thinking it will mostly be independent city-states, with smaller towns and castles dotting the landscape, all separated by dangerous wilderness populated by monsters.  The major roads will probably feature lots of castles ruled by NPCs, which will serve to keep trade flowing.  But the wilderness will be full of monster lairs, castles ruled by independent NPCs, and treasure-filled dungeons, just as the game suggests.
• Civilisation is ruled by men, although dwarves, elves and hobbits can be found in their lands in smaller numbers.  Those three races will be depicted similarly to the way they appear in The Hobbit, which is broadly consistent with later D&D lore.  I'll probably place their homelands somewhat distant from the main campaign area, though not so far away as to make demi-human presence unrealistic.
• Clerics (the Lawful ones) belong to the Church of Law, which due to various elements in the rules of OD&D - such as the presence of crosses on the equipment list, and the cleric level titles - I'm making broadly similar to the Catholic church.  I'll be doing this without specific reference to Christ and real-world Catholicism, just using the structure and some of the beliefs of that church as a baseline for how clerics work. Some of this can be explained by the mash-up nature of the campaign world: the cross, for example, would be referred to as an ancient symbol of Law whose origin has been long forgotten.  Worshippers of other deities and concepts will also be out there, of course, but the Church of Law is the dominant religious force.  I'm thinking that, despite working to further the cause of Law, and the church itself, clerics will be mostly independent operators, holy warriors that venture out to fight against Chaos.  Most of the clergy working day-to-day in churches will be regular people, or at most 1st level clerics (who conveniently can't cast any spells in OD&D).
• As for Chaotic clerics, I'm inclined not to give them a large, organised presence.  I'm thinking they worship various demons and evil gods, and are organised into smaller sects and cults that are not at all unified, and may even work at cross-purposes at times.
• Magic-users don't have an organised presence, at least in this part of the campaign.  Instead, they operate alone or in small groups, and all magic-users learn their craft by apprenticing themselves to a master.  Presumably the obligations of this apprenticeship - mostly doing the bulk of their master's menial work - are done by the time a PC M-U is out adventuring.

So that's my campaign so far, working off of the assumptions of the OD&D booklets.  So far, so generic.  But that's okay, I want this to feel like a D&D world, at least at the broad scale.  There'll be plenty of scope for including smaller areas with a more unique flavour.  But if I'm building a world that I can slot the majority of D&D modules and adventures into, it has to be somewhat generic.  It's a feature, not a bug!

That's it for today; this post turned out much longer than I planned or expected.  I'll start tackling some of the rules issues in the next few posts, although I might make them shorter and more focused.  I have a tendency to sprawl.  Right now, I need to sprawl out in bed and go to sleep; it's 5am and I'm meeting my son for lunch tomorrow (and to see Deadpool & Wolverine).  Writing is good for me mentally, but it does tend to wreak havoc on my sleep cycles.

Where I've Been and Where I'm Going

 So, uhhhhh, anyone still there?  Hello?

Yes, I am aware that it's been a long time.  About three years by my calculations, which makes it very unlikely that anyone who used to read this blog still checks in.  That's not even taking into account the general shift of online content from the written word to video; I'm guessing blogs are somewhat deader these days than they used to be, but I still read and enjoy a bunch of 'em, and I still think it's where the best online content for older editions of D&D can be found.  Basically, I like to write and I don't have the discipline or work ethic to transition this stuff over to Youtube, so for the moment I'm back at it.

As for where I've been, let's just say it's been a tough few years.  Separated from my wife, who I'd been with for nearly 20 years. Met someone else who passed away quite suddenly just after we moved in together.  Met the love of my life (so far) while I was still messed up from that, and lost her as well...  Life has been kicking me in the balls a lot lately.  It's what life does, but these last few years have been harder than most.  I have a great son, a supportive family, a job in a library that I love, and awesome friends who I live with and I know will always have my back, so things aren't all bad.  But needless to say, gaming and blogging have taken a back seat to all of that.

Of course I've still been following developments with the game, reading blogs, watching videos, making plans.  I'm not particularly enthused by anything coming from Wizards of the Coast, although I am quite keen to dig into The Making of Original D&D: 1970-1977; that kind of historical material is pretty much the only way they'll pry any money out of me.  I've been watching the various scandals and RPG-related kerfuffles with wry amusement, but as usual I've kept my head down and stayed out of these things, except to talk about them with mates in real life.  All in all, I'm happy enough to have jumped off the new edition train as of 3rd edition.  I'd happily play later editions, but I can't see myself running them or buying the books.  I don't even want to run 3rd any more if I'm being honest.

It's all a moot point, because I haven't been running anything.  I have vague plans to do a quick wrap-up of my campaign that's been running since 1998, having transitioned from 2e to 3e.  But that involves rounding up a number of specific people, one of whom I suspect has very little interest in playing again.  But, if I can convince him to squeeze in 3 to 6 sessions for old times sake... It would be nice to tie off that loose end, and then maybe my other friends will stop pestering me for the answers to various long-standing questions...

Most of my efforts have been going into the planning stages for my next campaign and world, the one that I would like to run for the rest of my life.  I began this blog many years ago talking about "The Ultimate Sandbox", my plan to run a mega-setting that incorporates everything ever officially published for D&D into a kind of huge multiversal sprawl, where I would begin with Greyhawk and OD&D and gradually layer in rules and elements as they're introduced in various supplements.  Youthful hubris, basically, and indicative of my habit for taking on tasks too big to practically accomplish within a single lifetime.  I have more modest goals now, although along some similar lines.

The biggest difference with where I'm going is that I'm not planning on using any official settings .  I may include some smaller setting elements, such as cities and smaller wilderness areas.  I definitely want to include modules and adventures; my plan is to design a world where I can incorporate as much official D&D material as possible, but my own personal spin and a lot of original material as well.  I don't have much interest in running games set in Greyhawk or the Forgotten Realms any more, but I do have an interest in running a lot of the old classic modules, because we didn't do a lot of that when I was younger. (Tomb of Horrors, Ravenloft, Dungeonland, a little bit of Night Below... I think that's about all we had access to.)

So, inspired by Alexis of The Tao of D&D, who uses the real world for his campaign, I've decided to use Australia as my geographical basis.  I could bang out yet another fantasy map, drawing little mountains and trees and coastlines, and I'd enjoy the hell out of doing it... but I like the idea of using the real world and having geography and weather patterns that makes some vague sort of sense.  I'll probably flip it on both axes, so that north becomes south and east becomes west; there are various cliches I still want to play into, such as the "frozen north".  Not that Australia has much of a frozen north (more rain-soaked and windy...), but there's a lot of D&D and other fantasy material that assumes a northern hemisphere, and I do like to play into the tropes where possible.

I'll probably center play in Victoria to start, as that's the region I've lived my whole life.  That's where I'd cluster the adventures and material with an OD&D, BX, BECMI or 1st edition flavour.  Areas further out from that would have more of a 2e, 3e, 5e, or (god forbid) 4e flavour.  (Note: flavour, not rules.)  That would cover most generic fantasy adventures, those set in Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Mystara, etc.  Your meat and potatoes D&D.  I have this idea to make the setting more like Dark Sun the closer you get to the country's "dead heart"; maybe instead of Uluru there's a weird monolithic thing there that warps magic and gives people psionic powers.  It would let me play with some D&D-as-Mad-Max vibes, which could be cool.  Mystara has a Hollow World, so that's probably a given.  Spelljammer, Ravenloft, and Planescape all exist as their own things, separate from the game world, so they're fairly easy.  Anything tropical probably goes in Queensland, and anything too culturally non-Western I'd shunt off into other worlds or continents, or maybe Western Australia.  For Eberron material, with its advanced magic-as-technology civilisation, I'm thinking that my world got to that level of advancement at some point in the past, before it was all destroyed in a big apocalypse (a good old post-apocalypse being the catch-all explanation for all sorts of D&D assumptions).  Maybe there's a "bottle city of Kandor" situation, where a pocket of that civilisation exists trapped somewhere, and maybe the PCs can get in but the inhabitants can't get out.  

It's definitely going to be a hodge-podge setting, and may suffer for that, but I do enjoy fitting those kinds of disparate elements together.  I'm also thinking of making it a part of the world's ancient backstory.  If the world is a hodge-podge of disparate D&D setting elements... why not lean into that?  Maybe there was some sort of cataclysmic, final war across all of creation, realities crashing into each other like in Jonathan Hickman's Marvel crossover Secret War.  And just as in that story, the final surviving world was a kind of smashed together conglomerate of everything that had gone before.  (Well, maybe not the final world; I'll still need places to sail Spelljammers to, as well as other planes and such... But close to it.)  I don't plan for it to be as patchwork as Doom's Battleworld from that story; many thousands of years will have passed since the creation to smooth things out.  And it may not be something the players ever know.  But I like it as an explanation for why my world is going to have all sorts of elements from different settings.

As for rules, I still plan on starting with OD&D, and gradually bringing in new elements and changing rules until I'm running AD&D 1st edition, or something resembling it.  I have some thoughts on how I can explain the changing rules, and also how I can give my players some agency in changing rules they may not like.  But I might tackle that in a future post.  The one aspect of the rules that I'm very keen on exploring is the use of 1:1 time.  As we all know, YOU CAN NOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT etc. etc. take a bow, Gary. I've become kind of fascinated with what the guys over at the BrOSR have been doing with the game (a journey that started when I discovered Jeffro Johnson's blog).  Say what you will about their online personas (personally I find them quite funny), but they're doing things with the game that nobody else online was talking about before them.  I've no doubt other folks have been out there running things similarly for decades, but this is the first time I've seen it discussed, and it's clarified so many rules from AD&D that I always found mystifying.  So I want to try to run an open table, where campaign time runs at 1 real world day per game day, and the game is "always on" (i.e. players who want to will be doing downtime stuff between sessions).  I'm not sure how my players will like it; before this we've only really done the adventure path style of gaming, so they won't be used to it.  But I'm very jazzed to try it out and see what effect it has on how the game runs.

As for what I had been doing with the blog... I don't plan on continuing with the historical, product-by-product analysis.  Going back over that stuff, I find my understanding of OD&D and its supplements woefully inadequate, and I just want to scrap it all and start all over again.  I would do it better.  But I'm older now, and I don't have that kind of time.  Well, I do, but I want to use it more wisely, in developing my world and playing the game.  I've been going through OD&D again to figure out how I'm going to interpret various rules, and I'll no doubt tackle that as I go.

I have more to write about (three years of build-up!), but it's 4am here in the Antipodes as I type this, and I'm meeting my son for lunch for his 16th birthday tomorrow.  We might even talk some D&D (he's a very casual 5e player).  Responsibility dictates that it's time to polish this up, send it out, and get some sleep.  I don't know if anyone will read it, but writing it's been good for me.  I want to play and run more D&D, and while thinking and planning is great, there's nothing quite like getting those ideas out of your head, even in a scattershot manner like this.  It's good to be back.