Recaps & Roundups part 45: Judges Guild Installment K

In February of 1977, Judges Guild sent out the third of its installments to their subscribers. This was Installment K, and contained the following items:

• JG18 Campaign Map One: Judges
• JG19 Campaign Map One: Players
• JG20 Booklet K (providing details for the maps above)
• JG21 Journal K
• Ready Ref Chart: Wizard's Guide/Construction Costs

The maps both cover the same area, with the Judges Map filling in a lot more details. They show a pretty expansive area around the City State, far more than any Judges Guild product has done so far. Booklet K gives an overview of what can be found at many of the places on the map.

Before I dig into those, though, I'll quickly cover Journal K, for which I only have a snippet of the first page. I'm not having much trouble tracking down the other JG products, but those Journals are hard to find. What I have of this one concerns some of the rules for forging and enchanting weapons that were given in Installment J, mostly to note that the mithril and adamantite weapons shown for purchase aren't magical, and aren't of a high enough grade to be enchanted to +4 or +5. It then goes on to advise that such weapons should be difficult to find, and not available for purchase just because a PC has the money. Hard to argue! The rest is logistical JG stuff about late installments and con appearances, nothing that I'm particularly interested in.

And now, the maps. I purchased some full colour recreations, but those aren't exactly accurate to those that were sent out back in '77. These are the best images I could find of the originals:

Players Map

Judges Map

The City State is pretty much dead centre, just to the west of the big forest in the middle (the Dearthwood). Thunderhold, from Installment J, is about 90 miles directly north of that, not too far removed from the north coast. It's all pleasingly consistent with the rough map that was provided in Booklet J. The maps use a hex grid, with four-digit coordinates that can be used to find a specific hex. Hex 0701, for instance, will be seven across in the top row. Hex 1211 is twelve across and eleven down.

Booklet K features a lot of miscellaneous rules and guidelines crammed in, as is the JG style, but I'll focus first on the parts that are relevant to the maps above. The first of these sections is "Idyllic Isles", which gives a brief description of what can be found on all of the small islands on the map. They're short but evocative, and good adventure springboards. Here are some examples:

• 1101: Isle of the Halflings - 27 shipwrecked Hobbits evading a Cyclops
• 4611: Isle of Slumber - The ruins of an ancient city overrun by apes hide a wishing well.
• 5116: Isle of Tombs - 1420 tombs full of undead and demons.

The book then goes on to highlight the small castle and village of Haghill, found in hex 2321 (not far from the City State). Haghill has been ruled by Huberic for the last 14 years, a portly fellow with large appetites and a delight in cruelty to animals. He lives in the former "Tower of Torpid Terror", which the locals believe sits atop the sleeping place of a terrible creature from the Elder Days. Huberic laughs of these superstitions in public, but has still had the dungeons below sealed.

Haghill is then described in much the same fashion as the City State, with the most prominent NPCs detailed, some legends and rumors suggested, and a map provided. To be honest, it's all a little too similar to the City State for my liking. I'm not sure why this place was chosen to be highlighted, because there's not really a lot going on. (Although there is a smith whose name is Stretchy Vagin, which is definitely a name that stopped me in my tracks.)

A map of Haghill

Two pages are then given over to detailing every settlement on the map: location, name, population, race of inhabitants, level of civilization, alignment, ruler, and their main resources. Somehow, all of this fits in a single line. Here are the first five villages:

That is compact: there are close to 100 settlements outlined in two pages here. The usual PC races are represented, but there are also a few goblin, orc and gnoll villages scattered about. The City State has its own line, with its population listed as 20,000. Its ruler is said to be a 16th level fighter named Balarnega; is this the overlord himself? Thunderhold is also listed, and said to be ruled by someone named Boralin. Booklet J had the ruler as Nordre Ironhelm, so I'm not sure what's going on there.

Close to 80 castles and citadels are scattered across the map, but those get much less detail than the villages: only the ruler and the number of men are shown.

The "Lurid Lairs" section is similarly sparse: there are over 100 lairs on the map, with all that's listed here being the type and number of monster found therein. Every monster in these lairs comes from TSR D&D.

That covers the bulk of the booklet, but there are a lot of other things in here which I'll go over in brief below:

• Tables for determining the actions of NPCs based on their morale.
• Tables for determining whether NPCs (presumably those allied to the PCs) get into altercations with other NPCs, including the reason why the altercation started.
• Tables for negotiating, with modifiers for alignment and Charisma.
• Some paragraphs to determine what exactly is a hireling (apparently any NPC controlled by a PC, excluding charmed creatures, insects, golems, and plants). There are also some rules here about polymorphing creatures, and whether a polymorphed creature can then become a hireling.
• Civilization and technology levels, which are given on a scale from 0 to 10: anarchy, democracy, tribal, agrarian, religious, tributary, oligarchy, republic, aristocracy, feudal, dictatorship. These numbers are used in the village section above.
• Rules for population density, with different land requirements for hunters and farmers. In general a hunting village needs 1 square mile per member, while one square mile of farmland can support 320 members. Are these numbers accurate? Buggered if I know.
• Rules for how much land a player needs to clear out for their barony, as well as how to calculate income, and the safe levels of tax that can be levied before the peasants start getting angry.
• A little bit about what it takes to shift the alignment of a settlement or area (police forces, temples, that sort of thing).
• This installment's Malevolent Character Module is about Count Kaledric, who is a supposed weakling and social bore, but is secretly the Co-ordinator, the much-feared personal avenger of the City State's Overlord. He has five trusted retainers, and access to a lot of weapons to give him god-like powers and demon-strength. (None of these are outlined though.)
• Some rules for determining how much can be made in trade based on a settlements population and the product on offer (including prices for some exotic monsters like balrogs).
• Rules for randomly determining the various factors involved in a geas or quest spell.
• Rules outlining what can be done with a wish and a limited wish, and the difference between the two (which seems mostly to be that limited wish can't create anything, but can change outcomes for up to a week in the past). Wishes are graded based on how greedy they are, and assigned a likelihood of success and a likelihood of some kind of curse or repercussion.

Finally, there's the Ready Ref Sheet. One side of it has guidelines for Wizards, and the other features the rules and construction times and costs for building a stronghold. The construction rules and prices given are consistent with those from D&D Vol. 3: The Underworld & Wilderness Adventure, but far more detail is given; the JG rules are much easier to understand and implement. There are also prices here for building Hobbit smials (burrows), and elven "tlan" (treehouses), as well as rules for using fantastic creatures in the building process.

The Wizard's Guide side has rules for creating magic items, and is very concrete about the time and money requirements. Featured are the prices for creating a decent selection of weapons, wands, staves, rods, rings and potions.