Gamer ADD: Fiend Folio + The Caves of Chaos

I am suffering a rather severe case of Gamer ADD and am struggling to keep my focus on any one project; however, one of this plethora has sort of emerged as something that I may very well have an opportunity to finish sometime in the nearish future. As I have noted, since WotC started to re-release its D&D library as .pdfs, Moldvay’s Basic Edition and B2 The Keep on the Borderland have hogged the 1 and 2 spots of top selling items over at RPGNow.

One of my most popular series of posts was an intellectual exercise to see how Moldvay’s Basic Edition would look like if the monster section only had creatures from the Fiend Folio. Although I did end up making Wandering Monster Tables and I did stock a dungeon using them, I never took the whole exercise to the next level: producing a version of the Caves of Chaos that would have come with that Fiend Folio’d version of Moldvay’s Basic Edition.

Given the popularity of both B2 and Moldvay’s wonderful little red book, I decided to take on the task. I can’t speak for other folks who write adventures, but there are those that fight you every inch of the way (my continuing struggles with my version of The Chateau des Faussesflammes immediately comes to mind) and those that seem to write themselves. When I started thinking about re-imaging the Caves of Chaos infested with Fiends from my favorite Folio, the adventure definitely fell into the latter category.

I have a similar variety of monsters in store, with a similar spread of HD, a similar amount of available treasure, a far more naturalistic make-up for why those monsters are there and a little over 40 more rooms to explore. Here is a little background to whet the appetite (and put a fire to my feet to get this thing done):

The Caves of Cormakir the Conjurer

Also called The Caves of Cormakir the Chaotic or The Caves of Chaos

Almost two decades ago, a group of adventurers happened upon a collection of caves on the edge of the Wilderness. They explored them, rid them of all the horrors that dwelt within and returned laden with the riches that adventure sometimes brings. One of their number, Cormakir the Conjurer, decided to make the caves his own with the intention of having them be a new vanguard against the forces of Chaos that lurked in the Wilderness.

Unbeknownst to all, there was something yet undiscovered within the caves that corrupted Cormakir to his core. Rather than making the caves a vanguard, he turned them into a laboratory for creating vile creatures intent on wrecking havoc upon Civilization. Fortunately, his experiments got out of hand before he was able to mass an army of Chaos and several of his menagerie escaped. Thus warned, his former companions and a small force of soldiers descended upon the caves and put an end to Cormakir and his depraved research.

Though the survivors went thoroughly through the Conjurer’s demesne, they could not find what it was that had corrupted him. Thus, they abandoned the caves for fear of being corrupted themselves.

That battle took place ten years ago. There is now growing evidence that there is a new master of the caves, who is sending out raiding parties of humanoids intent on not only wrecking havoc, but taking prisoners. A call has gone out throughout the area for a new generation of adventurers to return to the Caves of Cormakir the Conjurer and rid it of its evil once and for all.

SWCL + FF

Long before I ever went through the Monster Manual 2 to see what would happen to B/X if the only monsters available to Moldvay came from the MMII, I did the very same thought experiment with my personal favorite the Fiend Folio. Since I have already produced a version of SWCL that uses only MMII monsters, I thought I'd do the same with the monsters of the Fiend Folio. So, as a preview, here is the cover art:

Gamer ADD: Fiend Folio Part 1

Let me preface this by saying that one of my favorite poetic forms is haiku. It seems so easy — five syllables, seven syllable, five syllables; however, trying to create something truly beautiful with something so limited and small is a true challenge. This challenge often brings out my own creativity in a way that other forms of writing do not.

Thus, I was very much intrigued by Jeff Rient’s radical reduction of the 1ed PH weapon tables for his Wessex Campaign. Having had a lot of success, fun and creativity doing this sort of thing myself over the years I whole-heartedly agree with his assessment:

The lesson here might be that with a game as big as D&D one way of getting a handle on it is to cut it down to size.

Therefore, I happily followed him down the rabbit hole where he hypothesizes a campaign that only/primarily uses the Fiend Folio as its source for monsters. The FF had always been my favorite monster tome and I have gleefully used many of its inhabitants (even some of the goofiest).

This got my creative juices flowing and I am in full-on Gamer ADD mode. Given that I am not a huge fan of AD&D, the most likely way that I would ever implement such a concept would be with my favorite version of the game — B/X and its retro-clone LL. This gave me an intriguing way to further reduce the FF into a more easily digestible chunk — what would Basic D&D look like if it were only to use monsters from the FF?

Therefore, I went through the FF and gleaned only those monsters that might appear in the Wandering Monster Tables of a Basic D&D book — up to about 3+ Hit Dice . There are several very compelling implications to make about this list, so this will take multiple posts; however, I am going to begin with a criticism/concern.

As I was going through the FF and really trying to use it as a whole, one of its features really began to jump out at me — the length of each monster entry. It struck me that there are several truly creative and inspiring monsters like the Berbalang and Pênanggalan that I have never used because the flavor text was so long and complicated as to be virtually unusable for my style of fast and free play (who wants to skim through a page and a half of text to figure out how to use a randomly generated monster encounter?).

Curious, I did a cursory comparison of the FF to the MM. A quick (and probably inaccurate) count of monster headings in the Alphabetical Table of Contents revealed that the FF has about 161 and the MM about 212. The FF fits these headings into 91 pages while the MM does it in 97 pages. This means that while the FF averages less than 2 monsters per page (about 1.76), the MM has almost half an entry more per page (about 2.18). This only gets worse when one factors in monster headings that have a description followed by separate stat blocks like dragons and giants. The FF only manages to average 4 monsters per heading in these cases while the MM averages over 11 (11.4). In addition, the MM has a couple dozen entries that pack multiple stat blocks together (such as various animals with regular and giant versions). The FF has about three.

In other words, whereas the MM was one small step away from the bare-bones monster entries of OD&D and which made the MM one of those tomes that I constantly go back to no matter what version of the game I play, the FF is one (big?) step toward the over-complexity of later editions. Actually reading and re-reading some of these entries I am not sure if their length is a function of the complication of the game over time or simply an editorial need to fill enough space to justify a page count (probably both).

The implications of this for a Basic edition doesn’t bode well. Both the complexity and the verbosity of monster entries suggest a higher page count than 64, something I am not thrilled about. This is especially true when one considers that much of the complexity seems to be related to the growing canon of AD&D world/cosmology concepts like the various planes of existence.

The concept of the inner and outer planes has never set well with me, even before I became an Orthodox Christian. If, then, the page count beyond 64 is primarily taken up by cosmology and how it affects the game world not only are we one step closer to RPGs that spend more time telling us about their world than on mechanics (and thus limiting player freedom), but (more importantly) I may never have played the game.

Since my first exposure to D&D was with the Holmes edition, which itself was an exercise in DYI D&D, I have always been acutely aware of the freedom I had to mix and match as I please with the various components of the rules. AD&D (despite some of the claims of Gygax himself) was never the official way to play the game. Holmes gave me permission to fiddle as much as I wanted to. If my first exposure to D&D had been something I envision a Basic D&D flavored by the implications of only using FF monsters might be — complicated and constricting — I may have left D&D behind for greener pastures (the original Traveller comes to mind).

Gamer ADD: Fiend Folio Part 7

Wandering Monster Table Level 1

Among the other members of The International League of Fiend Foliasts, Chris of Vaults of Nagoh has already done an analysis of the Wandering Monster Tables (WMT) in the FF. I am not here to duplicate his work, rather I want to refashion the WMTs of Moldvay’s Basic Edition using FF monsters.

Thus, let us take a look at the WMT for Level 1 in Moldvay. For purposes of this analysis, I am categorizing the entries rather than listing specific monsters. The number in paranthesis is the HD of the creature and an asterisk indicates a special ability (such as poison):

1. human (1)
2. human (1)
3. Insect (1+2)
4. demi-human (1)
5. demi-human (1)
6. humanoid (1-1)
7. slime/ooze (2*)
8. demi-human (1-1)
9. insect (.5*)
10. humanoid (.5)
11. reptile (3+1)
12. humanoid (1)
13. mammal (2)
14. undead (1)
15. reptile (1*)
16. insect (2*)
17. fey (.5*)
18. flyer (1*)
19. human (1)
20. mammal (2+2)

It is actually quite surprising how easy it is to find a number of choices to fill many of these categories. In particular, flyers and humanoids with similar HD are in abundance; however, creativity is necessary in order to fill the human and demi-human slots since the FF has no entries for humans (no bandits, berserkers, traders, etc.) or traditional demi-humans (only drow and svirfneblin). I am going to take a page from Holmes here, and place classes for each of the human slots using level titles. For the demi-human slots, I will use my substitute demi-human race-as-class examples here. The biggest problem is the slime/ooze slot. All the various creatures in the FF that qualify for this category have much higher HD. If, however, one considers a slime/ooze to be akin to a plant, I figure a Yellow Musk Zombie could be an interesting substitute.

The result of this scheme might look like this (again, the number in parenthesis is HD and an asterisk is a special ability like poison):

1. Seer (2nd level MU)
2. Veteran (1st level fighter)
3. Assassin Bug (1+1)
4. Dakon (1+1)
5. Kenku (2)
6. Xvart (1-1)
7. Yellow Musk Zombie (2)
8. Quaggoth (1+2)
9. Goldbug (1*)
10. Jermlaine (.5)
11. Jaculi (1)
12. Bullywug (1)
13. Witherstench (2+2*)
14. Coffer Corpse (2*)
15. Iron Cobra (1*)
16. Garbug (2+2*)
17. Snyad (1-1)
18. Giant Bat (.5)
19. Footpad (2nd level thief)
20. Death Dog (2+1)

Overall, I think this list is a tad more frightening that the one found in Moldvay (one is more likely to get poisoned, ambushed, used as a reproductive host and/or have your treasure stolen). Running away must necessarily be part of an adventuring party’s repertoire (not a bad thing, actually).

Interestingly, though, there is a weird kind of bio-diversity here that seems absent in Moldvay. Whereas the WMT of Molday seems to yield goblinoids and giant animals, this FF Basic Edition WMT yields a wide variety of things — carnivorous plants, constructs and Chaos-touched animals as well as goblinoids and giant animals. I am very tempted to find me a map and roll me up some encounters to see just what kind of an ecology this WMT produces...

Gamer ADD: Fiend Folio Part 9

Wandering Monster Table Level 3

This is a continuation of my posts here and here. An interesting thing starts to happen with the Level 3 Wandering Monster Table (WMT) in Moldvay. The variety of monster types begins to expand. Trying to define some of them is actually quite challenging. For example, a Shadow is not undead in B/X and how does one categorize a Doppleganger? I was forced to categorize Medusae and Lycanthropes as humanoids because petrification is not common in the FF and there are no lycanthropes at all in the FF. For what it is worth, here is my attempt to strip out creature specifics and just leave general categories (the numbers in parentheses are HD and asterisks indicate special abilities, where two indicate more powerful abilities):

1. mammal (4)
2. insect (3+1)
3. humanoid (3+1)
4. scavenger (3+1*)
5. ambusher (4*)
6. insect (4*)
7. flyer (4+4*)
8. slime/ooze (4*)
9. flyer (3*)
10. construct (3)
11. humanoid (3*)
12. human (1**)
13. humanoid (4**)
14. NPC Party (var.)
15. slime/ooze (5*)
16. humanoid (4+1)
17. extra-planar (2+2*)
18. insect (4*)
19. undead (3**)
20. undead (3*)

Once again, the dearth of insects in the FF rears its head. I was forced to substitute some other kind of animal for every insect slot in this table. Surprisingly, the various weird categories had decent fits. The Skulk has a similar strategy as a Doppleganger, the Shocker is an extra-planar being like the Shadow and the Whipweed fits the scavenger slot as nicely as the Carrion Crawler does. The only other stretch I had to make was the Thoquua as a construct. The FF has a number of creatures that fit this category, but they either don’t have the right HD or are specifically not wandering monsters. Here is what I came up with:

1. Osquip (3+1)
2. Gorilla Bear (4)
3. Firenewt (2+2*)
4. Whipweed (2+4; 1+4)
5. Skulk (2*)
6. Fire Mephit (3+1*)
7. Grell (5*)
8. Stun Jelly (4*)
9. Mantari (1+1*)
10. Thoquua (3*)
11. Crabmen (3)
12. Swordsmaster (3rd level fighter)
13. Lava Children (4*)
14. NPC party (var.)
15. Algoid (5*)
16. Meazle (4)
17. Shocker (1+2*)
18. Firedrake (4*)
19. Sons of Kyuss (4*)
20. Huecuva (2*)

This WMT has a distinctly elemental feel to it. One of the reasons I chose the Thoquua as a construct was that it fit very nicely with the elemental theme. The one element that stands out is fire. Firenewts, Fire Mephits, and Firedrakes all have breath weapons. Thoquua and Lava Children have heat-related powers that can render various items useless. Another observation: there are a lot of multiple and special attacks on this list. PC parties better be ready to be creative because going toe-to-toe with this list of creatures is not a recipe for long-term success. If there isn’t an easy way to the surface from the third level of a dungeon, even one combat could place a party in danger of a TPK just trying to get out.

Gamer ADD: Fiend Folio Part 5

Dark Fantasy

As I have meditated upon this thought experiment — envisioning a Basic Edition that uses the FF for its monster section — I have pointed out the fact that it heavily implies science fantasy rather than pure or high fantasy. That does not mean, however, that the FF is purely science fiction or exlusively science fantasy. Take a look at the number of monsters that are distinctly or peripherally creatures of the fey:

• Al-mi’raj
• Booka
• Carbuncle
• Dark Creeper & Dark Stalker
• Dire Borby
• Forlarren
• Galltrit
• Gryph
• Hellcat
• Hound of Ill Omen
• Kelpie
• Killmoulis
• Meazel
• Mephit
• Mite
• Needleman
• Poltergeist
• Screaming Devilkin
• Scarecrow
• Skulk
• Snyad

What is striking about this list is that the alignments of these creatures are overwhelmingly Neutral and Evil. Yes, both the Booka and Killmoulis are listed as Chaotic Good, but only parenthetically (their primary alignment is Neutral).

This overall orientation suggests that the fey are indifferent to the human codition if not downright malevolent. Indeed, some are positively demonic.

This is a world where the Summer Court, if it exists at all, does not care one whit what happens to humanity. The Winter Court is happily tormenting the civilized world if not plotting its demise.

Personally, I hold that this is as it should be. I don’t know exactly when, but somewhere in our literary and popular culture, fairies became something cute, cuddly and helpful. One need only look at the original Grimm’s Fairytales to get a taste at how gruesome the fey were once understood to be.

There was a time in my life when I was heavily involved in theatre and was even trained in dramaturgy. I was particularly interested in Shakespeare and have often fantasized about doing A Midsummer Night’s Dream as horror. There is a BBC production that comes close, but I always wanted to push it further.

Thus, while it is quite possible to understand the generic campaign world of a Basic Edition using the FF to be science fantasy, there is still a strong fantasy element (via its depiction of the fey) to the monster section. And, according to my own proclivities, it is happily very dark indeed.

Gamer ADD: Fiend Folio Part 10

Stocking the Dungeon

When I put together the Wandering Monster Tables (WMT) for a FF Basic Edition, I promised to find a map and stock it using those tables. At the time, I had in mind the maps of Dyson Logos, whose hand drawn maps have found their way into my games on more than one occasion and also spearheaded the geomorph revival that gets put to such good use over at Dave’s Mapper. Unfortunately, Dyson’s recent output has been rather sparse and can usually fit on a 3x5 index card. Undaunted, I decided to string together several of his recent maps to produce a large enough map to really give my WMTs a good test run. I had to fiddle with the maps a little in order to make them fit, but here is the result:

For those interested (and to give Dyson proper credit), the originals are here, here, here, here, here and here.

I used the dungeon stocking table from Moldvay with one addition. Holmes provides a table that allows wandering monsters from tables above or below the current dungeon level. Since I had WMTs for levels 1-3, I wanted to take advantage of them all and so utilized this table from Holmes.

Here are the results (with initial thoughts in parentheses):

Rooms with traps: 1-7
Rooms with traps guarding treasure: 8-17
Rooms with unguarded treasure: 18-20
Rooms with specials: 21-32
Rooms with monsters sans treasure:
33. Goldbug
34. Snyad
35. Iron Cobra (was this created by the Conjurers in 46 & 61 or is it a remnant from earlier occupants?)
36. Veterans
37. Warriors
38. Bullywugs (spies from more dungeon levels accessed by following the river?)
39. Dakon (trying to get his treasure back, I assume)
40. Garbug
41. Garbug
42. Firesnake
43. Giant Bats (or Gorbels if you happen to be Scott)
44. Death Dog
45. Death Dog
46. Conjurer (one of two — brother/sister combo that now rules the dungeon?)
47. Kenku (are they the friendly kind or the slaver kind?)
48. Flind
Rooms with monsters and treasure:
49. Quaggoths (did these steal the Dakon’s trasure?)
50. Snyad
51. Norker
52. Firenewt
53. Death Dog
54. Grimlocks (some of the original occupants?)
55. Assassin Bugs
56. Coffer Corpse (the reason there was construction here in the first place?)
57. Footpads (lying in wait to backstab those in combat with the Veterans in 63).
58. Kenku (helping the other Kenku)
59. Meazle (plotting against the Conjurers?)
60. Witherstench
61. Conjurer
62. Flind
63. Veterans

The fun part of this whole exercise is that this dungeon doesn’t feel all that different from a classic sample dungeon for a Basic Edition — its a pair of Magic Users who employ some evil humans and humanoids as guards. However, all the various familiar elements are twisted just enough to be unfamiliar and therefore dangerous. I especially like how the demi-human stand-ins (Dakon, Kenku and Quaggoth) don’t necessarily seem out of place or are automatically an encounter that will help out an adventuring party.

EDIT: Since there has been an interest, the map above is now a larger version and I am including this version sans numbers:

Gamer ADD: Monster Manual II Part 11

Stocking the "Dungeon"

As I did for my similar meditation on the Fiend Folio, I wanted to find a map of a dungeon to stock using the Wandering Monster Tables I produced using monsters from the MMII. As before, I went to the maps of Dyson Logos to see if anything there inspired. I did not find any "dungeon" that satisfied, mainly because the idea of a dungeon, in a traditional D&D sense, isn't really something that an MMII-based Basic D&D automatically assumes. Most of the monsters therein are outdoor creatures that wouldn't be found crawling through the corridors of a long-lost dwarven mine.

I did, however, find these two maps here and here. I fiddled with them in order to make an odd looking two story manor that one might find out in the wilderness of an MMII-based Basic D&D world:

As before, I used the table provided by Holmes that randomly determines which WMT (1st through 3rd) to use so that I could take advantage of all three WMTs I produced with MMII monsters. Here are the results with some initial thoughts in parenthesis:

Rooms 1-13 are Empty
Rooms 14-15 have Unguarded Treasure
Rooms 16-21 have Specials
Rooms 22-26 have Traps
Rooms 27-28 have Treasure guarded by Traps
Rooms with Monsters sans Treasure:
29. Gripple (a prisoner?)
30. Pedipalp (charmed as some kind of guard?)
31. Vulchling
32. Footpad
33. Seer
Rooms with Monsters guarding Treasure:
34. Animal Skeleton (a servant of the Seer?)
35. Footpad
36. Constrictor Snake
37. Veteran
38. Vulchling
39. Scorpion (a kind of watchdog for the Footpad in Room 35?)
40. Hargin Elemental (summoned to guard the Footpad/Vulchling gang's hoard?)

This has shaped up to be a hideout of a gang of Thieves that employs Vulchlings, human Fighters and a Magic-user. The leader seems to have figured out a way to train giant insects and they have a beef with the local fey.

And for those of you who want a version of the map I made for this post sans numbers here it is:

Gamer ADD: Monster Manual II Part 8

Magic Items

Something I never did when I hypothesized a Moldvay Basic D&D with a Fiend Folio monster section was to see how that would affect the magic items detailed in the Treasure section. This was largely due to the fact that the magic items were fairly portable and made sense. Ironically, an MMII-based treasure section needs to be addressed because there are several magic items that require some kind of re-imagining.

Specifically, there are three items in Moldvay that have no meaning in an MMII world:

• Sword +1, +2 against lycanthropes
• Scrolls of Protection from Lycanthropes
• Gauntlets of Ogre Power

While there are lycanthropes in the MMII (foxwomen, seawolves and weresharks), they are either too powerful for a basic edition or would be better suited for an expert edition with its emphasis on wilderness exploration. Thus, there are no lycanthropes in the monster list that would appear in an MMII-based basic edition. Thus, any items specifically created to fight them are rendered irrelevant. In addition, the only ogres in the MMII are aquatic. Thus, like the MMII lycanthropes, they are far more appropriate for an expert edition. Therefore, this item needs to have a different reference point.

There are also a number of magic items that do not have the same import in an MMII world that they do in a normal D&D world:

• Sword +1, +3 against undead
• Sword +1, +3 against dragons
• Scroll of Protection from Undead
• Spell Scrolls
• Potion of Growth

As I have mentioned before, undead are scarce in the MMII and almost all of them are walking corpses created by necromancers. They do not have the frightening abilities that normal D&D undead do: level-draining, paralysis and disease. Thus, there really isn’t the same kind of incentive to create a magic item specifically designed to defeat them.

Unlike the MMI and the FF, the MMII does do not offer up a traditional view of dragons. Cloud and mist dragons are neutral creatures that literally live in the sky, far away from the cares of the world. Faerie dragons are small creatures that pose more of a threat as a spell users than as a fire-breathing monster. Shadow dragons are one of the few creatures in the MMII that have any kind of level-draining powers and certainly do not go around burning down villages.

As a consequence, there really wouldn’t be the same kind of demand for swords specifically made to fight these creatures.

Spell scrolls in Moldvay are specifically arcane in nature and are therefore listed as “magic-user/elf.” While I probably would not change this item at all for an MMII-based basic edition, it is worth noting that the only PCs that could use these are magic-users.

Finally, it should also be noted that a Potion of Growth is basically a watered-down version of what an MMII-dwarf PC can already do. This raises a question as to how these potions are created (from dwarf blood?) and how dwarves would feel about their existence and use.

The biggest generalized threat in an MMII-world are arcane spell users: necromancers, fey, chaotic elves, chaotic dwarves, faerie dragons and elementals. Thus, there would be a demand for Scrolls of Protection and Swords that did well against spell users. The latter already exists in Moldvay, but is a +1/+2 weapon. In an MMII world, this should be a +1/+3 weapon.

In terms of disease, mind control and being transformed into a minion, the biggest threat in an MMII world are plants and fungi. Items designed to fight these creatures would replace those originally intended to fight the undead.

It should be mentioned that there is a substantial reptilian threat in an MMII world. Dinosaurs and Ophidians are nothing to sneeze at.

Finally, the only basic-edition friendly creatures in the MMII that could inspire the idea of strength in the same way an ogre does is the cyclopskin. Without any other cyclops available to be kin to, however, I am just going to call them cyclops.

Therefore, here is a list of magic items that would be found in an MMII basic edition and the items they replace:

• Sword +1, +2 vs. reptiles replaces Sword +1, +2 vs. lycanthropes
• Sword +1, +2 vs. dragons replaces Sword +1, +2 vs. spell users
• Sword +1, +3 vs. plants replaces Sword +1, +3 vs. undead
• Sword +1, +3 vs. spell users replaces Sword +1, +3 vs. dragons
• Scroll of Protection from Plants replaces Scroll of Protection from Lycanthropes
• Scroll of Protection from Spell Users replaces Scroll of Protection from Undead
• Gauntlets of Cyclops Strength replaces Gauntlets of Ogre Power

Gamer ADD: Fiend Folio Part 6

Frogthulhu

When I was a kid and just learning to read what my children now call “chapter books,” I spent a lot of time in my local library perusing books in the mythology section. Of particular interest to me were stories from various Native American tribes. This was something I had yet to encounter and I found them both fascinating and horrifying.

The one thing I vividly remember about these books was an illustration of the Spider Woman. Though not necessarily understood to be a monster, this illustration certainly made me think of her as one. Ironically, despite my fascination with this depiction of the Spider Woman, I have never been a big fan of D&D’s Spider Woman — Loth. This is, in part, because of her association with the drow, which I have always found . . . boring.

This is, in part, because my childhood imagination was better than a bunch of dark skinned elves. The Spider Woman (and by extension Loth) imply the horrifying notion that creatures of the insect and arachnid worlds not only look completely alien, they are alien. They are manifestations of forces in the universe intent on destroying humanity — Cthulhu in an exoskeleton, in other words.

I mention this because though there is a (short) list of creatures in the FF that hail from the lower planes, none of them invoke the hostile alien intelligence that my young mind saw in that illustration of the Spider Woman (and later in the writings of HPL). There is, however, one group that can — the grossly underutilized Slaad.

Though their alignment is technically Chaotic Neutral, not only have I argued in the past that there is so little difference between Chaotic Neutral and Chaotic Evil that they might as well be the same, who could argue that the Lord of Entropy and the Lord of the Insane (the Slaadi Lords Ssendam and Ygorl) could easily be seen as despots of the lower planes?

What sets the Slaad apart, however, is that they are basically all frogs. Slaadi do for amphibians what the Spider Woman does (and Loth ought to do) for insects and arachnids. They transform an entire classification of animals into an ancient alien menace determined to wipe out humanity.

This is reinforced by the fact that there are several monsters within the pages of the FF that could easily be qualified as amphibian (and therefore Slaadi minions):

• Babbler
• Blindheim
• Bullywug
• Firenewt
• Firetoad
• Vodyanoi

One of the things I really like about this understanding of amphibians is the way it plays with classic tales like the Princess and the Frog. In fact, I do believe there is an adventure in there somewhere . . .

Gamer ADD: Monster Manual II Part 1

A few years ago, I did a series of posts based around the idea of seeing what would happen to Moldvay’s Basic D&D if the Fiend Folio had been the source of all the monsters instead of the more traditional ones found in the Monster Manual and the monster section of my favorite version of D&D.

As happens when I start thinking about gaming and actually gaming, my brain jumps from one idea to another in what can only be described as Gamer Attention Deficit Disorder. I was recently thumbing through the Monster Manual II in search of inspiration for some 5e monsters, when my brain began to think on the possibility of repeating the aforementioned exercise with the MMII instead of the FF.

What makes this possibility interesting to me is that the MMII has always been my least favorite of all the monster manuals. This is in part because I did not buy it upon release in hopes that I could be surprised as a player when new monsters came crawling out of the woodwork. Unfortunately, so much of the work in the MMII is derivative that I only found myself disappointed rather than surprised.

When I finally got my hands on one, I found that the collection was as boring and disappointing as I’d feared. Like its predecessors, the MMII has an overarching theme. The MMI is chuck full of mythological and literary monsters. The FF has a definite sci-fi vibe to it. The MMII is an expansion of Gygax’s underdark and planar cosmology. Whereas I am a huge fan of mythology and the literature of science fiction and fantasy, I have no love for either Gygax’s version of the underdark or the various D&D planes. Indeed, when I am world building, these are two concepts that are left on the cutting room floor almost every time.

As a result, I don’t find any really iconic monsters in the MMII that demand entire campaigns or even adventures to be structured around. I am constantly fighting the the preconceptions that come with the theme: the underdark and the planes. If experience has taught me anything when it comes to D&D, however, it is that there are many hidden gems within even the most familiar of texts.

Therefore, I am actually looking forward to this series of posts. I can’t wait to find those gems that I have passed by all these years because of my own disdain for the MMII.

Gamer ADD: In Need of Some Fey

In the wake of receiving the Swords & Wizardry Legion Packet, I have been hit pretty hard with Gamer ADD, so much so that I have persisted in trying to put together campaign ideas for the map provided with the SWLP despite the fact that the last couple of weeks have been brutally busy for yours truly.

Besides the issue of scale, the first issue I had to deal with was choosing which part of the map to focus on to build a campaign around. In my experience, an area of 4x6 five to seven-mile hexes is plenty to run a goodly amount of a campaign with. I decided to focus in on the village of Darnagal because of its proximity to several different evocative features on the map:

• Shorsai Forest (which just screams fey to me)
• Isle of the Blessed Serpent (which is a mid-high level adventure waiting to happen)
• The Haunted Keep (which sounds like a great excuse to make the top levels of a mega-dungeon)
• The Sacred Glade (which just solidifies the idea that fey are going to play a big role in the campaign)

In addition, The Great Salt Marsh and the Ruins of Varagost, though outside the 4x6 hex area I will originally focus on are close enough to suggest a high-level adventure area for later in the campaign once players start to get the itch to explore far and wide.

When I start a campaign, I generally like to make a few rules for myself so that I keep things focused and by delineating limits on what I will allow myself to do, I tend to be more creative with what little I am left with. Since this is campaign is inspired by S&W and Frog God Games, I decided to limit myself to the Tome of Horrors Complete, one of my favorite monster collections of all time. In terms of sheer inspiration (there are many campaigns I would run out that book if I could) I rate second only to the Fiend Folio and that is primarily because the Tome converts and updates a lot of the material in the FF to the OGL.

Since the area I have chosen evokes the fey so strongly, I decided to go through the Tome and collect data on all the various creatures therein that could arguably be called fey. Two things struck me:

• The vast majority of fey creatures are neutral.
• There was a pattern of powers that was reasonably consistent.

This gives rise to two thoughts:

• The fey are not going to be either the protagonists or the antagonists of this campaign. The main difference between seelie and unseelie fey is whether or not they are willing to cooperate with humans. Regardless, their main goal is to protect their own. If a party is killed off by fey, it is because they did something to threaten the fey domain; however, the party could potentially go through an entire campaign without one real whiff of a fey presence as long as the fey interest is protected.
• I am not a big fan of the way D&D and its clones categorize and portray the fey. By having both brownies and buckawn (which are described as being related to brownies) there is a strong implication that these two populations are separate entities, even if they are related. When I think of fey, I think of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream where the fey kingdom is portrayed as being a hodgepodge of all kinds of fey creatures. Since all of the various fey in the Tome of Horrors are quite similar in power and scope, I decided to boil them all down to a single monster entry.

Arthur Rackham's The Meeting of Oberon and Titania

Shorsai Fey
HD 1d6
AC 3[16]
Attack Weapon (1d3)
Save 16
AL N
Move 12 (+special, see below)
CL/XP 2/30
Special: see below

Shorsai Fey come in a wide variety, but all have the following abilities:

• Magic Resistance 25%
• Invisibility (self) at will
• Detect Good/Evil at will
• Illusion Magic (choose one of the following: Confusion, Mirror Image or Phantasmal Force) once per day
• Light/Darkness once per day
• ESP once per day
• Poison Use (Seelie use White Moonberry Poison which induces sleep on a failed save while Unseelie like to use purple Moonberry Poison which does 1d8 damage on a failed save)
• Each individual Shorsai Fey will have a special move that they can do in their favored environment which allows them a Move of 24. For example, a water fey would have a move of 24 in a river while a wood fey would have a move of 24 in forested areas.

To reiterate: these fey are what I like to call background noise. They will react to events in the world and may prove boon or bane to a party depending upon whether or not their activities are seen as a threat.

Saintly Saturday: St. Leo the Great

Awake, O man, and recognize the dignity of thy nature. Recollect thou wast made in the image of God, which although it was corrupted in Adam, was yet re-fashioned in Christ. — Sermon On the Feast of Nativity VII

…recognize thy parentage, to become free after slavery, to be promoted from being an outcast to sonship: so that, thou who wast born of corruptible flesh, mayest be reborn by the Spirit of God, and obtain through grace what thou hadst not by nature, and, if thou acknowledge thyself the son of God by the spirit of adoption, dare to call God Father. — Sermon On the Feast of Nativity II

Today is the Feast of St. Leo the Great, who I count among my friends. This may seem strange, considering that Leo lived and died fifteen centuries ago; however, we Orthodox Christians believe he is alive in Christ and I have gotten to know Leo through his writing.

I do not have fond memories of Christmas growing up. My family is small, estranged and far-flung. The two largest emotions I associate with my childhood Christmases are anger and disappointment. There were always fights and presents never lived up to my own imagination or expectation. Thus, I have a real tendency to be very cynical about the holiday — especially with the way it is treated by 21st century America.

A number of years ago, I found it necessary to do some research on Christmas. In the course of this project, I ran into St. Leo and his sermons on the Nativity. He convinced me, through his love, his enthusiasm and his eloquence that Christmas is indeed one of the great Christian feasts that deserved my own love and enthusiasm. I often go back to his writing in order to have my friend remind me how important it really is. For that, I am eternally grateful to him.

I mention this as a prelude to this post, because St. Leo is most famous for his writing, specifically a letter to Flavius the Bishop of Constantinople which is more popularly known as The Tome of Leo. The Church of the fifth century continued to be embroiled in Christological controversies. The Tome of Leo was written in response to the Christology of Eutyches, a monophysite (meaning one nature and which over-emphasized Christ’s divinity to the exclusion of his humanity).

The Tome was famously ignored out of hand by the Second Council of Ephesus (A.D. 449), where it wasn’t even allowed to be read. St. Leo would go on to call the council a “den of thieves” and it went down in history as the Robber Council. The Tome of Leo was finally adopted as orthodox at the Council of Chalcedon (A.D. 451), which would later be ratified as the Fourth Ecumenical Council.

It occurs to me that though tomes filled with lost knowledge and revelation are one of the great tropes of both this hobby and of the pulp fantasy/sci-fi which it uses as its inspiration, these tomes often contain some forbidden knowledge of great evil. The Necronomicon immediately comes to mind. Therefore, there is a lot of room for similar tomes that, rather than containing the forbidden, are revelation.

Since I am in the middle of a thought experiment where I am imagining a version of Basic D&D that only uses the monsters from the Fiend Folio, I think it apropos to imagine a campaign set in the distant future that such an edition strongly suggests. Personally, I find it quite compelling to throw a copy of The Tome of Leo at a world based on Vance’s Dying Earth. What kind of impact would such a text have on a people who had forgotten Christ? Who would want it found? Who would want it destroyed? An entire series of adventures could center around the party being one of many that are trying to find the Tome in order to protect or destroy it.

The aspect of this I like best is the implied end game. This isn’t just about finding the Tome, but also about what happens afterwards. Power structures will be threatened and created and the PCs will be right in the middle of things. It is a great excuse to break out ACKS.

***

The Tome of the Lion

This is a gold covered tome some 18” wide and 24” tall and 4” thick, decorated with the image of a lion made entirely of precious stones. The interior is an illuminated holy text along with various commentaries. Based on these materials alone, it is worth at least 50,000gp and even more to those who share the faith of the text.

This book, however, also radiates of magic. Its powers become manifest when the tome is placed upon a corpse. The lion will animate, roar and allow the person who placed the tome to speak with the dead. The lion will be the mouth piece of the corpse in question. The spell will allow 1d4+1 questions to be asked, after which the lion will go back to its original form. There is a 1 in 4 chance that the dead questioned will answer falsely. This chance goes up if the one doing the questioning is responsible for the corpse’s death. This power is usable once per day.

Gamer ADD: Fiend Folio Part 4

The Wilderness Personified

One of the interesting consequences of having the name Dungeons & Dragons is that regardless of whether or not a particular edition is geared toward introductory characters who have no business even talking to a dragon, dragons have to be part of the game. I have mused about this before, one of the striking things about Moldvay’s Basic Edition is that the average HD of the monsters is 3+1. The Holmes edition is even nastier with an average HD of 4+4. There are meant to be monsters that are way beyond the ability of low-level PCs to deal with. Dragons fit that bill.

Though dragons do show up in the FF, they are of a whole different cloth than the now familiar chromatic and metallic dragons of traditional D&D, who personify the great powers of good and evil, who speak with ancient wisdom and hate; who might be able to cast spells and even polymorph into human form to walk among their lessors. The dragons of the FF are inspired more by the Eastern conception of the mythical beasts and every single one of them is some shade of neutral.

Whereas the chromatic and metallic dragons are characterized by their breath weapons, the powers of FF dragons are characterized by the ability to manipulate nature itself. Earthquakes, burning water, weather control, control scaled animals and ice storms can all be found in the flavor texts. Some of these creatures can do these things at will. In other words, FF dragons seem to personify the cruel indifference of nature when natural disasters reduce humanity to dust.

This calls attention to the sheer number of creatures within the FF that have some kind of elemental-type of flavor or power. Those that might appear on the Wandering Monsters Tables of a Basic edition include:

• Fire Newt
  
• Fire Snake
  
• Hoar Fox
  
• Ice Lizard
  
• Mephit
  
• Shocker
  
• Thoqqua
  
• Thork
  
• Ice Troll
  
• Vortex
  

Given that the FF also details five Elemental Princes of Evil, it is fair to say that monsters are personifications of Fallen Nature itself. They are the face and hands of The Wilderness fighting the incursion of Civilization. At the center of all of this are those terrifying and indifferent dragons, who personify natural disasters. PCs, then, represent humanity’s attempts (in vain?) to understand, control and minimize the impact of nature itself even as nature fights back.

Though the classic trope of Civilization vs. The Wilderness is part and parcel to virtually every edition of the game, this particular version (again) has more in common pulp science fiction than it does with traditional D&D game worlds. Whereas Greyhawk is all about Good vs. Evil and St. Cuthbert vs. Iuz, the implied world of a Basic Edition using the FF for monsters suggests a world in the distant future where humanity is not just struggling against chaos and evil, but against the inevitability of its own demise — a dying earth ready to be consumed by the fire of a red giant star or a long forgotten space colony on the verge of being hurled into the void. In this context, PCs don’t necessarily represent heroes, but rather that glorious human defiance in face of inexorable defeat. It is a dark and depressing vision, but with that defiance comes a small glimmer of hope and maybe even the possibility of not just survival, but victory.

Gamer ADD: Fiend Folio Part 2.5

Optional Race-as-class

For those who want to embrace the science fantasy/mutant future weirdness that I suggested in Part 2 for the generic D&D world of a Basic edition that uses the FF for its monster section, I offer this alternate race-as-class:

Qullan

This is a bit of a stretch, which is why I didn’t include it in Part 2. Normally, I would dismiss Qullan out of hand because they would make horrible PCs — they emanate confusion and immediately attack, without question, all strangers. However, their use of individualized war paint of wildly contrasting colors and their insanity suggest that they might be clones — the insanity is a result of genetic degradation over time and the war paint is a means by which to identify themselves as individuals.

Making this assumption allows the use of the Replicant class from Section 9: Mutants & Mazes in Mutant Future. For those that aren’t familiar, they are clones that exhibit various mutations, which might result in some wonderfully weird looking PCs. I have always assumed that such a race might very well be obsessed with cleansing these mutations from their genetic code. The Qullan could therefore represent what happens every time the Replicants have tried to remove those mutations from the genetic material they use to reproduce. This also gives PCs a good reason for adventuring — they are seeking out ancient technologies that can help them do genetic experiments without resulting in Qullan (whether or not this is even possible may very well be a central theme of a campaign).

Gamer ADD: Fiend Folio Part 8

Wandering Monster Table Level 2

This is a continuation of what I started yesterday. Although I am itching to stock a dungeon with yesterday’s Wandering Monster Table (WMT), I am going to hold off until I complete all three levels of WMTs that would be found in a FF Basic Edition. In his advice for stocking dungeons, Moldvay suggests that there always be at least a couple of encounters that are placed rather than randomly determined. For these encounters, I like to look at and even roll on WMTs a level or two higher than the current dungeon level — a strategy akin to making them “boss” encounters.

Here is the WMT for Level 2 from Moldvay with the specific monsters stripped out. The numbers in the parentheses are HD and an asterisk indicates a special ability such as poison:

1. insect (2*)
2. human (1+1*)
3. mammal (3+2)
4. demi-human (1+1*)
5. undead (2*)
6. humanoid (2)
7. slime/ooze (3*)
8. humanoid (1+1)
9. reptile (4+2)
10. humanoid (2+1)
11. humanoid (2)
12. human (1 to 3)
13. fey (2)
14. insect (1*)
15. mammal (2)
16. reptile (2*)
17. insect (3*)
18. humanoid (2*)
19. human (1 to 3)
20. undead (2)

I will continue my strategy with humans — use classes and indicate level using level titles. A number of other challenges arise due to the variety of monsters in the FF. Undead are scarce, thus the Coffer Corpse will make a second appearance on Level 2. For a similar reason, Kenku will also make a second appearance; however, with the extra HD comes spell use. Therefore, they are not quite the same.

This is also true of the Garbug — Level 2 will see a stronger variety of this strange arthropod; however, one thing that I am beginning to notice about the FF is its dearth of insects. Yes, they do exist, but while traditional D&D monster sections have a good variety of insects that populate a number of HD ranges, the FF is spotty at best. One strategy might be to take a lower HD insect and increase the number encountered; however, I like more variety.

Therefore, I decided on placing the Gryph in one of the insect slots because using adventurers as a reproductive host seems to be a popular trope (and quite insect-like). I ran into a similar conundrum with reptiles. There are quite a few in the FF, but they are all higher HD. Thus, I went with one of my favorite FF monsters, the Volt. Here is what I came up with:

1. Gryph (2*)
2. Conjurer (3rd level MU)
3. Hoar Fox (2*)
4. Kenku (3*)
5. Huecuva (2*)
6. Qullan (2)
7. Enveloper (3*)
8. Norker (1+2)
9. Fire Snake (2*)
10. Ogrillon (2)
11. Grimlock (2)
12. Warrior (2nd level fighter)
13. Dire Corby (2)
14. Pernicon (.5*)
15. Rothé (2)
16. Volt (2+1*)
17. Garbug (3+1*)
18. Flind (2+3)
19. Robber (3rd level thief)
20. Coffer Corpse (2*)

In a strange way, this table feels a little more familiar than the Level 1 WMT. The humanoids, while still very different from your everyday run-of-the-mill orc, are still somewhat familiar. Norkers are akin to hobgoblins. Flinds are a variety of gnolls. Ogrillons are literally a cross between orcs and ogres. Even the strange looking Qullan remind me of the type of berserker I’d expect to see two levels down in a dungeon.

Of course, this doesn’t stop me from realizing that there is a kind of dangerous Alice in Wonderland kind of feel to this list. Everything may seem familiar, but beneath the familiar facade is a dark twist that contains a deadly surprise if you are not careful. I am particularly interested to see that Ghostbusters moment when a party realizes that the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man really is demonic and wants to absorb you and use your powers against your friends...

Gamer ADD: Fiend Folio Part 3

Putting the Scare back into the Undead

One of the recurring challenges in D&D is that the Turning ability of clerics tends to take a lot of drama out of encounters with the undead. As a result, they normally do not garner the kind of fear and loathing that the undead ought to. If a cleric (or clerics) get into mid-level and higher, then one has to be creative in order to make undead encounters even interesting.

One of the reasons that I have always liked the FF is that the undead found therein have some bite. Given a little bit of fiddling, undead in a Basic Edition that uses the FF for its monsters could prove to be very frightening indeed.

Let’s begin with a list of all the undead in the FF:

• Apparition
• Coffer Corpse°
• Crypt Thing*†
• Eye of Fear and Flame*
• Huecuva°
• Penanggelan≠
• Poltergeist†≠
• Revenant†≠
• Sheet Ghoul§
• Sheet Phantom§
• Skeletal Warrior
• Sons of Kyuss

Some notes about this list:

* = though the description seems to indicate undead, these are not specifically described as undead. 

† = these creatures are not really meant to be wandering monsters — crypt things and poltergeists are tied to a specific encounter area; revenants are tied to a specific encounter type. 

§ = sheet phantoms and sheet ghouls do not strike me as undead creatures, despite the fact that they are described as such. Their powers and abilities are much more akin to slimes and oozes. Indeed, the sheet phantom is said to be related to the lurker above and the sheet ghoul functions much more like the non-undead yellow musk zombie than a ghoul. Therefore, I am going to treat them this way because it makes for better undead. 

≠ = these creatures either are completely immune to Turning or there are circumstances when Turning will not work on them. 

° = these might appear on Wandering Monster Tables in a Basic edition.

If we get rid of the sheet ghoul and phantom, the lowest HD undead are the coffer corpse, the heucuva and the poltergeist. Since the latter is normally associated with a single spot and cannot be Turned if it is in that spot, poltergeists don’t really function as undead creatures and can easily be recast as dark fey or some other kind of magical activity.

This leaves the low power undead spectrum to the Coffer Corpse and the Heucuva. Check out their nastiness:

• The Coffer Corpse can only be hit by magic weapons.
• The Coffer Corpse is treated as a wraith on the Turn tables.
• The Coffer Corpse can cause fear.
• The Huecuva can only be hit by silver or magic weapons.
• The Huecuva is treated as a wight on the Turn tables.
• The Huecuva can polymorph self 3x per day.
• The Huecuva can give its victims a nasty disease.

Again, given the fiddling with the undead list from the FF, these are the weakest undead in the game.

There are a few interesting consequences to this:

1. Despite a complete absence of lycanthropes, silvered weapons would still be on the equipment list because they might do damage to the undead.
2. First level clerics are incapable of Turning the undead. At second level, they can Turn a Huecuva on an 11.
3. The undead do not drain levels, but they still have some diseased ways of making you either dead or one of their own.

The long and short: if you see the undead run for your lives! Adventurers will not be capable of having a shot at survival against the undead until at least third level and even then only if the Referee is nice and gives out a few magic weapons.

It must be noted that this renders clerics, as written in B/X, very weak at low levels. They will have no ability to Turn undead and no spells at first level, reducing the incentive to play one. I realize that this will suit many folks in the OSR and will also better justify the low XP requirements for the class. Personally, I would be tempted to use the LL version of the cleric, which at least gets a spell at first level; however, given the mechanical distance this undead list implies for clerics from those of other editions, I would be inclined to chuck it all and use Talysman’s non-spellcasting version where clerics do everything using the Turning mechanic.

In other words, the undead are properly scary and the cleric becomes its own unique miracle-working class rather than something somewhere in-between a fighter and a magic-user.

Gamer ADD: Fiend Folio Part 2

No Dwarf, Elf or Halfling PCs

There are no halflings or halfling-derivative races within the FF. The only elves are Drow, who live deep beneath the earth and have little incentive to come to the surface (all their cool toys are broken once they see the light of day). The only dwarf-relatives are the svirfneblin of which we know this from the flavor text:

Only males have ever been seen and those only deep beneath the ground.

Given that in other editions, the various demi-humans that were available as PC races or classes show up in the monster sections, a Basic edition using the FF as its monster section would not have any dwarf, elf or halfling PCs. The latter due to a complete absence and the first two because there is no justification for drows or svirfneblins to go wandering with surface dwellers.

While I am hugely tempted to leave this at that (in my old age I tend to lean toward human-centric campaigns), I am guessing that (like me) there are gamers from every generation whose very first character was something other than a human. In order to scratch that itch (and to start making assumptions about what a generic D&D world might look like through the lens of this hypothetical rule set), there are several candidates for non-human PC race-as-classes:

Aarakocra

Even though this is one of the few good creatures found in the FF and it is reasonably anthropomorphic and has a hit die comparable to the elf in the MM, I have to reject it out of hand. The reason is found in the flavor text:

Aarakocra are extremely susceptible to claustrophobia.

Since Basic D&D is all about exploring dungeons, a PC race that won’t go underground sort of defeats the purpose.

Dakon

Although the base damage for these intelligent apes seems high (1d10 x2), the base damage for an elf in the MM is 1d10, the HD 1+1 and they can use spells. Dakon also have an HD 1+1, are lawful, speak common, are on good terms with lawful humans and can be found in a variety of environments except near bodies of water. One flavor text I very much like is this:

…the dakon will never attack except in self-defense or to recover stolen treasure from it.

This immediately brings to mind the dwarves of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and suggests that the dakon will make a very good substitute for dwarves. In fact, one could simply use the same basic stats or (as I might be tempted to) use the White Ape Class from the RCC.

Kenku

Again, the base stats for these bird-men appear to be on the powerful side; however, using the MM elf as a model, it is an easy thing to say to the average player: sure you start out worse, but you are going to end up being a whole lot better. There is even a flavor text that suggests that younger (and therefore weaker) kenku are far more prone to going on adventures:

Particularly adventurous kenku have been known to use [shape shift] to assume the form of a god and accept offerings from credulous worshippers, and this is but one example of the bizarre uses to which the kenku, and particularly the younger of the species, have put this power.

Since kenku can cast spells, they make an interesting stand-in for elves; however, some of the elven abilities would need to be traded out for the kenku abilities:

• Flight 18”
• Shape shift 1/30 days for up to seven days in a row.
• Pass as human via a disguise 50% of the time.
• They don’t appear to be able to speak, though they seem to speak to each other via telepathy. (For purposes of making them PCs, this last one can be done away with or have PC versions be a minority that can speak.)

Though these might be a bit on the powerful side, given that kenku are mischievous and prone to kidnapping as a means of making a living, there would be a powerful social stigma that PCs would have to deal with.

Quaggoth

These white, shaggy bipeds have an HD 1+2, are neutral and speak common (if haltingly). PCs could represent either the most intelligent of the quaggoths or half-breeds. Though they are much taller (7’ +), the fact that quaggoths are immune to poison suggests that they are a good substitute for halflings (and could therefore use these stats). Another alternative is to use the White Ape Hybrid Class from RCC (which combines fighter and thief abilities).

If used, these race-as-classes firmly move the generic D&D world away from high fantasy and a medieval european analog. In essence, these three are intelligent ape-, bird- and bear-men, suggesting a science fantasy world in the distant future where these races evolved through either mutation or experimentation. Such a world would have more in common with Vance’s Dying Earth and CAS’s Zothique than REH’s Conan or Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. One might even be tempted to characterize it as a more serious/less gonzo version of Gamma World/Mutant Future. This leaves much room for introducing sci-fi elements and explaining various magic effects in terms of technology (Maliszewski’s take on wands, for example). For me, this is one of the most compelling aspects of this experiment, because it nicely scratches the science fantasy mash-up itch that I usually have to suppress or keep under wraps in most D&D games.

Meditating on How I Play the Game

Having read JB’s thoughts on the matter and some of the rants that inspired his post, I want to share some of my thoughts, but not in a philosophical, ranty kind of way. Like others, I find the video that started off this whole series of posts to be rather a waste of time and largely mistaken. To explain how, I want to tell the stories of several seminal moments in my experience as someone who plays RPGs:

Moment the First

When I was a wee high-school baby, I was introduced through some of my older friends to a cigarette smoking college student who wanted to start running a D&D campaign. The premise was simple. He showed us a map of where our characters were and asked us what we wanted to do. I remember how eye-opening it was to be at the steering wheel of the campaign: “You mean this whole campaign can be about us trying to hunt down and kill that blue dragon you told us about!? YES!” And, indeed that was the entirety of the campaign.

It was also the first and last time I played a Chaotic Evil character. While I remember the campaign fondly, I do not remember my fellow players that way. Since all the players knew my character was Chaotic Evil (and therefore a threat, although what kind of danger they expected out of a 1st level Illusionist, I don’t know) and therefore they were always trying to kill my character. The DM, however, always had my back. Even when I blatantly explained how my actions were rather Chaotic and Evil, he always made the players explain to him how their characters would know. When they failed (because I was VERY careful that my actions could be interpreted as helpful) the DM would disallow every attempt to kill me off.

In other words, the DM did a really good job of being a DM. He gave us a bunch of freedom to do whatever we wanted within his world, but very strictly enforced parameters around that freedom. There were certain things that were just not going to happen (like using player knowledge to screw with other players at the table). This actually made the freedom we had as players more valuable. For example, I knew I could get away with certain CE-like acts because the DM made sure that players couldn’t abuse their player knowledge and, in a way, I think he enjoyed how much I toed the line so that being CE never actually overtly hurt the party.

Moment the Second

Like many players in the 90s I played a lot of White Wolf products, and believe it or not I really appreciated these games. They actually taught me a lot about how to play a game. When my friends approached me about playing Vampire for the first time, for some odd reason they wanted me to be the…was it Storyteller? is that what they called the Referee/DM/GM? The reason I say odd, is because I rarely sat in the DM’s chair when we played. In retrospect, it might have been the few times I ran Call of Cthulhu one-shots that inspired them to ask me to take the reigns of a horror-themed RPG.

If I am honest, I rather didn’t waste a lot of time reading up on “how to play” essays littered throughout the industry. I learned by doing and this was the first real opportunity I had to put into practice what I had learned from my experience in Moment the First. I presented my players with a world: Boston. I informed them of that world through their various clans and then dropped a McGuffin into the whole mess where everybody wanted the McGuffin for different reasons. I then allowed my players to do what they wanted to do (within the parameters set by the game and by the setting).

In many ways, it was one of the more thoroughly satisfying campaigns I have ever been a part of, because I was surprised every time we played. My players refused to be predictable and as a consequence, my world had to react in ways I never imagined. It all culminated in a rousing three-way battle in the middle of Cambridge which left the players catching their breath in disbelief that they had actually survived. The best part: one of the players decided that it was in the best interest of everybody that the McGuffin be destroyed. I remember the player asking me if he could talk to me in private, because he wasn’t really sure that what he wanted to do was allowed. When I said, “Sure, why not?” I saw in him myself when that cigarette smoking DM asked our party what we wanted do to. He suddenly realized how much power he had over his own character and the campaign. The reaction around the table when the McGuffin shattered to pieces was one of the best moments I have ever had at an RPG table. I wasn’t responsible for that reaction, but I set up the freedom and the parameters for its possibility. I have been trying to duplicate this atmosphere for my players ever since and every campaign has a moment just like this, where my world interacts with a group of players that have taken the reigns of the campaign to create something that I could never manufacture on my own, even if I tried.

Moment the Third

In another White Wolf campaign, the group I played with decided to give Mage a try. We all toiled over character creation and painstakingly crafted the characters we all thought we wanted to play. Then our Storyteller? Referee? did something rather surprising that we all found shockingly fun: once he had introduced the fundamentals of the campaign, he handed us our characters’ counter-parts in the Technocracy. I ended up with a chick in a wheelchair. At first we all were not very happy, but then as we started to play we all realized that playing these characters that we had nothing to do with the creation of was actually more fun than playing our actual characters. I had no time invested in this character at all so I seized upon some of the things I saw on the character sheet and began playing her personality to the hilt without any fear of having this character die or be harmed or of even being liked. Other players followed suit and we soon found ourselves clicking as party, playing off of each other and outdoing ourselves when we had those carefully crafted characters we spent so much time creating. We were actually disappointed when we had to go back to our own characters.

Playing wheelchair chick made me realize that unfettered creativity isn’t all that creative. Left to our own devices, we human beings are kind of boring. When we start putting limiters on where we start with our creativity, whether those limits are playing a character we had nothing to do with creating, using random tables, rolling attributes in order, using only the Fiend Folio or Monster Manual II, using B/X or the original three LBBs as a starting point or whatever, the choices we make are going to surprise us and lead down paths we would never have thought of otherwise. This was yet another example of complete freedom within a set of strict parameters that just exploded with creativity and good fun. I have used random tables ever since.

Moment the Fourth

I will end with a bad experience. It was the first time I played D&D 3.5 with a DM that pretty much resembled the fellow in the video that started this mass spilling of virtual ink. Our party found ourselves in a time-crunch. We couldn’t retreat for fear of the evil we had uncovered getting away and becoming more powerful. So we pressed forward through the dungeon we were in despite not being prepared in the way 3.5 expects its players to be. When we got to the boss fight, it should have been a TPK. We couldn’t afford to retreat, but we couldn’t do damage at a rate that would allow us to survive the encounter. In fact, my character was completely incapable of doing any damage. I was out of spells and was only good as a meat shield. When the DM realized the situation, he started fudging die rolls and inexplicably changed tactics so that our party could actually start doing the kind of damage we needed to do in order to survive.

I actually felt cheated. My character should have died and I was robbed of a(n in)glorious death. We missed an opportunity as a group to re-think our party make-up and the way in which we approached the campaign to start anew and having to deal with all of the consequences of our previous party’s failure. Instead, we were all slaves of the story. The campaign never really recovered for me, but the upside is that it created an opening for me to introduce this group of players to Labyrinth Lord and the Lost Colonies were born. Although I have been sore tempted to fudge a die roll now and then, I have done my best to keep myself honest by rolling all my dice in the open ever since. As a consequence, even when those die rolls have resulted in the death of a beloved character, I have never felt cheated.