Halfling as Half-Dwarf Race-as-Class

Halflings (Half-Dwarves)

Requirements: DEX 9, CON 9
Prime Requisite: STR and DEX
Hit Dice: d6
Maximum Level: 12

Hill Dwarves (sometimes known as Gnomes) have a reputation for being reclusive, but are in many ways more gregarious than their Mountain-dwelling cousins. This, in combination with their relative proximity with Humans, has resulted in not a few unions between Hill Dwarves and Humans of smaller stature. The result of these pairings is a Half-Dwarf, more commonly known as a Halfling.

Like their Human progenitors, Halflings have a wide range of appearances, though they are rarely able to grow a beard of any significant length. They usually average from about 3 to 4 feet and weigh in at 60 to 100 pounds. Due to this short height, Halflings cannot use two-handed weapons or longbows. However, they can use any other weapon or armor. They must have at least 13 in one or the other prime requisite in order to get the +5% to experience. They must also have a STR and DEX of 13 to get the +10% bonus.

Due to their unusual background, they are used to existing on the fringes of both human and dwarven society. At character creation, a player chooses three Thief abilities that the Halfling character can use. Additionally, Halflings have an uncanny ability to disappear into their surroundings. Using any kind of cover, they hide on a 1-4 on a d6. They also have keen coordination which gives them a +1 to hit with missile weapons.

Halflings use the same saving throws as Dwarves, sharing the hardiness of that side of their ancestry. They also fight as a Dwarf. Further, a Halfling character will speak the common tongue, dwarvish, halfling, gnomish, goblin, and kobold.

Reaching 9th Level: When a Halfling reaches level 9, he has the option of creating a stronghold, which can be either above or below ground. The stronghold will attract Dwarves and Halflings from far and wide. A Halfling ruler is able to hire Dwarven and Halfling soldiers or mercenaries, but may only hire members of other races for other tasks, such as human alchemists or elves for spell casting.

Level Progression
1…0
2…1900
3…3800
4…7600
5…15,200
6…30,400
7…60,000
8…120,000
9…250,000
10…380,000
11…510,000
12…640,000

Advanced Edition SWCL

One of my favorite (if not the favorite) retro-clones is Labyrinth Lord. As I have said on many occasions, the reason I like it so much is its modularity. Goblinoid Games has produced a whole line of compatible titles from different genres so that you can port into your game whatever ideas, races, classes, magic, items, etc. you want. In terms of playing AD&D, Labyrinth Lord Advanced Edition Companion is my favorite version because it gets rid of all the fiddly stuff I don’t like about 1e and smooths out the corners with all the stuff I love about B/X.

I have been busy of late making alternate versions of SWCL and I thought it would be fun to do an Advanced Edition treatment to the rules. The questions becomes, what exactly is missing from SWCL that would justify an “Advanced Edition?” Here are a few ideas:

• Gnomes
• Half-Elves
• Half-Orcs
• Illusionists
• “Gygaxian” Monsters
• Artifact/Relic-like Magic Items
• Ability Inflation

In terms of the missing races, I want to take advantage of Moldvay’s description of Gnomes:

Gnomes are a human-like race related to dwarves

Sounds a bit like a half-dwarf. Thus, all the missing races can be understood to be half-bloods. As such, they can be any class just like their human parent; however, they don’t get the full-blown the racial abilities of their non-human parent. Rather, they get to advance in one of the Optional Classes without having to put in an extra adventure every level to advance. The Optional Classes would be as follows:

• Half-Elf: Ranger
• Half-Orc: Assassin
• Gnome (Half-Dwarf): Illusionist

Speaking of the Illusionist Optional Class, we need to make one:

Illusionists function exactly as Thieves, except they can cast a limited number of Magic-user spells as if they were a magic-user of one level lower. The spells Illusionists can cast are as follows:
1st Level: Charm Person, Detect Magic, Light
2nd Level: Illusion, Invisibility
3rd Level: Dispel Magic, Summon (Illusory) Monster

By “Gygaxian” Monsters, I mean those monsters that suggest a monster ecology. For example, Hobgoblins can speak the language of carnivorous apes and these creatures can be found in Hobgoblin lairs. Therefore, the plan is to find 10 or so monsters that can interact with the monsters provided in SWCL to create more "Gygaxian" monster ecologies.

The Magic Items in SWCL are wonderfully simple and generic. The Magic Items of AD&D are often quite specific. For example: Sword +1 Flame Tongue +2 vs. regenerating creatures, +3 vs. cold-using or avian creatures, +4 vs. undead. What I am suggesting is that rather than introduce Hand of Vecna-level magical artifacts to the game, add some of those wonderfully specific magic items found in the 1e DMG as one-of-a-kind magic items worthy of going on a quest for.

Finally, for me, one of the most iconic aspects of AD&D (and one of its most ridiculous features) was exceptional Strength: all those fighters running around with 18/xx Strength. I have no real desire to go there; however, something must be done to encourage and reward players for being human, otherwise there are no human rangers, assassins, illusionists, etc. Thus, the Optional Rule that humans get to switch out their lowest stat with a 15 will become standard.

Meditating on Firearms in D&D

So, following up on my recent thoughts about firearms, here are some simple concepts that could accompany the idea that the main defense against firearms is not armor but saving throws.

All firearms have three ranges:

• Short: full damage, save for half-damage
• Medium: full damage, save for no damage
• Long: half-damage, save for no damage

Cover (and the Referee gets to decide what is Cover and what is not) makes all ranges into Long Range.

Therefore, there are two main ways to modify how aspects of a gun function: adjust the Range or adjust Cover. This allows a huge variety of mechanical ways to express various “tech-levels,” barrel lengths, calibers, accessaries, etc. For example:

• Shortening or lengthening ranges is an easy way to express the relative effectiveness of a gun. A muzzle-loader would have a much smaller range increments than a 21st century sniper rifle.
• Different saving throws (if one uses the saving throws from B/X, LL etc. instead of the “one-size fits all” approach of S&W) can be assigned to different calibers. For example: "Poison or Death" could be used for the smaller end (.32 or 9mm) and "Breath Attacks" could be used for the higher end (.50 cal) and/or shot guns.
• Armor Piercing rounds could reduce Cover to Medium Range
• Scopes could reduce ranges to Short and Medium (Medium = Short, Long = Medium)
• Sci-fi weapons like plasma guns could only have a Short Range (however long the Referee wanted the range of a plasma gun to be).
• etc.

Let the world building commence!

Killer Wabbits!

Yet of those that chew the cud or have the hoof cloven you shall not eat these: The camel, the hare, and the rock badger, because they chew the cud but do not part the hoof, are unclean for you. — Deuteronomy 14:7

Recently, this blog post about killer medieval rabbits was pointed out to me and Gamer ADD immediately kicked in. I wanted a PC class for this ASAP:

When I did a little on-line research, I found out there is, in fact, a 5e character race called Rabbitfolk. Unfortunately, they look like they just walked out of Wonderland (art by Tony DiTerlizzi):

All he is missing is a watch

I am after a race that looks like a humanoid version of General Woundwort from Watership Down:

As such, I decided to start from scratch and came up with the following race-as-class for Labyrinth Lord:

Hyrax

Requirements: CON 9
Prime Requisite: STR
Hit Dice: d6
Maximum Level: 14

Hyraxes* are a humanoid race that resemble man-sized, bipedal rabbits. Fierce warriors, xenophobic and highly territorial, they guard their wilderness domains with a level of violence most humans find shocking. Though their numbers are small, there are some hyraxes that do see value in cooperating with other races; however, they often find themselves ostracized from their own community and forced to become adventurers. This is the most common background of a hyrax PC.

Hyraxes are osteoderms, having a layer of bony scales beneath their thick hides. As a consequence, their base AC is 5 and any damage die from a non-magical attack is reduced by 1 (attacks from creatures with 5HD or more are considered to be magical for this purpose). This protection increases at higher levels. At 7th level their base AC is 3 and damage dice are reduced by 2. At 13th level their base AC is 1 and damage dice are reduced by 3. These bonuses may stack with magic and magic items (such as a Ring of Protection), but not armor (even magical armor). As a consequence, hyraxes never wear armor.

The base move for a Hyrax is 90’; however, they have the ability to jump 10’ either vertically or horizontally.

As protectors of their wilderness domains, hyraxes are excellent at identifying plants and animals on a roll of 1-3 on a d6. They also get a +2 to all reaction rolls with normal animals. In addition, they may take animals as henchmen.

Hyraxes fight and save as fighters, can use any weapon and may use shields (though some might find doing so a sign of cowardice). They speak their own dialect of Common.

Level…XP Requirement
1…0
2…2600
3…5200
4…10,400
5…20,800
6…41,600
7…85,000
8…170,000
9…390,000
10…510,000
11…630,000
12…750,000
13…870,000
14…990,000

*I realize that a hyrax is a real animal that is more closely related to the elephant than a rabbit, but not only does the name sound cool, but it is sometimes used in Scripture to mean coney.

Meditating on OSR Innovation

Another bandwagon I am compelled to hop onto is this meme about innovation in the OSR: rules or settings? First, let me get this out of the way: when hasn’t the OSR been innovative? Seriously. I will grant that we can look like a bunch of reactionary grey bearded curmudgeons, but from the get go we have been pushing rules written at various times in the 70s and 80s in all kinds of interesting directions. Why are people looking for the next Tékumel or Blackmoor when there are literally as many astounding worlds as there are bloggers?

For example: part of the “complaint” about innovation is getting beyond 2000 cp in a dusty room…a reference to all the whinging about the Dwimmermount experience. How wasn’t Dwimmermount innovative? I said this before and I will say it again — James Maliszewski pushed us all to deal with, understand and chew on the concept of the megadungeon. Regardless of what you think about how his Kickstarter was handled or whether or not you care for the final product, the whole experience has made the hobby better.

For myself, I was never much influenced by Tékumel or Blackmoor. I hold no special place in my heart for either of these products, nor do I have any real interest in investing much time on either product. The same can be said of most setting products. Those who read this blog know that I have never played a single game in either Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms. The guys I play with have always been DIY when it comes to world building.

On the other hand, new systems don’t really float my boat either. Look at me, my favorite system was written back in 1981 and, when push comes to shove, I’d be happy playing nothing but B/X for the rest of my life.

What do I really want in a product? I want to be able to use it at the table. This either means that I can easily plug and play with an adventure or have a product that gives me awesome ideas that are easily applied to my games. This is the best way to be innovative, because there are so many products out there that are not very easy to use. Let me give you a couple or three examples of what I believe are innovative products:

Demonspore by Matt Finch
This is one of the best adventure modules ever produced by the OSR simply because it is designed to be plugged into an existing dungeon. It doesn’t have to be, but it can and I did and it was brilliantly easy to do.

Realms of Crawling Chaos and Starships & Spacemen 2e both by Goblinoid Games
Both of these products are plug and play tool kits for Labyrinth Lord (though S&S 2e can function as a stand-alone game). Frankly, anything in the Labyrinth Lord line is designed to be modular so that if I want to do a Star Trek/Flash Gordon/Horror/Mutant Apocalypse mash-up without house ruling everything, I can. Indeed, I have yet to fully take advantage of all of the modular goodness provided in RCC and S&S 2e.

This whole discussion began with JB of B/X Blackrazor and his problems with the game White Star by James Spahn. Personally, I really appreciated JB’s perspective. I was pining over the game because of the excitement generated around this section of the internet, but my gaming budget is still Free. JB let me realize that I would have had buyers remorse if I’d scraped together the cash to buy it.

Like JB, I worked on my own version of a Flash Gordon-esque version of BX/0e but abounded it because it wasn’t a game I really ever wanted to play. Now, before I get accused to being bitter about Spahn’s success in the same way JB did, I have already shared what fruits came out of that whole experiment.

Way back when, I did a series of posts stripping the 0e spell list of special effects in order to create a system to build new spells based on 0e assumptions. I shared it as Ye Auld Skool Spell Creator. What may not be obvious is that this whole project began as an attempt to create a tool kit for creating Jedi-like powers for a sci-fi version of BX/0e so that my version of a Star Knight (or whatever else you want to call it) wouldn’t have to have Bless or Purify Food and Drink on their spell list.

Speaking for myself, this is not the best thing I’ve ever shared with this community; however, I do believe that it is the closest thing that I have ever produced that demonstrates what I want in terms of the Rules vs. Setting discussion. It is innovative in the way I want my OSR products to be innovative: I can use it at my table to create my vision of a sci-fi campaign or add cool new spells to my 0e-inspired games.

In other words, I don't need publishers to give the new Tékumel or Blackmoor, I want them to give me cool tools to help me make it myself.

Arriving at a LL Thief Class with ACKS and Starships and Spacemen 2e

What follows is the version of the Thief that I would want to play, and therefore is the one I offer as a PC class in my LL games. It was made using a combination of concepts from Starships and Spacemen 2e by Goblinoid Games and the custom character creation system from the ACKS Players Companion.

If Fighter 1 from the ACKS PC is collapsed (as suggested by Harvicus) so that both Broad and Narrow weapon selection = d6 class damage die, this version of the thief gains two extra slots by reducing armor from Unrestricted to Narrow (Leather only). They then have the fighting styles of two weapons and TH weapons (weapon + shield is the one unavailable). It would be possible to gain one more slot (and thus one more Thief ability) by sacrificing the ability to use TH weapons.

Thief

Requirements: none
Prime Requisite: DEX
Hit Dice: 1d6
Damage Dice: 1d6
Maximum Level: 14

Thieves represent those Jack-of-all-trades characters that have a range of unique abilities that make them very handy companions in adventures. Upon creation, a player chooses seven of the following abilities:

• Arcane Dabbling: The character may attempt to use wands, staffs, and other magic items only useable by magic users. A successful throw is necessary. Failure (at the discretion of the Referee) may result in unexpected results.
• Climb Walls: This is an ability to climb sheer surfaces and the like which could otherwise only be scaled with proper equipment.
• Find Traps: This allows the Thief to detect a trap. This ability roll is in addition to any other roll that might be applicable (if a normal character can spot a trap with a 1-2 on a d6, the Thief gets that roll in addition to the Find Traps ability).
• Hear Noise: This allows the Thief to hear noises not otherwise detectable. It also allows the Thief an additional opportunity to hear a noise normally detectable by other classes.
• Hide in Shadows: This allows the Thief an additional opportunity to achieve surprise in situations where hiding could achieve such an effect. At the discretion of the Referee, it may also afford opportunities at surprise when not possible by other classes.
• Move Silently: This allows the Thief an additional opportunity to achieve surprise in situations where moving quietly could achieve such an effect. At the discretion of the Referee, it may also afford opportunities at surprise when not possible by other classes.
• Open Locks: This allows the Thief an opportunity to open a door without alerting those on the other side of the door. It also represents an ability to unlock a variety of items (like a chest) without bringing harm to that item.
• Read Languages: This ability allows the Thief an ability to understand a piece of writing in any language. Once a Thief fails, he cannot try again on the same writing (unless he finds relevant information that would merit another try).
• Sleight of Hand: This is the ability to do a practical effect with the hands that is akin to magic tricks. In other words, these are things that normally would not seem possible, but are made possible through deft hands.

In lieu of one of the seven, a player may substitute Backstab, which is a special attack when the Thief achieves surprise (either normally or through Hide in Shadows or Move Silently). When backstabbing, the thief receives an attack bonus of +4. At 1st through 4th levels a successful attack does double the normal damage, at 5th-8th levels triple the normal damage, at 9th-12th levels quadruple the normal damage, and at 13th level or higher quintuple the normal damage.

The player then picks a primary specialization and a secondary specialization. See the table below for the different chances of success for primary and secondary specialization in comparison to other abilities.

Due to the need to move freely to use their abilities, Thieves may only wear leather armor or lighter and may not use shields. They may; however, fight with a weapon in each hand or with TH weapons.

Reaching 9th Level: At level 9, a Thief can establish a hideout, and 2d6 thief apprentices of 1st level will come to work with the character. A successful character may use these followers to start a Thieves’ Guild.

XP        Lvl   Primary   Secondary   Other   Backstab
0           1          60             45          30         x2
1400      2          65             50          35         x2
2800      3          70             55          40         x2
5600      4          75             60          45         x2
11200    5          80             65          50         x3
22400    6          85             70          55         x3
45000    7          90             75          65         x3
90000    8          95             80          70         x3
190000  9          95             85          75         x4
290000  10        95             90          80         x4
390000  11        95             95          85         x4
490000  12        95             95          90         x4
590000  13        95             95          95         x5
690000  14        95             95          95         x5

ACKS and Class-Based Damage

After my brief foray into looking at the Basic Rules for 5e (which led to the unfortunate conclusion that it's unplayable as-is), I have shifted my focus back to my own RPG comfort zone — some iteration of B/X (and my favorite B/X retro-clone, Labyrinth Lord). Since I do not have the luxury of playing at the moment, and the only way I can decide whether or not hacking 5e is worth my while is by playing it, I am simply going to go back to hacking the version of the game I know I love to play.

To that end, I would like to highlight the one RPG-related purchase that I have spent more time using in the last year than any other — the ACKS Players Companion (ACKS PC). As with all things B/X, the guys at Autarch reverse engineered all of the core classes (minus the halfling) and then came up with a system with which to create all kinds of classes, including those same core classes. It is rather ingenious, actually, because it is now possible to create campaign-specific classes for a B/X-type of game.

This is important for me, because when I started my Lost Colonies campaign, I only allowed Fighters, Clerics, Magic-Users, Dwarves and Elves. As the campaign evolved, not only did players want to explore different class options, but the campaign world itself demanded it. At the time, however, I didn’t have a lot of options for dealing with these needs other than introduce Advanced Edition classes, which didn’t quite fit.

With the ACKS PC, I am now able to create those classes exactly the way I want to and still have them express some kind of balance according to the logic of the B/X core classes. There is only one issue with the whole system that I am struggling with: weapon damage.

ACKS elegantly divides weapons into various categories where each has a one-handed, one-and-a-half handed and two-handed version. These do from 1d6 to 1d10 damage. This isn’t an issue if the world can logically supply all these types of weapons; however, Lost Colonies is a metal-poor setting where iron, especially, is quite rare. Swords are normally bronze and there is no such thing as a long or two-handed bronze sword. This throws a kink into the ACKS damage system.

To boot, I also normally use universal d6 damage at my table for a variety of reasons; however, using weapon selection is a key element to the custom class design presented in the ACKS PC. Therefore, I need to somehow make weapon choice or damage meaningful in order to properly implement the custom class system.

The ACKS PC has four levels of weapon selection:

• Restricted (as with a Magic-User)
• Narrow (as with a Cleric)
• Broad (as with a Thief)
• Unrestricted (as with a Fighter)

When it comes to weapon damage, there are those who like to emulate Gandalf, the sword-wielding magic-user. They advocate damage by class, where every class can use any weapon, but the damage will vary from class to class:

• Magic-User = d4
• Cleric/Thief = d6
• Fighter = d8

With a little tweak, this class-based damage system can be ported over to the ACKS PC weapon selection:

• Restricted = d4
• Narrow = d6
• Broad = d8
• Unrestricted = d10

This would be a simple solution save for a couple of concerns. I wonder if d10 damage too powerful? Elves and Dwarves would also do d10 via this system and, in the case of elves I do think that is too much.

There are three solutions to this potential problem:

• The first would be to dial back all the damage by one die, where Unrestricted is d8 and Restricted is d3. That poses the question of whether or not the magic-user and cleric are too weak.
• The second option is to use the ACKS PC system to hack the fighter, elf and dwarf to have Broad d8 damage with some kind of weapon specialization/combat bonus; however this would add to the XP total necessary to advance. Fighters would need 2150 XP, elves 4150 and dwarves 2350. It doesn’t seem like much, but especially with elves it certainly feels that way.
• The third option is to use Unrestricted = d10, etc. for human characters and Unrestricted = d8, etc. for demi-humans.

So, my question (especially to those of you who have used class-based damage) which of these options do you like best?

What Should a Blue Mage be for ACKS?

I have to admit, I am still struggling with the concept of the Blue Mage for the ACKS conversion of my Averoigne campaign. My Preference would be to do a kind of elemental mage that specializes in water magic (thus the moniker blue); however, there aren’t a lot of elemental/water-type of Custom Powers. There are, however, several options for creating an Illusionist-type mage, which could be a stand-in for the blue moniker (referring to the type of aura their magics give off when detected?).

Thus, I have three concepts that I would like to float and get a general reaction to (with an emphasis on which of the following would you prefer to play):

Option One: Water Elemental Specialist

Blue Mages focus on the self discipline of water elemental magic. As a result, they only cast arcane magic at 2/3 of their level (slower spell progression); however, spells using the water element do an extra +1 to each Hit Die. Blue mages can also do minor magic research on water elemental spells at 5th (all others at 7th) and major magic research at 11th (all others at 13th). Their study with water elemental magic begins with a mastery of the movement of water within their own body. This control has two effects:

• A blue mage is better at fighting than other mages, fighting with the same progression as a cleric. Though, like other mages, they cannot use armor, they are able to use daggers, pole arms, short bows, spears and staffs.
• The blue mage has a natural +2 to AC and may reduce non-magical damage by 1 point per die. This increases to +4 AC and 2 points per die at 7th level and +6 AC and 3 points per die at 13th level. These bonuses stack with rings of protection and similar effects. Attacks from monsters of 5HD or more are considered magical. [This is the same as the Flesh Runes custom power.]

XP necessary for 2nd level would be 2375.

Option Two: Illusionist via Custom Powers

This concept follows the template of the brown and white mages. They cast at 2/3 of their level (slower spell progression); however, they are Masters of Illusion.Targets of their illusion spells are at a -2 to the save. Blue mages can also do minor magic research on illusion spells at 5th (all others at 7th) and major magic research at 11th (all others at 13th). In addition, they gain several Custom Powers:

• At 1st level, a blue mage can blend into any environment. They always receive at least a 12+ proficiency roll to hide. [Same as wearing an elven cloak.]
• At 3rd level, a blue mage can cast Ventriliquism at will.
• At 5th level, a blue mage never quite appears exactly where they actually are. Therefore, they gain +2 to all saves. [Same as Divine Blessing custom power.]
• At 7th level, a blue mage can cast the Alter Self spell once per 8 hours. [Alter Shape custom power.]

XP necessary for 2nd level would be 2075.

Option Three: Borrow Spells from the AEC

This option uses the same basic rules as a regular mage with the following alterations:

• The arcane spell list is switched out with the Illusionist spell list from the AEC for Labrynith Lord.
• By giving up the Two-handed fighting style, they gain the custom power Innate Illusion Mastery. Thus, targets of illusions are at -2 to save and illusion spell research happens as if 2 levels higher (which, could be interpreted to mean that minor magic research can start at 3rd level). 

As with grey mages, this version of blue mage would be required by law to belong to the Mages Guild and would be closely monitored.

So, which option would you rather play?

Do We Still Need Labyrinth Lord?

Now that both Moldvay’s Basic Edition and Cook’s Expert Edition are available as .pdfs from WotC, one can legitimately ask the question: Do we still need Labyrinth Lord?

I would answer that question with an unequivocal YES for two very important reasons:

1. LL is an established brand with a license that hobbyists like myself and small publishers can easily and legally publish under with full knowledge that whatever we produce can be used by those who want to do the B/X thing with virtually no conversion at all.
2. More importantly to me, LL has a library of compatible games that are specifically designed to be modular. Original Edition Characters, Advanced Edition Companion, Mutant Future, Realms of Crawling Chaos and Starships and Spacemen 2e are all specifically designed to be able to be integrated together to create all kinds of cool homebrew campaign worlds without having to house rule. In addition, Dan Proctor has provided several free .txt documents for us hobbyists to do exactly that.

Despite the fact that I gleefully grabbed up the .pdfs of B/X (and was very pleased to see how well they are bookmarked) I still plan to use LL as my default ruleset precisely because of the versatility it provides me as a hobbyist. There are still many things within the LL library that await to be exploited to go places where B/X on its own can’t go without a lot of work that has already been covered by the LL library.

Thus, while I am very happy about what WotC is doing for the hobby and they deserve my gratitude and thanks, Dan Proctor also needs to be thanked because his work has greatly expanded the awesomeness of B/X and taken it to places it never went on its own.

Reconsidering Thieves with Starships & Spacemen

When 2e D&D came out, it didn’t really affect the way in which my group played our version of AD&D (which was really something in-between AD&D and Moldvay’s Basic — much like LL+AEC). We largely ignored most of the rules, with the exception of the new rules surrounding magic-users and thieves.

Whereas my friends were enamored with the new schools of magic and what that meant not only for their characters, but the world they inhabited, I was thoroughly impressed not only with the way thieves finally had a decent chance to succeed at some of their skills at lower levels, but how a player could customize which skills their character was good at. Pick pocketing, for example, has never much been a part of any of the campaigns I have ever been involved in; however, lock picking and reading languages has. Being able to play a thief that was more of a tinkerer and collector of esoteric knowledge rather than a pick pocket really appealed to me.

Without having to track down a copy of the 2e PH (which I got rid of years ago), I now have an option for making Thieves more akin to that 2e version which appealed to me so much more than the standard thief found in older rules of the game. The unlikely source is Starships & Spacemen 2e (S&S) by Goblinoid Games.

As I stated in my review, the way that the inevitable skills found in modern and sci-fi RPGs is handled rather nicely in S&S and invites the system to be used in a number of different applications. One such application is to the classic Thief class.

Thieves in LL/BX have seven skills:

• Open Locks
• (Find &) Remove Traps
• Pick Pockets
• Move Silently
• Climb Sheer Surfaces
• Hide in Shadows
• Hear Noise

The progression of these skills start somewhere between 10-33% (with the exception of Climb which begins at 87%) at first level to 70-95% (including Climb) at 9th level. In S&S there are three types of skills: Primary, Secondary and Other. At first level they are at 60, 45 and 30% respectively. At 9th level they are at 100, 85 and 70% respectively. Thus, they have a much higher chance of success at lower levels and progress more smoothly (+5% per level) to the same range of success at higher levels.

In order to implement this for the LL/BX Thief, the player chooses one skill as Primary, one as Secondary and the rest are Other. This allows not only for higher success at lower levels, but for the kind of customization I loved about the 2e Thief.

For those interested in using the Thief Skills as a kind of Saving Throw for when the player doesn’t come up with a legitimate way to deal with a situation and thus automatically succeed (e.g. disarming a trap), here are the numbers needed to make a save at first level:

• Primary = 9
• Secondary = 12
• Other = 15

These saves are reduced by one at every level. These saves and skills can be adjusted with bonuses and penalties according to the situation, difficulty of the task at hand, players coming close to a legitimate solution, etc. Since they are "saves" or skills with a higher chance of success, these kinds of ad hoc adjustments by the Referee will be less onerous than for the poor 1st level thief who only has a 10% chance of removing a trap.

Thus, not only does this use of the S&S skill system offer more freedom to the player, it also offers more freedom to the Referee.

Review: Starships & Spacemen 2e

First of all, I would like to congratulate Dan Proctor for getting Starships & Spacemen 2e (S&S) out in a timely fashion. Of all the various Kickstarter and Indiegogo projects I have had the disposable cash to contribute to, Dan’s is the first to actually show up at my door.

S&S is a loving RPG tribute to Star Trek and all of the sci-fi imitators it spawned. If one has been a regular reader of my blog over the years, you might be surprised that I would spend money on something related to Star Trek. Admittedly, I do not much care for the franchise, especially in its most recent incarnation. As I have grown older and wiser, I have found the foundational principles of the Star Trek Universe to be dangerous, I have found myself deeply offended by episodes of TNG and I never really bothered with either DS9 or Voyager because of the lazy way they went about telling their own stories.

I did, however, grow up around Trekkies and remember with great fondness watching original episodes, the short-lived animated series and the first movies with those Trekkies. Though I never shared their enthusiasm, I did learn to appreciate why they had that enthusiasm. Thus, the idea of divorcing Star Trek from its foundational utopian illusions while capturing the enthusiasm that I grew to appreciate so much really appeals to me — especially when one considers that S&S is part of the Labyrinth Lord line of products with the built-in potential for a mash-up of Star Trek, Mutant Future and a D&D retro-clone.

My initial reaction when I did my first perusal of the rules was mixed. I laughed out loud with glee when I found out that there are rules for playing Red Shirts. That in and of itself makes the purchase of the game worth every penny and I truly hope that I get the opportunity to take full advantage of those rules some day.

However, Dan’s claim that S&S is “fully compatible” with LL is a bit of a stretch. For example, combat uses a mechanic where the goal is to roll below the target number. I assume that this is an homage to S&S’s Fantasy Games Unlimited roots (Villains and Vigilantes uses the same mechanic), but it does necessitate a bit of conversion if that Star Trek/Mutant Future/D&D retro-clone mash-up is to happen anytime soon. I will grant that the conversion is relatively simple, because the percentages of each system is basically the same; however, since every monster in the monster section assumes the roll-low mechanic, such a conversion will take some time upfront in order to reproduce the Armor Class of all those cool new monsters.

Here are some of my thoughts after a more thorough reading of the game:

Characters

Character creation will be very familiar to those who have ever played D&D; however Wisdom has been replaced by Psionic Potential. There is a very cool universal table of bonuses that has four columns. Each column is used in different contexts as detailed with each ability.

When determining a class, characters choose from one of three branches — Military, Scientific, or Technical. Each of these branches has sub-classes (for example, Military has Command, Security and Fire Control subclasses). These sub-classes will offer a secondary skill (more on that later) or other mechanical bonuses. If one eschews a sub-class, the character receives an experience point bonus. One can also choose between being a CO or an NCO. The CO track requires more experience points to advance and has more mechanical bonuses while the NCO track requires less experience for advancement and allows players the joy of being a Red Shirt.

Over-all I think this is a rather clever way of dealing with classes and is a loving homage to Star Trek and its ilk. The one draw-back is that one player in every group has to take the Commander sub-class. The upside is that every party gets to command its own ship regardless of level.

Races

There are eight different races available: Adromedans, Daelans, Dreipeds, Gorrans, Humans, Hykhot, Rigel and Taurans. There are plenty of homages to Star Trek races plus a few extra with built-in racial and political baggage with each in addition to all the various mechanical bonuses one receives. One of the nicest touches is that each race has one of three Metabolisms which determine body chemistry and therefore susceptibility to various diseases etc.

Equipment

Since this is based on Star Trek, which laughably got rid of a money-based economic system, equipment is not based upon how much money a character has, but rather by their branch and rank. In addition, there is an optional rule where a party can have a stash of extra equipment that can be traded out depending upon the needs of a mission.

While I don’t think the origin of this system is very realistic, I do like its elegance and could see it easily justified within the context of a military organization regardless of genre. This is certainly one of the modular rules that I would like to experiment with in other frameworks.

Skill System

As seems inescapable with modern or sci-fi RPGs there is a nascent skill system. It is broken down into three types: Primary, Secondary and Other. Depending on the level of the character each skill type has a target number. Primary starts out at 60%, Secondary at 45% and Other at 30%. If one considers that Combat is one of these skills, that means that Military Branch characters are twice as effective in combat than other Branches. In comparison to LL classes, Military Branch characters are slightly more effective in combat than Fighters overall, but every fantasy class is going to be a better combatant than either a Technical or Science Branch character.

Despite my normal reticence about skill systems, there are two things that I like about this one. Firstly, it is wide-open enough that one could easily see both of the following scenarios play out in the same game session:

Player: Since an object in motion wants to stay in motion, if we apply that to our current situation we should get the outcome we want. Star Master (the S&S version of a GM): Sure. Done.

Player: Captain, if we redirect the shield capacitor to reverse the current in the thrust of the nacelle unit, we should be able to force the door open! Star Master: Okay. Roll versus your science skill (with a bonus if said phrase of technical jargon was performed in a passable Scottish accent).

Secondly, this has potential further applications in other contexts. For example, if one wanted to create a non-Vancian magic system for a fantasy world, this is a potential model for how to proceed. Various classes would combine different skills-groups including combat, divine magic, arcane magic and other non-combat skills. The success or failure of a particular spell would be based upon these skill tables and could be modified by the difficulty of the spell, the number of people trying to cast the spell, the place where the spell is being cast, etc. This is another modular section of this game that I will want to experiment with.

Starship Combat

One of the most frustrating aspects of any sci-fi RPG for me is spaceship combat. There is inevitably one class that is significantly better at it than anyone else, which makes things frustrating for anyone who is not a member of that class. If the party is on one ship (as in S&S) there inevitably won’t be much for everyone to do, since the unit of combat is not the individual character, but the ship. There is also the real possibility of a TPK if said ship is destroyed. This can be made much worse when there is the possibility that there will be players who had no way to control or influence the outcome.

S&S tries to mitigate these failings in two ways. Firstly, all ship actions require Energy Units (EUs). EUs also determine when a ship is destroyed. Thus, combat requires that each ship decide how and when EUs are allocated. This gives an opportunity for every member of a party to have a say in the outcome of a battle. Secondly, starship commanders are required by military doctrine to flee combat when their EU count reaches 25%, and there is a mechanic that allows for this retreat. Thus, the chances of the TPK due to the destruction of the party’s ship is minimized (though not eliminated).

Overall, I must say I like this section of the game. It has a nice tip of the hat to Starfleet Battles without all the complication. It also has all the elegance needed to be a potentially fast and exciting part of the game.

World Creation

This is perhaps the weakest part of the whole book. Dan understandably (and correctly) assumes that most sci-fi games actually suffer from having a pre-generated setting. It often consumes the game and makes the task of the GM too daunting to even try (later versions of Traveller are an excellent example of this). Unfortunately, the reverse is also true. Creating an entire sector of space from scratch is also a daunting task — much more so than a small wilderness map on which is a town and a dungeon.

Although Dan provides an example sector map and a sample adventure there is little else in terms of guidance with which to create your own maps and adventures. Thus, S&S does little to inspire confidence in overcoming such a daunting task.

Perhaps S&S suffers from a comparison with Stars Without Number (SWN) which has an absolutely fantastic system for creating not only entire sectors of space with awesome descriptors which inspire adventure after adventure, but has rules for factions that might exist within that sector of space. Fortunately, SWN has a free version, so it is very possible to simply use SWN’s sector creation system for use in an S&S campaign.

Final Thoughts

I am not 100% satisfied with S&S. As a stand-alone product it does a very good job of emulating a Star Trek-type sci-fi game. While the lack of a world generator is annoying it is far from crippling. I am not a big fan of the roll low mechanic (it is one of the few things that I don’t like about V&V). I don’t know why, but the aesthetics of rolling high just appeal to me more.

The strength of S&S, however, is not as a stand-alone product. Rather, it is another set of modular options within the Labyrinth Lord line of products. The reason that LL remains my favorite of all the various retro-clones out there is that it is designed to be modular. We are free to pick and choose various sections of rules from each of these products to make our own unique home brew without having to house rule. Want a 0e-style elf? You got it. Want mutant plant PCs? You got it. Want an extensive AD&D-like spell list? You got it. Now, with the addition of S&S you have the option of space combat, alien PCs, a robust system for running a military-type campaign and some intriguing possibilities for a simple skill system and a non-Vancian magic system.

Ultimately, it is this modularity that makes S&S such a good product and one that I am very happy to have in my library.

Fighting the Future: A Monster List

One of the themes that I am playing with as I work on my version of the Chateau des Faussesflammes is that of time. I plan on having various levels exist in the distant past, the distant future and, in some cases, both at the same time. One of the easiest ways to dress a level to indicate these various time frames is monsters.

There are multiple choices and themes present in Homes, Moldvay, Cook and LL for monsters of the past. The are plenty of "Lost World" monsters (dinosaurs, neanderthals, saber tooth cats, etc.) as well as ancient Greek monsters (minotaurs, cyclops, medusa etc.). The challenge I am facing is finding monsters to effectively represent the future.

What follows is a preliminary list of monsters from Homes, Moldvay, Cook and LL (those not included in Holmes and Cook will appear in [brackets]) and an explanation as to why they suggest a future timeframe to me:

• [Ape, Albino] and [Baboon, Higher] — Four words: Plant of the Apes.
• Black Pudding — I have always felt that black pudding would fit better on an episode of Star Trek rather than as a stand-in for some primordial slime.
• Blink Dog and Displacer Beast [Phase Tiger] — These two have a definite sci-fi flavor. Their mutual hatred suggests a level of intelligence not necessarily represented in their statistics. I image the displacer beasts to be the equivalent of space-born Nazi war criminals and the blink dogs to be akin to a space-faring version of the Mossad hunting them down. The only question is, are the blink dogs actual agents or are they the pack of hunting dogs used by the agents (which would be some other kind of alien)?
• Carrion Crawler [Carcass Scavenger] — This tentacled monstrosity has more than a little HPL-inspired flavor. While I do use HPL as inspiration a lot, I usually do so from a sci-fi/futuristic POV rather than a fantasy one.
• Doppleganger — I despised DS9, but Odo proved the doppleganger is just as appropriate for a sci-fi setting as it is for a fantasy setting (if not moreso).
• Gelatinous Cube — I have an easier time believing this to be the result of a science experiment gone wrong than the consequence some kind of magical research.
• Ghoul, [Ghast] — These undead most closely resemble the zombies found in all those zombie apocalypse movies cranked out by Hollywood every couple of years.
• Golem, Bronze — This could very easily be re-skinned as a robot.
• Gorgon — Likewise, this could easily pass as some kind of living machine.
• Men, Berserker — Reavers. Serenity. Nuff Said.
• [Morlock] — as an homage to the inhabitants of H.G. Wells' dystopian future from The Time Machine, this is one of the few (if not only) D&D monster that is explicitly from the future.
• Ochre Jelly — Described as a giant amoeba, I can't help but think of the Invisible Monster from the episode of the same name from the first season of Johnny Quest. (This could also be the inspiration for the Invisible Stalker; however, I like Ochre Jellies better)
• Owl Bear — although described as the result of a magical experiment, this could also easily pass for a mutant from the future or the result of a genetic experiment.
• Rust Monster — These guys just beg to be seen as biological constructs created to clean up abandoned cities after some kind of future war that levels most, if not all, urban centers.
• [Statue, Animate (Iron)] — Like the Bronze Golem above, this can easily be re-skinned as a robot.
• Zombie — While ghouls and ghasts do more accurately depict Hollywood's version of zombies, that doesn't mean I can't also have the D&D version, too.

Realms of Crawling Chaos

If you hadn't noticed, Dan Proctor announced Saturday evening the early release of Realms of Crawling Chaos (hereafter RCC). Which meant I did something I rarely do — buy something immediately after it comes out. Normally, I read reviews, think about whether I will actually use something and then I might allow myself the purchase. In this case, knowing the work of both Dan and Michael Curtis, knowing that this was going to be a typical modular Goblinoid Games design that would be fully compatible with LL and knowing that it was going to mine one of my favorite fantasy authors (HPL), I felt very comfortable taking the plunge. I was not disappointed.

In a word: brilliant. Regardless of what your own campaign might look like, there are things in here which can be dropped in to make life more interesting for your players. Some highlights for me:

• The new PC races. I love them, especially the White Ape (which fits perfectly into my campaign). Seriously, all of them have already been placed in my campaign world — hopefully in places my players will be exploring soon.
• The Random Artifact tables are awesome. Not only is this right up my alley (I love random tables), it makes magic items dangerous. I also got a real kick out of this aside:

This way, even if the players own a copy of this book, their characters can never be certain what the odd object’s powers and, more importantly, drawbacks are.

• The simple take on Psionics that is completely compatible with Mutant Future.
• A new magic spell category called Formulae which cobbles together magic and alchemy to produce substances and effects.
• Rules on reading eldritch tomes.

What is truly marvelous is how easy all of this is to implement. Besides the races, I have already come up with several ways to immediately use all of the above in my campaign world.

However, one of the things I truly appreciated about this work is the introduction. It brilliantly summarizes HPL's "cosmicism" into six themes that characterize his work. In addition, there are suggestions on how to apply each to any given campaign.

Now, for those of you who have already read RCC and are familiar with my own campaign style with its inclusion of religious themes, you might be wondering why I would appreciate things like The Insignificance of Man, An Uncaring Natural World, and The Reality of Man as an Animal.

The reason is quite simple, actually. Cosmicism, especially as defined in RCC, perfectly expresses what is left when we get rid of God. The abject horror of a world sans God is marvelously expressed in the work of HPL, and in the themes of an RCC campaign. For me, this is a excellent foil for my own themes. It sharpens the realty of our choices and the consequences of these choices.

So, if you haven't already gone out and bought it, I highly recommend RCC.

Meditating on Greyhawk

I have a bit of a confession to make. I have never played in a Greyhawk campaign. In fact, it wasn't until well into the 90s that I even read any material about the Greyhawk campaign world. Certainly, I have played with modules written for Greyhawk, but they either were one-offs or removed from their original background in order to be reset into our home-brew campaign worlds.

Recently, I have come to really enjoy much of the research done by folks in the OSR about Greyhawk, Castle Greyhawk, etc. However, this hasn't affected the fact that I have never really had any desire to play in a Greyhawk Campaign or to go explore the Mad Archmage's Castle. Personally, I am more of a Judges Guild type of guy, because it has always seemed to me that the Wilderlands invited and encouraged a DIY attitude, whereas Greyhawk always felt like someone else's property. In fact, all of the attempts at finding a mythically historic version of Castle Greyhawk demonstrates that I am not the only one who feels this way.

Something funny happened on the way to the gaming table, however. After playing Labyrinth Lord for a year and a half while listening to me wax poetic about the old days of the hobby, some of my players have gone out and found old copies of modules, maps and rules. Not only that, but they have voiced a real desire to play them. As a result, I am faced with the very real possibility of running my very first Greyhawk campaign whether I like it or not.

To that end, I have been doing some thinking about how I could make a campaign set in Greyhawk interesting for me to play as a Referee. In other words, give it the same kind of treatment I feel entirely justified doing to my own version of the Wilderlands.

Source Material

Greyhawk 1st edition only. I don't much care for the later editions because they go into too much fiddly stuff and take the world in a direction I am not much interested in. The 1st edition is wonderfully short on detail, but overflowing with things that inspire. In other words, I can much more easily tailor the world to my liking and still stay true to the original material.

As far as maps go, I plan on using only this:

As much as it pains me to ignore so much of a beautiful map, limiting the campaign area greatly reduces the amount of information I have to process and be responsible for. It also places the Free City of Greyhawk in a backwater at the edge of the wilderness instead of being smack-dab in the middle of civilization. This allows me to have much greater freedom in representing what is off map. The corrupt Great Kingdom and the mysterious Scarlet Brotherhood can exert a much greater influence on the region because the geography need no longer get in the way.

Due to the reality that I don't want to spend an extraordinary amount of time on this project, I don't plan on using much in the way of home-brew adventures. In addition, this whole effort comes out of my players' desire to play through some of the original modules (specifically A1-A4). Thus, I plan to lean heavily on this material. Of course, one glaring hole in this plan is Castle Greyhawk. Though there are plenty of resources out there to emulate what the famous castle may have been, I'm not particularly interested.

I plan on taking a very different tack. The Mad Archmage will still be part of the world. He still built Castle Greyhawk only to disappear, and his influence can be felt far and wide, but the reasons the ruins of his castle are a magnet for adventuring types has very little to do with his original creation. Rather, at the height of the corrupt power of the Great Kingdom, the Overking used the ruins of Castle Greyhawk as a prison. While there are some who remember its original name and its original purpose, most now know Castle Greyhawk as Stonehell.

Ruleset

For reasons that will become obvious, I would use Labyrinth Lord as my ruleset. Not only because I have become a big fan, but also because I want to take full advantage of LL's modularity. This will be specifically manifest in the available character classes and races:

• Elves use the OEC rules.
• Dwarves, Halflings, and Magic Users use LL core rules.
• Clerics, Fighters, Illusionists, Monks, Rangers and Thieves use the AEC rules.
• Gnomes, Half-Elves and Half-Orcs will also be available as characters races using the AEC rules.
• In addition (as a way to allow the Mad Archmage to affect the campaign world), Replicants as found in Section 9 of Mutant Future will be available as a character class.
• Assassins and Druids are definite NPC classes only, because they both essentially function as monsters. As far as Paladins go, I am of the opinion that Clerics are Paladins and having a separate class just confuses the issue.

I have become a big fan of race-as-class. I didn't use to be until I started playing with it. I have come to really appreciate how it mechanically expresses the alienness of the non-human races. This has a way of sneaking into the way my players play them. I have become particularly interested in seeing how Elves from the OEC play.

Gnomes, Half-Elves and Half-orcs don't come with a race-as-class, however. Since the latter two are half-human, this can simply be explained by their humanness. Given this explanation, Gnomes can be understood as Dwarves who have come under undue influence of humans (dare I credit the Mad Archmage with creating a kind of Half-Dwarf?).

Magic Users begin with the LL core rules because I want to differentiate between the LL and AEC spell lists. The former will be more common spells, with the latter being much more rare, expensive to get a hold of and difficult to find.

Replicants are the result of one of the many bizarre experiments made by the Mad Archmage. Little is known as to who the original human being was that became the template for an entire race. Over time, however, as the Replicants continue to procreate, their ability to produce exact copies has deteriorated to the point where strange mutations have been popping up in recent generations. The closer one gets to the original, the more stable and mutation free one gets. Of note, though, Replicants have became fashionable bodyguards and soldiers among the elite within The Free City. Given the overall same-ness of the Replicants, they have a tendency to use tattoos as a means to express their individuality. Often, this takes the form of some kind of symbol tattooed on the face — this makes for easy identification.

Shape of the Campaign

The Free City has an economy entirely based around mercenaries and adventurers. It functions as the place where civilization and the Wild Coast meet to do business. The city works very hard at making an environment where outside feuds and conflicts are not welcome — they are bad for business. As a result, several mercenary companies have their headquarters inside the city and those interested in hiring them travel from all over the world to do business. This has resulted in a thriving economy based on accommodating nobility, merchants and travelers of all kinds.

Stonehell/Castle Greyhawk functions as a proving ground. Individuals who wish to join a mercenary company, adventuring guild or attract a patron are encouraged/expected to venture into the dungeon in order to demonstrate their worth. As a result, there is little interest in clearing out the dungeon or in finding out why it seems to be in constant flux and perpetually full of monsters. In fact, having it continually fester is good for business.

Slavery and the slave trade will be part of the background noise. While there is no slave market in the Free City, many of those who do business there own slaves.

Thus the basic trajectory of the campaign might very well be the party spending time in Stonehell in order to gain enough notoriety to gain a patron. Available patrons would be those that aggressively oppose slavery or have had family members kidnapped by slavers. The party will then be sent on a mission which will result in pulling out A1-A4.

Miscellanea

The one thing that I do truly appreciate about the Greyhawk world is the Scarlett Brotherhood. Any group that has racial supremacy as a central tenet makes for great villains. Nationalism is so very seductive and sexy. It also has the tendency to corrupt and turn very ugly. Thus, those who adhere to it can justify all kinds of heinous acts because they are the hero of their own story. In other words, every member of the Scarlett Brotherhood has a very real motivation that makes for great villainy. There is no doubt that I will take full advantage of this.

Finding My Own Personal Proto-Game

Recently, I read the news that Frog God Games is releasing a new "complete" edition of Swords & Wizardry. Though I do not currently play any edition of S&W, part of me really wants to. So, in order to find out what this new "complete" edition was all about, I started searching around for reviews and ran across this lovely bit of fandom.

This got me thinking about my own recent experience with Ye Auld Game and my attempts at exploring the roots of this hobby. This has primarily involved running my Lost Colonies campaign, which began as an experiment on two fronts.

Firstly, I was interested to see what would happen if I introduced an older edition of D&D to a bunch of players who cut their teeth on 3.5. In this sense, the experiment has been wildly successful. The campaign has been going on for 18 months(!) and has outlasted three concurrent 3.5 campaigns played by the same group of players. In addition, several of these same players have started running their own older-edition games.

Secondly, I wanted to reach back beyond my own experience to try and find an edition and a way of playing the game as it was somewhere in the late 70s. In this sense, my experiment has had mixed results. The campaign started with just the three core classes, and a few wrinkles based on the Chainmail rules. Both of these have long since been jettisoned. Something interesting happens on the way to the gaming table from the intellectual exercises that try to imagine a "purer" version of the game. In short, everyone at my table is more interested in having fun than adhering to some kind of rigid definition of what is "D&D." In process, we all gravitated toward that wonderful space that exists somewhere between the LBBs, Holmes, AD&D and B/X.

Which brings me to the real point of this post. For a variety of practical and fiddly reasons, when I chose to begin this experiment, I opted for Labyrinth Lord as my ruleset. At the time, I saw it as a compromise with my players that I wasn't entirely happy with (mainly, because it didn't meet with the exacting parameters of my own intellectual exercise). This decision, however, has turned out to be a huge blessing.

If, as has happened over the course of our play, by either design or by accident one wants to find that proto-D&D one might have played somewhere between 1977 and 1983 that shamelessly borrowed from the LBBs, Holmes, AD&D and B/X, Labyrinth Lord is a fantastic vehicle to get there.

The genius of Dan Proctor's design is modularity. Taken together, Labyrinth Lord (LL), Original Edition Characters (OEC), Advanced Edition Companion (AEC), Mutant Future and even (hopefully soon) Starships & Spacemen offers a plethora of compatible options for a slew of different campaigns. It is a very easy matter to use the OEC Cleric with the AEC spell list as written. There is no need to convert anything, no need to house-rule this stuff — it is all there in black and white just ready for anyone to mix and match.

In other words, LL is very capable of re-creating whatever version of D&D we old grognards played as kids. I know this because it is this proto-version of the game that has emerged from playing LL with my Lost Colonies campaign. I had almost forgotten what this proto-version was over the course of all these years since my mom came home from Target with the Holmes edition. LL not only made this kind of game possible, but easy to find.

Lost Colonies Session 28

This session the party did something that completely caught me by surprise. Upon the party's triumphant return to Headwaters, they had a plethora of things that they could do. We spent the beginning of the session by placing all of these options on the table to see what the players were going to do next. These options included:

1. The party is in possession of three treasure maps, one of which Ahkmed is particularly interested in because it is written in ancient dwarvish.
2. Ahkmed also wants to travel to "the south" to find the Elves to discuss his increasingly strange and strong relationship with his sword Hornet.
3. Hamlen wants to translate a book written in the same language that is used on his sword Liberator, in hopes that it will help them understand the growing threat of the Masks (the Yellow Lady, for example).
4. Dn. Swibish received a letter of summons from his bishop in Redwraith.
5. Dn. Goram wants to find a manual on golem building so that he can make one.
6. The party still is interested in getting Ahkmed to build them a Gnome.
7. Hamlen wants to rebuild "his" bridge over the Dark River on the road to Trisagia.

Despite all of these options, and despite a preference toward wilderness exploration, the party ended up going to the abandoned monastery to do some more exploration of the campaign's megadungeon.

For the first time in the entire campaign, they decided to forego their usual route in through the Lower Temple and began to map out the monastery proper. Upon finding a well in the courtyard, the party totally committed to going all in, despite the fact that the source of water was an underground river. The trip in nearly killed several NPCs and the party found themselves in a part of the dungeon they had never been to, with no easy way out.

This beginning was symptomatic of much of the evening, where several encounters with various types of vermin nearly killed off several members of the party. A combination of poor tactics, sloppy communication and just plain bad luck almost spelled disaster. So the party holed up in a room, spiked the door and regrouped, and just in time because they were about to find major trouble.

Ahkmed found a secret door that led into some kind of temple or church. Bodies littered the floor. Upon inspection, they were all exsanguinated monks who wore vestments suggesting they had all taken vows of extreme asceticism. Dn. Goram cast a Detect Evil, and then things got ugly.

They found a defiled reliquary with a stone sarcophagus, which Tykris and Hamlen tried to open. Suspecting a mummy, the party was shocked when Tykris was killed when a hand grabbed him and drained him of both his two levels. Kavella, the NPC magic-user, hit it with a Ray of Enfeeblement hoping that whatever it was wouldn't be able to remove the stone lid in order to get out. When the thing turned into a bat and flew out, every one realized just how dangerous a situation they were in.

Fortunately for the party, the player's sloppy play was replaced by their usual brilliant tactics under pressure. They pulled out some stones with Continual Light cast on them to throw at the vampire, while Dn. Goram kept it at bay with both holy symbol and icon — during the fight, he even managed to turn it.

When the dust settled (literally — they used black powder to blow up the sarcophagus in hopes of preventing the vampire from reforming if they forced it into a gaseous form), Hamlen had managed to shove a make-shift wooden stake through the thing's heart after only barely making his saving throw to avoid being charmed. They found the thing dressed in priest's vestments that had been defiled. As the session ended, Dn. Goram made a promise to himself and his brother that he would restore this place to its former glory.

I was also pleasantly surprised by the discussion I had with the players prior to play. As I've noted before, all but one of the guys I pay with learned the game via 3.5 (the one learned from 2nd edition). Despite this, two of them have started Labyrinth Lord/1st edition campaigns. In addition, the GM I swap time with has declared that when his current 3.5 campaign comes to an end, he wants to start up a 1st edition campaign. Though I know better (as I am an active advocate of the older rulesets), I am still amazed at how resilient this marvelous game is.

Lost Colonies Session 21

After a long and unplanned hiatus, I finally got back in the saddle and played some Labyrinth Lord this weekend. In some ways, the hiatus worked to my group's advantage, because Hamlen's player was very close to completing a task he has been planning for quite some time — getting Grak his prosthetic arm. The extra wait actually made him even more eager to get it done.

The party had to find its way back to Headwaters, which they did after negotiating with the giant spiders they encountered at the river in the jungle they had lost themselves in. Of note, giant spiders in my world are intelligent, can speak and have a weakness for elf flesh. This, the players took advantage of and quickly got information as to the location of the "stinking rotten paladins" at Headwaters and then proceeded to feed the spider to "The Bag" as it is now referred to by the party (other wise known as the Bag of Holding with a dragon-kin inside). After re-orienting themselves, in was quite easy to follow the river into Headwaters.

Unfortunately, the town was being attacked by an small undead army of skeletons, led by a wraith and a pair of tentacled undead the party had previously encountered underneath Trisagia's city of the dead. The undead split their forces and attacked the two main strongholds of the paladins — a keep and a watchtower. Dn. Goram also spotted a small group moving towards the Church. Suspecting that the main assault by the skeletons might be a ruse, the party split up. Dn. Goram and Hamlen went to help defend the tower and keep, and the rest of the party went to the Church in order to see what was going on there.

Hamlen and Dn. Goram were able to fairly easily gut the main assault. Dn. Goram paved the way through the skeletons, automatically disrupting several a round with the help of some magic items, in order to free up his brother who charged the higher HD undead with his sword Liberator.

In the meantime, the rest of the party (minus their two highest level members) found themselves face to face with a pair of ogres and a golden masked magic user interrogating Fr. Valinor, the local priest. Afraid that they did not have the ability to go toe to toe with these three foes, they set about doing a quick strike to free Fr. Valinor and then high tail it until bigger guns could be brought to bear (I was very pleased that "run away" had finally entered the vocabulary of our younger players).

At this point I must explain an interesting quirk about this group. They have developed a very good relationship with Alidar, the local alchemist. They not only frequently buy potions from him but will bring him all kinds of oddities from their adventures in order to see if Alidar can "weaponize" them, as my players like to say. One such oddity resulted in smoke grenades which were used to confuse the ogres and the masked mage long enough to grab Fr. Valinor and run away.

The party quickly found out that the true purpose of the attack was to get the Eye of St. Gabriel and the golden mask that (unknown to the assailants) had been stolen by Xerxes (and was now, as far as the party knew, inside The Bag). The party managed to trace the attackers back in the general direction of the abandoned monastery (and the megadungeon of my campaign). The party resolved to begin a serious expedition into its depths, as soon as they could re-equip themselves and take care of a few things left hanging from sessions past (like Grak's arm).

At this point, I must explain yet another quirk about this group. They very much like the idea of henchmen and followers; however, their idea of what makes a good follower is rather unusual. Instead of hiring out normal NPCs, they have taken to adopting various NPCs and monsters that they have encountered in their adventures:

• Grak the formerly one-armed tribesman of chaotic crab-grafting humans from the Giant Insect Jungle (who is now officially a 1st level monk, using the AEC LL rules).
• A peg legged prostitute that is now going to be the main bar tender at Hamlen's tavern.
• Pups, the dire wolf who has given birth to three healthy pups.
• A camel
• The unwitting and unpredictable dragon-kin inside The Bag

Other henchman have come and gone (and died) but no emotional attachment forms, unlike the devotion the party has shown for those in the list above. Also of note, Dn. Goram wants to make a golem and has begun a search for a manual to do so and the party has taken considerable interest in helping Ahkmed in building his son.

When I began this campaign, I had not spent much time at all sketching out the Elves, Dwarves and Halflings of my world. Indeed, I left much of that work to be done by players who wished to play a demi-human. When my Dwarven player heard about James' Dwimmermount dwarves, he was really excited about the idea and ran with it. The fun part is that, although there are similarities, allowing my players freedom in creating the demi-human cultures has resulted in quite a few deviations from Dwimmermount dwarves — a big one being that Ahkmed has insisted that all dwarves are neuter and has played up his ignorance about how other races reproduce.

This past session I mentioned in passing to Ahkmed's player that I have some specific rules for how to go about creating his offspring (using a variation on the work James has done with his dwarves). The party went absolutely nuts — they especially wanted to know (ironically, given discussions on this very topic over at Grognardia) if they could specifically try to make a gnome. All of this amused Ahkmed, but he seems more focused on saving his gold for a foundation for his stronghold — a revelation that I must say was surprising. Understand, Ahkmed's player is the newest to the game (his introduction to the game was my campaign along with a 3.5 campaign that runs when mine isn't in session); however, having read the rules about dwarves, the concept of the end-game sunk in. According to the rules (his words), he is supposed to build a stronghold in order to attract dwarves "from far and wide." Thus, he is already playing for that end game — I couldn't be happier.

The session ended with a rather mundane, but productive re-exploration of the catacombs beneath the lower temple at the monastery. The party decided that they needed a much more detailed map if they were to do some serious exploring there. I was quite happy to oblige. The one significant piece of information they garnered from the new exploration is that all the bones that used to be inside these catacombs are now gone.

Lost Colonies Session 15

One of the risks that you run as a Referee when undertaking a sandbox campaign is that the work put into creating dungeons can go for naught if players interests take them elsewhere. Personally, I deflect much of this by copius use of random tables — they severly cut down on prep time and not only offer up an interesting concoction for my players, but challenge me as a Referee which makes things interesting for me.

One of the curiosities of this campaign has been the way my group has largely ignored the tent-pole megadungeon (as James over ar Grognardia likes to call them). Although the campaign started out with several forays into the megadungeon, they have gone out of their way to avoid it ever since they delved too deep and ran into some things beyond their capabilities. This has resulted in making the place even more dangerous (sans an adventuring party to keep the forces of Chaos in check, they have slowly been able to accomplish their goals and grow in power). Instead, this campaign has largely been outdoor exploration with the occasional dungeon delve when lairs are found.

I find myself asking whether or not the megadungeon concept is at fault, that this group (having largely learned the game with 3.5) just isn't used to the idea, or if my version of a megadungeon just doesn't hold together very well.

This session I got burned a little bit. Ever since the party left Xerxes, the NPC Magic User, behind when they travelled to Trisagia, I have been planning a betrayal, a theft, a murder and a fun house dungeon. Upon returning to Headwaters, the party found out that Fr. Taggert had been murdered, the Golden Mask being kept at the Church had been stolen and the Eye of St. Gabriel had been gouged out of Fr. Taggerts' eye socket. The prime suspect is Xerxes, since he hasn't been seen since the murder and thefts.

The party went to his room at the inn to investigate, only to be welcomed by a taunting magic mouth informing them that if they wished to get the Eye back, they would need to follow a map buried under the corner stone of Hamlen's father's barn (which happened to lead to a good 'ol fun house dungeon I've been piecing together for several weeks). However, the party decided to go (yet again) in an unexpected direction.

Earlier, they had encountered what they thought to be a dragon (which had killed one of the PCs). In its possession was a vial of a silvery liquid they needed in order to give Grak an artificial arm. Thus, instead of puzzling through my fun house, the party decided to take on a dragon and forced me to take out a map I'd drawn a couple months ago which at that time was ignored. What ensued was a brilliant use of a Shrinking Potion and a Bag of Holding.

Unbeknownst to the party (and to their great benefit) the said "dragon" isn't a real dragon, only dragon-kin. It has no breath weapon, though it is poisonous and regenerates like a troll. After getting its attention by massacring a number of its goblin minions in an ambush, the dragon killed the party's horses and dogs and then proceeded to roll horribly and get itself "killed" (by the Halfling, no less); however, the regeration meant that the party could not kill the dragon with conventional weapons. Thus, when they had knocked the dragon out, they forced a shrinking potion down its throat, tied him up and threw him inside a bag of holding. I was stunned. I thought the move so brilliantly cool, that I allowed the maneuver. Now the party has a dragon stuck inside a bag of holding with no way out (the potion has since worn off and it can't fit through the small opening of the bag) and it is starving. It will be very interesting to see what the party manages to do with it.

As an aside, I was pleasantly surprised by one of my players (Arkmed the Dwarf) who thanked me for running Labyrinth Lord. He confessed that he liked the system better than 3.5 — it was quicker, freer and allowed the party to accomplish a lot more in a shorter ammount of time. It seems that you don't have to be a grumpy old man who's played since the 70s to appreciate the old ways. Thank God.

Lost Colonies Session 11

This session saw the addition of a new player, who must get some old-school kudos because he immediately picked up 3d6 and rolled his stats in order without complaint or question. He then determined that a 5 STR, 8 INT, 9 WIS and a 15 CON would make a perfect Halfling. Thus, Ponshee joined our intrepid adventurers.

It immediately dawned on me that in 30+ years of gaming I have never once seen anybody play a halfling before, let alone want to play one at the outset of a campaign. The group I play with are fairly human-centric in their gaming. If allowed to arrange their stats in any order, 9 or 10 times out of 10 they would end up with a human (and I know for a fact that none of their characters in their 3.5/Pathfinder game are demi-humans). Yet, my campaign has seen two elves, two dwarves and now a halfling.

I have an hypothesis as to why — rolling stats in order increases the number of demi-humans in a party. Ponshee is a classic example. He does not fit into any neat category — he'd make an equally lousy Fighter, Magic User or Cleric. Yet, despite the level limitation, the racial abilities that come with being a halfling offset the lower stats and "fits" better than any of the three core classes. Indeed, the +1 to missile fire that LL gives halflings has defined the way Ponshee does combat and he has proved to be an extremely valuable asset to the party (even if he sometimes refuses to engage in any combat if pure HTH is required).

I'd be curious to know if any one else using the "stats in order" method of rolling up a character has seen a similar phenomenon.

This session was quite straightforward. The party contacted several powers that be (including Bishop Iova and Turgon's mentor) in order to explain the impending danger of "the Gate." As a result, they received several one-use magic items including a few potions, a couple scrolls and a wand. Thus equipped, they descended into the dungeon below the Necropolis and fought the remnant goblin population, which seemed to be poised for one last defense. Having spent most of our session in this running battle, the party finally came upon "the Gate" guarded by four tentacled zombies. Immune to both non-magical weapons and the party favorite (fire and oil), the party was forced to retreat and lure the creatures into a narrow, where they could deal with each zombie one at a time. Hamlen, boosted by a potion of Heroism and the healing spells of his brother and armed with the scimitar Liberator, stood in the gap and hacked away until all four were defeated.

The Gate itself was a pit, full of churning blood with a pedestal in its center. On the pedestal was some kind of control mechanism. Having sabotaged the machine that powered the gate, playing with the mechanism only opened the gate briefly — the blood turned into a portal to an alien city encased in a blue cloud. The session ended with the party successfully destroying the mechanism, which resulted in the pit disappearing — replaced with a stone floor as if it had never existed in the first place.

Lost Colonies Session 2

Our second session saw the addition of another player and an elf to the quest to retrieve Hamlen's spiked club. I would give the elf's name, but no one remembers it (see below). The party quickly brought the elf up to speed and immediately returned to the frogmen sub-level.

The frogmen had used one of their own corpses to grow a young shrieker to warn them of the party's coming. In turn, the party was happy to use the young shrieker to lure the frogmen into the open and peg them with spells and arrows. The frogmen failed their morale and the encounter turned into a running battle.

The party found the frogmen's lair, which included a fast moving underground river, along with a fair share of booty. The spiked club was retrieved from the giant frog's gut only to be lost in the currents of the river (I love making up fumble results on natural 1s). Greed got the better of Hamlen, and they busied themselves with retrieving the treasure and getting it from one side of the river to the other.

Feeling quite confident after their victory over the frogmen, the party decided to have another go at the rats. It proved to be as short and bloody as the last encounter. The elf was overwhelmed and killed. Beating a hasty retreat, the party encountered some orcs who held a dwarven prisoner by the name of Thog. After his rescue, Thog explained that he was captured by the orcs in order to find false walls and hidden traps within the catacombs. The orcs were led by a female magic user wearing a golden mask, though she and the majority of the orcs did not descend into the catacombs. Although they had figured out how to get into the catacombs, the orcs had no holy symbol to open the secret door and get out. Thog happily joined the group. Beaten, battered and tapped out of spells and healings, the party decided to head back to Headwaters to spend their treasure.

The brothers Hamlen and Guron made a contract with some local carpenters to build a barn on their father's land. Guron found that the weapon smith at the Ft. Headwaters had a flail available and Hamlen discovered that the local leatherworker, a man named Tithian, could work with giant insect chiten. A suit could provide the protection of platemail, but was semi-ablative. Any natural 20 would decrease its effectiveness by 1 AC. Tithian had already started one suit, so Hamlen commissioned the rest to be finished by our next session. Turgon was anxious to copy all of the spells out of their fallen elven companion into his own spell book. When he discovered that the only way to do so was through a Read Magic spell, which neither spell book contained, he busied himself with purchasing the necessary materials to scribe a scroll to send to his old master in the City. He sent this package along with a request for a Read Magic spell with a caravan headed towards the City. He was told to expect a reply in two to four weeks.

I keep track of time outside of our sessions by equating 1 game day for every 2 real days that go by. We only play every other week — there is a 3.5 game that is ongoing that the group plays on the off weeks. Had we played every week, time would pass as 1 game day = 1 real day. This allows for natural healing between sessions as well as purchases like Hamlen's armor or Turgon's communications to proceed at a more natural/realistic pace and yet not interfere with the adventures.

Prior to this session, I downloaded Ruins and Ronins by Mike D. over at Sword +1. It is compatible with the Swords & Wizardry rule set, but with an Oriental setting in mind. Mike gave his fighter class a Cleave-like ability that we decided to try out, given that the magic users were a bit more powerful using the Vancian magic system of Spellcraft & Swordplay where casters get a chance to keep the spells they cast. This resulted in an interesting twist.

The players of both spell casters and the fighter all thought their characters were too powerful. I was quite surprised, given that the base classes in LL are much weaker than their 3.5 counter parts. In the face of the first character death, the players were beginning to embrace the challenge of surviving with a weaker character class than they were used to. Giving their characters more powers cheapened the experience. As a result, we've gotten rid of the cleave-like ability for fighters and we've scaled back the S&S magic system. I converted it to a d20 roll and failure by 5 or more results in a backfire. Alternatively, the players may choose to cast and forget, thus eliminating the roll, but sacrificing the ability to hold on to the spell to cast again. I was looking forward to see which option they would choose in coming sessions.