Let's roll some dice, watch some movies, or generally just geek out. New posts at 6:30 pm ET but only if I have something to say. Menu at the top. gsllc@chirp.enworld.org on Mastodon and @gsllc on Twitter.
My brain had to take a vacation for a couple weeks, but I’ve finally returned to my 1st Edition AD&D (“1e“) database. Having recently discussed the shishi, it was a nice coincidence that I finished Fiend Folio‘s oriental dragons last night. There were a couple of things that bothered me in the technical writing (e.g., is their lack of infravision a mistake?), but there was a creative choice that bugged me as well.
In my conversation with Tanya last Friday, she pointed out how eastern culture has far more good-aligned dragons than the western world. This was my understanding as well. Then why are all but one of the oriental dragons neutral along the moral axis? I get why Sobek, the crocodile-headed Egyptian god of the Nile, was made evil in most (every?) editions of D&D. He looked evil, and they needed a balance between good and evil gods for that pantheon. His evil fulfilled a narrative role, and there was plenty of material presented to accommodate some wiggle room. Besides, DMs are free to change it. No harm done.
That doesn’t seem to apply to neutrality, though. Sure, if the Fiend Folio had gone into depth as to the role their neutrality took, then there may be a narrative value to that change. Instead, it appears that they were made neutral simply because none of the chromatics or metallics were neutral. If you’re introducing a different culture into your game, it makes far more sense to remain loyal to it, at least until you’ve got a certain minimal level of material. That is, to start, it’s better to give DMs something authentic/faithful so that they have the right feel for that material before you or they make it their own. As with the Egyptian pantheon, oriental dragons should have been a balance of good and evil, and if one of them was made neutral, it wouldn’t have struck me the wrong way.
Note: I’ve never opened the 1e Oriental Adventures, though I recently bought the PDF from the DMs Guild. I say this to point out that I have no idea how an expansion of those cultures played out in the D&D world beyond what’s in the Fiend Folio and 1e Deities and Demigods.
My conclusion is that I’m going to have to do some personal research and, depending on what’s in the 1e Oriental Adventures, may modify these dragons. I definitely like oriental dragons and intend to use them.
Sundays now are lazy days for me. I either post something silly or other people’s work. Usually both. Today, it’s (loosely) using science to imagine a D&D creature.
Funny story. I never thought I’d ever be able to spell ixitxachitl, and only recently did it stick in my brain. Now I can spell it at will. Small victories, huh?
Dungeons & Dragons is a trademark of Wizards of the Coast, LLC, who neither contributed to, nor endorsed, the contents of this post. (Okay, jackasses?)
Okay, that title is false. Dumb monsters are dumb, but that doesn’t mean they don’t serve a purpose. I’m currently entering Fiend Folio data into my 1st Edition AD&D database, so I’ve got dumb monsters on the brain. This reminds me of countless articles I’ve read listing the dumbest monsters in D&D. I don’t agree with all the entries, and I’d guess many of you don’t either. One list had a Beholder on it. That’s got to be a minority opinion. And Teos will have words with anyone who criticizes the flumph. This is, of course, because these lists are subjective, but most of these lists do involve the usual suspects.
For example, let’s look at the mauler. Just look at it. Try not to give it too much thought. You definitely shouldn’t consider how the thing reproduces. That won’t end well because you’ll likely have to consider what it looks like from behind, especially while it’s rolling around. Anyway, there aren’t many things dumber looking than that. However, such a monster can serve a purpose to an adventure writer.
D&D takes place in a world of magic, and that necessarily leads to things that don’t make logistic sense. In fact, maulers don’t need to breed through a natural process. Phew! So, let’s say that your BBEG is performing an apocalyptic ritual. You decide that the ritual’s end goal is to cause non-sentient animals to gain sentience and kill all humans. You don’t want to give that away, but you need an adventure seed that hints at what’s going on. You decide that the early stages of the ritual must manifest themselves with increasingly strange effects on the natural world. The early stages of the ritual may be working out the fine details of the process, causing grossly odd mutations to normal wildlife in the meantime. Such mutations would probably be painful, which would anger temperamental animals such as big cats. Sure, you could give them stronger bites and extra claws, but that’s not so much “odd” as mere exaggeration. We already have exaggerated animals, whether prehistoric or “dire.” You want something far weirder than a larger animal with an extra couple of claws. That plays out no differently than just giving your normal animal more attacks with the claws it already has. The mauler fits this scenario perfectly, so you should be glad that the mechanics of how such a creature would work are already written for you.
The mauler helps in another way. As I was writing this post, I chose the mauler. From there, I had to reverse engineer how the mauler would fit into the example I gave above. I decided that the nature of the ritual was to grant sentience and anger to ordinary animals; ergo, the mauler inspired my writing. Its odd nature gave me the idea I didn’t already have. One of these bizarre creatures could inspire an unexpected story element.
Let’s also look at the carbuncle. That freak always makes the lists of dumb or “unusual” monsters. It has a very specific goal. The actual problem with this creature is that everyone’s aware of it, so players aren’t going to fall for its tricks. However, the carbuncle teaches us that we can come up with a silly little story idea then build a creature around it. I’m sure that’s how the thing came into existence in the first place.
Dumb monsters can fit nicely within your adventure and even help you write it. Once you’ve chosen to use one, you already have a shortcut on how such oddly structured creatures would play out in combat.
Now go insert a duckbunny in your adventure.
Note: I’ve exhausted all the posts I’ve written and don’t plan to write any more for a while. Sorry, but I’m not in the mood and won’t be for some time. I guess the current streak ends at 194 days in a row with a post.
Last week, I discussed some issues with the calculations for experience points (“XP”) in 1st Edition AD&D (“1e“). When I finally play 1e again, my intent is to play the game as written (as weird and impossible as that is), and every statement I make below will be in the context of the rules as written (unless expressly stated otherwise). I’m fully aware of the fact that a dungeon master can do what they want, but what I want to do is run the game as written. With that in mind, I intend to use XP, though I’m not a fan of it.
It makes far more sense to use a milestone method for leveling up. In 1e, you can’t level up within the course of an adventure because leveling up requires an expenditure of both time and money. You must spend between 1 to 4 weeks training, spending 1,500 gold pieces per level per week just to advance to the next level. (There may be even greater money and time spent on other matters, but those are outside the scope of this post.) In this regard, 1e is a perfect system for milestone leveling. There’ll never be a need for a calculation at the game table to see if it’s time to level up.
My reacquaintance with 1e does give me new appreciation for XP. The source of this appreciation is baked into why it would be difficult to run 1e without XP. (None of this will be new to any of you.) I like that you can earn XP based on treasure, which encourages playing characters intelligently (i.e., don’t have unnecessary fights). More importantly, level drain is some scary shit, and it gives you a sense of danger. That in turn immerses you in the game world. That said, I pointed out on Facebook that level drain more excessive than it needs to be, and someone suggested XP drain instead: each energy drain effect drains 500 XP per level. To that, I add the possibility that 1) in no event does XP drain take you below your current level; and 2) the XP (or level) drain is temporary. XP facilitates fine tuning energy drain to meet the DM’s specific needs, especially if you’re a modern gamer giving 1e a try.
I can live with XP, but I don’t look forward to tracking it. 🙂
Last Monday, I shared a bit of Chinese folklore. Today, I’m continuing with the eastern theme, moving northeast a bit. Here’s a video on the Japanese Oni. 1st Edition AD&D called them “Ogre Magi.” It’s no coincidence that the speaker points out how much they looked like ogres.
It isn’t all about Europe, or at least it shouldn’t be.
As I said yesterday, I’m not going to spend nearly as much effort on this blog for the time being, but I’m happy to say that I finished data entry for the 1st Edition AD&D Monster Manual yesterday and started entering Fiend Folio information. I think I may have written that I finished that entry a couple of days ago. I did but had to go back through the data and fix some issues. I’m not taking a particularly professional approach to this database — for software engineers, my requirements analysis phase has been shit — so after I reach a certain point, I realize I have to go back and change a few things. Getting to the very end of the Monster Manual lit yet another lightbulb, so I had to do a little more work.
Something important I learned in making those final changes: The XP calculations in Appendix E of the Dungeon Masters Guide sometimes make no sense at all. That not only includes some strange calculations that don’t seem to be supported by the stat block — green slimes don’t have as many special abilities (10) and exceptional ones (11) as Asmodeus — but it also includes impossible calculations not supported by the table, Experience Points Value of Monster (DMG, p. 85).
As to the former, I did what I was told. I assumed (probably naively) that the creatures were play-tested and played out more powerfully than the numbers otherwise dictated. I’m not going to rock that boat, though there were a couple of times I know I did, but don’t remember exactly which monsters those were. Sometimes the numbers were just so ridiculous that I changed them.
As to the latter, it forced me to make some calls that I really didn’t want to have to make. When you create a specific instance of a monster, you roll its hit points, which affects the final XP calculation. Because I want that calculation to be automated (less math for you!), for every given monster, I entered integers for the number of “special” and “exceptional” abilities. Therefore, the software will combine your die roll with certain data that calculate the XP for you. If that doesn’t make sense, just understand that you’ll push a button, and you’ll have a monster complete with an XP calculation. However, as I said, the calculations were impossible in a few cases, representing odd exceptions to the rules. I sometimes had to choose between a calculation that would give a creature an extra 10 XP or shortchange it by 5 XP. In such cases, I chose to give an extra 10 XP (larger numbers apply for higher level monsters, but the percentage of error is about the same). This doesn’t seem like much, and XP is often, being generous, an inexact science, so I won’t lose sleep over it. What bugs me about it is 1) it happened enough that it appears to be intentional; and 2) if these minor differences are nothing to lose sleep over, why have them? Why not have these monsters conform to the standard formula? If they did, that difference would also be nothing to lose sleep over. It just seems weird to make such specific, small exceptions to such an inexact equation, but knowing some of the AD&D crowd, I know I’m going to take some heat anyway for what I produce.
I’m so selfish for forgetting that I owe these people all my hard work.
In addition, there were times that no formulae were given, so I made them, and that also had me going my own way at times. For example, I broke out the dragons by those that cast spells and those that don’t, and considered 1st- and 2nd-level casting as “special” and higher level casting as “exceptional.” I also thought that the dragon’s fear aura was pretty damn powerful, so I called it “exceptional” even though it’s not in either list of abilities. Some will agree, and some won’t. Just try to keep in mind that all of these numbers will be subject to your own modifications within the database itself.
As someone who’s quite pretentious, I’m amazed how much competition some in the AD&D crowd give me in that regard. You realize it’s a game, right?
David Leonard has a blog, Greyhawk Musings. Last Friday, he added his own voice to the choir with a post about the 1st Edition AD&D (“1e“) adventure, L1: The Secret of Bone Hill. I previously gave my own review (Ha! I quickly made it about me!), but it was much briefer and wasn’t heavy on details. It’s a different sort of adventure, and has been soundly thrashed over the decades, but nevertheless isn’t an adventure you should ignore. I think it’s a type of adventure that needs to exist at various levels of difficulty. As always, YMMV.
This is the 187th day in a row with a post (note: not my longest streak). I’ll probably be ending that streak very soon. I’m going to focus my time on what you really want me to do: Complete my database. Or maybe you want me to shut up. Same net result. I’ll still post when something strikes me as blogworthy, and will probably continue to be consistent with my goofy nonsense on Saturday through Monday, but it won’t be my priority until I’ve got my database completed.
Like many (all?) of you that played it, 1st Edition AD&D (“1e”) taught me words I never knew. I started playing at age 9 in 1977, which was long before I studied Latin. 1e, not Fr. Wood, taught me id est, exempli gratia, and quod vide. In fact, during my 23 years away from the game, I still went out of my way to use q.v. in my writing, and continue to do so today. For whatever reason, that one stuck with me.
Another word I learned was “thrice” from the androsphinx, who could roar thrice per day. In 8th grade, I taught my mythology teacher the word, “pantheon,” which I had learned from the 1e Deities & Demigods three or four years earlier.
Mr. Joyce: You mean the Parthenon in Greece?
Me: No, Mr. Joyce. “Pantheon” refers to a culture’s collection of gods, as in the “Norse pantheon,” “Greek pantheon,” or “Indian pantheon.”
Mr. Joyce: Oh, I never knew that.
I clearly remember studying for the SATs when I was in 8th grade (my older brother was getting ready to take them, and I was in the room), and my mother asked us a practice question. I don’t remember the exact animal, but it was something like, “Elephant:herbivore::human:?” I knew the answer was omnivore before I was given the choices. My brother had never heard the word. I played D&D; he didn’t. Ironic in light of his and my mother’s participation in my Satanic Panic persecution.
All last month, Dictionary.com’s Word of the Day has been what I call, “D&D words.” For a brief instant, I thought that was odd, but I quickly realized this is because it’s Halloween, and everything scary has a place in D&D. But “empyrean”? An article on the difference between a catapult and a trebuchet? Hmmm. . . . Maybe Halloween was just an excuse for their editors to let their geek flags fly.
The Fiend Folio: A Tome of Creatures Malevolent and Benign.
Commenting on this on Facebook inspired many of you to share your own gains in vocabulary care of 1e: pseudo (from pseudo-dragon), homunculus, milieu, tableau, miscellaneous, simulacrum, clairaudience, glaive, carrion, alignment, satyriasis, melee, charisma, dexterity, projectile, theocracy, ethereal, omniscient, oubliette, hierophant, brazier (but pronounced as brassiere), and some alternative terms for prostitutes (1e DMG, page 192). It depends not only on your schooling, but also on how old you were when you started playing, so everyone has their own list. I know a lot of you learned math through 1e, or later editions for that matter, but I was always mathematically inclined, so 1e math was easy for me. But we all learned a lot. Spelling was my Achilles heel, and to this day D&D is teaching me how to spell. As of last week, I can write ixitxachitl without having to look it up. Of course, I’m not sure how that one’s going to enrich my life.
My friend (Vic) and I are (slowly) creating our own RPG, and I have a Word document called, “Big Words,” that contains a lot of obscure English words, and a few outside of English. The way we’re using them is as title for class and racial abilities. E.g., ataraia is “a state of freedom from emotional disturbance and anxiety; tranquility.” This could be the name of an ability or spell that calms emotions. The definition of ataraia is inherent in the (let’s say) spell description, so you can learn the word if you want. If you don’t want to learn the word, it doesn’t matter. It’s not going to cause confusion because it can be ignored in favor of the text you need to read anyway.
Other Subject Matter
But it was more than just words. I also learned some science. E.g., I memorized all the types of insanity (1e DMG, page 83). Looking at them now, I’m not sure this made me a qualified psychologist, but it did make me aware of them and raised my interest in science. I also flexed my future constitutional law chops by learning the definitions of several forms of government (1e DMG, page 89), and got some more science from the section on disease (1e DMG, page 89).
I’m also a bit grateful to that design when I was younger. It, along with similar traditions (philosophy in particular) taught me powerful cognitive lessons of attention and textual analysis. More than anyone at that point in my life, Gygax had me scrambling to the library and the Oxford English Dictionary just so I could understand what the fuck he was saying.
Moreover, as far as I can remember, 1e was my earliest experience with regularly thinking outside the box. I’ve always tried to see a bigger picture than my dopey, anti-intellectual siblings (who didn’t jump on that bandwagon until adulthood), but 1e was a near-constant exercise in that. Even when preparing an adventure, you had to think outside the box of the box outside of which your players were thinking.
What?
In other words, you had to anticipate that your players would find a way around the obstacles you wrote for them and put a larger obstacle around that. It was always a war of who could outthink whom. Whether playing or preparing, you were flexing your creative muscles, and it was so enjoyable that you had fun learning. That’s probably the best lesson of them all, and RPGs are perfect in this regard.
Dungeons & Dragons is a trademark of Wizards of the Coast, LLC, who neither contributed to, nor endorsed, the contents of this post. (Okay, jackasses?)
Last week, I published a post critical of Lord Gygax’s writing technique, to which I’ve added a lot of other examples since its publication. Today, I’m going to push back on that. One thing I’ll always appreciate as an old man being left behind by time is Lord Gygax’s writing style. Gary’s style was based on the time I grew up, so I love the directness.
It must be borne in mind that all of these [dinosaurs] are extremely stupid.
1e Monster Manual, page 23.
I know we’re learning more about birds every day, but it’ll take millennia of evolution before a raven will be enrolled in kindergarten. According to paleontologists, dinosaurs, despite their relationship to birds, were at best a little dumber than a raven, and even meat-eaters were mostly dumber than a chicken. They really are stupid by human standards, and until we meet some space aliens that blow us away with their intellect, Gary’s claim sticks.
Seriously, Jason? You’re going to die on this hill?
More on point, though, is the commentary from my friend, SRM. He commented (on Facebook),
There is absolutely no way that sentence would fly with current editors. “Gary, can we just say ‘remember’ instead of ‘It must be borne in mind.’ And can we use something not as judgmental as ‘stupid’? Then a conversation on how even “remember” or “keep in mind” are pointless and unnecessary. In the end, it would say, something like: “Dinosaurs are simpleminded animals.” And then, we would have conversations about the new theories of dinosaur intelligence and the fact that birds are not simple-minded animals. And then the sentence would be dropped.
I don’t doubt this, but neither Lord Gygax or I give a shit. We’re not going to spare the feelings of extinct animals too stupid to know we’re insulting them anyway. And I’m sure that, like me, Lord Gygax doesn’t tremble at critical words when used in the abstract.
Let’s move on.
Your players may want to know how far they can go in a day on a flying carpet (or other similar device). For the purposes of long-distance aerial travel, assume every 3” of speed equals one mile per hour. Thus, a broom of flying, with a speed of 30”, can fly long distances at an average speed of 10 m.p.h., and can cover about 100 miles in a day (assuming ten hours of semi-continuous travel during daylight). The above formula does not necessarily apply to short distance travel.
If your players are unimpressed by these kinds of distances, remind them that in a pre-technological civilization they are little short of miraculous. Some of your players may have walked as far as twenty miles in one day. Ask them to remember how far it was.
1e Dungeon Masters Guide, page 50.
Translation: If you don’t like how far you can fly in a day, suck it up, buttercup. Them’s the rules. We’re not here for a physics lecture but to create a reasonable game system. If you just want to “win D&D” by heavily slanting it in your favor, then I’ll just say, “Congratulations. You win. Now get out of my house. The rest of us actually want to play the game, challenges and all.”
Here’s another.
Wolverines inhabit only colder regions (which is fortunate for mankind, for these animals are horrible).
1e Monster Manual, page 102.
He’s not wrong. They’re adorable from a distance, but I wouldn’t be dumb enough to try to pet them. Even bears give them a wide berth. How can you criticize his choice of words when they’re 100% accurate? Stop fearing the truth. You must know, understand, and accept it before you can deal with it, and in this context, the truth helps with immersion in the game world. Don’t make me drop a wolverine in your backyard to accelerate your lesson. Still don’t like it? Fine. Screw you. They’re really neutral evil. Take that!
This is how Gary wrote because it’s a game. He expected you to roll with the jokes. It was funny, and I love it.
Dungeons & Dragons is a trademark of Wizards of the Coast, LLC, who neither contributed to, nor endorsed, the contents of this post. (Okay, jackasses?)
Play What You Want 