Joshlyle

There's about a day left in Autarch's Adventurer Conqueror King: Domains at War kickstarter. I was lucky enough to get a Domains at War war-game playtest with Tavis Allison. It's very impressive for the same reason Adventurer Conqueror King is impressive: it marries simple D&D mechanics with rock-solid behind-the-scenes mathematical rigor. That may not sound like much, but that combination is a rock on which many RPG-design ships have foundered. I still can't believe that ACKS has pulled it off, and I keep peeking behind the curtain, only to find that the system is even more solid than I expect.

Let me tell you two stories: the first is why you should have ACKS on your bookshelf, and the second is why you should back Domains at War right now.

Ask Adventurer Conqueror King: How many knights per square mile?

Right now I'm reading Charles Oman's A History of the Art of War, a giant volume that, according to Jon Peterson, was a primary text for Gary Gygax's Chainmail. I'm reading a chapter chock full of the meaty medieval economic information I love:

We have seen that "knight-service" and "castle-ward" were ideas not altogether unfamiliar before the Conquest, and that the obligation of every five hides of land to send a mailed warrior to the host was generally acknowledged [...] A landholder, knowing his servitium according to the assessment of the vetus feoffamentum of the Conqueror, had to provide the due amount of knights. This he could do, in two ways: he might distribute the bulk of his estate in lots roughly averaging five hides to sub-tenants, who would discharge the knight-service for him, or he might keep about him a household of domestic knights, like the housecarles of old, and maintain them without giving them land. Some landholders preferred the former plan, but some adhered, at least for a time, to the latter. But generally an intermediate arrangement prevailed: the tenant-in-chief gave out most of his soil to knights whom he enfeoffed on five-hide patches, but kept the balance in dominio as his private demesne, contributing to the king for the ground so retained the personal service of himself, his sons, and his immediate domestic retainers.

OK, this seems pretty clear: each knight needs five hides of land to support him. Problem is, what's a hide? Apparently, it's an extremely variable amount: the land needed to support one farming family. Its area is most often given in old texts as 120 acres.

Given this information, I extrapolated two useful pieces of information: how many families can be supported by a square mile of farmland, and how many knights defend it? (Stuff like this can be very useful for D&D worldbuilding, whether you need to know, for instance, the size of a country's army or, conversely, the size of the country needed to support the army you want to use.) According to my initial calculations, a square mile of farmland, 640 acres, contained about 5 hides: about 5 farming families and one knight.

I thought I'd compare this to ACKS. I discovered that each hex of civilized land contains, according to ACKS, about 4x as many peasant families as I expected. I had a feeling that Autarch hadn't missed a trick here. I emailed Tavis and Alex to see if they could unravel this riddle for me. Alex responded:

It's quite confusing because a hide is not a fixed area of land. It's 60-120 acres, but the acres in question are "old acres". ACKS uses "modern acres". A hide is about 30 modern acres. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_medieval_land_terms. [...] Now, 1 6-mile hex is about 32 square miles, which is 20,480 acres, which translates into 682 peasant families. At sufficient densities I assume a surplus that includes non-farming craftsmen, so we end up with the cap of 750 families per 6-mile hex in ACKS.

In any event, 5 hides supports 5 families in ACKS. Each peasant family generates on average 12gp per month in revenue for their lord. 5 x 12 gp = 60gp. The monthly cost for a knight is 60gp (see Mercenary Wages, Heavy Cavalry). So each 5 hides can support 1 knight, as per The Art of War in the Middle Ages.

Mystery solved! My estimate for peasants per mile was off by a factor of 4 because the area of an acre had increased 4x! Furthermore, I was delighted to see that five families exactly supported one knight, as Oman suggested.

That's one of the big selling points of ACKS for me. I like to do historical research and tweak my game accordingly, but if I want to double-check my answers, having ACKS on my shelf makes things easier. And if I consistently fall back on its prices, domain rules, end economic model, I'll end up with something more plausible than what I could cobble together on my own.

Domains at War: Richard and Saladin

A few nights ago I went over to Tavis's house for a playtest of the Domains at War system. I hadn't read the rules, but I was deep in Oman's descriptions of the major battles of the Crusades, and I've read a lot about medieval tactics. I figured that my ignorance of the Domains at War rules was actually a boon for the playtest. If I could command an army using only the tactics described in historical battles, and get plausible results, without knowing rules, that would be a win for the system.

On the train ride over, I'd been reading about the battle of Arsouf between Richard the Lionheart and Saladin. I think Tavis had some other playtest planned, but after I enthusiastically recounted the battle, he said, "That sounds fun: let's play that." Oman gives a rather detailed troop breakdown of both sides, including the generals in charge of various divisions of the Crusaders. D@W includes rules for subcommanders, each with their own initiative and attributes, so the wings of my army were led by their historical commanders: King Richard at the center, King Guy of Jerusalem in the rear, and the Duke of Burgundy in the van. I put the Bishop of Bauvais, a cleric, at the head of the small band of heavily-armed Templars at the fore. Although D@W includes rules for battlefield heroics by PCs, King Richard and Saladin never met for a decisive D&D-encounter showdown.

The Battle of Arsouf is exceptional because the Crusaders, for once, held their ground and stuck to their game plan instead of charging disastrously into traps set by Saladin's more mobile cavalry. I set myself the same challenge: could I maintain discipline and resist the temptation to charge Tavis's skirmishers?

NO!

After a few turns of being peppered by arrows, I deviated from King Richard's strategy. I saw an opportunity to send my cavalry into the flank of Saladin's wheeling cavalry. It was worth it to see how beautifully my rolling cavalry charge checked Tavis's advance and sent a few of his units fleeing for the woods.

After a few turns of opposed cavalry charges and countercharges, I was rolling up Tavis's left wing while my own left wing was close to routing. We'd each taken a lot of casualties. Tavis needed to kill only one more of my units to force a potentially game-ending morale check; I needed two. And in real life, it was well after midnight. We played one more turn. On my left wing, Saladin concentrated his forces on one of King Guy's cavalry units, trying to force it to flee, but it held. Meanwhile, on my right wing, I chased down and defeated one of Saladin's light cavalry units, and sent a thundering charge into a second, but, bad luck for me, it made its morale check. Night fell on the battlefield, ending the battle inconclusively after a tense final turn. I got home around 3 AM on a work night - the sign of a good game.

As the game went on, I found myself trusting the rules more and more. If I had just role-played the part of King Richard, I think the game system would have given me the victory. In fact, I role-played the part of an undisciplined, impetuous Crusader cavalier, and, as they so frequently did, I nearly turned victory into defeat. Maybe Tavis will give me a rematch sometime. This time I'll stick to the plan.

I think it would be useful for those who hold tournaments in these times to know what sort of prizes were commonly given at the tournaments of the Middle Ages. The following is a list of prizes that were awarded at tournaments from the twelfth through the sixteenth century, as mentioned in the first two sources in the bibliography. The majority of the references are to fifteenth-century tournaments. Where a given type of prize is mentioned more than once, I have listed the number of different times it was given.

Jewelry and Gems

A golden clasp decorated with diamonds and rubies
A golden clasp
A clasp worth forty pounds
A clasp worth forty marks
A golden belt
A silver belt
A gold chain (2)
An "A" of gold with a diamond
An "E" of gold with a ruby
An "M" of gold with an emerald
A very rich ring
A ring of gold with a ruby (2)
A ring of gold with a diamond (3)
A golden ring (2)
A ruby mounted on a golden rod
A golden rod or baton (4)
A gold crown (2)
A gold circlet
A diamond (4)
A ruby (3)
A sapphire

Arms and Armor

A sword and steel gauntlets
"A set of fine steel armor such as a prudent man would wear"
An elaborately crested helmet (6)
A sword garnished to the value of three crowns

Cloth and Clothing

A velvet cap
A rich silken chaplet
Three fine pieces of cloth
A length of velvet

Animals

A swift horse with silk trappings
A bay horse
A noble courser, saddled and bridled
A barded destrier with harness (2)
A white hound with a gold collar around his neck
A bear
A talking parrot
A big dead fish ¹

Miscellaneous

A golden thorn
A horn garnished with gold
A silver gilt lion
A cup of gold worth forty marks
A golden vulture

A few other miscellaneous prizes are also worthy of mention. At a tournament at Nourdhausen during the thirteenth-century Heinrich, margrave of Meissen, set up a tree with gold and silver leaves. If a contestant broke a lance against his apponent, he was awarded a silver leaf; if he unhorsed his foe he received a gold leaf. The fifteenth-century pas d'armes of the Fountain of Tears involved three different types of combat: with axe, with mounted lance, and sword combat on foot. The challenger who fought best in each weapons form received a golden replica of the weapon with which he had fought.

Taken together the prizes give a strong impression of expensive display. A clasp worth forty pounds could represent a year's income to a fifteenth-century knight. Even the helmets frequently given as prizes in Italian tournaments (Piero de' Medici kept four in his bedroom) were primarily vehicles for elaborate and expensive crests. ² Such a helmet, crested with a silver figure of St. Bartholomew, or with "a naked cupid tied by his hands behind him to a laurel tree," might often cost more than a complete jousting harness. ³ Hosting a tournament was always an opportunity for the wealthiest men in Europe to show just how wealthy they were.

I do not wish to suggest that we should be offering costly prizes. Even our dukes do not have ducal incomes. Worse, an expensive prize puts a terrible strain on a system of running tournaments that depends almost entirely on the honor and good will of the individual contestants. We can, however, recreate much of the spirit of the medieval prizes without going to great expense. Gems and jewels are by far the most common items on my list of prizes. Fortunately, reproductions of medieval jewelry, available through the various museum catalogs and from the merchants and artisans of the Society, are often quite reasonably priced. Brass, gilding, and assorted base metals can simulate expensive gold and silver objects. Cloth, a not unpopular medieval tournament prize, is also within our budget. A single yard of fine cloth, laboriously spun, woven and dyed by hand, might well cost a fourteenth-century English knight a week's wages. ⁴ A length of such cloth was not, in the Middle Ages, out of place with the other expensive prizes given at tournaments. Thanks to the Industrial Revolution our fabric costs us much less.

I hope that this list may be of use to those who host tournaments. If nothing else it may provide an alternative to the bad custom of giving scraps of green paper as a prize to the victor. And anyone awarding a gold vulture as a tourney prize will have my undying admiration.

Notes

1. This prize was given at one of William Marshal's tournaments. A lady of noble birth awarded a pike to the duke of Burgundy, one of the contestants. He declined it, proclaiming himself unworthy, and it "passed from hand to hand among the upper barony," each man handing it on with speeches of self-deprecating generosity until it was taken home by William Marshal. It is not clear whether chivalry or prudent self-preservation was at work here.
2. Scalini, 24.
3. Scalini, 24.
4. Hart, 37 and 124.

Bibliography

Barber, Richard and Juliet Barker. Tournaments. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989. Cripps-Day, F.H. The History of the Tournament. London: Bernard Quaritch, 1918; reprint New York: AMS Press, 1982.
Duby, Georges. William Marshal: the flower of chivalry. New York: Pantheon Books, 1985.
Hart, Roger. English Life in Chaucer's Day. London: Wayland Publishers, 1973; New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1973.
Scalini, Mario. "The Weapons of Lorenzo de' Medici." Art, Arms and Armour: An International Anthology. Vol. 1, ed. Robert Held. Chiasso, Switzerland: Aquafresca Editrice, 1979.



Copyright Will McLean, 1992, 1997 

While I keep rehashing exactly what it is that I'd like to include in the next "Elves of Ur-Hadad" post,  I was slightly afraid that I was going to get lost and not move forward with other new Ur-Hadad-related material. But then, +Wayne Snyder & I were talking more about the city itself and just how you'd get in. Here's the result.

While the Squat and Pilgrimtown are the most famous of Ur-Hadad's several gate towns, along with the East and West Gates that they surround, these two are not the only gates into the First City. Indeed, there are two northern gates (three if you include a portcullis-protected river gate) and the wonderfully defensible "southern gate" (actually the harbor the city nestles around) and whispers abound of the "gate invisible," the series of portals by which wizards, sorcerers and other arcanists come and go from the city. Each known gate has at least one Captain who is responsible for maintaining the order and integrity of the gate (the Sea Gate has two Gate Captains, each of whom helms colossal warships), along with the military compliment to accomplish his mandate. These Captains and forces are maintained by Hadadi noble houses, following a long-standing tradition of nobility sponsoring specific gates; today, the Grand Vizier (much like the last century or two of Paschas before the current period of regency) honors these families by granting a "license of sponsorship," whereby the honored family is granted the responsibility for maintaining a particular gate. These Gate Captains are also responsible -- directly or indirectly -- for the gate towns that spring up around the entrances as well as the conduct within the city of those who have passed through their gate; it is perhaps for this reason more than any other that the Gate Captains do not issue as many entry visas as demand calls for.

The Gilded Gate

The northwestern most gate of Ur-Hadad, the Gilded Gate is one of the two best-defended gates in the city. Here, the walls are engraved with bas reliefs that trace the lineage and familial histories of each of the great noble houses of Ur-Hadad, and even many of the minor ones, such that, to pass through the gate, one must demonstrate one's own connection to those recorded there. A noble must, for instance, stand before the great wall of the First City, before the Gate Captain's due representatives, and recite his own heritage, at least until two generations of engraved history have been recounted; then, and only then, may the noble and his entourage enter the city.

The Lotus Gate

More traffic comes and goes by the Lotus Gate than by any other of the "normal" gates of the city. It is here that Captain Lokusz Barat (under mandate of the Guljilul clan of nobles) issues entry licenses to merchants from lands far and wide to trade within the city. Each license bears, on the front side, the likeness of the Captain, gesturing magnanimously toward the riches of the First City; on the reverse stands the image of a white lotus (the preferred funerary flower in Ur-Hadad) along with a scene that would be of a funeral, were the part of the deceased not clearly being played by a living victim. The implication is clear and rarely does Captain Barat have to make good on his threats, for not only is a transgressor's life forfeit, but also his wares, possessions and estate. Thus, clan Guljilul's forces and allies within the city are among the most vehement pursuers of unlicensed and visaless merchants inside of the city itself. Captain Barat is also responsible for the River Gate, a smaller gate adjacent to the Lotus Gate (and bound by the same rules and dictates), that has occasionally been ruled under a separate mandate from the Lotus Gate, but today is ruled by the same one.

The gate town that surrounds the Lotus Gate, often called the Lucrewarren by critics (and never in official correspondences), is nearly as profitable as Ur-Hadad itself, as it often serves as a wholesale and dealer's market where Hadadi merchants seek the lowest prices possible from foreign merchants and acting as middle men between the sea trade and the river and land trades. Large merchant compounds made with high clay walls dot the Lucrewarren, bristling with pike and crossbow-armed mercenaries who assure the freedom of commerce throughout the gate town.

The Sea Gate

A euphemism for the large harbor around which the First City has been built, the Sea Gate is patrolled by the forces of two competing Gate Captains: Nol Velgulassi and Ise Koluemon. Velgulassi was appointed by the traditionalists of the Partonato merchant house and is in charge of regulating the issuance and execution of "writs of trade," selling foreign and Hadadi merchants alike access to the port. Koluemon, on the other hand, was appointed by House Ulgobaz, to pursue smugglers and other lawbreakers in the harbor. Regarded by many as a loose cannon, as dangerous to the city as helpful, Koluemon's arrest and seizure of smugglers and their assets is controversial and, certain detractors suggest, selective. While smugglers attached to many other merchant houses have been detained and had the contents of their ships seized, why have no Ulgobaz smugglers been similarly detained? The sufficiently enlightened wouldn't expect anything else and regard Koluemon as little better than a corrupt privateer in the pocket of the crooked noble house in the First City.

The Gate Invisible

The existence of the "Gate Invisible" is known to the majority of the mundane population of Ur-Hadad due to its most unusual feature: throughout the city, a series of faces animate to announce the comings and goings of the various wizards and wonder workers who frequent the city. "Vargazungolius, Sorcerer Penultimate and Master of Transmogrification, has left the First city," they may say, or "Shining Ur-Hadad welcomes Amor Ba'Gish, Grand Arachnomancer of Atraz A'Zul." Since none other than the greatest of magicians are ever announced in such a matter, not even the Grand Vizier himself, it is assumed by most inhabitants of the First City that these wizards use some unknown entrance to the city, a "gate invisible."

The reality is much different from what the common man or noble presumes.

Teleportation magics, while rare on the face of Ore, do exist. When Man first discovered such magics, he also learned that teleporting in and out of the First City wasn't a simple process. Instead of simply disappearing in one place and reappearing in another, in between the would-be traveler makes a brief stop over in a stone room of unknown location, large and ornate with a high, vaulted ceiling. Before moving on, the traveler must first discuss his travel plans with an immense and invulnerable demon from some forgotten lower dimension as well as present him with a small gift, a token that earns the traveler his blessing to move on. This shapeshifting demon craves gifts that conform to an ancient pattern of cycles and epicycles of aesthetics, known to Man due only to the work of the Elder Elf archivist Ascingolus (every wizard worth his salt maintains a copy of the text and obtaining one is considered a rite of passage for would-be archmages). One passage might require the first rose bud of Spring, whereas another may require the tears of a mother after her son's death and still another might require a common block of cheese or a simple chicken's egg. History records this demon's name as variations on "the Preserver," and it is believed by these wizards that, were the Preserver not present to mediate hyperspatial travel to and from the City, an ineffable fate will befall the city and, possibly, the entirety of the Ore.

Who's Using the Gate Invisible?

A wizard just entered the city; who was it? Roll d11. (1 - 2) - Vargazungolius, Sorcerer Penultimate and Master of Transmogrification. (3 - 4) - Amor Ba'Gish, Grand Arachnomancer of Atraz A'Zul. (5 - 6) - Emerikol the Chaotic. (7 - 8) - Lokerimon the Lawful. (9 - 10) - Aila Brahe, Sorceress-Queen of the Celestial Spheres and Doom That Came to Singhex. (11) - Uskoll the Uncaring, He Who Sees Through the Void. Things Get Better: The wizard seeks out the PCs and offers them a small boon in accordance with some greater design that they cannot possibly understand (wizard stuff). Things Get Worse: The wizard has a score to settle with the PCs and comes looking for them. This score may be due to something that they've actually done already, have yet to do, have done in some alternate time line or whatever. The important thing is that there's a pissed off wizard and he's coming for you.

The EFF, who just moved into their new offices, seem to be making effective use of the new kitchen space. They're baking up a special recipe: mean-spirited censorship pie. Yum! Most of you would call it "Derby Pie." But a company called Kern's Kitchen has been going around threatening everyone calling it Derby Pie based on its trademark. Kern's has been forcing blogs to change what they call the pie when they post their own recipes: Hence, the new name: mean-spirited censorship pie*. I hear it tastes great. If you want the full recipe, you can see it here. Just don't call it "Derby Pie" or a bunch of trademark lawyers might start screaming at you. Because, here in America, we lock up our language!

* Also, please make your mean-spirited censorship pie before the trademark application on that name goes through and we all have to find another name.

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The 5e playtest version of Isle of Dread encourages the DM to spindle, fold, and mutilate the original adventure. The module suggests (spoilers ahead) having NPCs who visit the jungle center of the island return as undead, possessed, or otherwise corrupted versions of their former selves.

I went with this idea: the natives of the friendly village warned that explorers often come back "wrong:" not undead, but with an imperfect memory of their former lives and with a cunning tendency to act normal until they found a way to kill as many of their fellow villagers as possible. Therefore, the villagers had instituted a password and security-question system for letting explorers back in the village.

When the PCs met some native villagers walking around in the jungle interior, they somehow forgot about these hints. They trustingly hired the natives as guides: furthermore, they insisted that the villagers keep watch at camp so that all the PCs could go to sleep at once (including the high elf, who insisted that "I don't NEED to sleep, but I LIKE to sleep.")

That night, the corrupted villagers tried to creep up to the sleeping PCs and slit their throats. Only a series of improbably high PC Listen checks prevented a sleeping TPK. The PCs killed the corrupted villagers and then finished their rest.

The next day, surveying the carnage, the PC druid had a horrifying thought. "What if the villagers were sneaking up to put mints on our pillow or something? What if we're the ones that are "wrong"? They went through the checklist: do we leave piles of their bodies in their wake? check. Are we remorseless? Check: this was the second night in a row the PCs had gone blissfully to sleep among corpses of their own making. Do we have poor memories? Sure, they'd forgotten that natives in the jungle might be dangerous. Besides, PCs never remember any plot points from week to week.

For a while, the players seriously entertained the notion that I was acting as an unreliable DM narrator, and the players had "gone wrong" and were killing innocents. And I? I cursed myself for not thinking of it. If I'd planned it, and managed to pull it off, this could have been The Creepiest D&D Game Ever.

OK, I don't 100% encourage you to try this trick in your own Isle of Dread run. It could go horribly wrong and really alienate all your players. But on the other hand, it could go horribly right. Either way, it'd be a memorable campaign, and I'd like to hear about it.

Time to sketch out a new campaign setting for summer...something down and dirty.

(Eugene Volokh)

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is telling universities to institute speech codes. And not just any old speech codes: Under these speech codes, universities would be required to prohibit students from, for instance,

1. saying “unwelcome” “sexual or dirty jokes”
2. spreading “unwelcome” “sexual rumors” (without any limitation to false rumors”
3. engaging in “unwelcome” “circulating or showing e-mails of Web sites of a sexual nature”
4. engaging in “unwelcome” “display[] or distributi[on of] sexually explicit drawings, picture,s or written materials”
5. making “unwelcome” sexual invitations.

This is not limited to material that a reasonable person would find offensive. Nor is limited to material that, put together, creates a “hostile, abusive, or offensive educational environment.” (I think even speech codes that would have these requirements are unconstitutional, but the speech codes that the government is urging would in any event not have these requirements.) Every instance of such material of a “sexual nature,” under the government’s approach, would be “sexual harassment” and would need to be banned.

Why do I say this? The explanation has quite a few moving parts, because of how the government has articulated its theory. But here’s a brief summary.

1. The OCR has long taken the view that, just as Title VII’s ban on employment discrimination has been read as prohibiting speech or conduct that is “severe or pervasive” enough to create a “hostile, abusive, or offensive environment” based on sex for plaintiff and for a reasonable person, so Title IX (the educational analog) does the same for speech and conduct in educational institutions. Colleges and universities, according to the government, must therefore institute speech and conduct codes that ban such speech and conduct.

Those courts that have considered the issue have held that such speech codes in public universities violate the First Amendment on their face (to the extent they cover speech), because they are too vague or overbroad (i.e., apply beyond the few unprotected categories of speech, such as threats or “fighting words”). See, for instance, some of the cases cited in this guest post by FIRE’s Greg Lukianoff. The government’s pressuring the creation of such codes in either public institutions or private institutions would likewise violate the First Amendment. But the government takes a different view. Though it agrees that “harassment” codes shouldn’t be read in ways that violate the First Amendment (which is tautologically true), they apparently think that a great deal of speech “of a sexual nature” on campuses is unprotected by the First Amendment, as suggested by the materials discussed below, and that

2. Now, in an investigation involving the University of Montana (and see also this document, the government has apparently gone further:

a. The government has specifically faulted the University for defining “sexual harassment” as being limited to conduct or speech that is severe or pervasive enough to create a hostile environment, or conduct or speech that would be objectively offensive to a reasonable person. “Whether conduct is objectively offensive is a factor used to determine if a hostile environment has been created, but it is not the standard to determine whether conduct was ‘unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature’ and therefore constitutes ‘sexual harassment.’”

b. Instead, according to the government, “sexual harassment” is simply “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature and can include unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal, nonverbal, or physical conduct of a sexual nature, such as sexual assault or acts of sexual violence.” And what constitutes “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature”? An earlier OCR document, defining, conduct “sexual in nature” as “sexual conduct,” says that “Examples of sexual conduct include”:

1. making sexual propositions or pressuring students for sexual favors;
2. touching of a sexual nature;
3. writing graffiti of a sexual nature;
4. displaying or distributing sexually explicit drawings, pictures, or written materials;
5. performing sexual gestures or touching oneself sexually in front of others;
6. telling sexual or dirty jokes;
7. spreading sexual rumors or rating other students as to sexual activity or performance; or
8. circulating or showing e-mails or Web sites of a sexual nature.

Incidentally, the “sexually explicit drawings, pictures, and materials” do not have to be punishable obscenity, or even displays of sex; “pictures of nude suggestive pictures even if not nude, since the government routinely analogizes to workplace harassment cases, in which nudity has not been required for material to be found to be unduly suggestive.

Finally, the government does not limit such “sexual conduct” to conduct said directly to the offended person. Speech displayed or said to people generally may qualify if one of the viewers finds it offensive (as one can again tell by looking at hostile work environment cases, given that the government routinely analogizes to them).

c. So “sexual harassment” is defined that broadly — and though the government concedes that such sexual harassment is legally actionable only if it is objectively offensive, and “severe or pervasive” (or perhaps both “severe and pervasive,” as Hans Bader’s post on this argues), the government insists that universities should punish each such instance of conduct:

1. “The Agreement will serve as a blueprint for colleges and universities throughout the country to protect students from sexual harassment and assault.”
2. “To resolve the concerns identified in the Letter of Findings, the University will take effective steps designed to: prevent sex-based harassment [defined to include ‘sexual harassment’ -EV] in its education programs and activities ....”
3. “By July 15, 2013, the University will update its program to provide regular mandatory training ..... [that] will ... make students aware of the University’s prohibition against sexual harassment, sexual assault, and retaliation.”
4. “On May 4, 2012, the Assistant Secretary of the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights mailed notification to the University indicating that OCR was opening a Title IX compliance review to assess whether ... the University’s implementation of [its] policies and procedures ensure the elimination of sexual harassment and sexual violence, appropriately respond to such harassment and violence, prevent future harassment, and eliminate the hostile environment and its effects that result from such harassment.”
5. “To improve the campus climate, the University is providing more training for students that defines sexual harassment, including sexual assault, and makes clear it is unacceptable.”
6. “Other actions [following a sexual harassment complaint] may also be necessary to address the educational environment, including special training, the dissemination of information about how to report sexual harassment, new policies, and other steps designed to clearly communicate the message that the college or university does not tolerate, and will be responsive to any reports of, sexual harassment.

And I assume the government means exactly what it says here — that even individual instances of “conduct of a sexual nature” that aren’t severe or pervasive or objectively offensive must be punished — and isn’t just using “sexual harassment” to mean “speech that creates a legally actionable hostile environment.” After all, the government expressly condemned the University of Montana (see 2a above) for using “sexual harassment” to mean speech that creates a legally actionable hostile environment; “sexual harassment,” the government stressed, is simply “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature” (whether or not objectively offensive “and can include unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal, nonverbal, or physical conduct of a sexual nature, such as sexual assault or acts of sexual violence.” And though some of the statements I quote above discuss what the University of Montana is about to do, it’s clear from context that the government is arguing that universities must in general be doing this.

These individual instances, then — sexual jokes, sexually themed posted material, sexual propositions, and so on — is what the government is saying should be treated as “unacceptable,” should not be “not tolerate[d],” and should be “prevent[ed],” “prohibit[ed],” and “eliminat[ed].”

3. In the University of Montana situation, as well as in others in the past, the core issue has had to do with alleged sexual assault of varying degrees. No specific speech-cases were discussed.

But that’s a big part of the problem: Serious problems involving alleged physical assaults, and university’s potential failure to properly deal with such assaults, have long been merged — by the government and others — with sexually themed speech. The policies the government is seeking deliberately aren’t limited to physical assault, but expressly cover speech. How universities should deal with alleged physical assaults by students against other students is a difficult question. But the government’s demands of universities go far beyond those questions, and extend to speech that is protected by the First Amendment and that, in any event, ought not be the subject of university discipline (even if it’s juvenile and rude).

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has more on this, as does Hans Bader (OpenMarket.org).

Now, since I don't play with clerics in my own D&D games, I don't interact very much with the Turning Undead ability any more. But it did come up in my friend Paul's "Back to Basics" D&D game a few weeks ago.

In the classic texts, Turn Undead is usually silent on the duration of its effect. It pops up in Original D&D Vol-1 for the first time without any text at all -- there's just a table at the end of the combat & spells rosters titled, "Clerics versus Undead Monsters" (it doesn't even specify when or how often clerics can use this). To my mind, the implication is simply that undead "run offstage" and everyone can forget about them at that point.

Now, the interpretation that Paul used in his game -- that was novel for me -- was that the cleric in question has to continue presenting his holy symbol and chanting in order to sustain the "turn" effect. So it's a bit like someone holding a vampire at bay, just out of reach, with a cross -- the cleric can't take other actions or spells or else the turning effect ends and the undead possibly come back. To me, this was surprising, as I'd think the effect effect was like casting a fear spell -- the power hits the undead and they're stricken, so then you can go on with other stuff like other PCs.

Interestingly there's no comment on this or any duration for the effect in OD&D, AD&D, Holmes or Moldvay Basic, Allston Rules Cyclopedia, etc. The AD&D DMG does say that when evil clerics use the power to control undead, they "serve for a full 24 hour period" (DMG p. 66). There's also a Skip Williams Sage Advice column (seemingly meant as cross-edition information) that asserted the effect lasted for the same time: "Q: What happens when a cleric turns undead? Does the turning have a duration? A: The undead run away from the cleric for one turn, then avoid the cleric for a full day, unless the cleric attacks them." (Dragon #134, p. 36). If that's the case, then it seems unlikely that a cleric is chanting all day to maintain the effect.

So I'm wondering what you think. Do clerics have to keep up the holy symbol to sustain a turn effect (kind of like keeping Dracula at bay)? Or does the effect hit the undead once and allow the cleric to do something else (more like an Exorcist drive-it-out for good)? And does the 24-hour duration sound right, or is there any book that says differently?


Edit: Sir Gawain in the comments points out that AD&D does include an explicit duration:  "not less than 3 nor more than 12 rounds, moving at full speed for the duration if at all possible. The turned undead will be able to come back again, but they are subject to further turning by the cleric". [DMG p. 76]

Aristotle thought that usury and sodomy were related because in both cases there was attempted reproduction in an unnatural way. (Yeah, I don’t get it either. The argument would have been better as an argument against cloning. No matter, the argument was influential).

In a very good piece, Jeet Heer contrasts the ancients with Adam Smith and the liberal, free market tradition:

Aristotle’s linkage of non-procreative sex with usury profoundly influenced Christian thinkers. Thomas Aquinas, whose Summa Theologica codified the fusion of Aristotle with Christianity, argued that sodomy and usury were both “sins against nature, in which the very order of nature is violated, an injury done to God himself, who sets nature in order.” Echoing Aquinas, Dante placed sodomites and usurers in the same circle of Hell in the Divine Comedy. In his 1935 tract “Social Credit,” Ezra Pound, whose obsession with crackpot economics took him down many historical byways, argued that “usury and sodomy, the Church condemned as a pair, to one hell, the same for one reason, namely that they are both against natural increase.”

There is a flipside to this tradition of seeing sodomy as the enemy of the natural economy of the household: The counter-tradition of liberal economics founded by Adam Smith challenged the household model by seeing economics as rooted in the free trade of goods between households and nations. Precisely because Smith was more receptive to previously condemned or taboo economic activities like trade and manufacturing, he was also more open to sexual liberalism.

Smith’s friend Alexander Dalrymple is now thought to have written an anonymous tract, Thoughts of an Old Man (1800), recalling that the founder of modern economics believed that “sodomy was a thing in itself indifferent”—a radical thing to say even in private at a time when sodomy was a capital offence, condemned by church and state.

…Smith’s new and somewhat inchoate ideas were pushed further by Bentham, who in an unpublished essay observed that sodomy “produces no pain in anyone” but “on the contrary it produces pleasure.”

…It’s no accident that in 1787 Bentham wrote a “Defence of Usury,” which tried to convince Adam Smith to take a more benevolent view of the hitherto morally sanctioned economic activity. On the subject of both usury and sodomy, Bentham’s inclination was to take Smith’s liberal impulses to their logical end. Bentham was in favour of consensual adult acts (be they sexual or economic) that led to greater happiness, whether they violated pre-existing taboos or not.

It was, of course, also no accident that Tyler posted on Bentham last week. Here is a good extract of Bentham on usury.

Hat tip: The Browser.

Arch-wizards, alchemists and taxidermists crave various chunks of monster anatomy for their own peculiar purposes, and sometimes they’re willing to pay good money for such things! Players who recognize this may get into the habit of chopping up everything they encounter and hauling the bits back like deranged slaughterhouse workers. To keep the PCs from overdoing it, you may wish to limit such sales to specific requests (or “quests” for short) proffered by enchanters for whatever fresh ingredient they happen to need at the moment, as determined by the

REAGENT BOUNTY TABLE

Roll twice on a d20 to determine what weird thing the local magician desires. If this offers a nonsensical result, like a ghoul horn or hellhound wing, ignore it and roll on the “special reagent” table instead.

Roll	Creature	Reagent
1	Basilisk	Blood
2	Cockatrice	Bone/Skull
3	Doppelganger	Brain
4	Dragon	Ear
5	Ghoul	Eye
6	Giant	Flesh
7	Gryphon	Genitals
8	Harpy	Hair/Feathers/Scales
9	Hellhound	Hand/Foot/Paw
10	Hydra	Heart
11	Manticore	Horn/Antler
12	Medusa	Liver
13	Minotaur	Nose
14	Mummy	Saliva
15	Ogre	Skin/Hide
16	Owlbear	Stomach/Intestine
17	Troglodyte	Tail
18	Troll	Teeth/Beak
19	Wereolf	Tongue
20	Wyvern	Wing

SPECIAL REAGENT TABLE

Roll 1d12.

Roll	Reagent
1	Carrion crawler tendril
2	Displacer beast hide
3	Fire beetle gland
4	Gelatinous cube gelatin
5	Giant scorpion stinger
6	Giant spider venom
7	Giant toad tongue
8	Killer bee honey
9	Ochre jelly protoplasm
10	Rust monster antennae
11	Shrieker spores
12	Stirge proboscis

Appropriate payment will vary based on how much gold you want to put into the PCs’ hands. In the past, I’ve generally offered 1d6 x 100 gold pieces for reagents. Now I’m considering monster HD x monster HD x 100 gold pieces. This may inspire PCs to go after monsters that outclass them in order to earn some sweet loot!

The guidelines for recruiting hirelings are likewise only designed for hiring individual psychopaths.  The purchasing of mercenary companies, while a common practice in the Dark Country, requires a great deal more bickering over contracts and haggling over rights then I really want to deal with in this post.

A settlement will have a number of hirelings available at one time based on the chart below.  The number generated is the total number available until a fresh crop of young settlers arrives.  This could mean that the hirelings could be exhausted from a settlement for quite a long time in some of the more remote areas of the Dark Country.

Hirelings by Settlement

Settlement Level	Number of Hirelings
Hamlet	1d2
Village	1d4
Town	1d6
Castle	1d8
City	1d10

For each available hireling indicated, roll on the tables below to determine what’s wrong with the hireling and the type of hireling it is.

What’s Wrong With Your Hireling

dX	Result
1	Nothing. Subtract 2 from their base morale.
2	Suicidal.  Is willing to be paid at a daily rate (1/30th of the monthly one provided).
3	Hobbled. Moves as though wearing plate regardless of armor.
4	Branded.  Marked with the coward’s - or probably heretic’s - shame.
5	One Armed Man.  Cannot perform any activity involving two hands/arms.
6	Absent Minded. If asked to perform a task outside of the supervision of a PC - such as guarding the horses or securing a rope - must make a morale test to see if it gets completed.
7	Starts Shit.  Must make a morale test during any negotiations.  On a failure, will sabotage negotiations by “acting like a douche.”
8	Mute.  Doesn’t have a tongue.  Can at most muster a voiceless hacking as a feeble attempt to raise an alarm.
9	Mumbler.  PCs can’t understand a word he says, though strangely most NPCs can.
10	One Eyed.  Surprised on a 1-3 if left as a guard.
11	Hook Hand.  Can only use hand weapons, but can also make attacks with his hook.
12	Openly Heretical.  Likes to give strange sermons loudly and in public.
13	Obsequious.  Always sickeningly deferential, suspiciously so.
14	Penitent.  Scourges self for some unimaginable sin.  Permanent -1 to HP.
15	Filthy.  Smell may attract monsters.
16	Murderous.  Must make a morale check or kill any captives the PCs might attempt to take.
17	Clepto.  Tries to secret bits of treasure away from the PCs.
18	Hideous.  This fellow is especially ugly.  It is very unpleasant.
19	Scheming.  Really working for the “Bad Guys,” or a set of bandits that is conveniently laired nearby if you don’t have any Bad Guys that are applicable.  Plans to help them ambush and kill the PCs.
20	“Nothing.”  No effect.

Hireling Types

Listed below are the types of hirelings typically available in the Dark Country.  Wages listed are for a typical month, and use the new reckoning of Dark Contry currency.  Thus a guilder (abreviated k) is worth 20 groshes (g) and 240 pennies (d).  A grosh is a silver coin worth the equivalent of a silver piece in LotFP or a gold piece in most other forms of D&D.

Not all of the types of hirelings are available in every settlement.  The table is but an example, and larger settlements such as the Seven Cities will have considerably more types available.  The referee may also change these tables to represent changes in the population either through new settlement or player action.

Nightwick Hirelings

d6	Hireling Type
1	Brigand
2-3	Peasant
4-6	Woodsmen

Barbers are those “trained” in what qualify as the medical arts in the Dark Country.  They are typically runaways from mercenary companies, though they may have also been employed by a noble family or wealthy merchant house.  They can bind wounds on a 1-2 on a 1d6, restoring 1d6 hp.

Equipment: 1d6 bandages, jar of leeches, rusted scalpels

Wage: 14k

Brigands are either currently or formerly bandits.  They typically employed as light infantry by the Seven Cities if they are capable of being hired.

Equipment: Crossbow, 2d6 bolts, padded gambeson, hand weapon, helmet

Wage: 1k

Conjure-Men are backwoods wizards of poor skill.  They only know one spell - determined randomly - and my only cast it once per day.

Equipment: Dagger, filthy robes, bag of bones

Wage: 1k

Fanatics are religious loons who have come to the Dark Country in order to participate in the holy war against the pagans.  If following a cleric, they will gain a +2 bonus to their morale.

Equipment: Bladed scourge, silver cross, crazy eyes

Wage: 10g

Men-at-arms are comparatively heavily armed men of stout bearing.  They gain a +1 bonus to HP and a +2 bonus to morale if following a fighter of 4th level or higher.

Equipment: Polearm (70% chance of being a spear), shield, hand weapon, helmet, and a shirt of mail.

Wage: 5k

Peasants are common settlers from the West.  They typically have little to their name and little to lose.  

Equipment: Wooden hoe, an empty pouch meant for bread or coin, and misery.

Wages: 5g

Woodsmen are those members of Dark Country society who make their living gathering forest products - whether that means felling trees, burning charcoal, or trapping for furs.

Equipment: Felling axe, hand weapon, bow, 1d12 arrows

Wages: 10g

Clear grasslands and cities are the least unique of the terrain types in OD&D. Most of the cities and towns sit in grassland hexes, and grasslands are the most numerous single type of hex. They provide the default background against which the other hex types stand out.

The list of "basic animal" encounters gives us a listing of animal types including spiders, scorpions, lions, boars, weasels, toads, apes, ants, centipedes, snakes and beetles. A note tells us that animals will "usually be of the giant variety," which means we have a world populated by giant scorpions and giant toads. Lions, boars and apes don't need to be giant as badly as the ants and spiders do in order to be threatening encounters.

It is somewhat strange to have the toads and centipedes and snakes and apes all in the clear grassland; of course they're all available in other types of terrain as well, but this table is the only one that makes up "clear" land encounters. Judging from the terrain, the animals may be better picked as wanderers from nearby areas: apes from the jungle, giant frogs from the swamps, giant scorpions out of the deserts and so on. Except in the northwest and southeast corners, almost every grassland hex is less than 3 hexes (1 day of travel) from a forest, swamp or mountain hex, so this is always workable. Perhaps giant ants (with suitable underground caverns) and some types of snake are "native" to the grasslands but little else.

The map gives us no indication of roads through the grasslands. If there are paths between the towns indicated, they must pass through forests or over mountains except for two towns in the center area. One of those towns is the only town on a river, which is a natural fit for the main commercial city of this region. Looking at the layout again, the five towns in the center of the map are relatively well protected by castles on different sides, and it is possible that the four closest ones form the only kingdom in the territory. Alternatively, the city in the woods could be an elven city and the others are the human cities that trade with it. Each town outside of the core five is somewhat peripheral to the map and may be more of an outpost or a frontier town.

These are towns that are separated by enough difficult miles that except for the four core towns, trade is probably difficult and extremely limited. This explains, FWIW, why trade goods in D&D are so damnably expensive: each town is basically running a frontier style economy, far from major centers of commerce, and even getting a shipment of goods through these lands requires an armed escort. As I said in the post that opened this series, these will of necessity be small towns, probably walled, with small out-populations supporting them.

Encounters in towns and cities are limited to two types: Men (fighters, clerics, wizards, brigands and bandits) and Undead (the whole classic list). They are literally half and half, so each town must have some fairly active necropolis attached to it, and the population must bar themselves indoors at night. Banditry and brigandage in the towns, and undead, are obviously combated to some extent by the humans who are also wandering with their retinues. These encounters are rarer than other locales, so it must be that these are simply the exceptional ones. But there has to be some role for the undead - as I discussed under wizard's castles and towers, it may be that high-level wizards routinely create non hostile undead to do their bidding. Brigands and bandits, meanwhile, easily become various toughs and hoodlums, lawless types in the city.

So this is the setting of original D&D: a frontier land, perhaps with a single state in its center, with wilderness populated by creatures of myth, legend and giant creature films. It is a world of Arthurian castles, knights templar, necromancers, dinosaurs and cavemen. It is wild, and it feels profoundly like the world someone who watched every cheesy science fiction movie about giant monsters and every classic horror film would make. This is bolted onto a world with openly Tolkienesque elements - elves, goblins, orcs, balrogs, ents, hobbits - and other entries that quickly became generic fantasy because they were in the D&D books. The result is far more gonzo and funhouse than people give D&D credit for, and I think it winds up being a good mix.

I've really been happy with the reception this series has gotten, and I hope it will make it into folks' games. I will be compiling it all into a pretty basic PDF file in the next few days, nothing fancy, that will be available for free download. Feel free in the comments or on G+ or FB to let me know what you'd like to see next.

Sorry for the radio silence, gang. I've hung up the DM spurs for a while, and I'm playing in a Caveman Campaign run by a friend of mine, Matt Groves. So, I thought I might take a break from telling you what's cool about my game to tell you what's cool about his.

A C-C-Caveman campaign, you say? What's so cool about that?

1. You rise from the dirt with nothing. No clothes, no weapons, no equipment. Anything you want, you have to make with your own two hands. Kill a boar, strip its hide for armor and tie a tusk to a stick to make an axe. Tie vines together for a rope, use a strip of fur as a sling. You want bows and arrows? You better find a master craftsman to invent that shit.

Whenever you get an item, roll a craft check: d6+int+a bonus for good materials. Write that number next to your item. Whenever it gets damaged badly - say, if an enemy gets a good hit against your armor, or they attack your weapon directly - roll d6 as a save. If it's over your craft number, it breaks. If it's under, it's safe - but subtract one for next time.

This strips D&D right back to the primitive basics. Brutal and primitive, your fists are your first and last defense  You have a very small amount of shit, and you care about all of it. This is the spike you tore off that giant cactus - this is the armor you made from the bones in the dinosaur graveyard. Everything is personalized and unique.

It works because no-one else has anything either: you can't buy anything, and most of the battles are fist VS fist. This puts the focus on using the environment - throwing sand in their eyes, pushing shit onto them. Punching does a d4, a crafted weapon does a d6, a great weapon does d8. You might want to downgrade the hit points by a bit.


2. Everything is based on something tactile. You need things like eyes or tongues for spell components. You get experience by eating the brains of your foes. The end of every battle is marked with a bloody frenzy as you start ripping into the bodies of the fallen.

(Pro anatomy tip: Human bodies comes with two "Club Bones" that make perfect weapons.)

Leveling up involves smoking rare herbs to enter the magical level-up plain and commune with the gods. Classes are basic: Wizard spells should be fiddled with to become more like subtle tricks than obvious magic.The ability to start a fire is a good level 1 wizard spell, for instance.


3. Everything was cracked out of the clay mold just the other day. The land is still molten; mountains move, gods walk. There are no cities, trade routes, or civilization - just straggling tribes surrounded by crazed wilderness. Anything could be over the hill. Forms are still fluid, the way they are in creation myths; many animals still talk.

(Jonathan H. Adler)

Salon has an interesting report on Tuesday’s court hearing before federal district judge Edward Korman in which the Administration sought to defend its newly announced policy of limiting the over-the-counter availability of Plan-B contraception  to females 15 and older instead of removing all restrictions as Korman had previously ordered.  A taste:

This morning, Korman repeatedly slammed his hand down on the table for emphasis, interrupting the government counsel’s every other sentence with assertions like, “You’re just playing games here,” “You’re making an intellectually dishonest argument,” “You’re basically lying,” “This whole thing is a charade,” “I’m entitled to say this is a lot of nonsense, am I not?” and “Contrary to the baloney you were giving me …” He also accused the administration of hypocrisy for opposing voter ID laws but being engaged in the “suppression of the rights of women” with the ID requirement for the drug.

The Administration is also appealing Korman’s order.

Fiend Folio has some varient races like norkers that are really just slightly different creatures. So as Im much more into the 1-page rule approach to monsters - just a basic list of humanoid by HD and size but then add some extra features. Marine varient notes are on hobgoblins, trolls, ogres why not others? Id rather a few lines describing a variant than a full description about someone elses game world of the military organization of monsters when appearing in group of 500.

HD and Height makes right
I usually assume races get a + to be hit but big creatures may offset with more armour to compensate
Tiny Under 1" -4 to hit
Small 1-4' -1to hit
Human 5-6'
Large 7-9' +1 to hit
Giant 10-17' +2 to hit
Titanic 18'-49' +3 to hit
Gargantuan 50' +4 to hit

d4 Kobold (3'), Booka(6"), Jermalain(1'), typical human (5'6"), Nixie (4'), Pixie (2'6") Killmoulis (6"), Brownie (1'6"),
d6 human militia man, bandit, Merchant, Cultist (5'6"+)6
d6 +1 (1d8-1) Goblin* (4'), Elf *(6'), Beserker (5'8"), Mite (2') Snyad (2'6") Xvart (3')
d8 Orc (6'+), Dwarf (4'), Human Soldier (5'8") , Gnome (3'+), Giberling (4'-5') Githyanki (6') Vegepygmy (4')
d8+1 Hobgoblin (6"6), Baboon (4'+), Bullywug (3-5'8"), Merman (5+), Dakon (6'2"), Dark Creeper (4')
1d8+2 Norker (4') Quaggoth (7+) Shocker (5'6")
2d8 Dryad, Gnoll (7'+), Locatha (6+), Caveman (6'), Dire Corby (6'), Grimlock (5'+) Kenku, Kuo-Toa (6+), Ogrillion (7'+) Qullan (8+), Skulk (5'6") Tabaxi (6'6") Ice Troll (9')
2d8+1 Lizard Men (7'), Troglodyte (5-7') Dark Stalker (6')
2d8+2 Sahuagen (6+mostly or 8+), Fire Newts (6'2")
2d8+3 Flind (6'+)
3d8 Nymph, Seahag, Triton, Crab Men (9')
3d8 +1 Bugbear (7'+), Wererat (3-5'8")
3d8+4 Needleman (5'8")
4d8 Meazel (5-6') Sandman (5'6") Derro (4')
4d8 +1 Ogre (9')
4d8+3 Werewolf
4d8+4 Yeti (8')
5d8 Carnivorous Ape, Satyr
5d8+2 Wereboar, Ogre Magi (10'6")
5d8+5 Verbeeg (8'6"-10)
6d8 Dune Stalker (6')
6d8+2 Weretiger
6d8+3 Minotaur (7-9')
6d8+6 Troll (9'+)
7d8 Rakasha
7d8+3 Wereboar
8d8 Nighthag, Lizard King (8) Giant Troll (10'+)
8d8+1d2 Hill Giant (10'6")
8d8+4 Mindflayer (6')
9d8+1d3 Stone Giant (12')
10d8 Efreeti(12) Giant two headed troll (10'+)
10d8+1d4 Frost Giant (15) 
11+1d4+1 Fire giant (12')
12d8 Mountain Giant (14')
12d8+1d6+1 Cloud Giant (18')
13+1d3 Formarian (13'6")
13+1d6+1 Firbolg (10'6")
14d8 Fog Giant (18')
15+1d6+1 Storm Giant (21')
17d8 Titan (18'+)
35d8 Gargantua Humanoid (80-100')

+1 HD Sub leader  Leader - one in 12
+2 HD Leader - one in 20
+3 HD Champion - one in 50 +1 attack +1 AC
+4 HD Cheifttain - one in 100 +1 attack +1 AC
+5 HD King - one in 500 +2 attack +2 AC
+6 HD High King - one on 1000 +2 attack +2 AC
if base HD d4, then sub leader gets 1d8 instead

*Deviations from the books... MM FF MM2
goblin is 1d7 18-1 minimum of one in AdnD
elf is d8+1 (5'+) in MM, my elves taller than humans but like greyhound lithe versions

undead, animals, other plane will get own later

Variations of standard humanoids
Id be quite happy with generic humanoid with variants by HD and do all of these monster on 2 pages
but here is my variable table to change existing humanoids or to generic humanoids with whatever you want. Starting with cosmetic ending with better ones. A second separate table follows of out right magical abilities after which could be for a magical elite type, other planar varient or hybrid or fey versions.

How many rolls to make?
These tell you how many rolls to make and can be stacked if DM approves (chaos mongrel man mutant for example)

Minor sub breed
1 minor alteration
 
Major divergent sub breed
1d3 minor alterations

Mongrel Man or mutant
1d3 minor alteration
1d3 mutations

Futuristic version
1 minor alteration
1 anachronism

Throwback version
1 minor alteration
1 mutation

Magical sub breed
1 minor alterations,
one magical per 4 HD

Outer plane ancestor breed
1d3 minor alterations,
one magical per HD

Chaos Warped
1d6 mutations

Law Focused
1d6 Anachronisms

Minor Alterations 1d100
example damages for 1-4 HD humanoids, increase when making ogre or troll or giant size.
1-3 Tail
4-5 Prehensile tail
6-7 Weapon Tail (1d4 for human size)
8 Weapon Tail (1d6 for human size)
9 Sting tail (1d4 + poison +4 save)
10-12 Stubby horns (1d4 headbutt for human size)
13-14 Horns (1d6 for human size)
15-17 Fangs (1d3 for human size)
18-19 Jaws  (1d4 for human size)
20 Huge Jaws (1d6 for human size)
21-23 Claws or martial arts (1d3 for human size)
24-25 Claws or martial arts (1d4 for human size)
26 Claws or martial arts (1d6 for human size)
27-30 +1 Hit and damage
31-33 Dwarf version, half size
34-36 +1 hp per HD
37-39 Big version +1 HD +10%
40-41 Huge Version +2 HD +20%
42 Huge Version +3 HD +30%
43 Giant Version +4 HD +50%
44-46 +1 AC from hide or agility
44-45 +2 AC from hide or agility
46 +3 AC from hide or agility
47 Beserker +2 hit and damage, out of control, fight till all dead, difficult to stop
49-50 +2 hide and sneak
51 Mimic voices and sounds
52-55 +2 one type of save throw (poison, charm, etc)
56-57 +4 one type of save throw (poison, charm, etc)
58-59 1pt less damage per dice from one type of damage (poison, fire)
60 1/2 damage from one type of damage (cold, lightning, acid, edged)
61-62 Sneak attack as a rogue
63 Back stab as a rogue
65 First Aid NWP
66 +4 Torture
67 +4 Track
68 1/2 chance one normal sense NWP, compensate with blind fighting if needed
69-70 +4 one sense NWP check
71 +4 NWP sense checks
72-73 Night Vision (or day tolerant if day-blind), half normal penalties
74 Dark Vision (or day tolerant if day-blind), no penalties
75-76 +4 Balance
77-80 +4 Climb
81 +4 Pick Pockets
82 Swing in branches or stalagmites
83 Very Slow 6" base speed
84 Slow 9"base speed
85 fast 18" base speed
86 Hopping +50% jumping range, +1 hit damage with hopping charge
87 Glider Membrane, glide across in feet equal to height in feet, 90 degree turn each round
88 Crude Wings, 6" speed, rounds = CON per hour, 180 degree turn each round. I/nsect, bird or bat
89 True Wings, 18" speed, 360 degree turn each round, insect, bird or bat
90 Luminous organ or in emotional state
91 Chameleon +4 Hide
92 Stealthy +4 Sneak
93 Recover 1hp with 1 turn rest after a injury
94 Recover 1hp per hour
95 +4 Feign Death NWP
96 Freakish colours
97 Surprise on a 1d3 instead of 1 on a d6
98 +2 Initiative
99  Alternate alignment and contrary behavior to rule
00 Roll on magical or mongrels and mutations table table

Mutations d100
More extreme bizarre, debilitating freak powers with clear biological quality
1 extra eyes +2 Spot NWP (like a spider or third eye on forehead
2 no eyes, but get blind fighting WP halves normal penalty
3 deaf
4 bat ears, sonar and echolocation powers of a bat
5 mute, possibly squawk or gasp or hiss
6 subsonic speech, silently speak to own kind
7 Huge ears, hear things from far away +4 Listen
8 Huge Nose +2 Track and Smell
9 Huge Nose +3 Find food, find water
10 Burrowing claws 1' per round, 1d4 damage (if human sized)
11 Huge Tougue +4 taste poison
12 Hairy all over or bald or freaky natural punk
13 Lamprey mouth 1d4 + can hang on and keep draining
14 Spider or crab feeding parts 1d4 (for normal size)
15 Huge Beetle feeding parts 1d6
16 Extra arms - extra hands
17 Extra legs - extra feet +50% move
18 Extra legs - cling with spider legs
19 Bendable +4 escapology
20 Stretchable +50% height or reach if needed
21 Elongated neck 1 foot per lv
22 Hideous Wattles +1AC
23 Tentacles for limbs or face or hair or fingers
24 Crab claw 1d4 nip
25 Elongated prehensile tongue
26 Independent googly eyes can look multiple directions 360 degrees
27 Spinnerets can spin lv" per day of rope from your butt
28 Pheranome spray +2 CHA with oposite sex
29 Hermaphrodite or variable gender
30 No gender, breed by budding, or new babies hatch from corpse or sexless or sterile
31 Bombardier Blast (1d6 fire bolt 10" per lv)
32 Tough Feet, dont need boots, -1 damage per dice from ground attacks
33 Bizarre Phobia (something ordinarily harmless scares you like holy symbol, rats, spiders)
34 Parthenogenic, breeds without a mate and can start a colony
35 Hybridizes with anything it can mate with, mongrel features
36 Extra heads 1d6 1-3 = +1, 4-5 = +1d3, 6 = +1d6
37 Slug legs, 50% speed but cling
38 Tail 1d6 slap, extra attack
39 Vomit Acid 1d6 every 3 rounds spit 1" per level
40 Quadrupedal
41 Missing limbs or body part
42 Huge stomach, +2 vs ingested poison,
43 Hump or fat stores food and water a for week
44 Extra face or set of teeth on body
45 Trunk or prehensile nose 6"-3' long
46 Duck Bill or other bird beak, 1d4 peck
47 Sterile or sexless
48 A swarm live in the mongrels body
49 Freakish genitalia and sexual characteristics
50 Altered diet, eat some basic food like plants, shellfish, bugs, dung
 51 Amorphous blob, no longer humanoid
52 Weakling 50% STR
53 Sickly 50% CON
54 Clumsy 50% DEX
55 Idiot 50% INT
56 Fool 50% WIS
57 Hideous 50% CHA
58 +1d4 STR
59 +1d4 CON
60 +1d4 DEX
61 +1d4 INT
62 +1d4 WIS
63 +1d4 CHA
64 Two brains, extra save vs charm but turns on back up personality (?)
65 Regrow body parts back but different species
66 Thermal vision
67 X-Ray vision one round per turn 1' thick stone or 3' wood
68 Beam vision like Fiery Eyes spell
69 See souls, can spot undead, see targets in dark, tell if dead, see spirits leave those killed
70 Grows valuables in body like gen in head, ivory, fur
71 Unnatural 1d3 extra hybrid species features
72 Spit poison save or blind 1"/lv
73 Scream, demoralizes all in 10"/lv, once per battle, heard for miles
74 Con save each round to stabilize HP loss when in negative HP
75 Amphibian can breath water and air
76 Can hold breath one turns instead or rounds
77 Immune to blinding attacks
78 Always land on feet -d6 fall damage
79 Tusks 1d6 extra attack
80 Shoots spines or bolts from body like a light crossbow, 1 shot per CON per day
81 Vampire drinks blood to live and can heal a hp by drinking blood after a battle
82 Albino dark adapted hates natural sunlight -2 to fight or sense in daylight, white skin and red eyes
83 Shock touch 1d3+1 per level touch once per battle, can stack with a punch or kick
84 Shed skin or sleep in cocoon monthly and get changed appearance and possible abilities
85 Cold resistant with blubber or fur or both like a polar bear or seal, comfortable any natural cold
86 Biomonofilament tentacle 1d6 1'/lv
87 Able to infect others of its kind to be more like it, change in looks and alignment over time
88 +4 Disease Resistant
89 +4 Poison resistant
90 Produces addictive delicious fluid or scented musk it uses as bait or to train slaves
91-95 roll twice more
96-100 roll again and +1d3 times more

Magical Alterations 1d100
 Id use these to make spell caster and elite types

1 Bizarre Phobia (something ordinarily harmless scares you like holy symbol, rats, spiders)
2 Bizarre magical aversion (cant cross water or holy symbol or snake or something)
3 Bizarre magical allergy (harmed by substance like cold iron, garlic, holy water)
4 Cast spells as a priest
5 Cast spells as a sorcerer
6 Cast spells as a druid
7 Cast spells as a wizard
8 Cast spells as a psionic
9 Spell like ability (1-2nd level spell, at will like Invisibility, Knock, Spider Climb, Chromatic orb)
10 Spell like ability (3-4th level spell three times per day like Fireball, Polymorph) )
11 Spell like ability (5-6th level spell once per day like like Teleport, Curse, Quest)
12 Wish powers (d6 1-5=monthly, 6=yearly) conditional and flawed or dangerous or cost (soul?)
13 Create Darkness/Light 15" radius once per turn
14 very fast 24" base speed
15 Spider climb
16 Mask - illusion of face at will
17 Disguise - illusion form over body
18 Shape Shift 1 form
19 Shape Shift 1d3 forms
20 Shape Shift 1 type of creature (size, mammal, plant, elemental)
21 Shape Shift into anything at will
22 Resistant (fire poison edged) 
23 Invisibility (10 minites ever hour)
24 magic and one base metal or material like wood or stone to hit
25 +1 to hit
26 +2 to hit
27 +4 Initiative
28 Sense (Life, gold, good, or any one thing)
29 Regenerate
30 Divination powers or special wisdom or can ask gods or spirits
31 Body parts good to make magic item or potion
32 Has true name, can be bound or banished with right spells like demon or devil
33 Returns as undead when killed
34 Monster hatches out when dead
35 Resembles totally different creature like undead or mechanical or looks human
36 Can be trapped in bottle or container with right magic
37 +4 AC from metal hide or crystal carapace
38 Levitate
39 mate and reproduce with anything even inanimate objects
40 Tries to poses a new body after undead, three tries before spirit departs
41 Undead, gains resistances as if undead and vulnerable to necromancy, turning and holy water
42 Drains one level on touch
43 Craves bizarre or expensive food craving or sexual desire or something unnatural
44 Dimension door for escapes
45 Teleport for escapes
46 Plane Shift to escape
47 Gate can call a other plane being HDx10% chance once a day
48 Phaze can shift to other plane and back, needs magic to harm,
49 Alighnment flips and changes
50 Gate HDx10% chance once a day can call a lesser other plane being
51 Gate HDx10% chance once a week can call a major other plane being
52 Gate HDx10% chance once a year can call a unique other plane being
53 Can shrink to one foot +2 AC -25% move
54 Can shrink to 1" +4 AC -50% move
55 Can grow next size class
55 Can grow several size classes
56 Blunt weapons, -1 damage on any any edged weapon hit till repaired
57 Conjure weapons into hands at will
58 Can cast cantrip per HD at will of any type
59 Extra attack 1d6 tails with poison sting
60 Venomous bite or claws 1d4 or envenom weapon by licking
61 Shape shift into last thing they kill
62 Turns to normal person when killed
63 Can change gender
64 Immune to 1st level spells
65 Immune to 1st to 2nd level spells
66 Immune to 1st level 3rd spells
67 Turn to a statue or tree or crystal foe years if desired
68 Powers of remote vision
69 Danger sense, cannot be surprised
70 Charm person three times per day
71 Fear three times per day
72 Increased STR +3 damage increase
73 Increased CON +3 hp per dice
74 Increased DEX +3 hit and AC
75 Increased INT +3 extra languages and proficiencies
76 Increased WIS +3 extra second chances
77 Increased CHA +3 extra followers
78 Call animal servants or friends as followers
79 All members of species carry a magic item (d6 1-3=all same 4-6=all different)
80 All connected to other planar lord or god
81 Spawn of other planar power, parent bares grudge on killers
82 Race can identify any who have killed a member of the species on sight
83 Explodes on death
84 Turns to stone on death
85 Turns to smoke on death
86 Turns to stinking cloud on death
87 Turns to simulacra of killer on death
88 Influence local weather, more powerful or large groups have more effect
89 Breath weapon
90 Hypnotic gaze, transfixes victim stared at who fails save
91 Paralysis touch
92 Stone gaze
93 Magic resistant HDx5%
94 Magic resistance HDx10%
95 Raise undead minions from dead as animate dead spell
96 Unique magic item or relic, possibly with prohibitions or taint on user
97 Bard Powers
98 Alignment champion powers
99 roll twice more
100 roll again and +1d3 times more

Anachronism table later
This table will appear in future post sorry - a d100

More for high tech cyborgs or exotic ultratech hardware

Lawful features from planes of law (opposite of chaos mutation) might appear like clockwork or steampunk or decopunk  cyberwear or weapons.

Consider some varient mutations like cthulhu table, or table for each alignment...

d12	Ruler	d12	Ruler's Goal
1	Bandit King	1	Personal glory and adoration
2	Cult Leader	2	To amass wealth
3	Displaced Noble	3	To conquer a neighboring kingdom
4	Knight	4	To crusade in the name of religion
5	Magic-user	5	To drive an ethnic group from the land
6	Mercenary Captain	6	To find an item of great power
7	Merchant Prince	7	To forge a dynasty
8	Monster (hag, demon, naga, etc.)	8	To forge an empire
9	Peasant Revolutionary	9	To make war with a hated neighbor
10	Priest	10	To provide safe haven for their people
11	Tribunal of Equals	11	To start a new religion
12	Undead (lich, vampire, deathknight, etc.)	12	To usher in a new Golden Age

d12	Ruler's Style	d12	Ruler's Quirk
1	Abusive and Cruel	1	Addicted to drink or drugs
2	Decadent and Overly Sensuous	2	Disguised as a member of the opposite sex
3	Fair-minded and Contemplative	3	Easily swayed by beauty
4	Gruff and Businesslike	4	Fascinated by the latest science
5	Imperious Autocrat	5	Gripped by delusion
6	Merciful and Compassionate	6	Mentally controlled by their vizier
7	Noble Poseur	7	Religious fanatic
8	Ostentatious Displays of Wealth	8	Secretly a demon cultist
9	Paranoid and Skittish	9	Secretly a doppelganger
10	Self-sacrificing and virtuous	10	Slated to be sacrificed by a cult
11	Unforgiving and Fanatical	11	Unpredictable temper
12	Weak and Indecisive	12	Unswervingly obeys a moral code

 




 

If you're playing B/X or something similar, but perhaps you're a bit of a "roll player" (like me!), here's a quick little bolt-on system to bring some extra action into your combats. It is built on the basic principles of the DCC Mighty Deeds™ combat stunt system.


Step 1: Bump the thief up to a d6 hit die. Let's face it, he could use the boost.

Step 2: Use this for attack rolls:

1d16 + HD, i.e.

Fighter/Dwarf: 1d16+1d8
Cleric/Thief/Elf/Hobbit: 1d16+1d6
Magic-User: 1d16+1d4

For stunts, you have to declare them before rolling, get a 4+ on the hit die and a high enough total roll to score a hit. If you do not meet both conditions it's a miss. If you do meet both conditions, you can choose between scoring double damage (called shot), or scoring normal damage plus applying an effect, such as disarming, knocking down, pushing back, etc.

There's no advancement built in, so if you want the PCs to improve, you'll have to figure that out yourself. I figure a magic sword or whatever would allow you to replace the d16 with a d20 (more or less equivalent to a +2). I figure this is enough of an improvement over the regular system that we can just ditch the improvement over time. If you want to see the mathematical effect, check this graph.

For crits, you can do whatever, but I'd probably just do natural 16's for the sake of simplicity and giving a very minor bump to crit chances. Maybe even have fighters crit on 15-16 so they can be real murder machines.

If for some weird reason you don't already have several sets of zocchi dice, d16s can be bought individually.

Dungeon exploration game movement rules generally assume you are:

- trying to move quietly
- trying to map
- try to spot hidden danger or hidden anything

Let's talk about that first one, moving quietly - and more broadly, how do you sneak in a dungeon?

It seems like most people assume - for surprise, for wandering monsters, and especially for their own characters, that they're moving pretty quietly, stealthily, and generally make it hard to detect them. Not only that, but that they can see and hear pretty far themselves. How true is all of that?

Sound

How easy is it to move through an underground tunnel quietly?

"A base movement rate of 120' in 10 minutes may seem slow, but it assumes that the players are mapping carefully, searching, and trying to be quiet."
- Dungeons & Dragons Basic Rulebook, ed. Tom Moldvay, p. B19

Moldvay pegs you at a movement rate of 1 yard every 15 seconds, which is pretty slow if you think about it - it's not a march, it's a very quiet and slow movement rate. Presumably, it's abstracted between speeds much like a lot of D&D is abstracted - overall, you get 120' every 10 minutes, which includes some quicker movement and stopping to look at things and draw your map. So you aren't burning along at a high pace, you're trying to be quiet. No word on how far that sound carries, that I can find anyway.

AD&D is a little more harsh. The DMG implies you're making some noise - thieves move at the normal rate silently if they make their Moving Silently check (well, if the GM does). Special versions of the Ring of Invisibility make you silent, too - as do Boots of Elvenkind. But heavy gear can make you noisy, and light get singled out as easy to spot under discussion of pursuit:


NOISE: Characters in metal armor can be heard for 90', hard boots can be heard at 60', relatively quiet movement can be
heard at 30'."
- AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide, Gary Gygax, p. 68

So you can only be heard out to 30' if you're quiet, out to 60' clicking along in those hard boots you bought, and out to 90' if you're in metal armor - mail and plate wearers, look out.

No surprise, GURPS addresses this sort of thing directly, with a (pretty easy) rule for hearing distance. GURPS Underground Adventures has some more general rules for this sort of thing - specifically how far sound and light carry in an underground setting. Not surprisingly, sound can carry pretty damn far. Stone makes it echo, which can make localizing the sound hard (-2 to the roll in GURPS, per Underground Adventures p. 10) but tunnels carry the sound along pretty well.

While GURPS is pretty generous, in my opinion, about how loud walking is (half Move is a "normal conversation" and Stealth rolls work without extra penalties at Move 1 aka 1 yard per second) it's counteracted by how hard it can be to localize the sound. Not only that, it singles out combat and cane travel - aka tapping on the floor. Like, say, how a 10' pole would work. Rhythmic or a-rhythmic, tapping is pretty loud - and needs to be if you're using it to hear your way places or hear covered pit traps.

So you're giving up your best chance at not being heard by doing your best to avoid pit traps, tripwires, false floors, and unseen dropoffs. It's tap and likely be heard, or don't tap and take your chances with the floor.

Encumbrance matters for Stealth - you suffer your encumbrance level as a penalty to the roll. So heavy armor gets you, too, in GURPS. And either combat were blows are struck or tapping makes Stealth rolls impossible and makes it significantly easier to hear you!


Environmental factors will come up here, too. GURPS gives a +4 for most caves because they are quiet; but a megadungeon, for example, or occupied caves with monsters in them, will never really be quiet. I personally zero it out - the distant bangs, groans, creaks, drips, scrapes, etc. are enough to obscure some noises, but aren't so loud that they'll obscure them completely.

All in all, avoiding making noise is pretty hard, even without talking or fighting.

Light

"LIGHT: Straight line of sight is near infinite, any corner cuts distance to 60'."
- AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide, Gary Gygax, p. 68

"Treat the light as in in plain sight to distance observers who have a clear view of it: +10 to Vision rolls to see it"
- GURPS Underground Adventures, p. 10

In either case, this works out to be the same thing - if they have line-of-sight on your light source, they're going to see you. Which mean all the sneaking in the world won't help unless you've extinguished your light sources and gotten away from other light sources. Fortunately (and GURPS points this out), light helps you see within its radius but obscures what's outside its radius. It's the "blinded by your campfire" issue - you adjust to the better light source and it effectively blinds you to what's outside of its radius.

This is one I find people forget the most - they'll move quietly, communicate by gesture, and otherwise minimize their sounds - as they sneak past the door with a half-dozen magical sources of extremely bright light. Oops.

Smell

"ODORS: Normal scent can be detected by creatures hunting or tracking by scent for several hours - even in a dungeon setting. Scent can be masked with various things - mustard powder, oil of citronella, crushed stinging nettle, etc."
- AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide, Gary Gygax, p. 68

I like how it singles out scents. Although I think there is a mistake waiting to happen there - yes, citronella will mask your odor, but it's a different and strong odor. It might easily alert something even if it convinced smell-hunting unintelligent monsters not to bother you because you don't smell like food. Active camouflage like this can backfire pretty easily. A better approach would seem to be either match your smell to nearby creatures (ala Disguise (Animals) in GURPS) or eliminating it (the No-Smell spell in GURPS).

But yeah, smell is potentially important.

GURPS Basic Set doesn't spend much time on smell, but I think it's worth having any monster that can smell make a roll if stinky stuff comes by - adventurers burning torches, stinking of sweat and blood, fresh meat, etc.

"If anyone sneaks up on us, J'zargo will smell them coming. Or he might not. We'll see."
- J'Zargo the Khajit, Skyrim

Discriminatory Smell is a perfect case for this - with it, a critter might detect what's coming, and tell the difference between "delver stinking of sweat and tension and metal" and "one of those juicy giant rats." Don't forget to check if they smell the adventurers coming - and it's yet another dimension a sneaky group needs to use.

Other Senses

In a fantasy game especially, other senses matter. Monsters might have Vibration Sense and feel you coming. They might have Detect Life (Precise) and sense your presence no matter how quiet you are. They may have magical triggers to alert them to your proximity. Even the sneakiest of folks can fall prey to supernatural detection. If the monsters have it, you need to have an idea how close anyone could get before they just get detected. And those trying to sneak up need to figure out clever counters . . .

We Speak in Sign Language

Coupled with a good way to see in the dark, this isn't bad. But it's limited, and all the PCs will need to learn it. Even then, it's hard to fight quietly . . . which brings us to combat.

What about combat?

Combat sounds will carry everywhere. The odds that you're quietly sneaking up to a room, quietly forcing the door, and/or quietly neutralizing monsters is pretty low. Especially that last bit - it's hard to kill quietly.

In Basic D&D, if you aren't quiet in the first place, your chance of a surprise drops to nil:

"EXAMPLES: A party is no likely to surprise a monster behind a closed door if the party has just fought a battle near that door. A party will not surprise a monster if the attempt to open the door fails (even once!)"
- Dungeons & Dragons Basic Rulebook, ed. Tom Moldvay, p. B23

Same in GURPS - a fight counts at least as "loud conversation" (no penalty at 4 yards), more (presumably no penalty at 8 yards) if metal armor is struck. -0 at 8 yards means it's only -3 to hear at 512 yards if you're in a normal 10' x 10' dungeon corridor. Oops, there goes the element of surprise in the orc complex. Once they've heard you, it's not that much harder (despite the -2 above) to locate the sound and figure out what it is. Even if they don't, kiss Total Surprise goodbye, and Partial Surprise might go bye-bye too if they're actively preparing to fight.

Gunfire is ridiculously loud (see GURPS High-Tech for details), so if you're using primitive guns or really loud magic (Thunderclap, any Explosive Spells, etc.), it's going to wake up the whole damn dungeon.

So fighting and weapon use is noisy.

Whether denizens will react or not is a different issue - maybe they're like me, and are used to some "outside noises" - police cars, neighbors, the fire truck heading out, the train rolling by. Or maybe they're in a quiet zone and hyper-sensitive. Maybe they known from experience that bangs and crashes and shouts of combat are a sign that easy food is around, or that extreme danger approaches. But between light, sound, and smell, it seems hard to stay truly quiet in the dungeon.

There is a nice bit here of Rob Kuntz discussing playing Robilar solo in Gary Gygax's game. The encounters were set up for groups, with the assumption that a big noisy group is coming. He used magic to achieve surprise by staying quiet and unseen (and presumably using some kind of light-free vision source) and attacking by surprise. This is something that just isn't terribly reasonable in a group.

Not without magic - which I'll cover in Part II.

Remember back in the early days of the "War on Terror" when bin Laden was suppose to have a cool super-villain (or orc chieftain, what have you) lair beneath a mountain in a cave complex called Tora Bora ("Black Cave" in Pashto, which only adds to the mystique)? Turns out that wasn't true, but in the those days of fevered speculation, the Times of London produced this cool cross-section:


Obviously, you could put some sort of terrorist mastermind there, but it could also double as the sanctum of Cthulhu cultists or goblins, or whatever. Reality's loss is your game's gain!

Many on the frontier pay passing homage to the goddess Gloriana, sometimes styled Majestrix, for she embodies the exploration of Wampus Country in many ways.  Gloriana is the bounty of the wilderness - the idea that all this food, lumber, and living space are just out there for the taking if one only has the courage to reach out and grab it.  Some farmers maintain a small shrine to Gloriana, for although they be agents of agriculture, they are keenly aware that their tamed land has been parceled out to them by the wilderness Herself.  Some adventuring-types also bow their heads to Gloriana Majestrix, although they may take her "go out and grab it" philosophy in a slightly different direction.

The goddess herself is pictured as a young (or sometimes matronly) woman clutching a cornucopia, sometimes accompanied by a shield on one arm or mounted upon her back.  Although sometimes drawn wearing a massive fruited bonnet, and other times with russet locks flowing in the breeze, she is inevitably barefoot.  On occasion she is accompanied by one or more brightly-colored birds, or by a swarm of bees.  Copper charms bearing the image of the Majestrix are sold in most towns as luck-charms, and wards against starvation while traveling.  In some ways Gloriana resembles a hearth goddess, using similar terminology - it is she who sits at a loom and weaves the fabric of the land, for example, she who stokes the fires beneath the mountain to keep the world warm.  Festivals acknowledging Gloriana Majestrix are held in the Spring and Autumn, and are themed around the planting and the harvest.  More than once in the past decade these festivals have been interrupted by black-clad assassins of death determined to act against the cult of Gloriana.

Clerics dedicated principally to Gloriana are but a mere handful, but they certainly make their presence known wherever they go; here they are delivering warm speeches on streetcorners, there they are tagging along with a posse of ne'er-do-wells and dragging something valuable out of the woods.  Some time ago in Thistlemarch, a priest named Roland made a bit of a name for himself around town by discovering, along with his fellow gentleman-adventurers, the forgotten subterranean abode of a long-dead sorceror.  Roland was affable, well-liked in town, and known for applying his cleverness to the constant problem of "how can we profit from this seemingly-unsellable loot?"  Sadly, he and his companions have not been seen in town in over a year - perhaps they are off on another quest, or perhaps they have been devoured by wampus-cats somewhere.

Townsfolk dress in elaborate food-related costumes for the Spring festival.

Gloriana's spirit-messengers are said to be resplendent avians which guide men to treasure or safety.

In a later installment we shall investigate the connection between the Gloriana cult and the rainbow-striped zebras, and perhaps look into a certain rare type of brutish lycanthropy associated with her worship.

Encumbrance should be a measure of not just how much weight you can carry, but how easily you can manoeuvre whilst carrying different things, we’re adventuring here after all. Besides that, there’s also the fact that most of the time there’s going to be some things that you want to be a bit more accessible […]

Mountains are one of the more plentiful terrain types in the Outdoor Survival map that is the presumed setting of original D&D. There is a nice big range in the north and center, and both the northwest and southeast quadrants of the map have what appears to be several ridges. In Snorri's map which I used in the start of this series, there are several high mountains in white. These are probably old mountains, more like the Appalachians than the Rockies. There are six castles in the mountains (one third of the castles), and these must be hard fortresses that use their natural defenses to good effect. Most of the castles with flying defenders will be in the mountains, for logistical reasons.

The mountains run with giant types (which includes humanoids, ogres, trolls, giants, and demihumans), and dragons, each being 25% of the encounters located here. Giants proper will, naturally, live in the mountain ranges, probably with various and sundry followings; there will be hill and stone giants in the caves as well as frost giants in the frozen mountains, and possibly a cloud giant castle. Other goblinoid types are probably making forays from caves deep within the mountains. Elves are the out of place encounters here.

Dragons living in the mountain range will be primarily red, although the colder northern mountains may have a few white dragons as well. The dragon chart also includes cockatrices, basilisks, wyverns, balrogs, chimerae and hydras - all of which could well be native to the mountains. This is in addition to the flyer list that includes dragons and balrogs already. Combined with the giants, we need a pretty good cavern system to support these creatures; the mountains must nearly have an underground wilderness beneath them.

Under the "Men" listing we find cavemen, the only place where they appear in the encounter lists. Cavemen in OD&D are 2nd level fighting-men, wielding clubs the equivalent of morning stars but fighting at -1 to morale. Their primitive state is indicated in Neutral alignment. Given the media of the time, it's probable that these are meant as fur-wearing Neanderthals, with primitive communication and limited technology. These are hardscrabble cavemen, who compete with various magical beasts, monsters and paleolithic predators for their living space. It's no surprise that they are bigger and stronger, but canny enough to run when cornered. If you're facing a balrog there's no reason to stay and get killed.

The animal listing for Mountains is well suited to cavemen: there are cave bears, dire wolves, sabre-toothed cats (called tigers in the OD&D books), mastodons, spotted lions, woolly rhinos, titanotheres and mammoths. What's funny is that despite it being a very common trope at the time (for instance One Million Years B.C.), these cavemen are mostly distant from the dinosaurs and don't interact with them. Mammoths and mastodons make fine prey species for humans as well as the many predators of the mountains.

As with swamps, mountains are slow going, but it's harder to become lost in the ranges, and if you look, other than the north-central range, a lost party will fairly shortly find themselves outside the mountainous area; it's not hard to get to lowland if you look. In the movement rates, we also see an interesting wrinkle: the dragons can cover 24 hexes per day flying, which would get them about 2/3 of the way across the map, so a dragon could hunt 12 hexes away from its nesting area and return in a day.

Mountains are savage terrain; human toeholds barely tame them. The hardy few who live in mountain castles are seen as the defenders of the lower realms. Of course, where there are dragons there is rich treasure, and many foolhardy adventurers go off into the mountains never to be seen again...

Front cover of a prototype rulebook for Dungeon!

In 2011, pictures of a hand-made prototype of Dungeon from 1973 surfaced on the Acaeum, posted by an old friend of Dave Megarry, the game's designer. The cover of the prototype's rulebook is shown above. Megarry himself later posted that this was the "2nd version" of the game, and indicated that he had a copy of the original board but not rulebook, having been lost by TSR during production. You can see a portion of his original board here on the Mule Abides blog.

Board for Dungeon, prototype, 2nd version (click for larger view)

The prototype of the 2nd version is similar to the published version, but is named "The Dungeons of Pasha Cada" according to both the rulebook cover and the board itself (see detail above). The full set of rules was not posted, but we get a glimpse on the back cover:

Front cover of a prototype rulebook for Dungeon!

We see here that the amount of treasures required was different for some characters: Elf was 10,000 gp, but Hero was 12,000 gp, Superhero 15,000 gp and Wizard 25,000 gp. Just below this there is a warning: "If no one gets out alive, the Dungeons have won", implying that players couldn't start again if killed. Next there is an optional rule for safekeeping "prizes" (as they were originally called in the 1975 version), which was included in the "advanced rules" of the 1975 version but then dropped from the 1981 version. Then we have "Byword: The deeper you go, the better they are but the worse it gets". Finally, there is a list of "Rumors of Monsters that Inhabit the Dungeons", with exactly 30 monsters:

Goblins *
Kobolds *
Orcs *
Wights *
Lycanthropes * (presumably WereWolves)
Balrogs *
Giant Snakes
Red Dragons *
Giant Spiders *
WereRats
WereBears *
WereTigers
Green Slimes
Grey Puddings (OD&D, Vol 2, refers to "Black (or Gray) Puddings")
Anti Heroes *
Anti SuperHeroes *
Evil Sorceresses *
Black Dragons *
Wraiths *
Brown Dragons
Fire Elemental *
Earth Elemental *
True Trolls * (The True Troll of Chainmail is the same as the D&D Troll)
Ogres *
Giants *
Evil Wizards *
Giant Worms
Blue Dragons *
Purple Dragons * (The Purple Dragon of Chainmail is the same as the D&D Purple Worm) 

This monster list is closer to the monsters of Chainmail than the published game. I put an asterisk by each that appears Chainmail (or implied evil version), 21 of 30. The influence of Chainmail on Dungeon was previously discussed in the Blackmoor forums here. 

The board and list of monsters were modified during production of the 1975 game by TSR. In a letter to Megarry in April 1975, Gygax wrote:

"Basically the board is that you designed, with a few additional rooms, passages, and stairs/chambers. The number of different monsters has been cut to 24, and the same for the treasures. Rules will be very simple with an advanced play manual and monster description folder. All the monster cards will bear illustrations of the beasties. The map will be 22” x 28”, in multiple colors, with many wee spiders, bugs, rats, bones, and so forth shown in the blank areas. The cover will be mostly black and white with DUNGEONS! Dripping across the cover in blood red. Comments?" (See a scan of the original letter here on the Mule Abides).

Apparently at this point they had shortened the name from “Dungeons of Pasha Cada” to “DUNGEONS!” which would later be changed to the singular “DUNGEON!”.
 

Board from the 1975 version of DUNGEON! (click for larger view)

(This post is a revised version of one originally posted here on OD&D Discussion.)

The swamplands in OD&D are hardly as prolific as the forests that surround them; on the map there are only two swamps of any size. Both are large and fed by rivers, so we can say that they are freshwater wetlands; both are bordered by forests and should be considered as proper forested swamps and not reedy marshes, which likely exist in the river hexes. The southwest swamp is dominated by a castle, while the northeast swamp only has the fork of the major rivers in the area.

Every move there is a 50% chance of becoming lost and moving in a random direction, making travel particularly treacherous. Visibility is poor and there are few permanent landmarks; only the rivers can realistically be used to navigate them safely. As we'll see, I think this makes the deep swamps a particularly tricky environment.

Swamp encounters have a 25% chance of undead, and as such it's likely that the castle in the southwest swamp is that of a Necromancer or an Evil High Priest. It should go without saying that if you see a body in the swamp, it may not be at rest, and a zombie or ghoul that doesn't have to breathe could wait for weeks to find prey by hiding in the shallow waters of a swamp pool. Mummies and vampires are a bit more out of place, but a burial ground in the swamp might have some above-ground tombs reminiscent of the ones in New Orleans that could house these types.

The encounter tables also list the horrible "swimmer types," which include giant crabs, octopi, squid, snakes, leeches and fish, as well as crocodiles, mermen, nixies, sea monsters and dragon turtles. Logistically these would have to come at points where the rivers intersect with the swamps and make deeper than usual waters for habitat. Crocodiles and giant snakes being par for the course as you are going through the wetlands. Nixies are particularly nasty - rather than being physically violent, they try to charm opponents and enslave them.

It's worth talking briefly about OD&D mermen here: they are described as similar to berserkers but fighting at -1 on land. Clearly these are not mermaid-style creatures, and this is further verified in Supplement II: Blackmoor, where mermen are described as riding giant seahorses. This is a very far cry from the fish-tailed mermen that Gygax codified in the Monster Manual, more Namor than anything. They should be fearsome raiders into swamp and river territories, though - presumably eventually going to their far-off ocean homes.

But the big shift in the swamps proper is what lurks in the "optional swamps" table for animal encounters. There is an oddity in the charts - such that there is a sub-head for swamp animals, but no listing within the swamp encounter chart for "animals" that would trigger it. Obviously these are encountered somewhere, and I would suggest that it's best to substitute "Animals" out for "Swimmer" where there is no river in the swamp hex, meaning that dinosaurs are only found in the deepest reaches of the swamplands.

The inhabitants of these deep swamps include tyrannosaurs, pterodactyls, triceratops, brontosaurs (not yet changed to apatosaurs) and stegosaurs. OD&D has no entry whatsoever for any of these monsters, but given their location it's not entirely off-base to think that they represent the view of dinosaurs as lumbering, slow, lizard-like reptiles. This hints at a Lost World type of area, where swamp dwellers are at risk of tyrannosaurus attack. The potential interactions are fascinating: humans riding dinosaurs, an encounter interrupted by a tyrannosaur, hunting a wild brontosaurus. There's also the possibility for an Arzach type of character, riding on a giant pterosaur (assuming that the listing didn't limit us to smaller proper pterodactyls). Or of an animated tyrannosaurus skeleton.

Swamps are also the home of the black dragons, which take on their familiar aspect of acid-breathers who are less stupid than white dragons but not as wily as the other types. These are much more comfortable in the swamp, like the dinosaurs, and their lairs are likely to be the most fetid corners.

For humans, the swamps are difficult and treacherous lands. Travel through them is slow and difficult, and they contain possibly the most threatening types of encounters. It is a true land that time forgot, a treacherous place where you are as likely to meet a zombie as a tyrannosaur. Venturing into them is not for the faint of heart, and one should have a cleric as well as a strategy to face the dinosaurs and river monsters.

Apparently Homeland Security's Immigration & Custom's Enforcement (ICE) team has found a new tech issue to overreact to and overhype. shutslar points us to a story of ICE agents raiding 25 smartphone repair shops in South Florida for daring to repair phones with aftermarket parts, rather than original products from Apple. As seems standard for ICE these days, rather than actually understanding the details at hand, they're taking orders from a corporate entity, in this case, Apple:

Apple is working with the government to shut down those who mislead consumers.

This seems like a massive overreaction to a mere case of "misleading" consumers. They paint this as if it's some massive danger to make use of an aftermarket/non-Apple parts in doing the repair, but it's not. In many cases, such aftermarket parts are a good way to fix a phone at a more reasonable price. If Apple feels some of the shops are misleading customers, then it can sue for trademark infringement and deal with it that way.

Having over-aggressive, amped up ICE agents pretending this is a drug raid and that they need to "shut down" these shops is a massive overreaction which only serves to help prop up Apple's bottom line by taking aftermarket competitive parts out of the market, so that Apple can keep the margins on its parts extra high. Either way, there's simply no reason for treating the whole thing like a drug raid:

"When they came in it almost looked like a drug raid," Said Abella.

Abella claims there were 20 ICE agents and two people from Apple in his small Bird Road store.

Abella says he began fixing Apple Products because everyone else was.

"We got the parts from a company in California. To this day that vendor is still selling parts," Said Abella.

"Why did the come after me?” he added.

They came after you because you weren't paying the toll to Apple, and Apple doesn't like competition. Why our taxpayer money is being used to support such a massive overreaction, shutting down small businesses who provide a useful service repairing phones, is beyond me. Honestly, ICE's propensity to act as private cops (with guns) doing favors for giant businesses is really sickening. ICE has been out of control for a long time, and shutting down small businesses because Apple doesn't want to compete? That's just crazy.

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Today, when Jason Collins became the first openly gay NBA player, some people were predictably annoyed. One of them was ESPN's Chris Broussard, a lout:

"I'm a Christian. I don't agree with homosexuality," Broussard said. "I think it's a sin, as I think all sex outside of marriage between a man and a woman is.

"If you're openly living in unrepentant sin … that's walking in open rebellion to God and to Jesus Christ," he added.

Yeah, Jason Collins is really bringing down the high moral tone of the NBA.

Chris Broussard is a dinosaur snarling at the oncoming asteroid. Even opposition to gay marriage is doomed in the long term, let alone dwindling opposition to gays and lesbians living openly. If they are angered by people like Jason Collins, Broussard and his ilk are destined for lives of increasingly marginalized bitterness and resentment.

But that's not enough for some who think Chris Broussard's views should be suppressed by force of law. For instance, over at Pacific Standard, Nicholas Jackson uses Chris Broussard as an opportunity to call for censorship and be thoroughly wrong about free speech and the First Amendment. It's typical for people to react to obnoxious speech by waving their arms and proclaiming vaguely there oughta be a law; that's banal. Jackson distinguishes himself by asserting authority and then promoting disinformation about the law, all in the service of an argument that the law should prohibit Broussard's speech.

What authority, you might ask? Authority as a journalist:

It’s the blanket free speech argument. (And I know that argument well. As a wildly conservative—this is back in the jingo days before I came out, when I was using the near-lethal combination of pen and temper to shield my own personal insecurities—high school student, I wrote a number of columns for the student newspaper and regional publications in the Chicago area on this subject.) But the blanket free speech argument is a weak one. Any journalist knows that. After a basic media ethics class (the easy way) or a handful of frightening emails from a subject (the hard way), you’ll know a thing or two about libel and slander.

Jackson relies upon his journalist's experience to tell us that the Supreme Court has many restrictions on free speech, and has been cutting back on the First Amendment.

There’s also, of course, obscenity, child pornography, incitement, false or misleading advertising (all commercial speech is subject to limited protection), and speech owned by others (this is where trademarks and copyright issues come into play). Over the years, the U.S. Supreme Court has tightened the definition of free speech over and over again.

Therefore, Jackson suggests, the "fighting words" doctrine should just be expanded a bit to prohibit words like Broussards'.

Jackson's just flat-out wrong.

First, Jackson's censorious fantasies aside, the Supreme Court has been expanding free speech rights for a half-century, not "tightening" them. With very few context-specific exceptions — like speech at schools — the Supreme Court has used every opportunity to reject the argument that the First Amendment permits suppression of speech because it's "offensive." In doing so, the Court has relentlessly rejected attempts to expand — or even apply — the "fighting words" doctrine. The Court said it wasn't fighting words to wear a jacket with the words "Fuck the Draft." The Court Court held Jerry Falwell couldn't recover for the humiliation of a Hustler ad parody suggesting he lost his virginity to his mother in an outhouse, "fighting words" doctrine or not. The Court overturned flag burning laws, rejecting the argument that flag-burning constitutes "fighting words." The Court found a broad hate speech law to be unconstitutional, noting that the "fighting words" doctrine could not be applied selectively to disfavored speech. And, as Jackson concedes, the Supreme Court rejected — by an 8 to 1 margin — the argument that Fred Phelps' douchebaggery constitutes "fighting words" just because it causes emotional pain.

Nor has the Court been willing to carve out new exceptions to the First Amendment. The Court refused to create a new First Amendment exception for lies about military credentials. It refused to create a new exception for depictions of animal abuse.

In short, the "fighting words" doctrine is dying. It's quite rare to see it used to justify censorship. What Nicholas Jackson is asking for is not the minor tweak to current doctrine that he suggests, but a wholesale reversal of fifty years of free speech precedent. Why does he think we should do that?

Now, as a 25-year-old, I appreciate those restrictions [on speech], because, frankly, I don’t want to listen to your bullshit.

Oh, Nicholas. Believe me when I understand that I get that right now. But it's not enough. My right to free speech depends on the free speech of people like Broussard. If you think that that's just a rhetorical flourish, let me remind you of Nicholas' own words:

After a couple of years in which we’ve seen dozens of studies—LGBT youth who are bullied are far more likely to consider and commit suicide; acceptance from family and friends minimizes risk—and a similar number of deaths, Broussard’s words, and the arguments by otherwise reasonable people that they should be protected by free speech, are no longer acceptable. They’re fighting words. [emphasis added]

Yes: not talking out of your ass when you discuss the First Amendment is now hate speech, according to Jackson.

Broussard's team is losing, or has lost. Their traditional argument — that homosexuality is evil, and dirty, and icky, and morally objectionable to decent people — is no longer palatable to most people, let alone convincing. Therefore their strategy has shifted. More and more, the public argument against gay marriage is not that it's morally wrong, but that expanding gay rights will necessarily lead to fewer rights for everyone else. We're told that recognizing the equal rights of gays and lesbians will lead to suppression of freedom of speech and religion.

I don't think that's a winning argument long-term. But people like Nicholas Jackson do their best to make it seem plausible.

Nicholas Jackson is a useful idiot for the anti-gay right.

Edited to add: My good friend Clark has a critique of my treatment of Broussard, and I have a partial response.

Nicholas Jacskon Doesn't Want To Put Up With Your Bullshit. But You Should Put Up With His. © 2007-2013 by the authors of Popehat. This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. Using this feed on any other site is a copyright violation. No scraping.

The woodlands of the OD&D world are thick and plentiful, second only to grasslands in terms of number of hexes. Over half of the castles are actually in wooded locations, and although they only contain one town, three others sit on the border of forests. Woods surround both swamps. They are presumably the reason for the low population density of the OD&D setting, since so much of the arable land is forested. As we will see, there may be good reason that more has not been cleared for farmland.

In the encounter tables, the most common (1 in 4 chance) are lycanthropes. Werewolves, wereboars, weretigers and werebears stalk the woods in uncommonly high numbers, and by alignment, only the werebears can be Lawful. These are mostly small family packs, and lycanthrope attacks create fresh lycanthropes. Foresters and rangers in this world must prize silver weapons, and no logging expedition would dare go out unless it was guarded by men with silver. This is a double danger since lycanthropes can be either human or animal in form, and what appears to be an encounter with bandits may suddenly turn much more dangerous.

Your "typical" humans wander the land - bandits, brigands, berserkers, and high level classed characters. These are presumably travelling parties from the leaders and defenders of the nearby castles. Bandits and brigands amass in relatively large forces, 30-300, and presumably prey upon various merchant caravans. Given the demographics, there are an extremely high number of such if you roll 30-300 men-types as per Monsters & Treasure, and each major forested area should have perhaps 2-3 groups, either bandits or brigands (like bandits but Chaotic). The brigands are presumably deserters from military service while the bandits are general outlaws from civilized society.

The real depth of the forest comes in the "Optional Woods" table of encounters which includes centaurs, unicorns, minotaurs, gorgons, pixies, manticores, dryads and medusae. Centaurs are explicitly stated to live in hidden glens and be at least semi-intelligent. In ancient Greek myth the centaurs represented barbarism and civilization was triumphant over them; in OD&D, some centaurs are actually Lawful in alignment, and fit more of a role as ancient defenders of the wood. Unicorns are always lawful and follow medieval myth in only being approached by maidens. These are powerful creatures, and a typical encounter might be with a powerful maiden-warrior who has taken a unicorn for her mount.

Minotaurs are an interesting choice, since traditionally they are so closely associated with Daedalus's labyrinth. These are obviously the awful half-man, half-bull hybrids, and they are described as man-eaters who always attack. Gorgons are, as I discussed back in March, based on an article that showed a monster like the khalkotauros that had a poison breath. Manticores are straight-up horrors to cross, and I've already talked about medusae and pixies.

Dryads are interesting because they're one of the encounters that is totally non-violent but can potentially remove a character from the game; they will use Charm Person when approached, with -2 (stated as 10%) to the saving throw, on 90% of the people who approach them. It's a powerful encounter but its character-removing nature is entirely optional, since an intelligent character shouldn't go up to a dryad. It's also worth mentioning that elves don't have any of their usual immunities in OD&D and would be impacted by this just like any other character.

The woods in OD&D are a truly mythical place, full of wonderful and horrible things. Humans build castles here to huddle behind the walls - and flying defenders - when they're overflown by manticores or attacked by brigands. They hire guards armed with silver or magic against raiding wereboars and weretigers. The forest is like to be peopled by the occasional emdusa and gorgon statues; their lairs take on the "statue garden" aspect. But it is possible to ally with the occasional centaur tribe, or hope for help from a unicorn-mounted maiden. It's a place where heroes can be made, or disappear never to be seen again.

There's this group of friends, right? And they're the second or third sons or daughters of aristocratic families and industrialists who never need to work again. They're what might be called, nowadays, the 'idle rich'. But they've become bored of polo, hunting, drinking and bridge. And the devil makes work for idle hands. So they spend their time researching magic, demons, evil spirits, alchemy, and things of that nature. They've learned the rudiments. And they've also learned that there is a whole other reality behind that which they know: a reality in which the rationality of the Enlightenment and the Victorian age is simply wrong. They find the thought of it truly terrifying. But they also suspect it may be the path to something greater than anything else to which they can aspire.

This post was originally written on October 18, 2010 at 4:44 am. I have always considered it a quite useful tool for playing in an adventure game. I imagine if I were to codify a list for hexcrawling or megadungeons it might be different. Some of the advice for interacting with NPC's was based on my neophyte ideas of NPC design and interaction. If I wrote the post today, I would change many things, not the least of which is the title.

I perused the "A Quick Primer to Old School Gaming" document earlier tonight, and it got me thinking about our game. (Although the link above is currently not letting me download, it can be read here at Scribd but for goodness sakes, don't try to download it from there!)

Although the core of our game is an old school aesthetic, there are strong new school influences on our game. I talked earlier about really starting to know my players, and there are several 'new-school' things that I think many of my players would be unhappy without.

We like our numbers and our fiddly skills. I often call for rolls for things like identifying spells or various other small things, none of those things are truly important. For the most part, simply having a skill no matter the level it is at is enough to succeed. I think without those skills many players would feel a much reduced sense of accomplishment. Skill selection is the single longest part of character creation. Even though something like the SIEGE system is much faster and in game achieves the same effect, while removing a vast amount of bookkeeping; my players would be much less happy without the fiddly bits. They like the crunchy gamey stuff.

The other thing I think is difficult for my players has little to do with what they think is fun, and more to do with the type of people they are. Not that there is such a thing as 'true' old school gaming, but when faced with the classical 'search each room in the dungeon as if you were actually there' scenario given inside the document several problems would quickly start to occur. One of my players would wonder why we were 'wasting time' that could have been spent fighting something. Another would have a great idea, but get distracted and totally forget about any sequential plan of action. Another would be concerned about the abstract fairness of the meta-interaction. Another is just happy someone besides him is taking point.

The point of this post is not just commentary on 'what my players are like' but instead a step by step primer on 'how to go about role-playing successfully in an old school style'. They touched on this within the document, but I found their list lacking. This is a listing on what I would do if I were a player within my game. Perhaps this will help other players be more effective and proactive in their old school games.

• Make a listing of all your goals and keep it in front of you on a 3"x5" note card.
• Have a blank scratch paper for the sole purpose of writing down names, ideas, thoughts, and questions when talking with NPC's
• Seek out various NPC's before doing anything and talk to them. A list of suggested NPC's are below.
• Townspeople
• Guardsmen
• Town Officals
• Bartenders
• Bar Patrons/Other Adventuers
• Various 'guilds' (Merchant as well as nefarious)
• Religious Organizations
• Sages and Magic-Users
• Talking to NPC's: 
• When you talk to the NPC's GET THEIR NAMES.  Your DM is running these people as people - when you walk up to them rudely, they respond rudely. Don't be overly obsequious either.
• 50%-70% of all rumors and NPC information is false in all published materials. This should be a clue to how much  you believe what they say. Default into thinking that what you are being told is false - even when it looks like they know what they are talking about. (This advice is NOT relevant for sages. They charge a pretty penny, because you know what you are getting is the truth).
• Trust your eyes and your investigation abilities. 
• Think very hard about their perspective on the situation. When you do get information from someone, even if you are sure it is true, remember to treat it like a theory. Be prepared to revise it as soon as you receive additional or conflicting information.
• Cover each and every goal on your list with every NPC! Use your goals sheet as a checklist. In a sandbox game there will be many threads going on at once.
• Accomplishing goals
• There are two ways to accomplish anything in old school play. Money, and Adventure. 
• You can pay the gold to buy training, or answers from the sages, or spells cast for you, or certain specific magic items. Often this is a way to compensate for bad play (except in the case of sages - sometimes your only option). This (money) is the real source of power in old school gaming, and it's fast and effective - but very expensive.
• Or you can engineer the situation to get what you want. 
• Do not walk up to the person and go "What can I do to make you X" Where X is 'give me free training' or 'lead me to the magical whosit'. It may work at the very start of a campaign or adventure, but mostly it gets blank stares. (Think about someone coming up to you and going "What can I say to make you buy a vacuum today/believe in Jesus Christ our zombie lord/donate blood" Mostly the response is "Gah!")
• Do observe the person. See where they go, who they talk to, what they do.
• Talk to other people about the person indirectly. Say something that you know is just slightly wrong, and listen to the way people correct you. "Joesph isn't just in charge of the lighthouse - he also is on the city council, right?"
• Then, once you know the score, you can assist/blackmail/bribe/coerce the person into giving you information, training, etc. 
• Often there may simply not be anything prepared there, but that becomes less and less likely the more important the person is. Most old school DM's have exploitable relationships like this prepared. If they don't they will either develop something on the spot or use this to lead you to what is going on that's interesting.
• Going on an Adventure
• Be a boy scout. (Be prepared!)
• That means mounts, pets, men-at-arms, torchbearers, equipment, food, and supplies, weapons, armor, and spare shields.
• Treat those men you buy well! Give them extra gold, take risks for them. Talk to them and make sure they are comfortable. Over 100% loyalty is crazy nice. 
• Scout ahead! Time and time again, I've seen the scout not be sent ahead because it was dangerous. That is their 'fsking job! It's not like they are nearly as effective as any of the other classes in combat. Their biggest advantage is not getting surprised, discovering the enemies and reporting back to the party. This helps the party avoid being surprised - the single biggest killer of PC's.
• Avoid combat at all costs. Experience comes from treasure. Monsters give very little ep value compared to treasure and carry a high risk. If you have an encounter with an enemy that appears even mildly intelligent PARLEY. Even if their alignment is diametrically opposed to yours, your job isn't fixing the whole world (at this point), it's accomplishing your immediate goal. This is why certain inflexible classes are so difficult to adventure with (Paladin, I'm looking in your direction).
• If in doubt, run. I've started pretending to track damage for creatures immune to weapons the party is using unless it is very obvious that they are not working. You cannot kill everything, and you will run into things you can't kill.
• Make sure your party mapper comes prepared with actual real world tools to map (Paper) and some sort of organizational scheme for the maps.
• Ask lots of questions about the environment. Remember any unusual words the DM mentions. There is an economy of language - rooms 'seem' empty, you 'think' you don't find any traps. If there's dust on the floor, is it ancient debris? Or pulverized bone from the ceiling crushing down every 4 minutes? Or powdered blood and flesh from a disintegrate trap? Not asking about the dust on the floor means you're going to be the dust on the floor.
• Look up
• Test the floor - every floor, every time.
• Make sure your marching order is effective. Like Gygax says, short people up front, then elven bowmen, then your men with pikes. Maximize your damage potential. Focus fire on targets until they are down. Don't ever assume anything is dead. 
• Cut open the stomach of every monster, even if you didn't kill it. (Especially if you didn't kill it).
• Search every item in every room. Break apart rusty pipes, check pedestals, daises, idols, everything.
• Set a watch at a chokepoint while you're searching.
• The most important thing of all: Have a party goal and STICK TO THE PARTY GOAL. Do not be distracted.

That's a start. Think of anything I missed? Please comment!