In OD&D It Takes 1 Turn to Cast Cure Wounds Spells...

...another example of how, for me, OD&D comes across as more literary than any other edition.

When I played Pool of Radiance on the PC in the 80s, I was shocked that you could cast Cure spells in combat; somehow, despite never being exposed to OD&D, I had just assumed that you couldn't use Cure spells in the middle of a fight.

Also, why are there so many blospot D&D blogs despite the fact that the ampersand is a forbidden character to use in tags?

The "Official" OD&D Thirst and Starvation Rules...

Back in my pre-teen years in the 80s (my era of  "I need Gygax/TSR to tell me how to do this properly!") I would furiously tear through my Expert D&D and Dungeon Masters Guide looking for the rules for thirst and starvation. I mistakenly believed that I had somehow missed them while reading the rules; it couldn't be an omission, or else why would they have food and water in the equipment lists, nevermind Expert foraging & hunting rules?

Eventually "improved" editions of D&D included rules for such (and a million other) situations and I was satisfied... until I turned my back on such ways and returned to my youth with confidence and a DIY perspective.

Anyways, I'm editing together an OD&D rules & houserules booklet for my own game, and I decided to do some research on the rules for the OD&D-referenced Outdoor Survival Avalon Hill boardgame; although I was unable to find a PDF of the rules, I did find the following on Boardgamegeek:

 Whoah... OD&D had rules for Thirst and Starvation from the very beginning...

BTW The numbers in the "Life Level Index" track seem to be the movement allowance; you run out of food and water? Good luck getting back to civilization...

(I love the icon for the 0 movement section of the track; new Blogspot avatar perhaps...)

BTW, does anyone have a PDF with the Outdoor Survival rules? Abandonware and all.

OD&D: Awesome Castle Inhabitants & Types of Guards/Retainers Table

EDIT: Jeff Rients already did pretty much this exact post.

One of the more charming sections of The Underworld & Wilderness Adventure deals with procedural determination of castle inhabitants and their reaction to the party. My favorite part is "Types of Guards/Retainers":

d6 - Occupant & Types of Guards/Retainers in Castle
1. Lord (9+ level fighter) with (d4): 1. 1-8 Champions (7th level fighters), 2. 1-6 Griffons (with 4th-level fighter riders), 3. 1-10 Myrmidons (6th level fighters), 4. 1-4 Giants (any variety can be neutral or chaotic)

2. Superhero (8th level fighter) with (d4): 1. 1-8 Myrmidons (6th level fighters), 2. 1-4 Rocs (6 HD lawful giant eagles, with 4th level fighter riders), 3. 1-4 Ogres (may be neutral or chaotic), 4. 1-10 Swashbucklers (5th level fighters)

3. Wizard (11+ level magic-user) with (d4): 1. 1-4 Dragons (any alignment), 2. 1-4 Balrogs (chaotic), 3. 1-4 Wyverns (neutral), 4. 1-4 Basilisks (chaotic)

4. Necromancer (10th level magic-user) with (d4): 1. 1-4 Chimeras (neutral or chaotic), 2. 1-6 Manticores (chaotic), 3. 1-12 Lycanthropes (any alignment), 4. 1-12 Gargoyles (chaotic)

5. Patriarch (lawful 8+ level cleric) with (d4): 1. 1-20 Heroes (4th level fighters), 2. 1-6 Superheroes (8th level fighters), 3. 1-10 Ents, 4. 1-8 Hippogriffs (with 4th level fighter riders)

6. Evil High Priest (chaotic 8+ level cleric) with (d4): 1. 1-10 Trolls, 2. 1-6 Vampires, 3. 1-20 White Apes, 4. 1-10 Spectres

Also every castle has 30-180 men-at-arms and possibly some flunkies of 3rd-8th level depending on the character class of the castle master.

Although AD&D and B/X D&D contain similar rules, they don't have the awesome table for determining what monsters serve the castle master, obviously a grave omission on the part of later editions...

A DM can use the alignment of the generated monsters to determine the alignment of the castle inhabitant (unsurprisingly magic-users seem to exhibit a tendency towards chaos...).

An enterprising DM could easily expand the above tables or substitute entries with other creatures of similar power and "theme."

The AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide has a similar, yet more complicated table, that determines castle type & size, and includes the possibilities of the castle being deserted; deserted with monsters; inhabited by a band of bandits, brigands, berserkers, or dervishes; as well as druids, paladins, rangers, illusionists, monks, thieves and assassins.

But it sadly does not include a table to determine what monsters serve as the special guards. What kinds of monsters would serve as guards for illusionists, monks, assassins (giant snakes?), etc.?

[Fairy Tale OD&D] Rumplestiltskin Dwarves RULE

"Not tolkein/modern/WOW/Games Workshop/Scottish axemasters but gnomic crooked midget worms maggots of the earth akin to Rumpelstilskin and Norse mythology."

The Dwarves of my OD&D game are not stout, doughy, ale swilling Sean Connery's in geometric Viking drag but "real-life dwarf" sized, sinewey and not stout, crooked limbed, Rumpelstiltskins. They cackle and make bargains that involve 10 years off of a person's life. I'm pretty sure they dress like Punch from Punch and Judy, wear lots of stripes and polka dots, and their beards are long, scraggly chinbeards. This is somewhat relevant and inspirational to this game's version of Dwarves. I'm pretty sure the Dwarves in my game have creepy bird-like feet as well.

When the PCs encounter Dwarves in the mountains they cackle and demand tribute instead of being gruff and stoic.

Last session Peter made a Dwarf character and it was awesome. He cackled, he gamboled, he tried to give a teenaged girl to a hag that had a crush on him that he met at the Fairy Market.

His Dwarf used a short sword (which I now imagine looking like a big butcher knife), but during combat I kept thinking he used an axe and would say "Caddo rolls out from under the huge foot and severs the giant's hamstring with his hatchet!," Pete: "ahem... as I've repeatedly said before, Caddo is using a short sword," Me: "Goddamnit!"

Even when I attempt recasting D&D Dwarfs into a different (and more mythologically accurate IMO) archetype, the goddamn Scottish axe slingers still invade my imagination!

With the Algol games one of my goals was to attempt D&D without being stifled by modern D&D cliches; you don't know how many times I had to say when someone was making a PC: "No, there are no goddamn Dwarves on Algol! (aside from humans that have dwarfism)" I'm not out to cockblock a player's fun, but I demand a certain level of playing along with a campaign's "vision," and I think that all parties involved benefit from playing D&D under a different paradigm.

I'm consistently amazed at how much people love playing stereotypical D&D Dwarves (as well as playing toddler-sized races). It's not badwrongfun, but it's certainly interesting at how much traction such concepts have in folks' imagination.

But in this current campaign I'm trying to do something different yet again, and I have to say these Rumpelstiltskin Dwarves are pretty fun; they strike some Jung-ian nerve; and I'm glad "I imagined the hell out of it!" instead of just going all Talislanta during chargen and saying "No Dwarves!"

[Fairy Tale OD&D] It's Pretty Awesome When Everything Speaks "English"

Certainly the classic D&D language minigame is a nice bit of resource managment ("Who speaks sphinx, c'mon someone?"), but for my Lyonesse-inspired OD&D game I went whole hog with "pretty much everyone speaks the same language" and is usually pretty chatty. Foreigners, Dwarves, Goblins, Giants, even Zombies ("Oy! I'm already dead mate, no point in threatenin' me!") and Chimerae.

It ties in with delight in Jack Vance's eloquent monsters ("Please quit struggling and lie down peacably so I can enjoy eating you sir...") and it also comepletely removes the character generation speed bump of languages spoken, which I've been pretty much mashing through and ignoring for years now.

The one phenomenon I've noticed with this is that sometimes a player will continue to attempt negociating with or browbeating a monster after hostilities have commenced ("Stop! Stop!","There's no talking me outta eating your man-flesh, arrgh!"), which is pretty hilarious.

The session before last a PC was transformed into a toad by hag; although a traditional interpretation of such a transformation would involve him being only able to ribbit and croak, I got my head out my ass and ruled that the toaded PC was indeed capable of speech. Unsurprisingly, much hilarity ensued and the player was able to participate in the following events, so it worked out pretty much perfectly. Plus the player attempted talking like a toad, which was a real laff riot as well.

I also quite enjoy having counterintuitively chatty monsters such as zombies and chimerae, which certainly ramps up the absurdity and the fairy tale vibes, although I haven't gone completely off the deep end and had ordinary animals speaking, now that would be just too wacky for this particular game.

Blair's Lyonesse Inspired OD&D Game: The Rules

The Setting
Vaguely dark ages/Arthurian/Fairy Tale/Lyonesse-ian

The Rules
Original OD&D LBB with Gygaxian OD&D Houserules & some Greyhawk ability score modifiers (STR to hit only; CON to HP; DEX to AC for Fighters only).
Humans, Elves & Dwarves for PC Races.
Clerics are either "Druids" or "Hermits" (vanilla OD&D Clerics with campaign appropriate names & flavor; not New Age/Wiccan/Nature worship Druids but Clerics that are called Druids because that's whay they call religious functionaries in Lyonesse).
Literal interpretation of OD&D class-based weapon and armor restrictions; Clerics cannot use magic edged weapons; Magic-Users cannot use magic armor or magic weapons aside from daggers (or Arnesian "magician swords").
Hit Points are rerolled at every level a la Empire of the Petal Throne; the higher of the old or new HP is retained.

Dwarves
Not tolkein/modern/WOW/Games Workshop/Scottish axemasters but gnomic crooked midget worms of the earth akin to Rumpelstilskin and Norse mythology.

Elves
Not Tolken/RPG/Metrosexual/New-age Elves, but Fairies from Fairyland without a consistant appearance. Low CHA Elves are grotesque, high CHA elves are elegant.
Between sessions Elves reside in Fairyland; at the beginning of every session Elf PCs leave Fairyland and enter the mortal world at which poin they choose to function as a Fighting-man or Magic-user for that session.

Explicitally stated: There is NO way a PC can use, benefit from, powergame or exploit the transition to and from Fairyland and the Mortal World; it is an arbitrary and irrational phenomenon. YOU KNOW BETTER when I'm DMing.

Magic
OD&D LBB spells along with spells from Elritch Weirdness and selected Arduin Spells.
A saving throw is allowed vs. a Sleep spell; all Fairys & Fairy creatures possess the Elven 90% resistance to Sleep spells (and immunity to Ghoul paralyzation).

Social Class
The 3d6 roll for starting gold is recorded as "Social Class"; if a Fighting-Man has a Social Class of 11 or higher they are a Knight (a loser landless Knight if you have an 11 Social Class)
If your Social Class is 18 you are a Prince or Princess!
Don't expect in-game benefits or powergaming via Social Class
The PC with the highest Social Class is the Caller/Leader of the group; in case of a tie, the higher CHA score breaks it.

Armor & Weapons
STR and DEX weapon and armor prerequisites.
Use the AD&D weapon and armor price lists, but...
Leather and Chain armor only; Plate mail is very rare and very expensive, don't count on finding any.
No crossbows; two-handed swords are also very rare and very expensive.
All weapons inflict 1D6 damage w/o any STR modifiers but Greyhawk STR to hit modifiers for Fighting-Men.
Weapons use an amagamation of the Greyhawk and AD&D weapon vs. AC tables; this information is not provided to PCs.  Roll the dice and I'll tell you if you hit. But...
A positive modifier on the Weapon vs. AC table is negated if your opponent is wielding a weapon that is longer than yours (Ex: The generous Dagger vs. Unarmored modifier is negated if your opponent is wielding a longer weapon).
"Beat The Wretches" houserule.

[OD&D Houserule] Beat The Wretches!!

Many times in literature and cinema an aristocrat will have his footmen beat an uppity wretch with their canes to teach them to respect their betters; sometime a bunch of rough labourers decide to teach some hoity toity type slumming in their tavern a lesson in class-hatred with chair legs and axe handles.

In bog-standard OD&D that presents a conumdrum; obviously the intent of such actions aren't to kill the victim, but mechanically that's how things would play out. As well, in actuality beating someone unconcious often results in the unintentional death of the beatee.

Here follows a houserule I came up with to respresent such hilarious brutality:

- When a  not-entirely-lethal bludgening intrument is used to attack, the damage dice are used to represent "subdual damage" (temporary damage that only renders the target unconcious at 0 or less hit points); however if the damage die results in a natural six result the die is thrown again and the resultant roll is applied as actual real damage.


Obviously it is no great feat to use this houserule with non-OD&D versions of the game; I just came up with it while musing about OD&D and Small But Vicious Dog.

(Somewhat inspired by sundry posts on The Vaults of Naogh and the atrocious movie Sweeny Todd)

Question for OD&D LBB/White Box types?

So I'm DMing a LBB OD&D/Whitebox d6 & d20 type game, and I've found that converting "normal D&D" material on the fly is a snap, except for one thing, monster damage.

There is a precedent in LBB D&D (& EPT) for some monsters inflicting multiple dice of damage, such as giants.

If you are converting a post-greyhawk/AD&D/B/XD&D monster to LBB OD&D, at what point (if any) do you decide that the monster's attacks do more than one dice of damage? Or do you use another scheme.

In an encounter with a giant crocodile that was listed with a 3-24 damage bite, I decided to roll 3 six-siders and use the highest roll; but I could see rolling two or three dice for damage (4-24 roughly equals 3 d8 "hit dice" which would be 3-18 in d6 "hit dice").

I also use "latter era nice-guy Gygaxian/Master of the Game" PC hit dice; PCs roll 1 die per level, with fighters getting a +1 per die, so the PCs do have more HP than standard LBB characters.

So how do you guys handle this?

Hiero's Journey, Dune and Further Musings Regarding Clerics

So I've been getting ready to read Hiero's Journey again, a buddy and I were talking about it and how great of an example of a D&D Cleric he makes. And it makes D&D sense, with high level clerics being better fighters than fighters, Hiero is a stone killer on account of than.

Another great example of a genre literary example of a possible cleric is the Bene Gessit of Dune. I guess the weirding way is another example of the fighting capabilities of a high level cleric. Plus, they totally use the Command spell!

I haven't been keen on the idea of the Cleric class and their ability to cast spells due to divine intervention; I very much prefer the idea of the true attributes and even the existence of deities in D&D to be ambiguous, with exceptions for immortal God-Emperors, blasphemous thing from before time and the like. Although I though it was total horseshit when I first got Menzter Basic D&D and it said that clerics may derive their powers from philosophies or something along those line, nowadays I like the idea of magic powered Clerics belonging to esoteric-ish sects that imbue their members with preternatural abilities via intense training and conditions, preternatural abilities. A lot of cleric spells could be seen as psychic abilities, unlocked via the secrets of one's order.

Of course with my two examples above there's conflicts withe the traditional clerical prohibition against edged weapons, and the ability to turn undead (although one could argue the Hiero may have turned/destroyed an undead in the Palood), but my current simulacra of choice, LOTFPWFRPG, solves that conundrum.

When thinking about the prohibitions against edged weapons it's interesting to according to LBB OD&D that magic swords are explicitly restricted to fighters, I see it as a bit of genre protection for Fighting Men. The only mechanical effect of weapon restrictions for clerics (and magic users) is that they don't benefit from those sweet magic swords!

Perhaps the eldritch emanations from magic swords suffer interference from the magical auras of spell-casting characters, and are disabled in their grasp...

Aligned Magic Items Idea

Especially if you are using the Lawful/Neutral/Chaotic alignment system, but what if every magic item was aligned, the same way all magic swords in OD&D were aligne?. Even potions. Maybe when you used a potion,for the duration your alignment changed with appropriate behavior? Or you could just take damage, or have a varying duration dependent upon alignment differences. Most magic items, ring, axes, helmets, staves and so forth, would be aligned, and possibly intelligent with attendant ego scores, psychic powers, and so forth.

It strikes me a somewhat genre appropriate...the sorcerous gear of a blasphemous warlock corrupting those who dare use their foul magic; the holy relic inspiring the bearer; an enchanted wine-cup making the owner abandon their former 'good' or 'villainous' nature for hedonism. You could emulate that by having some, many or all aligned objects follow the AD&D procedures for 'personality conflicts' and ego score for swords; and that section of the Dungeon Masters Guide does seem to conflict with the previous rules for hit point damage accrued for holding a weapon of incompatible alignment.

Awesome Sci-Fi OD&D Supplement - Terminal Space!

The Polish gentleman necro_cyber dropped me a line to let me know that his science fiction/science fantasy supplement for OD&D, Terminal Space, was available for download (the sidebar-widget pdf thing on the right-hand side).

Just a quick first-impression review. It unabashedly proclaims itself a "...supplement for Dungeons & Dragon Original Edition."; it contains lots of genuinely cool/good original art (Spaceman vs. Beholders!); it was originally in Polish, the translation is charmingly clunky but completely clear; it has a d% Deep Space Encounter Table!; solar system, Moon! and planet generation tables; spacecraft rules; pilot, technician and scientist character class; tables for the pilot%, repair% and science% skills for OD&D classes!; a tech level Ability Score!; and a bunch of other wacky, sci-fi OD&D goodness.

I will definitely be printing this out in digest-format and using it in my campaign, and I strongly recommend this to those of like (weird/sci-fi/sci-fantasy) interests!