Man, D&D is HELLA polarizing

Everyone has their own 'preferred' version of D&D, generally based on whatever they liked when they were twelve.  What can make this difficult is when these viewpoints clash.

I was talking with my buddy Ryan, who was the initial catalyst in running a game of D&D.  He's a complete tabletop RPG novice, but seems very eager to learn the whole process.  On top of that, he's also the person who's in charge of gathering a group for the game.  I haven't met any of these folks and didn't know if they had any previous gaming experience until last night when he asked me what edition we were running.  I told him Basic, since I'm pretty sure he didn't really care about the concept of retro-clones or publishing rights.

What I got back from him was that his buddy wanted to play a Human Monk and cross-class into Psion.

I've got no animosity towards folks that play and enjoy 3.5, it's just not my bag.  There's a ridiculous amount of prep involved and hundreds of pages of codified rules that can easily lead to super-not-fun arguments between player and GM.  One of the reasons that I'm always looking for lighter and lighter rules sets is because of how much I hated spending countless hours prepping for super-complex games (3.5, GURPS, Shadowrun 2nd Edition, etc...)

But the more and more that I think about it, it's less about rules sets and more about players and expectations.  Apparently this dude is a bit of an instigator and is willing to argue.  Ryan described it as part of his charm, but it instantly raised my hackles.  One of the things that I absolutely NEED in my gaming experiences is for everybody to be on the same page.  We're getting together to play some elfgames and have some fun; I'm not out to screw anyone over to boost my ego or act out weird power fantasies.  But by that same token, I need my players to trust my rulings and go along with what we're doing, especially if I'm house ruling and improvising as much as I plan to.

So what the hell do I do?  I'm tempted to just scrap the idea of D&D all together and go with a non-D&D RPG, just to avoid the whole expectations situation.  But ultimately, I am the guy who's running this thing and by the old RPGNet maxim, no gaming is better than bad gaming.

Brainstorming Lite

I have a tendency to get hamstrung by the scope of my own settings. The only time I ever tried doing National Novel Writing Month, I got so wrapped up in the internal cosmology and character histories of my detective horror story that the novel itself barely got started in the 150 pages that I wrote.  In the past, I've tried to do Rob Conley-style sandbox development or trying to build a big ol' fantasy city and I always lose steam before I can even get started.  So, naturally, when I started work on this campaign, I went to the internet for help.

I'd never really heard of Stack Exchange before, but there is apparently an RPG board there that offers ranked advice on problems that people have.  On someone's question about 'How to create a D&D setting,' RPG blog mainstay Kelvin Green has some great advice to offer on the topic:

What I would not do:

Try to create a campaign setting.

What I would do:

Make a list of all the ideas and concepts I want to use in the setting. Put the list away and go and make a cup of tea. Go through the list and make connections between the items. Leave all the dangly bits, because I'll find ways to connect them later.

That's it. Really. You don't want to try to create the whole thing from scratch or, and this is important, it will never happen. Start small, start with a bunch of ideas, build outward as the game goes on. Ideas will occur in play which would never have done so beforehand, and best of all, the players will come up with ideas that you can pinch and include.

I like this.  I like this a lot.

I've never been able to craft sandbox rumors or the economy of a fantasy city because, ultimately, I really don't care about that stuff.  But what I do like are stupid ideas to make things fun.  I can make everything else in the world bog-standard default D&D for the sake of my sanity and free time, but throw in a handful of fun little tweaks to keep things fresh and unique.

So I've made a list and I've had a cup of tea.  Some of my list covers overarching campaign ideas, some cover new monsters and magic items and some are just fun little setting bits.  I'll start putting up posts on them today.

Basic Fantasy: Too Weird to Live, Too Rare To Die

For RPG nerds in general and Old School clone enthusiasts in particular, the question of "which system to use?" is about as close to a spiritual dilemma as they come.  Thousands of forum posts and millions of words have been devoted to defenses of System A vs. System B for use in different settings, needs, styles and formats.  As much as I've said that this new campaign is as "back to basics" as possible, I do have a handful of requirements:

1. Ascending AC: Honestly, the only real sticking point.  I know it's "totally easy to figure out" and "not as big a deal as it's made out to be," but descending AC has straight-up never made sense to me. 
2. Single Book Game: At this point, I'd rather start out with a smaller game that I can bolt stuff onto than a larger one that would need rules taken out.  I want a rules set that's closer to the Basic philosophy than the Advanced one.
3. Simple Enough To Wing It: Tying into the single book game aspect. I want to be able to put together stats for a vampire coffin mausoleum golem in under two minutes, or create a magical artifact with a limited amount of bookkeeping and balancing
4. Race and Class Separate: I really love Race As Class as a concept, but it seems to be a much bigger sticking point for other people.  People love to play their Dwarven Clerics, Elven Thieves and the like.
5. Cheap Or Free: If my players want a copy of the rules, I don't want them to have to throw $30 down for one.  That money would be better spent on cardboard minis, Chessex maps and beer.

So with all those things in mind, one game stood out.

I feel like there are two different types of "old-school games" on the internet these days: your retro-clones that try to exactly mimic the rules of existing out of print games (your Labyrinth Lords and OSRICs) and the games that take an old-school approach or rules framework in order to create something wholly original (your Stars Without Numbers and Crypts and Things).  Basic Fantasy is sort of an odd duck in that Old School Renaissance/retro-clone marketplace.  It makes enough changes to the original Basic D&D rules set that it can't really be considered a retro-clone, but it is still closer in rules and tone to that framework than any other RPG.  For me, it hits that sweet spot with simple, streamlined mechanics that are nonetheless compatible with anything labeled B/X, BECMI, LL, etc.

Like all campaigns, there will be house rules, notably to get rid of the Medicine Cabinet saving throws that Basic Fantasy inherited from Mentzer and Moldvay.  I'll probably replace them with Swords & Wizardry's single save with class bonuses (when did Swords & Wizardry turn into AD&D?) but I don't want to do too much tinkering.  Basic Fantasy gives me a system that I am fairly comfortable following RAW and I want to do that as much as possible.

(now can I retroactively add this to Tenkar's Basic Fantasy Role Playing Blog Appreciation Day?)

On Returning

I basically stopped writing this thing because I hadn't played or GMed a roleplaying game in years.  All of the prep, house rules and roleplaying ephemera was being created with no eventual end goal and it was really getting me down.  In the two (!) years since I last posted, my whole life has gone through a lot of changes and my free-time priorities shifted from solitary bookkeeping to basement shows and tattoo parlors.  I shaved my head and grew a beard, I spent my spare cash on records and a drum kit, and I made some real local friends in the Philadelphia area.

Friends who thought it would be cool to learn how to play Dungeons & Dragons someday.

And when I started to prep for our game, I started revisiting these blogs.  I don't think I'll have to draw a single map thanks to Dyson Logos, I know my friends will all get a kick out of Jeff Rients's Carousing Rules and I met a lot of rad folks through the whole RPG blogosphere, who all seem to still be doing great stuff.

I can't say that anything I'm gonna be doing is groundbreaking.  I'm taking a real back-to-basics approach to this game, since I am now an adult with real life responsibilities and at least one concert to go to every week.  But I am gonna have a hell of a lot of fun on a very limited budget.

A Brief History of Vomorhin

Vomorhin, the cosmopolitan center of trade and intrigue, is a city delighting in its first tastes of freedom after a century under a crazed despot.

Creeshus, the mad wizard king, ruled Vomorhin with unspeakable power and utterly bizarre whims. Everything from the city's laws to its physical structure could change on a daily basis. Cowed citizens shared their streets with vicious ogres, cunning tieflings and all manner of nefarious creatures who shared in Creeshus's schemes. That is, until Creeshus disintegrated them for condescending to his owlbear.

Sure, the city barely functioned and both man and monster despised Creeshus and his rule, but who could actually stand up to him? Uprisings were attempted, but the revolutionaries were generally turned into frogs or divorced from their skeletons before the gates could be breached. City leaders and merchants met in shadowed sewers to discuss methods of keeping the populace fed without incurring the tyrant's wrath.

In the end, the city's salvation came from within the walls of Creeshus's massive palace tower. The wizard's four children, powerful magicians by birth and training, surprised the city's secret parliament by offering them a deal: in exchange for places of significant power in the city, they would slay their father and bring stability to Vomorhin. It was a risky proposition, but just about anything would be better than the status quo.

It wasn't a public execution or a theatrical melodrama. Three days after the decision was reached, the city was rocked with a vicious earthquake and a massive explosion of magical power erupting into the sky. And like that, a new age dawned over the city. Creeshus's tower was demolished as a symbol of the peace that would hopefully last between man, beast, demon and monstrously powerful halfblood wizards.

That was 10 years ago. In the intervening time, Vomorhin has arisen reborn as a new hub for culture, politics and magic. That and organized crime.

The Cheap Minis Project

Miniatures are expensive, no matter what form they take or what company manufactures them. From the detailed pewter of a Warhammer or Malifaux model to the most recent prepainted D&D or Heroclix boosters, it seems like the only way to acquire affordable miniatures in on the secondary market. When I used to play Warhammer 40K, eBay was a godsend for cheap(er) Space Marines built from other people's bits boxes and Rhinos on the sprue without packaging or instructions. For prepainted minis, the places to go are websites like CoolStuffInc and Troll & Toad, where you can find just about any monster released for any collectible game.

However, these websites also illustrate another upsetting part of the miniatures market: their once-collectible status. The randomized booster format of D&D miniatures means that there are 'common' and 'rare' miniatures that cost ridiculous amounts of money for the materials used to create them. Among these 'rare' minis are many of D&D's most iconic monsters: dragons and giants of all shapes and sizes, the beholder, owlbear and displacer beast cost anywhere between $5 to $20 to purchase. In order to play the typical game of D&D with minis, you would most likely end up spending more money on plastic than you did on rulebooks, which is really saying something.

That's not to say that there aren't affordable D&D miniatures, far from it. I think there's a wealth of awesome, weird and quality collectible miniatures out there that won't break your bank account.

Over 300 of them, in fact.

Before the Christmas holiday, I compiled a spreadsheet of every single available D&D miniature under $1.50 on CoolStuffInc, not only as a piece of bargain hunting, but as the basis for a worldbuilding project. Over the next few weeks, I plan to assess the miniatures that I've found on the secondary market and begin to create the structure for a campaign world around them. Instead of lamenting the lack of a cheap Black Dragon or Ogre miniature, I want to build a fantasy setting that is tailor-made to accomodate something like the Maug or the amazing Half-Illithid Lizardfolk that I have come across in the under $2 range. I think that working within this framework will at the very least inspire me to create some cool fluff and adventure ideas and might possibly lead to a campaign in the future.

Later this week, I plan to take stock of the list, its strengths and weaknesses when it comes to creature diversity. There's a lot of great stuff in there, from sword and sorcery looking cultists and warriors to a bunch of off-beat monstrous humaniods like bullywugs and a copious amount of troglodytes. Stay tuned for more!

Where'd You Go?

So, what have I been doing in the past two months? Well...

- Still playing in Drance's awesome Castles and Crusades game, for one! It has been waaaaay too long since I've actually gotten a chance to play a role-playing game of any stripe, so spending every Wednesday rolling as Milo the mace-wielding thief has been great fun.

- Running some games! In October and November, I ran some D&D Gamma World (the most recent 4E-style box set) for my friends and my girlfriend. Though Thanksgiving and real life definitely killed most of the game's momentum, it was a total blast while we played it.

- Working a crappy seasonal job to pay rent! Thankfully, I've got some job interviews lined up in the future for more library-focused work, but 5:30 mornings have been a bit of a creative buzzkill.

Fortunately, there's going to be plenty more to come from Fistful of Coppers into the new year, so stayed tuned today for some more posting and the announcement of a super special new Old School/Dungeons and Dragons-related project!

That's right! Goblins and treasure and magic swords and everything!

Heist Plan #5 - The Curtain Call

The Job: The Curtain Call

The Set-Up: The City of Masks takes its opera very seriously. The only thing more elaborate than the sets and costumes are the riches on display in the audience. Every year, the largest opera production is the Black Ship of Vesperia at the Coronet opera house, a dramatic aria about the romance between a pirate captain and a princess imprisoned by a wizard. The box office alone takes in over 20,000 gold pieces, without factoring in donations or the sales of wine, not to mention how much money you could make kidnapping a lead player before their big number.

Why It's Impossible: The Coronet runs a very tight security shift. Unauthorized personnel are forcibly escorted from the wings of the theater by large men and women, but they're not the only ones. Cloaked guardians, floating inches above the ground patrol the halls of the theater, including the backstage, the cat walks and the dome ceiling that opens up onto the sky. No one knows where they came from, but every employee of the Coronet knows to stay clear of them. There's also the chance that you'll come across a doting aristocratic fan or scheming talent agent that might not take too kindly to outside observers.

The Cracks

• There are tons of stagehands, costumers and chorus members all around the theater, ample opportunities to disguise one's self.
• The catacombs under the opera house can be accessed through many different secret passages in the City, from the houses of Parliament to the brothels of the Red Quarter. Just watch out for cloaks
• Bianca Corrovaddo, the alto playing the role of Lucretio, the milkmaid disguised as a male pirate, is getting sick of playing second fiddle in Coronet productions. If you come across her, she's willing to parlay: if you kidnap her and hold her for ransom, she'll cooperate completely in exchange for half the ransom. She's also willing to help your group kidnap another member of the cast for a finder's fee. If she's kidnapped against her will, she will be an awful prisoner.

The Twist: The cast of the Black Ship of Vesperia isn't completely human. Some of the more unearthly choruses are provided by a pair of harpies, who have exchanged their predatory lives for more comfortable existences.

Notable NPCs

Cloaked Creatures HD 3; AC 3 [16]; Atk 1 claw (1d6); Move 12; Save 14; CL/XP 5/240; Special: Paralyzing cry, cannot be hit by nonmagical weapons.

Glulinda and Parsimony, Harpy Chorus HD 4; AC 7 [12]; Atk 2 talons (1d3); Move 6 (Fly 18); Save 13; CL/XP 4/120; Special: Flight, Siren-song

Heist Plan #3 - Hot Potato

The Job: Hot Potato

The Set-Up: In a previous score, one of the PCs has come into possession of a beautiful cats-eye gem. The stone is bad luck, through and through. If the PC has tried to sell it, it continues to return to their possession in increasingly bizarre ways and just makes their luck worse. Usual fences refuse to buy the stone again and are starting to shy away from the group entirely. Now you've got to figure out a way to get rid of this cursed piece of rock before it destroys all of your lives.

Why It's Impossible: Whoever enchanted this rock was not messing around. Any local artificers or lay clerics you know can't seem to break the curse on your party member. You'll either need to get the help of a very divine cleric (who might not be sympathetic to your plight) or talk to the gem's previous owner about it (who's beefed up his or her home security after the PCs took off with their possessions.) Neither way seems like a good idea.

The Cracks

• It would be much easier to talk to the former owner of the gem outside of their fortress-like abode. Going to meet a client, shopping for new jewelry or furniture, the possibilities are endless.
• Indol the Left-Handed is the high priest of the God of Thieves (or your game's trickster god equivalent). He's got the divine know-how to remove the curse from your party member, but owing him a favor is probably worse than their current predicament.

The Twist: Your previous mark couldn't be happier that you've taken the gem. They've been trying to get rid of it for years to no avail. The defenses that are being constructed are not to prevent any further thefts; they're meant to keep the PCs from ever trying to return the gem.

Notable NPCs

Indol the Left-Handed, 8th level Cleric St 9 In 13 Wi 16 Cn 14 De 10 Ch 16, 40hp, Ring of Protection +1, Leather Armor +1, Wayfinder (short sword +1, locate objects), Scarab of Protection

Heist Plan #2 - Brothel in the Sky

So, the Labor Day weekend is finally finished and I am back in the South Jersey saddle. Time to catch up on these adventures.

The Job: Brothel in the Sky

The Score: There are plenty of tall towers in Quohal, but only one of them has no visible way of entering. Locals call it the Sparkling Spire and rumor has it that this ornate structure is the home of the Emperor's secret harem, full of lovely women of all races and creeds collected by the monarch over his exceptionally long life. If the finery of its parapets are any indication of the wealth within, it would be a hell of a score. Maybe in more ways than one.

Why It's Impossible: Seriously, there's no way into the tower from the ground. Everyone that you know in Quohal has tried, but there's nothing: no illusory walls, no concealed door, nothing. From what you can see of the structure, it goes up 15 stories before the tower even starts having windows. Even once you've reached these upper levels, there's no telling what lies beyond them.

The Cracks

• Though there's no possible entrance at street level, intrepid adventurers may take to the sewers below Quohal, where a secret tunnel guarded by monstrous humanoids leads to a secret way in: one really, really long ladder. Feel free to put Elmer Bernstein's The Stairs on in the background while the players figure out how not to fall off while they ascend hundreds of feet of ladder.
• The PCs could also try reaching the tower by the air. The sheer stone surface of its lower half is studded with balconies, buttresses and other potential handholds. They just require you to have some sort of very high vantage point or perhaps a flying getaway driver.
  

The Twist: What the rest of the city thinks is just an elaborate house of pleasure is actually the real seat of Quahol's government. The real Emperor died decades ago within the Spire's gilded walls and ever since, the denizens of the Sparkling Spire have collectively taken his place. This council includes a multitude of races, including human, elves, dwarves, bound dryads (their trees are located within the tower) and even a doppelganger, who impersonates the Emperor in public. Any adventurer who makes his or her way up to the highest reaches of the Spire will definitely become involved in these machinations as a knowledgeable party.

Stats

• Sewer Creatures: HD 2; AC 4 [15]; Atk 2 claws (1d3) or by weapon (1d8); Move 12; Save 16; CL/XP 3/60; Special: Blindsense 60 ft., Camoflague (75% chance of not being noticed while waiting in ambush.)
• Elder Dryads: HD 5; AC 3 [16]; Atk 1 life drain (1d8 + 1d8 healing); Move 12; Save 12; CL/XP 8/800; Special: Charm Person (-2), Entangle (as Web), Plant Growth.
  

Heist Plan #1 - Mutiny on the Dowry

The Job: Mutiny on the Dowry

The Score: The heir apparent of your city's nobility, Prince Heinrich, has just celebrated his wedding nuptials with the Lady Mernau, the fair and somewhat older daughter of the Duke of Okkuz. Their honeymoon journey will consist of a carriage caravan transporting the happy couple and their respective entourages between Okkuz and your fair city. Though most of the gentry assume that this is just an overly public and traffic-causing ceremony, you've learned that the real purpose of this cross-kingdom convoy is to transport all of the new princess's worldly possessions to her new home.

Why It's Impossible: There is never a point where the caravan is unguarded. Soldiers from both Okkuz and your home city have been assigned to protect the newlyweds, not to mention the constant swarm of servants, drivers and other support personnel. If even one carriage goes missing, the entire procession will lock down and the militaries of both cities will be tasked to bring you in at any cost.

The Cracks

• The aforementioned swarm means that disguised folks can easily 'join up' with the caravan, provided that they have a good enough story.
• At night, the caravan runs on a skeleton crew of paid professionals. If they can be distracted or misdirected, the rest of the caravan will be relatively unprotected.
• Lady Mernau's entourage only contains a single wizard, Flidwick Pontos, who tends to enjoy a good drink. From what you can gather with your magical senses, only the prince and princess's carriages are protected by spells.
  

The Twist: The gems, gold and other finery in the caravan are protected by another guard entirely. Flidwick Pontos's real talent is not in sorcery, but magical tinkering. Concealed within the majority of wealth-bearing carriages are mechanical sentries disguised as brooches, lamps, candlesticks and other potentially stealable items.

Stats

• Brooch Bug HD 1d4; AC 4 [15]; Atk 1 bite (1d2 + paralysis); Move 9; Save 18; CL/XP 1/15; Special: Immune to Sleep, Charm, Hold Person; Paralytic Bite (Save or Paralyzed for 2d4 turns)
• Lantern Sentry HD 1; AC 6 [13]; Atk 1 flame spout (1d6 fire damage); Move 9; Save 17; CL/XP 1/15; Special: Immune to Sleep, Charm, Hold Person

A September of Short Adventures

Every once in a while, the Old School blogosphere has these collaborative events, both official and unofficial: the April A to Z project, Zak's Secret Arneson Gift Exchange and Gigacrawler and the most recent Building a Better GM, inspired by ckutalik's over at the Hill Cantons. Of the different events that I have taken part in, I've always felt that they have at least encouraged me to post more regularly, if not more competently.

This month, Matt at Asshat Paladins convened a little challenge called the September of Short Adventures, where each of the participants will create 25 compact adventure scenarios over the course of the month. If anything, something like this is just what I've been looking for to keep me hunched over my notebook on a part-time basis while I look for work.

I intend to create a series of different adventures, capers and conflicts for at least two different settings and systems during this September: Bullets and Tequila, my cinematic Wild West adventures with a slight twist towards the strange, and Heist D&D, presenting thefts, swindles and break-ins for use with Old School fantasy-type RPGs. Where stats are concerned, B&T will be dual statted in Savage Worlds and Stuart Robertson's Weird West RPG and Heist D&D will be put together in Swords and Wizardry-style Ascending and Descending AC.

Mappening is what's happening...

And once again, my nemesis is revealed...

As the son of an architect, I grew up with a lot of graph paper around the house: big reams of it, small pads, just about any measure of the stuff that you can imagine. Yet I never really felt compelled to use any of it for mapping purposes until I started checking out older versions of Dungeons and Dragons. I always get kind of jealous when I look at the fairly amazing geomorphs that folks like Dyson and Risus Monkey put together because I've always been awful at putting my ideas about a building or a city down onto paper. Everything always ends up too symmetrical or too empty. This might not mean much when designing a loosely-structured western town or an asteroid haven for space smugglers, but it matters a hell of a lot when you're marking jugs for a Dungeons and Dragons heist.

The map that I'm holding in the picture above is the Temple of Manymon, a potential heist site that supposedly holds the bottled soul of one of the land's greatest poets in its sacred wine cellar. This is the product of three hours of draw, erase, conceptualize the space, draw again and erase again. I was intentionally trying to avoid making the temple too symmetrical and blocky, but ended up running into my second problem. As much as I do like the exterior structure of the building, I have no idea how to stock the damned thing. The only thing that I really have so far is the giant eyeball altar in the middle of the temple and the Greek-style open colonnade entrance. Maybe I should get back to space, where my head's clearer...

Some magical weapons that I cooked up at the library yesterday

Solar Knife - A dazzling wide bladed golden dagger (+1, +3 when exposed to sunlight). At night, the blade of the Solar Knife emits light as a Light spell. Double damage against the undead.

Aegis Hand - A massive giant-sized gauntlet traced in gold and embedded with a glowing emerald. Functions as a Gauntlet of Ogre Power that does 1d10 damage when used in combat and cannot wield any other weapon. Blows from the Aegis Hand can knock down normal doors with a single blow. Larger reinforced doors may take longer to sunder.

Black Bastion - A stout jet black shield (+2) with the unsettling outline of a face and a pair of fangs at its base. Once per day, the Black Bastion can be struck against the ground to create a Wall of whatever material covers the ground (default is a Wall of Stone)

Mosquito Blade - A thin rapier with a scintillating insect wing hilt. Counts as a +1 magic weapon for the purpose of immunities. Always hits, regardless of armor class, but deals 1 damage plus or minus Strength modifiers for each blow (Thanks to Telecanter for the idea on this one.)

Wingthief Boomerang - A boomerang (+1, +2 vs. flying creatures) made of an unknown bright green wood and inlaid with bronze. Flying creatures hit by the Wingthief Boomerang lose the ability to fly for 1d6 turns.

Man, I hope that post comes back

And we're back to the world of the blogging. Unfortunately, my most recent post on the Mentzer box sets and my younger influences was also swallowed up by the catastrophe. I am a bit miffed, as I'd gotten some great comments on it, but I can hope that the post will return once the repairs to Blogger have been finished.

On the other hand, I've really been inspired by this whole campaign idea, coupled with a few other cool posts I've been reading (Telecanter's unbelievably cool Five Swords post and Zak's Sandbox ideas, which are now unfortunately missing). Thinking about this confluence of old influences and current ideas has been really fun for me. When I was reading old sword and sorcery pulps in an attempt to understand older D&D editions, it was a good experience but not exactly nostalgic for me. My roleplaying origins definitely lie with Lone Wolf and Legend of Zelda as opposed to Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, and that's neither a good nor a bad thing. It has more to do with what my generation really identifies as fantasy than levels of literary quality or inspirational source material. The fantasy of the 1990s was very heroic and probably more inspired by the Mentzer and AD&D 2nd Editions than the older, pulpier games. Is it any wonder that saving the kingdom or defeating the dragon is ingrained in many of us? Even when playing a roguish character, I'm all about doing what's right.

Expect more material in the near future. I'm on a roll here.

WW12YOMD?

This week, I finally bit the bullet and cracked open my Mentzer Red Box to check out the goodies inside. Though I did notice some of the rules differences between it and my older Moldvay box set (Thieves knocked down again! Why?), I really liked the organization and especially the introduction. It reminded me of the old Lone Wolf books that I used to borrow from my best friend Conor when I was in middle school. I'd always loved Choose Your Own Adventure books ever since I was small and the addition of combat and roleplaying elements to the standard "if you want to go east, turn to page 26" formula gave them a lot of re-read value.

In my online searches for Lone Wolf books, I came across a website called Project Aon, where you can read and play all of the Lone Wolf books for free, legally and with the expressed permission of Joe Dever, the original author. Naturally, I started into the first one, which got me thinking: what would it have been like if I'd gotten this box set when I was 12? My influences at the time were the Lone Wolf books, Magic: the Gathering cards, games like the Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past and emulated copies of Chrono Trigger and Shining Force. Reading the Mentzer Red Box made me want to revisit all of those old sources and see if I could put together a whimsical kind of D&D campaign with them in mind.

I'm still a heroic kind of guy at heart. Saving an imaginary village from rampaging ogres is definitely more satisfying for me than acquiring imaginary loot. So whatever this campaign would be like, it would have plenty of danger, monsters and potential good to be done on top of the normal loads of treasure and magic items. I think 12 year old me would be satisfied.

(Note: Looking through my old Magic cards, I had no idea that Liz Danforth and Tony DiTerlizzi did so many illustrations for them. It's cool thinking back on how the worlds of RPG and CCG art intersected before Magic really took off.)

Has this happened to anyone else?

Have you ever dreamed a phenomenal dungeon?

It's been a day of registering for classes and the like, but I'm still remembering parts of the dream that I had last night and how they would make a great D&D dungeon. The start of the adventure was fairly mundane: I can recall giving the signal to my sister and a couple of my friends on the edge of a baseball field, where we all got into black burglar clothes and started making our way towards something.

Here's where it got pretty crazy. Apparently, the heist that we were meant to pull off was in this crazy dungeonesque castle which was really just a massive manned tank around a gigantic octopus. Like the size of a skyscraper. A series of rope bridges connected different parts of the castle aquarium, including some that went directly over the octopus. I was trying to get into the structure through one of these bridges, but the weight of me and my gear made it sway in the high air, so I had to crawl the rest of the bridge's length on my belly until I reached a small portal where I could enter. Inside, the stone walls were damp and had algae growing on them like the inside of a fish tank.

I really want to expand on this whole idea for a dungeon and hopefully I've gotten enough written down to remember the inspirational aspects of the dream. The thing that really stayed with me was "what happens if that octopus gets mad? Utter chaos, that's what."

But look on the bright side...

Last week, I went to my local library's Friends group book sale in search of some cheap mystery novels or YA books that I wanted to read. Imagine my surprise when I came across a pair of Mentzer-era D&D box sets, still sealed in shrink-wrap and basically perfect, apart from a triangular-shaped box dent on the back of the Basic set. Total cost: $2 each.

Thank you, old ladies from the Friends of the Library group. You didn't quite know what you had. Now should I open them or leave them in their pristine sealed condition for a rainy day?

O is for Old Ideas Made New Again

Sorry it took so long to get back to this, Superhero Necromancer. :)

While I was working on the branch library, it seems that a veritable revolution in lockpicking and thieving skill has been going on around the old-school community. Sparked off by Arkheim at Rather Gamey, the thread was taken up by Telecanter, Zak S, Roger the GS and many more from the overarching blogging community. Reading about all of these cool thieving ideas (NEVER bump a Dwarven lock!) got me thinking about the D&D Heist ideas that I had come up with a month ago. Unfortunately, none of my current gaming crowd are super interested in playing Dungeons and Dragons any time soon, so these efforts are purely speculative on my part.

There was a great post that I read on the Dungeon Mastering blog while planning for a potential D&D heist on how to prep a heist adventure without having to plan the whole thing out like a Hollywood screenwriter. I'm not sure about the "Planting Information" stage, but the first two are rock solid. Every heist movie or novel has its section explaining why any attempted caper is either tough or impossible, so why not lay that out explicitly when constructing a heist?

The Place: The Temple of Manymon
The Score: A bottle from the temple's heavily guarded wine cellar said to contain the spirit of a famed poet, plus as many relics or ornaments as you can get your hands on.
Why It's Impossible: The temple is almost always occupied by the clerics of Manymon and their animate guardians. In order to get access to the wine cellar, an ordained cleric must speak the ancient oath and drain a drop of their blood into the intricate reliquary vault. No one knows what would happen to someone who screwed the pooch at the vault.
The Cracks:

• The feast day of Hallowlaeg is approaching and the clerics of Manymon are preparing for the ceremonies and festival contests. Plenty of performers, cooks and brewers come in and out of the temple in the days leading up to the festival.
• No one said that the blood had to be in the cleric's body.
• The animate guardians sense the world around them seismically, in the vibrations of footfalls and impacts. Chances are they wouldn't notice someone just floating past them.

With these four steps, you can illustrate all of the important aspects of a potential heist and have a pretty sweet little adventure sketch, all in one. I could imagine these being great on 3x5 cards, maybe separated by what city the PCs are in or the kinds of efforts that would be needed.

The Dungeon String: The Thief

As anyone who's seen heist films knows, the gathering together of a crew (or "string" as Donald E Westlake's Dortmunder novels call it) really sets the tone for the rest of the caper itself. Each member of a string has a specialty that makes them essential to the task at hand, from safecracking to infiltration to crowd control. The television show (and subsequent roleplaying game) Leverage divided these specialties into the broad categories of Hitter, Hacker, Grifter and Thief. For my Heist D&D game, these roles are going to be covered by the four standard classes from Basic D&D.

These Dungeon String posts are my ideas on how each D&D class can fit into the heist milieu. Though the Thief class seems like it would cover the traditional pickpocketing, lockpicking and stealthy elements of a caper, this is a fantasy heist. There are going to be vault doors closed by magic, exploding rune traps, gelatinous cubes making security sweeps in the sewers below, plenty of room for a wide variety of unscrupulous characters. But since they are the backbone of any good heist, let's start with the Thief.

In a game where disarming traps and dodging security are commonplace occurrences, the Thief is the obvious utility player, acting as dedicated burglars, ranged combat specialists or expert lookouts. On top of their obvious Thief skills and alertness bonuses, Thieves also have the Backstab ability, which not only covers striking from the shadows with a knife to the back, but also ranged attacks from long distances. A Thief armed with a repeating crossbow in a high vantage point could hold off advancing enemies until the job is done or the plan has to be abandoned.

As many people have already noted, the standard B/X Thief is kind of a chump, with low hit points, okay saves and an alright attack progression. But on top of that, the Thief isn't any good at his job. I know that the Player Skill vs. Character Skill debate has been hemmed and hawed over by the OSR blogging community as a whole, specifically having to do with Thief skills, but it still stands that a standard Thief is much, MUCH worse at being a Thief at 1st level than a Fighter is at being a Fighter and so on. A starting Fighter with decent stats has about a 25-40% chance of being able to hit most monsters. A Cleric has a 33-50% chance of turning undead of around his level. But a starting Thief is more likely to succeed at his saving throw against a poison trap than his actual Trap Removal roll.

No more. In the Heist D&D campaign, I'm planning on using a modification of Beyond the Black Gate's Swords and Wizardry Thief class with the unified Thievery skill starting out at a 35% success rate. I figure that a modification like this puts the Thief on more even ground with the rest of the Basic classes and as a result, it will hopefully encourage more stealthy maneuvering and thiefly behavior.

Picture from Claudio Pozas' art gallery on ENWorld