The Level Grind

Alex Schroeder on my last post:

I think that the reason D&D works the way it works is that as you go up in levels, the game itself is supposed to change. Ordinary men going through a military career will end up as veterans on 2nd, 3rd, or 4th level. Some rare commanders will reach 5th level. But adventurers will want to fight trolls, and giants, and dragons.

More hitpoints is what allows adventurers to proceed to the next type of D&D game, going toe-to-toe with tough brutes.

As they gain even more levels, hit-points start to loose in importance as magic items and spells, and the appropriate defenses gain in importance. Now you want to go up against nagas, and mindflayers, and beholders. No problem!

To me, that's the D&D secret nobody told me about: Every level range has a different "feel" to it, appropriate encounters, strategies, tactics, items, concerns, and so on.

The mental disconnect only happens, I think, if you take your level 8 fighter and fight bandits, or fight alongside henchmen. If you don't want the level 8 fighter to shine like a madman, like a prince of Amber, like a hairy foot god of war, then it's easy to point your finger at the hit-points. An alternative point of view might suggest that perhaps the adventurers should not gain more than a level or two in the first place. That keeps them within the level range where fighting bandits and goblins and remains a cause for caution.

I don't think that one way or the other is intrinsically better than the other way of playing the game. I do think, however, that the default rules imply a certain progression through the monster manual, if you like. Conversely, if you limit hit-points, I think you will have to massively change monsters. I'm not sure whether just reducing hit-points is appropriate enough. My guess is that higher level monsters also need to have their melee attacks reduced, otherwise an unarmed mind-flayer isn't just dangerous because of his mind-blasting and his brain-eating, in addition to that he'll also be a fearsome melee fighter (which he is not, with the default rules).

The entire thing is an interesting thought experiment. I'm not sure I'd want to go there, however, because personally, I like the changing nature of D&D as you go through in levels (and I therefore accept side-effects like knights being infinitely superior fighters to squires and henchmen, etc.).

 I'd like to start by saying that I agree with the spirit of this entire remark. There's really nothing wrong with the game as written, and it's a lot of fun to play as a level 8 Fighter and be a powerhouse of death and be tough as nails, able to slay a band of lesser men with only a couple of scratches to show for it. Similarly, I agree that the feel of the game changes dramatically, and not necessarily for the worse. Low-level campaigns are ones where the cauliflower-eared fighting man reigns supreme, and the most deadly threat is the sword in your back, but high level ones are where wizards are the deadly ones, and even the most staid of fighters are brandishing +4 Vorpal Greatswords and have quivers full of Arrows of Dragon Slaying and stuff.

I suppose the most fundamental disconnect comes, as you say, when you have to look at the monsters and realize that what is portrayed as a weak, but mentally powerful mind flayer can wrestle men to the ground and beat them to death with their bare hands, or when you realize that the sort of threats that require a 6th level party can nearly decimate a kingdom. Or when you realize that you're going to have to hit a fiery dude fifteen times with a sword to get it to quit trying to eat princesses. Or when you realize that your fighter can get straight chomped on by a troll a good four times and still get up and smack him with yet another axe chop. It's not particularly interesting, especially when you consider that, despite claims to the contrary, hit points as written are entirely toughness and not some sort of "strength of will and luck" and stuff. When's the last time you had to rest for a day to recover one point of your luck?

Regardless, I don't think there's really a reason that we have to throw out higher levels just because it's tied to health. I can't think of a less impressive fighter than one who never gets any better at dodging as he levels, and only learns to take a punch better. A man like that is a guile-less butcher, not a warrior. With just an easy tweak (perhaps applying the THAC0 as a bonus to Armor Class, and then halving hit point gains after level one?) you can make a fighter that's dodging and weaving as well as getting more grizzled and hard to kill.

And see, it's cool that D&D isn't really meant to emulate sword and sorcery fiction- it's sort of a science-fantasy game, with fire and forget spells and everybody trying to wear as much armor as possible and a high death rate and exploring dungeons created three world-spanning armageddons ago. It's a very cool feel for a game, but it's not the only one possible by any means. With just a couple of tweaks, you can make it into a more historical game, where killing trolls and dragons means that you're planning out a major invasion that would be the focus of a campaign in and of itself, instead of a session of hack and slashery made possible because you've got 80 hit points and seven +12 axes or whatever.

But I digress. Again.

Low-Level Play

What I am about to say will not shock anybody who's gamed with me over the past, what, ten years? But I must press on.

I love low level play in Dungeons and Dragons. There! I said it!

WOT?

Not for me are the bizarre tales of level 32 Fighters dual-wielding the Hammer of Thunderbolts and a +5 Sword of Dragon Slaying, tackling a squadron of githyanki pirates riding spider eaters, nor of level 25 Wizards reshaping the world as they see fit. There's nothing wrong with that game, of course, but it doesn't do it for me.

What I like are the tales of the little men. I have a copy of The Decameron, an interesting hodgepodge of stories told by a group of tale-spinners from the year 1348, full of tales of clever rogues, vengeance, and humor. The stories involve common men and women who find themselves in unusual situations and (generally) get the better of a more dull-witted rival through deception and cunning. It's a fascinating read, and extremely enjoyable. I recommend that you take a peek. It's worth every penny of the $7.95 I paid for it at Borders. Seriously. It's awesome.

It's the same way in roleplaying games. The story of how Napoleon conquered a good chunk of Europe is pretty interesting, and similarly with Alexander and Genghis Khan. Masterful conquerors, valiant warriors, and interesting people every one of them. But they're not interesting because they were powerful- what's interesting is what makes them tick.

For example, knowing that Alexander had an awful temper and was prone to hot-headedness is interesting- you can imagine what it'd be like to meet this warrior-king. We've all met fiery, passionate, driven people before, and we can relate. His megalomania and paranoia are interesting. Who hasn't felt like they ought to be the ruler of the known world? Who hasn't wondered if there aren't secret conspiracies amongst us? The fact that he conquered so much of the world is interesting, and the accounts of his battles are interesting, filled as they are with brilliant strategies and incredible insights.

But you'll notice that this is all historical. This actually happened, with regular people. Interesting, larger-than-life people, yes. But regular people nonetheless. Genghis Khan didn't have to have a magical sword, enchanted greaves, or a wand of fireballs to ravage the world with his hordes. He did it by being smarter, meaner, and tougher than anybody around him.

And that's how D&D should play. You can be the roughest, toughest, meanest motherslapper in town. Cool. But you're still going to need to be smart to get ahead. You can't lean on your magical weapons, armor, scrolls, potions, and staves to carry you through. You can't plow through an army of level 1 soldiers, because they're "merely" wearing plate mail, mounted on mundane horses, and wielding "boring" lances. That's insane, and that's just not right.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't get tougher, or that you should always face the same enemies in your games. I'm not saying you shouldn't progress, or that if you're playing a different way then you're wrong. I'm just saying that there's no reason that "mundane" is boring. There absolutely isn't. Nothing could be more exciting.

Tombs of Nebimute: Session One, Part Two

Once the scarabs were smashed, they next attempt to decide whether to flip either of the switches, and if so, which one. They're trapped in a relatively small area via the aforementioned portcullis, and are unable to retreat. Takeno and Ralph discuss which lever to pull, if they should be pulled separately or together, and what their likely function was. Were they traps? What is the meaning of putting levers and tripwires behind a secret door? Why is it so dark? Should they be more cautious?

While the other two are deep in discussion, Hafiz gets antsy and cuts the discussion short by yanking both of the levers at the same time. The room immediately begins to fill with sand, dropping from the top of the long, cylindrical room, and the other door slides open.

They wisely decide to leave the filling room and go to the open door, being careful to go around the tripwire. While they're crossing, three zombies come from the newly opened doorway- one exiting immediately, and two becoming tripped up on one another, scrabbling to exit the room. The zombies are withered, decrepit things, more akin to uncovered mummies than the traditional freshly dead, but blackened, preserved skin sticks to bones as well as meaty flesh.

Takeno sticks a torch into one, and then the zombie misses its attack horribly, allowing the samurai to grab the zombie by the arm and wrestle it to the ground. Hafiz settles on his own target, and Ralph begins the crossbow barrage in vain. The zombies are quickly slain, and they reach the hidden room.

In the room is a chest and a lever. Takeno excitedly opens the chest, as quickly as possible, and I ask him to roll 2d6. He rolls snakeyes! I inform him that there is 200 gold in the chest, and everybody's cursing him. I laugh, perhaps a trifle maliciously but hey, they could have won up to 1200 gold from the chest!

By the way, opening the chest has released a cloud of purple gas, make a saving throw vs poison. The intrepid samurai fails, and he loses 1d6 CON, for a new total of 10. I tell him not to mark it off his character sheet, and to instead take a note. In his frustration, the samurai kicks the chest, and I jokingly ask him to make another saving throw. He complies, but succeeds. Can't fail all the time, right?

It's at this time that we're all tired, and besides, Ralph's player has to go to work in the morning and it's already getting late, so we call it a night. I look back on the session and think:

What worked well?

• Letting players roll most of the dice. The only time I touched dice was during combat. Determining what side of the portcullis the rear guard was on, figuring out how many zombies were in the next room- I asked the players to roll dice for me for absolutely everything. It was glorious.
• Making up the dungeon as you go along. I know it's not for everybody, but if you can strike a balance between adding things as you think of them and obeying a self-imposed ruleset and style, you can invent fairly colorful and realistic worlds without any forethought or planning. I know I didn't have any. 
• Letting the players determine the setting and their relationship. The first post goes into more detail about it, but essentially, you let the players decide where they're going and what they're after, by virtue of what is essentially free association. It's not for those DMs who thrive on pre-planned adventures, unless they like changing them on the fly, and it's not for people who insist on having close control of their stuff. But if you want a quick challenge to your creative and improvisational skills, nothing comes close to having the group of people you're trying to entertain make up the night's entertainment for you.
• Variable Weapon Damage. It works. Takeno's player was looking at the page-long description of weapons, and I told him not to bother, as I'd changed everything. This was met with approval, as nobody really likes looking through lists of weapons and deciding whether one extra point of damage is worth an extra three pounds and nine gold.

What didn't work?

• Having to get up in the morning. Nobody likes having to cut a session short after only a couple of hours, but our work schedules aren't really flexible and there's not a whole lot any of us can do about having to come in extra early sometimes. 
• Regular Vancian Magic. Without any sort of explanation about how interesting and bizarre J. Vance's works are, or anything about the implied setting that the characters wouldn't know or likely discover through regular play, Vancian magic kind of sucks. Hey, you get two spells today. I encountered that with our wizard, who had never played a game with Vancian magic, and she wasn't happy. I don't really care if it's the way things have always been done, or if Jack Vance wrote it that way. He didn't have young wizards running around discovering spells, he wrote about mighty sorcerers who already had researched a thousand spells. And D&D isn't really about mighty sorcerers, especially not at first where the limitations of Vancian magic come into play.

The Tombs of Nebimute: Session One

When Tony sees how I've spelled that, he's going to flip his wig. But regardless of spelling, it was a good session last night. We had Takeno, the devious wandering ronin, Abdul-Hafiz, cleric of the Protector, and Ralph the crossbow-wielding spellslinger, and the very first thing I did was ask Takeno, since he was sitting across from me, how he knew Hafiz. He decided that he found him, naked and penniless on the streets of a city and took him in and clothed him. I then asked Hafiz how he knew Ralph, and he said that he was riding on one of his many camels when Ralph asked for a ride. Hafiz refused, but Ralph impressed the camel-rider with his spells and was allowed to ride in the end. And then, Ralph knew Takeno because once, when wandering through the forest, Takeno attempted to kill him but was stayed by sorcerous means. Takeno knew nothing of magic, and so was interested and delighted to find that the battle's cause was unintentional.

So we have three distinct characters in the first ten minutes of play, see? Hafiz is a pious, well-off cleric from pseudo-Arabia with perhaps a taste for danger, Takeno is a well-meaning but occasionally extremely violent samurai, and Ralph is a wandering wizard with little purpose or guidance.

That's one of the better tricks of the trade, really: Ask your players not how they know each and every other member of the party, but how they know the guy next to them. In fact, ask your players everything you can. You're not the only one playing the game after all- imagine how awful movies would be if only one actor really acted!

In keeping with this spirit, of course, I asked after we'd determined who was who and how they knew each other, I asked them where they were going and what they were doing and what they were after and how they were getting there and so we come across the story of three stolid men after an artifact of incalculable power- an Amulet to control the Undead, hidden deep in the desert wastes in the Tomb of Nebimute! Takeno bullied a map out of some townsfolk who didn't apparently know the value of what they'd had, and the three of them rode camels directly to the enormous obelisk in the center of a circular plaza, obscured by sands. The closed doorway sits in front of them, an oblong semicircle of smooth, solid stone. It must be forced open, as it hasn't been opened for many years. The sun is setting on our intrepid adventurers as they work on opening the door with a crowbar, and the winds begin to howl, sending stinging sand on our adventurers' faces.

When they enter, they come across a long, smooth, 20'' wide passageway made of blocks of limestone, sloping gently downwards. Though there are scones in the walls, they are unused. Takeno, the de facto leader of the party, shouts down the passageway, and though only a faint shuffling sound can be heard in response, decides that the best part of survival is caution, and instructs his sorcerous companion to light one of his many torches he is carrying and toss it down the slope. He does so, and the torch lands with a thud.

The party then decides to use a wedge formation to look for wall traps, and has Hafiz and Takeno on either side of the passageway at either wall, and then Ralph in the middle as lookout, armed with his deadly crossbow. The passageway slopes down uniformly until they come across a slight seam, as though the entire block pattern had shifted down an inch or so. A tap reveals a hollow sound, causing the suspicious Takeno to request for the cleric to bash the wall with his great hammer. Repeated smashings cause one of the blocks to wiggle slightly, as though not as solidly impacted, so Takeno bashes it in. Hafiz humbly suggests that they remove it, and lo! It comes out!

Hafiz makes another suggestion, this time that Takeno, "put his hand in there."
Takeno: "Fuck that. I poke my crowbar in there."

Crowbar poking hits some sort of mechanism, which clicks ominously, and repeated strikes cause the mechanism to complete its function. I pause. The wall across from you drops down slightly, and then slides into the wall across from you. A secret door! They enter.

In the roughly 20x20 room is a door across from them and an open doorway. They carefully cross the room, but spot a shimmering gleam about halfway through. Not a misty shimmering, nor a "semi-invisible" shimmering or even a glassy shimmering, but a tripwire. Ralph actually guessed it immediately, so kudos, right?

Anyways, they carefully track the wire to either side of the room, checking to see if it goes all the way from one wall to the next. It does, so they go underneath and try the door. It's not budging, and there's absolutely no way to interact with it- no doorknobs, no handles, no pushbars, nothing. So they go in the open doorway.

In that room, of course, there are two levers and an ivory statue on a two foot cylindrical pedestal, depicting  man being devoured by scarabs while alive. The scarabs have inset gems in their carapaces. In their infinite wisdom, the adventurers decide to smash the statue above the muttering of their wizard. Upon smashing, the statue's scarabs come to life, hungry from possibly centuries of unlife.

Thinking quickly, Takeno and Ralph decide to use their torches to herd the scarabs (since we reasoned that most animal life is afraid of fire and scarabs aren't an exception) into Hafiz's hammer range, where he would take them out as quickly as possible.

More to come- watch for it!

The New Game

After we got Jeff back from drill, we set out to roll up some characters. I intentionally kept the house-ruling to a minimum, using only the following modified rules:

• Weapon Size by Damage
• Rerolling hit points for the first hit die if below average

Practically spartan by my standards! But I thought it would be important, since we're planning on trying out the Rotating DM Hat trick, where we each run a session or two and then switch out. Maybe more of a short arc for each DM, so that we accomplish something and then when the campaign reaches a natural lull (for example, after the dungeon's cleared we go back to town and rest up, invest in some real estate, fix our armor, and set our sights on the next goal; this would be an ideal time to switch up the DM and get some "fresh air" into our adventuring.) 

The DM hat. Singing optional.

But keeping houserules to a minimum is helpful when you're switching like that and is, as I understand it, one of the reasons that AD&D had such a strictly defined ruleset- it makes life easier when the default assumption is that you'll be taking your character from one world to the next with a minimum of translation. But there's no reason that a similarity of rules couldn't be contained by one group, especially with the world as murkily defined as it currently stands.

After all, there's nearly nothing defined about it except what will be defined during play, such as the fact that Tony decided to be a pseudo-Arabian cleric whose name translates into "Servant of the Protector", thereby indicating that there's A) A pseudo-Arabic culture and B) A Protector-Diety of some prominence in that culture. Depending on how the game goes, it could either be a Zoroastrian-style Protector versus the Defiler, or it could even be a polytheistic religion worshipping the Protector, the Mighty, the Sage, and so on as personified manifestations of human nature. Or maybe not. That's the fun of organic gameplay, if you ask me- it suits perfectly the players and the Dungeon Masters, since we're the ones making it up on the spot.

Let me introduce the current cast of players, as it stands:

We currently have myself as Dungeon Master, T. Hamingston as a desert nomad Cleric, Allison as a sage Wizard with powers of trickery and warfare, and a proud Samurai adventurer. It's shaping up to be a pretty good party. When I play, I think I might be a Dwarf or and Elf- despite my disdain for race-as-class (and not for the reasons you think, more than likely), they're useful and valuable allies in their own bailiwick. The Dwarf is a powerful warrior in his own right, hardy and capable and possessing of useful underground perceptions, and the Elf is both a fighting man and a scholar of the arcane arts, and has keen senses in his own right. We'll have to see, I suppose, before the dice are rolled and the die cast. Even the lowly Theif isn't out of the question!

What does this mean for the poor Aremorican Addendum? Well, the game will still go on, the next time Tony's girlfriend comes over, but it'll be totally separate, especially since they'll be my "guinea pig" group and then we'll have a much looser organization, with each rotating Dungeon Master bringing different ideas and specialties in the game. Like a Theives' World game, roleplayed. If you will.

Character Backgrounds

In honor of my last post, which my friend Mr. Joesky the Dungeon Brawler would say makes a "blahblahblah" sound, here's some free stuff you can use.

Fighter Backgrounds
When you make a fighter-type character, you may choose to roll 1d6 and gain the following backgrounds:

1- Veteran: When you were conscripted into the army, the recruiters laughed and shouted "More meat for the grinder, boys!" and the rest of the soldiers laughed. That was almost a decade ago. Even before embarking on an adventuring career, you've seen things that would make other men's insides turn to jelly. Hellish, horrible things that haunt you to this day.
Benefits: You gain a suit of chainmail and the weapon of your choice for free from your military service. You also have 500 bonus experience from your many years of service.
Penalties: You often have a thousand-yard stare, remembering the events of wars past. When something causes stress, you have a penalty to notice things and situations. When extremely stressed, you may enter a comatose state, and be unable to be budged for 1d6 minutes.

2- Brigand: You were once a marauder of the forests, mountains, or snows. You have turned from a life of crime and murder to a life of looting and slaying. A minor change, to be sure, but certainly less stressful on your countrymen at least.
Benefits: You have an additional 1d6x20 gold to start with, booty from your theft. You also have a bow, free of charge.
Penalties: You are wanted in your home region by the law and are recognized as such. There is a bounty of 1,000 gold on your capture, and 500 for your head.

3- Blacksmith's Son: Work for years slaving over some hot iron for meager rewards? No thanks, says the Blacksmith's Son. He's seen world-weary travellers, heavy with gold and with word of their adventures, and cannot stand the thought that he'll spend the rest of his life in a hamlet somewhere, arming the free-spirited folk and never having his own adventure.
Benefits: You have the ability to work metal, able to produce your own arms and armor for 3/4 of the normal cost, as long as you're willing to spend at least a week per 100 gold total. You can also repair your own arms and armor for the same cost. In addition, you have a great and heavy one-handed hammer for free.
Penalties: Being a blacksmith's son, you have little experience handling weapons that aren't broad and heavy hammers and suffer a -1 penalty to attacks with such weapons.


4- Deserter: You signed up to serve your kingdom, not spend your days cooped up in some garrison, sharpening swords and looking wistfully at the horizon. In the cover of nightfall, under some false pretense, you escaped with your sword, armor, and horse, and never looked back.
Benefits: You have a normal sword, suit of scale mail, and a decent-quality horse. The armor is clearly identifiable as belonging to your former army, and you may be identified as a scavenger, deserter, or a member of the army you left behind, depending on their familiarity with your former allegiance.
Penalties: While your former compatriots aren't on the lookout for you, desertion is punishable by death by hanging, and if found out, you will be brought to justice and killed. You are generally paranoid about being discovered, and are always looking over your shoulder.


5- Marine: You were a soldier-sailor, one of those who would fight pirates and other men on the high seas, boat to boat. You're rough, tough, and more than a little scarred and capable of putting up a good fight regardless of the conditions. Once you were released from service, you quickly realized that the free food, shelter, and drink came to an end and decided to continue doing what you always did best: fight.
Benefits: You have the great reaving axe you carried and a suit of studded leather armor. In addition, you are capable of maintaining and sailing most kinds of watercraft, and are a passable navigator. Finally, you're able to drink most anybody directly under the table, useful in seedy waterfront bars.
Penalties: You are physically dependant on alcohol, having drank more than your fair share while out to sea. When not under the influence of some liquor or another, you suffer a -1 penalty to all rolls. Recovery, if possible, is likely long and hard and fraught with missteps.


6- Nobleman: You are the son of a minor noble who's caught wanderlust. Having been born to hear tales of chivalrous knights, dragon-slayers, and heroic battle. While never having been in an actual battle, or seen one, or even knowing what one smells like, you're awfully eager to spill some blood.
Benefits: You have a full suit of plate mail from your parents' armory. It is relatively ill-fitting, having been designed for a man larger and stouter than yourself, but you make do.
Penalties: You are naieve and haughty, and suffer a -1 penalty to your Charisma score for having and retaining henchmen. You treat them like common servants and stable-boys, and they resent your superior attitude. You are also likely to get on your compatriots' nerves, never satisfied with anything less than the finest food or sleeping arrangements, and complaining heartily that today's adventurers aren't nearly as heroic as the legends of old. In short, you're spoiled badly.

Aremorican Addendum: Playtesting!

Today's the day that I get to take my recently released Labyrinth Lord supplement, Aremorican Addendum Volume 1: Player Option for a test drive! Exciting, right? It's a good chance to see what works and what doesn't, and to see what character options are the most popular. It's been a metric of mine for a long time that if you can't decide what class to be, then the classes are all awesome and your job is done. Keeping in mind player preferences, that is- there's no accounting for taste, right?

Anyways, it's going to be a group of four, with T. Hamingston being one of the usual suspects, and also my girlfriend and his as the other two. Three PCs isn't bad, especially not if you consider that half of the time, I'm DMing for two PCs instead of three. It's exciting, because Ham's girlfriend has never played any sort of roleplaying game before, isn't really into sword and sorcery and hell, doesn't even talk that much. So hopefully we can have a good session without me running her over with my evil, evil killer DM instincts. That's sarcasm, by the way. I know we're going to have fun, since we always do.

The module of choice in this situation is going to be none other than my own Servants of Plague module, mostly because it's the one that's freshest in my memory and all of my attempts to sit down and read through one of the more classic modules like Keep on the Borderlands or the Outpost on the Edge of the Far Reaches (available free from the Warlock's Home Brew, if you've missed it) have failed for a week straight. This is due to my personality, mostly- in case it doesn't come across in the blog, I'm an excitable fool, always chattering and thinking and writing and tinkering and all of that fun stuff. I'm not particularly good at sitting still unless it's at my computer and even then I'm not very good at it, preferring to write a couple of hundred words all at one sitting, without any particular foresight or direction. My girlfriend jokes that I'm bipolar sometimes. That just shows you how cruel she is.

But back to gaming! Servants of Plague is actually a pretty good module, assuming that your tastes in fantasy run towards B-movie zombies, nastiness, and a little bit of grit. For example, the first time I ran the game, the players made it to the first room of the keep, where the garbage pit lies. I looked at my skeletal notes, and decided that a couple of plague orcs were there, looking for scraps to eat or possibly any sorts of missed treasure. The players rode in on their horses, and the plague orcs, surprised, burst out from underneath and beside the piles of garbage. A deadly game of hide and seek broke out, as the plague orcs used the enormous filth piles to hide behind, while hurling straight lengths of rusted metal as javelins and smaller chunks as slingstones. One plague orc leapt out and attempted to use his own intestines to dismount a player!

The players did eventually win, though we weren't able to complete the module. It's for that reason that I'm using it again on poor Ham, since he had only gotten roughly halfway through. There's plenty of secrets to be had, even if I played it "by the book" both times. That's the real secret to using the Servants of Plague and something that I think marks a difference between old-school and new school; old-school gives you the bones and says "make something of it, or just steal from it, whatever" and new school says "I know better than you, if you don't run this as written you're doing it wrong."

But I digress. Heavily.

Otyughs and Saving Throws

Saw this picture on rpg.net the other day, in a post about posing "old school" images, or rather, images that suggest old school to you. This one struck me as particularly hilarious, and very, very telling.

One of the things I tell my players before every session (especially when they're new, or we haven't played in a while) is that I'm not going to fudge rolls, that some monsters may be too tough for you, and that you may very well die in the first battle you get in. There are traps in the dungeon that might slay you, and there is a very real possibility that you'll all be ambushed and killed by a band of kobolds. And looking online, it feels like I'm in the minority.

To be entirely honest, the online place I was thinking of was Enworld, which is perhaps not the best source of information, but it is an enormously popular site and the topics that (when they aren't OMG LOOK AT THIS NEW DRECK WOTC IS PUTTING OUT HOW MANY COPIES WILL YOU GET) are at least brain-tickling, even if for the wrong reasons.

One of those brain-ticklers is the debate between save or die, and how apparently they're a horrible, horrible blight on the state of roleplaying. Anecdotes on both sides abound, while my tiny comment goes unnoticed. I said, and I quote:

"Saving throws are your last chance as a player to survive, given to you when you messed up so bad that you deserve to be dead, paralyzed, or worse."

Obviously, the debate went right around me, since people were more interested in point-by-point debating over what amounts to either semantics or preference in playstyle than actually talking about save or die effects, but that's fine. Let the little pedants have their fun because I know what I'm using.

I'm using, and have been using, save or die effects in my games, and I can't think of why I wouldn't. I asked one of my longtime players, the man known on here as T. Hamingston, and he said he liked them for the same reasons I did: They let the player live. They give the player another chance, when they should have been caught by a fireball, or incinerated by dragons' breaths, or horribly disintegrated. And that's something that's overlooked.

Which is sad, because that's pretty much the whole point of them. That's entirely what they're for, and for nothing else. Some of the people on there get upset, saying, "It's just not fair! Players shouldn't be able to die from random monsters, they should be the heroes! Heroes don't die from basilisks!"

Not even a 20 foot tall basilisk?

But that's another subject for another day, about why people need to play the world-saving heroes in a system originally designed to simulate tomb-robbing, mercenary rogues. We'll get to that. Today, it's about Saving Throws. Show me the part in any of the player's sections in any game where it says "The players are Heroes and deserve better fates than to be eaten by Otyughs in a nameless dungeon at third level." If there is a part like that, I've been playing it wrong all these years. Silly me! I've been making my players earn their heroism. I wasn't aware that players need to be coddled, protected, and handed big piles of gold and experience or they won't want to play. I must have been confusing my players with adults, who think that things that aren't earned aren't worth anything (to reuse an analogy, picture the award you got from winning a footrace against five-year-old children).


But seriously, what is it with everybody wanting to be an epic, save-the-world-before-breakfast hero these days? Half of the posters on EnWorld expect their players to be on a slow march towards inexorable victory, and view any sort of deviation from the inevitable end-game campaign as some sort of mean-spirited deviation. What? Challenges are unfair? Expecting players to be intelligent is mean? I think I'm going to release a game today: if these whiny 4th edition DMs are any indication, it'll be the most popular game in the world.

If you're the DM, roll 2d6. If you're the player, you can roll whatever you want, because you're going to win anyways. Sit still while the DM tells you how cool it was.

That's two of them there
square fellers.

2d6 RESULTS TABLE
2: Tell the players about some cool stuff they did. For example, they descended through the center of the earth, drop-kicked a dragon into a black hole, or talked a king into letting them ride griffons around the world and into the next dimension! Don't forget the Rule of Cool: Everything needs to be awesome, at all times.
3-5: Play a two hour game of watered down Warhammer Fantasy Battles. Make sure the encounter is balanced or the players might lose, and you'll have to contrive a victory out of it anyways!
6-8: Skill challenge time! Roll a d20 at least five times. If you get more odds than evens, they win! If you get more evens than odds, try again.
9-11: Time for some loot! Let your players write the loot from their "Wish List" onto their character sheet, and then have them write a new "Wish List." It can be whatever they want; after all, they've earned it!
12: Uh oh, time to save the world! Roll a d20 behind your DM screen. Whatever it was, tell the players it was a 20, and that they've saved the world! Congratulations!

Wishy-washy DMs look out. I've just rocked your world through subtle sarcasm.

Character Building?

Thank God I took three levels in Ropeclimb Bowthief.

One of the things that always bothered me when playing WoW, LoTRO, and especially WAR (because WAR was my favorite, see), was that people refused to call their characters that. They were never characters, they were always "toons". "Gotta reroll my toon", one guy would say, or "Just rolled up a new toon today, trying out Choppa," or "Don't play Bright Wizard, I know a guy that has a BW toon and he hates it."

I never understood it. Why would you pick possibly the dumbest name for a "character" and then compulsively call it that? I understand the part about "rerolling" (since it comes directly from D&D, something that the average mouth-breathing MMO player may not know) but not about "toons."

And so my confusion extends to this obsession with "character building." I've complained about Enworld before, but why is it that everybody and their mother wants help building characters? It's dozens of people not asking about cool character concepts or interesting personality traits, but how to make the most powerful character in combat with a certain example. And people will respond,

Oh, start out with 3 levels of Cudgelmaster Nogginbane and then pick up a couple ranks of Swank and then multiclass into Tremulous Spidereater so you can have a base attack bonus of +7 and be able to jump at least 20 miles into the air as well as gain a +70d3 damage bonus against anything with two or more legs.

Or something along those lines. I dunno. And it doesn't really make sense to me. When did roleplaying a game about looting stuff and splitting skulls turn into this wierd competitive mathematics? I'm not playing Labyrinth Lord so that I can try and put together the most classes so that I can deal more damage than you, I'm playing it because I like you, and I want to hang out. That's it.

It's not interesting to me to do differential mathematics with a side of trigonometry every time I sit down to roll up a new half-orc fighter. I'm working on my degree in electrical engineering, the last thing that sounds good after a long day in classes is, hey, more math! Yes, please let me flex my wonderful system mastery so that you can know where exactly to get a +5 coincidence bonus to your attack rolls that stacks with other attack rolls. It's right here in Player's Handbook VII, did you not pick it up? HEATHEN.


Reminds me of some advice I heard recently, on the Atlanta D&D pickup forums. A guy was asking what books he needed to play 4e, and some dude sagely said, "All of the players handbooks not connected to a specific campaign guide."

Oh, all ten of them? Player's Handbooks 1-4, and then all of the "X Power" books, so Divine Power, Martial Powers 1 and 2, Arcane Power, and Primal Power. You need ALL of these to play 4th edition? Isn't asking me to pick up 9 books at $30 apeice a little much? Who is spending $270 to play a game revolving around pieces of paper and plastic dice?


But I digress.

The game shouldn't be about character building, can't be about character building, especially since in this case, your character is a collection of powers and skills with a thin veneer of character by way of explaining how in the holy shit you thought to combine 5 levels of Paladin with 6 levels of Sorcerer.

Aremorican Addendum: Vol. 1 Released!

Another Labyrinth Lord supplement by
your friend, N. Wright

Today is the day I'm releasing the Aremorican Addendum Volume 1: Player Option. It's a roughly 30 page document that gets you, roughly,  three new spellcasting systems, 9 classes, weapon and armor tables, and a little bit more.

Quick blurb:

"These classes are designed with the idea of replacing the regular default classes from Labyrinth Lord in my next game of Labyrinth Lord. The idea is a long-percolating one, coming from the long-standing dissatisfaction of race-as-class, not for whatever reason dealing with the idea that not all elves are fighter/magic users, for example, but for the fact that it is more fun to have the dwarf class represent a dungeoneer. Why let the fun demi-human classes go to waste just because one habitually runs a humans-only game? And what about the other classes, while we're thinking about it? Something always seemed funny about the thief class, and why is there a cleric class but none for the regular robed and fragile priest, and why are all magic users the same... You get the drift.

So out of the Unknowable Void comes the Aremorican Addendum Volume 1: Player Option, the only Labyrinth Lord companion piece you'll ever need, assuming that you only need one companion for your Classic Fantasy Games and their retro-clones. You'll need that game to play, to be sure, but when it comes to choosing a class, feel free to ditch it and look here. You'll find rules for mage-seeking warriors, demonologists, elemental summoners, crusading knights, and more. It's everything you need for a human-centric game that doesn't lose anything by losing out on boring, trite, and overused demihumans."

So, in a nutshell, it gives you 9 new classes in 30 pages, including spell lists. It runs a little wordy, but has plenty of period-accurate art inside to break up the double-column text. And, as a big bonus, it gets rid of fire-and-forget magic and introduces a couple of ways to destroy the "15-minute adventuring day" as well. It's free, and, if I may speak honestly, not a bad work for Labyrinth Lord fans. Volume 2 will likely contain more in the way of hex maps, locations, organizations, and possibly more advanced spells, being aimed at a sort of Dungeon Master's Guide to Aremorica.

Please note that this is an early version; no extensive playtesting has been run through this bad boy like it really deserves, so feel free to try it out and let me know how it goes!

Get your copy today, before the internet runs out!

8 SEP 2010:
Update time! Added more spells to the Diabolist lists, updated the mechanics for Sorcerers and Abjurers, and changed Crusaders from having Abjurer prayers to their own style of Invocations! Not bad, right? It's still free, and still less than thirty pages, so try it out and see what you think!

New Class: The Sorcerer

A foreward: The Sorcerer is one class from my in-progress work on, essentially, reworking all of the basic Labyrinth Lord classes. It's something that's really a lot of fun, and something that's definately getting used by my group the next time we meet. The formatting's almost done, which is always cool, and the classes are all pretty different than the generic fantasy classes. Well, not all of them, but they're definately different than the Way It's Usually Done in classic fantasy gaming, which is to keep the underlying structure of magic, for example, and just add some more spells and maybe a theme or two. Not enough is done to accomodate more literary influences or the simple fact that in LL, resting directly after a fight is about the only thing that makes sense to do, whereas Conan, Aragorn, Elric, and the like don't bother to wait for their paltry wounds to close, since they didn't take any- and neither did the people in D&D.

Naturally, this goes hand in hand with my house-rule for Wounds which I posted recently. So here's the Sorcerer, influenced by a certain Melnibonean, Lovecraft, and (believe it or not), White Wolf's old Werewolf game. Here's the write-up, and after that, a link to the pdf.

Agrindan and his bound Fire Elemental.

Sorcerer

---

Sorcerers delve into the very raw materials of creation, seeking to reshape the world as they see fit. Using the secrets of the arcane circles they've gleaned from years of study into the bizarre and blasphemous books of the wizards of old, Sorcerers take what knowledge they've plundered and turn it into raw power. Sorcerers tend to be aggressive, as they are dealing with raw energy and absolute power. Their powers are more suited for searing their foes with gouts of fire and creating great cracks in the earth than subtlety.

Though just as many sorcerers are indifferent to the affairs of the gods as not, there is a strong current of faith in amongst them. They tend towards worship of the Unknowable Ones, a cthonic mystery cult dedicated to the creators of the world itself. They hold that the gods of acolytes and laymen alike are but scavengers on the corpse that the Unknowable Ones had created, and that they deserve no more respect than the flies on the corpse of a mule. The true worship goes towards the Unknowable ones, and the result of their worship is the blessing of the Bonded Elementals.

To a sorcerer, their elemental is not their servant or their slave, but a minor deity in and of itself. They do not demand for their elementals to do their bidding, but rather request it upon them. And the elemental, for its part, often complies.

The elementals themselves are highly variable. A stone elemental is as likely to be an ambulatory boulder or a man made of mud, and fire elementals can be anything from a pillar of burning ash and smoke to a salamander composed of molten lava! Very few elementals are to be found in the stereotypical “anthropomorphic” style, tending instead to be as variable and bizarre as the elements themselves.

Hit Dice: d4

Allowed Weapons: One-handed weapons only, sling

Allowed Armor: None

-

Class Requirements: 11 Charisma

Prime Requisite: Charisma

Level	Experience	Special Features
1	0	Elemental Binding, Summoning Circle
2	2,501
3	5,001	Elemental Resistance
4	10,001
5	20,001	Raw Power
6	40,001
7	80,001	Elemental Mastery
8	160,001
9	310,001	Tower Master / Sage

Sorcerer Features

Elemental Binding

At 1^st level, a Sorcerer has the ability to bind elemental spirits to do his bidding. While not true “elementals” in the monster sense, elemental spirits provide magical assistance to the sorcerer. The Sorcerer must spend his turn psychically commanding the elemental to do his bidding.

The Bound Elemental has as many hit die as the Sorcerer who summoned it has levels, and is both ethereal, and invisible to those who are not Sorcerers or do not have some form of magical vision. A Sorcerer can have only one Elemental spirit summoned at one time.

Elementals can be healed if they're exposed to a significant amount of their primary element. For example, a fire elemental can be healed by allowing it to bask in the roar of a great fire, and an earth elemental can be rejuvenated by allowing it to rest in an area with plenty of earth, but little other, bordering elements, such as in a narrow earthen tunnel. When a Bound Elemental is reduced to zero hit points or less, the Elemental is returned to its plane of existence and a new elemental spirit must be summoned.

Summoning Circle

Sorcerers have knowledge of Summoning Circles which can be used to summon elemental spirits and bind them to their will. The ritual depends on the background of the player, but it never takes less than one hour and is always physically and mentally draining, requiring at least an hour of rest afterwards.

Elemental Resistance

The sorcerer's close bond with the Elementals has bolstered his personal toughness to those who would use the elements against him. He takes one less damage from fire, electricity, acid, and cold.

Raw Power

Bound Elementals summoned by a Sorcerer of 5^th level or greater lose one less health when they exert themselves.

Elemental Mastery

At 7^th level, the Sorcerer's elementals have an additional Hit Die when summoned.

Tower Master

At 9^th level, the Sorcerer may build a tower. Typically this is built without permission of the local lord, and no permission is required. Few interfere with the affairs of powerful wizards! Once a tower is built, 1d4 low level magic users will come to the tower to learn the ways of the Sorcerer.

Sage

A Sorcerer who does not build a tower may choose to wander further as a Sage, ever seeking more and more knowledge to further his power. In many social circles, Sages are accounted the very highest of respect.

The V2 Dungeon Map: First Draft

The Louvre should be calling any day now.

This is the first draft of the V2: Dark Skies Above Us dungeon. It's made in the medium of crayon on lined notebook paper. It's a little known fact, but Monet was an advocate of this medium, and often insisted on doodling in crayon before painting directly over the waxy drawing. I dunno, he scraped it off or something, don't ask me.

Just thought you guys might be interested in looking at it. The "S" designates a secret door, and the lines designate passageways. The entire complex is built out of the local stone, probably granite although I haven't decided, seeing as how a little more research on rock formations is going to be necessary. Hopefully for the rough draft I can at least remember to draw on unlined paper, right?  How will the crayon-drawers amongst us be taken seriously when we're held back by the distinctly amateurish blue and red lines on our paper?

Houserule: Wounds

Lord Chivalrous suddenly wonders whether
he left the kettle on.

One of the things that's bothered me for a long time is the treatment of hit points in D&D; specifically, how hit points are simultaneously health and not-health. They represent your ability to not get killed, luck, divine intervention, and sheer pluck. They also represent your ability to take hits, roll with punches, and sheer stubbornnes.

And there's nothing innately wrong with that. There's no real reason that you can't be the final arbiter of your character's skill, that two Fighters with 10 hit points can't be narratively different, with one not even noticing the stab wound in his arm as he kicks the orc in the chest, and the other skillfully dodging under the minotaur's clumsy, overhand hack and body-slamming the brute. Mechanically, according to D&D, there's no difference. And that's pretty cool, actually.

But there is something innately dissatisfying with the idea that this abstract representation takes so long to heal up. 1 hit point a day? Seriously? What am I "healing", anyways? Conan famously requires nothing more than breathing room and a swig of wine to ignore his wounds, and that's the sort of thing we should emulate, not Final Fantasy time and money drains.

In short, I've been considering adding Wounds to Labyrinth Lord, and they'd work fairly simply. You keep track of your Wounds separately, with each one reducing your maximum hit points by one. You take a wound whenever you get damaged by something. (Alternately, you could take a Wound for every 4 damage you take. Or, if you like, damage equal to half the class' hit dice size- so every 2 points for wizards, 3 for clerics, and 4 for fighters. This helps your tougher classes stay in the fight longer, if you're so inclined.) In this way, a hit means a hit, and Wounds represent real, physical damage. Whether you get hit by a stray arrow, an orc's sword, or the like, Wounds hurt, and they need to be healed.

To make up for your rapidly dwindling health, you regain all of your Hit Points by simply catching a breather of a minute or two. But not your Wounds. Your Wounds disappear at a rate of 1/level every time you get a good night's sleep. So, in other words, your Wounds represent the very real scrapes, cuts, bruises, gashes, concussions, and other sundry ailments that a life of hardship and pain brings. It represents the fact that even a knife cut hurts.

Clerics and other sources of healing magic can heal Wounds at a rate of 1 Wound per 5 HP healed, if they so choose. Of course, their healing is still useful, as it keeps a man from dying in combat, and is extremely useful for bringing a man up from the prone position, so to speak.

So you're tougher, and you can fight for longer in a day, but you still can't fight forever like some adventurers in "other games" can. But you're not any stronger in a straight fight than generic LL, so it's not like you have to redesign fights, encounters, or any sort of adventures. It puts a higher cap on what you can accomplish in a day, and that's always a Good Thing.

The Two Potential Covers

This was supposed to happen with the Servants of Plague cover, where I posted two different options for consideration, but if that project stalled anymore, it'd go straight into a death spiral, ending only when it smashed into my head and severed into hemispheres. Nobody wants that.

So in the interest of continued sanity, here is a new prototype I'd been working on. I'm not too terribly sold on either one, but the first one is the layout I'd been using, and the second one is the one I've been working on. It's not a finished prototype, but there are certain things I like about them both.

The current "look" of the V series of modules produced
by yours truly.

Option One
This one is the basic, utilitarian version. It's got a black bar, then a picture, then some description text. It's simple, and unpretentious. It emulates the modules of old without assuming prior knowledge of them. It's clean, and is composed of sharp lines and straight edges. It's got a timeless look to it, as proved by the fact that it's how most adventure modules have looked since, well, adventure modules started looking like adventure modules.

On the other hand, it's fairly basic looking. There hasn't been a lot of innovation in module design, and it mostly looks like this. There's nothing wrong with that, per se, and it certainly beats some modern designs. There's a lot of modules that look like this, and that's kind of a problem. Mostly, because any comparison of my hobby's products will pale in imitation to the original greats, or especially anything that the OSR comes out with. Much like any other form of lazy presentation, it makes one wonder as to the effort made inside. If they can't be bothered to create an original and appealing cover for their work, what makes anybody think they put any effort into the inside? Of course, that's vastly unfair to those of us who are not artists by any stretch, but such is life.

Option Two

The potential new "look" of the V series of
Labyrinth Lord modules.

This cover keeps the solid background and the emphasis on text over art, but adds a splash of color in the corner and a little beveled text boxes, two things which help the cover stand out at least a tiny bit in comparison. In addition, there's room for a silly little woodcut graphic of a knight, an image I like very much.

The cons? Well, I'm not sure about the red, or the bevelled box for the title, or the fact that it cuts over the image. In addition, I'm feeling that the "V2" text should be white, not black. Other than that, it's ok. It seems perhaps like it tries a little hard to have a "new and improved!" feel, when it's really impossible to improve over the balanced and classic design of the originals.

What do you think? Emulate the originals, try and improve on them, or try something else entirely?

EDIT: Hybrid Option

This is a hybrid design, taking the rounded box and font of version two and keeping the more reduced aesthetic of version one. The knight on the lower left is still there because, after all, he's still pretty cool. The attribution could stand to be a little bigger, and the knight image a little smaller, but still, tweaking isn't such a bad thing.

If this ends up being the final design, then it'll be absolutely no problem to edit Servants of Plague to conform to this standard, since these templates are made in Inkscape, which is about the best format known to man, as far as ease of use goes.

I kind of like the hybrid, to be honest with you. It might end up being the "final draft" so to speak.

Dark Skies Above Us

A Crayonian Sorcerer, perhaps?

You may not have noticed, but I've started working on V2: Dark Skies Above Us. It's in extremely preliminary stages at the moment, little more than a couple of ideas floating around in my skull. With any luck, it'll have more juicy goodness without all of that overly crunchy crap, and it'll probably be a little more dungeon-crawly. V1: Servants of Plague didn't have much dungeon crawling at all, featuring a more open-ended, go wherever you want sort of area with slight limitations. (For example, I added a key to get above the giant garbage pit of the first floor that was being carried by the patrolling Orc Sergeant, since my players blitzed the keep and I didn't want them to ignore all the rest of the stuff.)

Since this seems like as good of a place to say it as any, my Player Character Hack is also almost done. It really needs a name, which is unfortunate, since nothing really seems to fit it well. There's just something about names... If my home campaign world had a name, it'd be easier, since then it'd be "GAMEWORLD COMPANION" instead of being called absolutely nothing, or worse, "Crayonian Classes." How pretentious can you get?

Anyways, the part that's taking so long is replacing the art I'd taken from sources on the internet and from my hard-drive's art archives, and replacing it with free, open-domain woodcut art. It takes a while, especially when there isn't really any art for wizardly type guys unless they're being hauled off by demons or some other such silliness. I suppose that could work, technically, but I'd be much happier with some other line art like the art I've been using, such as the nice artwork that I've used at the beginning of this blog post. Anybody know any kind-hearted fantasy artists?

The Best Retroclones

Since my other post was extremely (excessively) negative and it didn't let me stretch my writing wings hardly at all, here's another post to tide you over, one with a little more positivity. Yes, it's time to write about the Best Retroclone.

It's a distinction with highly subjective statements that may or may not apply to you, my gentle, well-mannered, and undoubtedly attractive reader. You may howl in rage at my gross miscalculations, and scream in impotent rage at my idiocy. Bear with me, as my opinions are not without reasons.

4th Best Retroclone: Basic Fantasy

Basic Fantasy: Old-School, redesigned

I'm not a big fan of Basic Fantasy. It's an old-school game bolted onto the chassis of 3rd edition gaming, and it shows. It's better than 3rd edition, but it diverges in order to make efforts to "improve" the game and make it more "modern" while still having the spirit of old-school. The spirit is admirable, and it's a good effort, make no mistake. But there's something about it that just isn't for me. I wish I could articulate it. Maybe a greater mind than myself will be able to do so?

I suppose it might be the way that it takes the trappings of all editions and bundles them together which throws me off a bit. I may be in the minority, but there are distinct flavors of gaming between AD&D, oD&D, BECMI, and the like, and each flavor is delicious in its own right. But some things aren't meant to be mixed together?


3rd Best Retroclone: OSRIC

OSRIC, the AD&D retroclone

OSRIC almost got chosen as my favorite Retroclone. This is from a man who has played almost no AD&D, who is notorious for ignoring vast swaths of rules he doesn't like. But it was the first retroclone I discovered.

I can't remember how or why I discovered it, but I do remember why I liked it so much: It has half orcs, and assassins, and rangers. Half-Orcs are awesome; they have a mixture of sadness and raw power, a sort of sullen majesty. They're men of mixed descent, looked down on in most "civilized" society for faults which are not their own. They didn't ask to be born of the mixture of man and orc any more than other men asked to be born of two men, or of two dwarves. But still they are sneered at, mocked, and unwelcome. This sort of pathos appeals to me, and ensures that half-orcs get a spot at my gaming table where few other demihuman races do.

But as a game, OSRIC suffers from the same faults that AD&D does as a whole. It's a little clunkier, a little more obtuse. It has non-weapon proficiencies, secondary skills, sub-classes, and the like. Much like AD&D proper, it simply feels like it's been cobbled together from bits and peices.

Still, it's a good game. A very solid choice for anyone, though my heart lies elsewhere.

2nd Best Retroclone: Swords and Wizardry

Swords and Wizardry: A 0e D&D retroclone.

Swords and Wizardry is a fantastic game, and always draws me nearer and nearer to its clutch every time I read about it. It's simple, eloquent, and easy to modify, which is the whole point of old-school games.

You'll notice that the image is of the S&W Whitebox, rather than the S&W proper. That's because of the two, I prefer the Whitebox for its open-canvas feel. Both of the editions are spectacular, and are covered in evocative art, excellent writing, and clear statements. It has "optional rules" that have become standard features in other games, such as Strength increasing your damage scores, or Dexterity improving your Armor Class. It also features a single Saving Throw, which is nice and easy to remember, and still allows for plenty of customization (by, for example, allowing Dwarves a bonus against saving throws for poison). Swords and Wizardry is a beautiful, beautiful game, and the Knockspell magazine published by the same company is a great companion.

Best Retroclone: Labyrinth Lord

This writer's favorite retroclone.

If you didn't know I was going to say this, welcome to Lawful Indifferent. This is a blog about retroclones, old-school games, and wargaming.

Bad humor aside, this is my favorite retroclone. Not only does it emulate one of the most popular editions of old-school D&D, it does it well. Beautifully, I might add. It retains the race-as-class feature, multiple saving throws, and easy to digest and understand formatting. The layout is heavenly and the interior art is awesome.

I prefer the purple and black cover of the older edition, but I also supported getting the full-with-art interiors for free, so what do I know? Despite the new free to get edition not having any interior art, this version is still my favorite. It just plain plays well!

In addition, it has the extremely useful and very well received Advanced Edition Characters, or AEC that adds the Ranger, Druid, Assassin, and other classes into the game. It's like taking the best of AD&D and sticking it directly into basic D&D. Not to mention the Original Edition Characters, another "expansion" of the core rules that emulates the "Little Brown Books" of oD&D. I don't have much experience with them myself, but they seem to have gotten fairly high marks from those that have used it.

There's just something about Labyrinth Lord that really gets my creative juices flowing, and the spark in my belly fired. It makes me want to create endless campaigns and design stuff until my fingers wear grooves into my keyboard. You really need to try it if you haven't already.