D2 Shrine of the Kuo-Toa

The D series adventure continues, and this module uses the exact same format as the last: two minor encounters followed by one major keyed location at the end, with the rest of the action determined by how lost the party wants to get in the maze of surrounding tunnels.

• This module is notable to me for including what I consider to be the very first NPC in any module.  Now technical there were some in previous modules, but usually they were prisoners meant to be freed by the party, like the siren in Tomb of Horrors or the storm giantess in Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl.  To me, a true NPC is a character who has 1) a name, 2) a personality, and 3) an encounter with the party whose outcome depends on how the party roleplays.  Enter Thoopshib, a slightly insane rogue Kuo-Toa who operates a ferry across an underground river that the party must negotiate with.  History should have remembered you better, Thoopshib.
• This module is a little light on content.  After dealing with Thoopshib to get across the river and encountering some deep gnomes who might accompany the party, we jump straight to the titular shrine itself.  The shrine is a bit of a strange place, as the Kuo-Toa are not automatically hostile to the party.  If they wish, the party can sight-see the shrine and just pass through, making it a very short adventure.  The party really has to go looking for trouble in the shrine.  Now that's a nice change of pace from the norm, which usually involves busting down the door of some place where the party expects pretty much everything to be hostile, but it's a little strange for the climax of the module.
• The Kuo-Toa deity Blibdoolpoolp is introduced here, and the party can meet her if they desire, which again just seems strange.  Using her altar that is the focus of the shrine teleports the user to the elemental plane of water in her presence.  Making a sufficient offering to her grants the user a small favor, plus the ability to speak Kuo-Toan, so yeah.
• One thing I haven't commented on before is Gary's writing style.  He is obviously very well read and has an extensive vocabulary which he does not hesitate to use.  Quite often he'll use words far out of the norm. For example, one of the locations in the shrine is referred to as a seraglio.  That's just another word for harem, but darn if I knew that without looking it up.  I can never tell if he does it on purpose to show off or not.

That's all for this module.  We finish up the D series next time with Vault of the Drow.

D1 Descent into the Depths of the Earth

We now begin the D series of modules, sequels to the G series.  Having discovered that the Drow were behind the giants' attacks on civilization in Hall of the Fire Giant King, the party is now following the passage from Snurre's hall that leads into, well, the depths of the earth in order to discover more about the long-forgotten Drow menace.

• An amusing tidbit on the cover reveals that TSR clearly didn't have publication down to a rigorous science just yet.  I have a copy of the first printing of D1, and on the cover it talks about using this module in conjunction with the rest of the D series, the G series, and module Q1, which it calls "soon to be released".  Q1 was, in fact, not released for two more years.  Keep in mind that at this point in the timeline we're still also waiting for the Dungeon Master's Guide, which will not be released for another year.  Of course this is all just a symptom of Gary trying to write everything himself.
• This module takes a slightly different tack than the G series in its presentation.  All three G modules were simply keyed locations the party systematically cleared.  Here, though, the DM is presented with a hex map covering several dozen miles in both directions with vague drawings of underground connections between locations.  Only three encounter areas are detailed, the final of which is a large keyed area much in the vein of the G series, but the rest of the action is left to exploration by the party and the random encounters it would naturally generate.  It feels like Gary was trying to experiment with a different module type, which is nice, as the keyed location concept was already wearing thin after just three modules.  I will say though, the presentation is incredibly confusing.  Maybe I'm missing something, but I have no idea where the final detailed encounter is supposed to be located on the area hex map.
• Mind flayers make their first module appearance and are given the name "illithid" for the first time, this apparently being their Drow name.  Jermlaine are also introduced in this module for the first time.
• An oddity I noticed is that in the various encounters players can recover items from the Drow inscribed with their house names, but Gary doesn't bother to explain (even to the DM) that that's what they are or their significance.  I don't know if this is an oversight on his part, or just an attempt to maintain an air of mystery for the other two modules.
• This module pulls no punches in difficulty.  In exploring the final encounter location the party can run into both a purple worm and a 20th level lich, because why not?  The use of the lich is to me another indication of the primitive state of the game.  Personally I feel that liches are so powerful and the possibilities for them so great that they shouldn't just be thrown around like other monsters.  If you need a simple, high level encounter for a high level party, sure, give them a purple worm - it's basically just a very large and dangerous animal.  But a lich should be a unique creature with a unique story and a unique place in the game world.  Just having them be another entry in a keyed location that the party stumbles into and has to deal with demeans what they can be.  Tomb of Horrors was much better in this regard.  True, we didn't learn a ton about Acererak, but the fact that he had surrounded himself with a lair of devious and deadly traps was much more in the spirit of how liches should be handled - unlike here, where a lich is also a possibility for a random encounter if the players get off into the side passages.  A lich should never be a random encounter, period.

That's about all there is to say for this module.  It feels a bit purposeless, as by the end of the module the players haven't really accomplished anything besides exploring the underworld and dealing with a few encounters.  Granted, it is meant to set up the remaining two D modules, which is were we will pick up next time.

The Dragon #18, September 1978

The Dragon marches on with another issue:

• The issue starts with a detailed article on the Traveller roleplaying game.  I know nothing about the game at all, but still found it a fascinating read due to superb writing by the author (a real rarity in these early issues of the magazine).  The point of his article can be summed up by saying that the success of a character is far more related to how they are played than by the random stats they are generated with.  I've mentioned this topic before, and it's something we no longer even think about really given that randomly generated character stats have largely gone the way of the dinosaur in modern RPGs (tabletop or video game).  In days of yore, some players (*cough*munchkins*cough*) would whine when they rolled up a character who they felt didn't have good enough stats, and that became their excuse when the character failed.  Nowadays when you roll up a human paladin in World of Warcraft you know he is exactly the same as every other human paladin that ever has or ever will be rolled up, which eliminates that particular excuse.  Sadly though, now our excuses have shifted to whining about balance problems between races or classes.
• There's quite a few game reviews in this issue, from the Traveller game already mentioned (and yes, they do intentionally spell it with two 'l's), to some board and miniature games, to my favorite board game of all time (which I've talked about previously), Cosmic Encounter.  Alas for the lack of time to be able to experience all these different games...
• We get a couple of articles on magic for D&D.  One is a list of new spells researched by players in the author's campaign.  They're a little on the powerful side, and I don't believe any of them ultimately caught on.  The other in an article discussing the theory of magic - elements like the Law of Similarity and the Law of Contagion, etc.  It's interesting, but really only useful if you're going to be creating your own magic system to replace the existing one.
• There are a few short articles that demonstrate how not to write an article.  First is an article on weapons for monks based on traditional Japanese weapons, but the author bizarrely forgets to include actual stats for any of the weapons.  Second is an article on poison that I don't even understand.  Finally there is an article on NPC stats for shop owners that shows that most people just don't know how to design rules that are simple and mesh well with the existing system.  Good writing is definitely at a premium at this point, mainly because the magazine is still relying heavily on fan submissions.  It will be a while before it transitions to professional staff writers.

Some articles for other games (Boot Hill, Metamorphosis Alpha, Gamma World) round things out, including this month's Sorcerer's Scroll.  We get back to products now with the D series of modules.

The Dragon #17, August 1978

What awaits us in this month's The Dragon?

• We start with an article on vampires, where the author gives advice both to the DM for playing vampires and to players for combating them.  It's short, but has a bit of worthwhile material.
• Another author updates the jousting system from Chainmail to account for fighter level in D&D.
• There's a lengthy and fun recounting of a D&D session from the Winter Fantasy I convention DM'ed by Gary Gygax where the players ended up being teleported to the Metamorphosis Alpha setting.  What follows is rather funny tale of magic users and clerics trying to come to terms with androids, ray guns, and mutants.
• Jim Ward has an interesting article introducing a proto-concept for specialist magic users.  It doesn't rely on the schools of magic like later specialism would, but rather groups spells by type, like attack, defense, detection, movement, etc.  It's not super compelling, and I doubt it was the seed for the specialist concept as it appeared in 2nd edition, but it's interesting from the standpoint of seeing people have ideas even in the infancy of the game that would later become staples of the system.
• There's a short and odd article on illusory sights and sounds for a DM to use in the dungeon.
• There's a section for new creatures, but two of them are jokes and the third is just pointless.  Tim Kask must have been really hard up for material for this issue.
• An article encourages the use of hyperdimensional geometry in dungeons to confuse mapmakers.  I've seen some material go overboard in its efforts to trip up mapmakers for sure, but still I feel this is a bit of a lost art nowadays.
• Jim Ward continues to be a prolific writer for the magazine with a second article, this time on ideas for dungeon level design based on historical periods.
• Another variant article introduces angels to the game.  Seeing as they're a natural complement to demons and devils I'm surprised it took this long for them to appear.

A few other non-D&D articles not worth mentioning round out the issue.  Next up we've got one more issue before diving in to the D series of modules.  I'll see you there.

G3 Hall of the Fire Giant King

Shocker of shockers, I was pretty much on target with my guess in the last post that the third module would indeed follow the same format as the previous two.  There are some minor differences of course.  There are now three levels to explore instead of two, and the players come face to face with the Drow for the first time, putting a name and a face to the unseen menace behind the giant attacks that has only been hinted at in the first two modules.  The stakes are higher, too, and just from reading you can tell the difficulty has definitely been upped.  But what really struck me when reading this module was just how dense it was, both in monsters and treasure.  King Snurre's hall is literally bursting with creatures - far more than you would think could live in such a space, considering that most all of them a giant-sized.  I'm not sure the scale was well thought out here.  In addition, the amount of treasure in this module approaches ludicrous levels.  I swear it would take a team of porters a week to haul every last gem and gold piece out of this place.  I'm wondering how this plays in to the gold pieces = XP gained rule of 1st edition as well.  I don't remember exactly how it was worded in the Player's Handbook, but do players just have to discover treasure to get the XP for it, or do they actually have to take possession of it (i.e, haul it out of the dungeon)?  I'm pretty sure it's the latter, in which case I can only imagine how many 1st edition sessions were derailed by meta-game considerations of needing to pause the action while the party carted out the loot they had found because they didn't want to lose out on the XP.  I'm rather glad the game had done away with this concept by the time I started playing.

The module ends with the players discovering a tunnel leading away from King Snurre's hall into the unknown depths of the earth.  We have a couple of months' worth of The Dragon to get through, then we can pick this plot back up with the D series of modules.

G2 Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl

This is the sequel to Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, and begins immediately if the characters chose to use the magic chain at the end of that adventure to teleport to this one.  There's honestly not much to say about this one.  It follows an identical format to the previous one, with the players exploring both above ground and below ground keyed locations.  Instead of hill giants the primary opponents are now frost giants, and instead of a wooden fortification in a forest, now they're exploring a series of caves in a glacial rift.  The enemies are all typical cold-natured monsters like winter wolves, a remorhaz, etc.  And once again at the end they find a teleporter that takes them to the location of the next module, Hall of the Fire Giant King.  I'm going to go way out on a limb here with a prediction that that module will be the same thing as well, only now with a theme of fire!  Join me next time where we'll see if my wild guess turns out to be correct.

G1 Steading of the Hill Giant Chief

Here we are, one of the most played and most loved modules of all time.  I've always heard about the Against the Giants modules, but never knew anything about them, so I'm excited to delve in and see what these first AD&D modules were like.  Let's do it then:

• The very first thing I note is that the hill giant chief in the background is named Nosnra, "a grossly fat and thoroughly despicable creature, sly and vicious, loving ambush and backstabbing."  The odd name and terrible description piqued my interest, and I immediately noticed that Nosnra backwards is fairly close to Arneson - as in Dave Arneson.  A little googling confirms my suspicions that this was a little character assassination on Gary's part.  I have to say my opinion of him has rather plummeted as a result of this project.
• Again, I'm surprised to find that this is a fairly high level module.  Given that AD&D was brand new, you would think they would want to start with some 1st level modules, like they ended up doing with the B series for Basic D&D (maybe by then they had learned their lesson).
• There's not much to say beyond that.  There's no story here beyond "giants have been attacking lately and causing problems, so go stop them."  The format is a simple dungeon crawl through keyed rooms.  There aren't a ton of traps, so it's a pretty straightforward fumigate-and-loot kind of place.  It's also surprisingly short.  Not that I was expecting much more, since the game is still in its infancy.  I do like the teases for the next module though - a paper with instructions signed by the mysterious "Eclavdra", and the magic chain which teleports the party to the location of the next module.

All three giant modules were released together, so stick with me as we go straight into the sequel, Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl.

The Dragon #16, July 1978

We've had two iconic products for the last two posts, but we're back to The Dragon again for now.  Let's get to it:

• This issue doesn't start off promising.  You may recall a while back how much I complained about a Gods, Demi-gods, and Heroes supplement for the Cthulhu mythos that appeared.  Someone then wrote a letter in a later article kvetching about some of the choices the authors made (rather than the stupidity of the whole thing in the first place).  Well now we have more of our time wasted by a response article to that article!  People apparently take their Cthulhu very seriously.  This is immediately followed by yet one more G, D-G, and H supplement for the Sumerion/Babylonian/Canaanite mythologies.
• We next have a variant introducing the ninja to the game.  This is not meant to be a new player class, as the author admits that it is far too overpowered.  Just imagine a fighter who also has the abilities of a thief, assassin, and monk and you have a good picture.  It's actually presented as an aid for DMs to use as a "hit man" on player characters.  Seriously.
• Jim Ward has another good "The Adventures of Monty Haul", lampooning ridiculous high level play.
• Gary Gygax takes this month's Sorcerer's Scroll with an article whose tone is rather pedantic and condescending.  The article is a supposed rebuttal of players who want more realism in the game, but it's just Gary defending his baby again.  How dare anyone suggest they can come up with better rules than him!  His points basically boil down to 1) it's a game, which is by definition an abstraction of reality, not reality itself, so concerns with realism are pointless, and 2) it's fantasy, so realism goes out the window the moment you accept that magic exists in the game world.  However, these points are both straw men when it comes to the realism debate.  He does have some good points - for instance, you can't change just one part of the game without examining how that part fits with and impacts the whole - but misapplies them when it comes to actual D&D rules.  For instance, some players wonder why magic-users can't use swords or fighters can't use wands.  From a realism standpoint, what's to say a magic user couldn't devote time to learning how to sword fight, or a fighter learn to use simple wands?  The answer in the context of D&D rules is obvious and he explains - because it would destroy the distinctiveness of character classes.  If every class can do everything, there's no point in having classes.  Certainly some rule variants do get out of hand in trying to make a god class (see the ninja variant previously in this issue), which spoils the game for all involved (and believe me, I've played a campaign with an out-of-control god character - a story I'll relate someday).  But the fact that letting any character learn any skill creates problems does not prove that a "realistic" approach is inherently flawed, but rather proves that there is a greater problem with the game mechanics themselves - namely, that character classes are a flawed concept.  This is why I am a much bigger fan of rule systems that let players learn whatever skills they want, even if they come from different "professions".  Those systems avoid the god class problem though because they add another dose of realism - a person can only learn so much, and you can either have a broad but shallow knowledge of many things, or a narrow and deep knowledge of a few.  Thus a character can indeed learn both swords and spells, but they'll never be either a master swordsman or an archmage.  He also brings up the example of demihuman races - they have a lot of nice racial abilities that are compensated for by having level limits.  If those limits were removed, no one would ever play a human anymore.  But again, this is just hiding a deeper problem, which is the unnecessary imbalance between humans and demihumans.  Simply balance racial abilities and then artificial and illogical level limits can be done away with.  It gets funnier in hindsight when he goes on to bash two sets of rules that later on became official optional rules - double-damage critical hits and weapon expertise (and critical hits were in fact a primary rule in 4th edition).  He complains that those that want critical hits don't logically consider that monsters should get them too for balance purposes, and claims this would somehow make the game too deadly (now I do have an issue with critical hit tables that allow for instant-kills, as I have lost a character to these before), and that nobody considers that if you allow critical hits, you also have to allow critical failures.  He then takes on weapon expertise, claiming that if fighters can get expertise, monsters should too.  I do agree that optional weapon expertise rules do simply add to a fighter's power without giving anything in return, but I'm just amused at the level of hissy fit he throws over it.  Finally he takes on spell point systems for magic users, which again is hilarious in hindsight considering that mana-based magic systems are so fundamental to fantasy gaming now that we don't even think about it.  He makes clear at the end of the article that all of this is a result of some attacks that had been made on him in some amateur publications.  I don't have those materials, so I can't gauge how appropriate his response is, but I have to admit I'm rather disappointed that every time Gary writes for The Dragon on matters like these it always seems he does so in a whiny and petulant tone.
• Next - obviously carefully chosen by the editor to back up Gary - is an article/variant complaining about players who want their magic user to be able to use a mace or their cleric to use a sword.  It attempts to give an in-world justification to these rules, then provides rules that do allow characters to wield these weapons, but at a hefty price.  Coming down hard on players who want to play a certain kind of character is a classic case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  Sure, some players are just trying to selfishly make a god character so they can rule the game, but other players just want to create the character they see in their imagination - they want to be Gandalf, wielding both spells and the sword Glamdring at the same time.  It's again a symptom of the disease of character classes, and I'm sad that modern gaming still clings to the concept so hard (although some games like Skyrim thankfully buck the trend).
• As if in counterpoint to all the D&D defense going on in this issue, there's an ad for the new RuneQuest RPG.  I'm not sure if it has appeared in previous issues already, but it caught my eye in this one for the text, which claims it is based on a "REALISTIC SET OF FANTASY RULES [emphasis theirs], based on experience and reality rather than an arbitrarily developed abstract mathematical system."  Take that, Gary!  D&D is not named, of course, but it's clear that's where that particular barb is aimed.  It goes on to proclaim "No Artificial Character Classes!!"  I know nothing about RuneQuest at all, but when they promote stuff like this as their differentiator from D&D it definitely makes me want to take a look.
• We get the second part of the Harold Shea story.  It's just meh.
• Finally, Jim Ward has a brief article extolling the virtues of high-powered play, where dungeons are full of great treasure guarded by tremendous challenges.

So much for another issue.  Sorry to get on my soapbox there for a bit, but hey, if Gary can do it, I can do it to.  Join me next time as we start perhaps the most famous D&D adventures of all time, the Against the Giants series!

S1 Tomb of Horrors

At last we come to the very first D&D adventure / module, Tomb of Horrors - at least I think it's the very first module.  Some sources I've read claim the giant series (G1, G2, and G3) came first, but my research shows that this module was first published in June of 1978 while the G series was not published until July.  In any case this module had first been created for an Origins convention a few years earlier, so I'll give it the edge for that if nothing else.  And for those who haven't read my very first post, I'm only counting items published by TSR themselves, so I'm not counting Palace of the Vampire Queen, which was in fact the very first published module for D&D, but published by another company.

In any case, this is one of the most famous and infamous modules of all time.  Designed by Gary Gygax to test the mettle of some of the best players/characters in his group, such as Rob Kuntz's Robilar and his son Ernie's Tenser, it is without a doubt a character killer.  Death awaits characters in so many forms it's simultaneously evil, unfair, and hilarious.  It's best summed up by a note in the module on one of the traps: "Cruel, but most entertaining for the DM".  Let's walk through it together:

• My first thought as I examine the module is surprise that TSR's very first module would be a high level module.  It seemed to me (perhaps unfairly so - we'll see in the future) that in 2nd edition TSR developed an allergy to high level adventures, and it was rare that they printed one for characters above, say, 12th level.  But you'd better bring out the big guns if you want to survive this tomb.  The module includes a list of pre-generated characters for players to use, and all of them are high level, have crazy good stats (like 17, 14, 15, 18, 16, 17), and come with some very nice magical items.
• There is shockingly little combat in the module.  As Gary says at the beginning, "THIS IS A THINKING PERSON'S MODULE" (emphasis his).  It's far more about tricks and traps than tough combat encounters, which I appreciate, although I can only imagine how many fighters were frustrated as they sat around with nothing to do while the mages and clerics cast divination spells.
• This module highlights one of the biggest problems of D&D and the modules written for it - spellcasters have too much agency and so the modules have to cheat in order to keep things interesting.  For instance, spellcasters can travel astrally or ethereally, and this normally would be a great boon to figuring out a labyrinth like this.  But since that would make things too easy, Gary throws in a little note that any characters doing so have a chance each round to attract the attention of a demon.  It's artificial and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.  To this day I still don't really understand the thought process behind spell progression in D&D.  It gives away far too powerful effects at far too low a level, which then creates problems like this.
• A related problem is how this module rewrites rules on the fly, another practice I find incredibly distasteful.  As a player I expect the rules to work just as it says they work in the Player's Handbook.  If my character has a racial power for discovering secret doors, then I expect it to work as written.  Similarly, if a spell says that it detects X, then I expect that it will always detect X every time, unless another rule that I have access to says that in some circumstances it does not.  But this module just makes up its own rules on the fly, changing things up on the player without informing them.  There's a secret door that racial secret detection powers just don't work on.  There's another door that can't be discovered by any kind of magic, because the module just says by fiat that it can't.  There are other encounters where it states that only certain spells can be used to deal with the situation, even though as a player there may be several other spells that would seem to be useful.  To me this is a symptom of the all-or-nothing nature of D&D spells.  Take for instance the Detect Magic spell - it detects all magic all the time without fail, so whenever a situation arises where the DM needs to hide the magical nature of something, they have a problem.  Instead, Detect Magic should be a spell with merely a chance to detect magic - that chance depending on the power of the wizard casting it and the power of the wizard who cast the magic to be detected.  Thus when faced with the magic of a powerful opponent (such as a demi-lich), a character might in fact fail to detect the magic, and there is a plausible explanation as to why, instead of the module simply declaring "Detect Magic doesn't work on this" with no other motivation than the module needs to make things harder for the players.

This module seems to me to be a test of endurance more than anything else - a gauntlet of hideously lethal traps the players must wade through until they get to the final, ultra-hard confrontation with Acererak himself.  It's a far cry from the kinds of adventures we expect today, and is the "Nintendo hard" equivalent for roleplaying games.  It's a tremendous piece of roleplaying history that I'm glad to have finally experienced.

AD&D Player's Handbook (1st edition)

Well here we are at last - the Player's Handbook.  I've been waiting for this for quite some time.  Herein are so many elements that were but legends to me growing up - monks, assassins, named character levels, and so on.  I'm also eager to see the bridge between the original D&D rules and the 2nd edition rules I knew and loved.  I've remarked before how shocked I was that most all the rules I was familiar with were there from the very beginning in the original rules, if perhaps in a primitive and embryonic form, and I'm fascinated to see what progress was made in this midpoint between them.

Enough talk, let's dive in:

• D&D has often been referred to as "the granddaddy of roleplaying games", but I was amused to see Mike Carr use this very phrase in the introduction - in 1978.
• In reading the preface by Gary Gygax I was struck by a couple of the names in the acknowledgements.  It's of course a list of well-known names from D&D history, like Brian Blume, Rob Kuntz, Jim Ward, and so forth.  One person listed though is Dennis Sustare.  I chuckled because my first thought was, "So that's where the Chariot of Sustare spell came from!"  But I really paused when I saw another name - Skip Williams.  Like, Skip Williams who co-created the 3rd edition rules?  Yep, one and the same.  I had no idea he had such a history with the game.  Can you imagine being an integral part of the game's history over a span of 25 years?
• While most of the details were not new to this book, I was reminded again when reading the section on character attributes how the rules very much had a "the rich get richer" design to them - i.e., characters with exceptional attributes became exponentially better than characters with average attributes.  You got a 10% bonus to experience for having a prime requisite of 16 or better, fighters who rolled an 18 strength got to roll for exceptional strength, priests with high wisdom could cast a lot more spells, etc.  It's such a foreign concept to modern game sensibilities.
• Again this rule is not new, but I can't help but laugh at the conversion between gold pieces and weight.  There are 10 gold pieces per pound.  That means that a gold piece in this fantasy world weighs 1.6 ounces.  That is one heck of a heavy coin.  To put things in perspective, a quarter weighs just about 0.2 ounces.  Not only is that really heavy for a coin, it represents a ludicrous amount of value.  As I write this, one gold piece would be worth close to $2,000, and when you consider that the average character is going to eventually collect hundreds or thousands of gold pieces...
• I've never been a fan of the Bend Bars/Lift Gates mechanic for the strength score.  It leads to ridiculous scenarios like this.
• Speaking of things I don't like, I really have never been a fan of the duality of the class rules between humans and demi-humans.  By that I mean the fact that humans can dual class, have unlimited level advancement, and have access to the "special" classes like paladin, whereas demi-humans have special racial abilities, can multi-class, and have level limits.  It's all so artificial, unrealistic, and poorly motivated to me.  Of course I'm far from the first person to complain about this aspect of D&D rules.
• I was unaware that certain race and class combinations were limited to NPCs only!  For instance, there apparently can be halfling druids, but only as NPCs.
• Being a child of 2nd edition, half-orcs were also an unknown phenomenon to me.  I've never really heard why they were dropped for 2E.  I'll be interested to see if it comes up in Dragon issues around that time.  Indeed, I'll be interested to see to what extent at all 2nd edition changes were discussed in Dragon.  Nowadays gamers just naturally expect to be part of the feedback loop of game design.  When a game has a new version or expansion in the works, we expect to hear details on what's changing, hear justifications as to why those changes are happening, and voice our opinion on those changes.  I'm not sure to what extent these kinds of sensibilities existed in the 80s when 2nd edition came out.  After all, Gary Gygax didn't discuss these 1st edition changes in the pages of The Dragon before it came out.
• Rangers getting magic-user spells at higher levels is also an unknown thing to me, and one I had not heard of before.  And by the way, I'm really getting tired of the term "magic-user" that has been around since the original boxed set.  Was "wizard" really undesirable for some reason?
• Wow, just wow.  So in reading the section on multi-classing, it seems that 1st edition took the opposite tack from 2nd - class restrictions are eliminated instead of combined!  That is, a fighter/cleric can use edged weapons, while a fighter/mage can use armor.  I had never heard of this before, and I can only imagine how much fanboy rage the 2nd edition rules must have generated over this issue when they first came out.
• I appreciate the discussion of hit points and the explanation that a character with 60 hit points cannot literally take ten times as many wounds as a character with 6.  It more represents the ability of higher level characters to mitigate incoming damage that would outright kill a less experienced character.  It still leaves a bit to be desired from a realism standpoint, but the rationalization helps with suspension of disbelief.  2nd edition never bothered to explain this, and indeed hit points have become so ingrained and fundamental a concept to gaming that we no longer even think about or question them, even when modern games stretch the concept to the absurd, where a high level character might literally have thousands of times as many hit points as a low level character.
• I also greatly appreciate the discussion in the money section explaining that the campaign setting is one of hyper-inflation, much like a gold rush era, where gold is super abundant and thus prices are extremely inflated.  It makes the abundance of gold and the ludicrous prices of goods more palatable, whereas again 2nd edition and modern gaming just take this for granted.  Virtually every fantasy game deals in gold pieces, and the ludicrous amounts you collect would make you rich beyond the dreams of avarice in the real world.  It is a testament to the influence of D&D that concepts like hit points and gold pieces are just taken for granted as they are in modern fantasy games, even though they make no sense at first glance without some explanation of the underlying assumptions given here.
• Tenser's Floating Disc first appeared in the Holmes Basic Set, but I appreciate the comment thrown into the spell description here: "[Tenser]...whose ability to locate treasure and his greed to recover every copper found are well known."  Keep in mind that Tenser is an anagram of Ernest, and so Tenser was the character of Gary's son Ernie, who was one of the original playtesters for the game.
• Flame Arrow was introduced in this product, but it is vastly different from the 2nd edition spell that I knew.  Here it is more of an arrow enchantment spell rather than the direct damage spell it was later.  An interesting and rather radical change, considering that the vast majority of spells changed very little over the editions.
• So Spiritwrack...a spell that didn't survive into 2nd edition and thus is new to me, and I think I can see why.  I've always though the purging of demons and devils from 2nd edition was an overreaction to the satanic panic of the 80s, but I can see how content like this might have crossed the line for a few people.
• Mom: "Bobby, is it true that there are demons in this game?"
• Bobby: "Yeah Mom, but they're bad guys that you fight."
• Mom: "Well that's not so bad.  What's this Spiritwrack spell that you cast though?"
• Bobby: "Oh that's just a spell that lets me torture a demon until he submits to my will."
• While Tenser's Floating Disc first appeared in the Holmes Basic Set and introduced Tenser, this product is the one that introduced all of the other Greyhawk personalities we're familiar with in spell names: Bigby, Drawmij, Mordenkainen, Nystul, Otiluke, Otto, and Rary.  These were originally PCs or NPCs of Gary or his friends in their home games (although I'm a little unclear if that's the case for Nystul and Otiluke), and Gary borrowed the names for new spells in this product.  It was only after Gary left that TSR rounded up these names and created the Circle of Eight, so all of the Greyhawk material concerning them has little or nothing to do with the original characters themselves - especially considering Rary was only ever a 3rd level wizard and could never have even cast Rary's Mnemonic Enhancer, let lone be an arch-mage.  He was a character of Brian Blume's, and the joke was that he just wanted to get him to 3rd level so that his title would be "Medium Rary".
• Bards reappear in this book, after having not really been mentioned much since their first appearance in the second-to-last Strategic Review.  They've changed quite a bit since that article, and are a good bit different from the 2nd edition bard I am familiar with.  It seems bards originally learned druidic spells instead of mage spells.  It makes sense, since the original bards were a product of Celtic culture (although long after the age of the druids had ended, however).  Oh, and the whole class is entirely optional at the DM's discretion, since apparently there was some concern about them having too much agency, having the abilities of fighters, thieves, and druids.
• This product is the first to formally give us the full range of nine alignments, introducing neutral good, lawful neutral, chaotic neutral, and neutral evil.  Appendix III consists of nothing but a visual chart showing the various alignments, although I'm not sure why Gygax thought the visual was necessary.  This is immediately followed by a discussion of the known planes, which contains this gem of a sentence: "The parallel universes are not shown, and their existence might or might not be actual."  We get the usual suspects: the prime material, the positive and negative material, the four elemental planes, the ethereal and astral, and finally the outer planes, arranged as follows:
• Seven Heavens (LG)
• Twin Paradises (LNG)
• Elysium (NG)
• Happy Hunting Grounds (CNG)
• Olympus (CG)
• Gladsheim (NCG)
• Limbo (CN)
• Pandemonium (NCE)
• The Abyss (CE)
• Tarterus (CNE)
• Hades (NE)
• Gehenna (LNE)
• The Nine Hells (LE)
• Acheron (NLE)
• Nirvana (LN)
• Arcadia (NLG)
• Note that this ordering is slightly different from the planes Gary first presented in The Dragon #8, and is the ordering they would maintain for the rest of history.  We still don't have a TN plane of Concordant Opposition / Outlands.  Also, the diagram illustrating the outer planes shows each plane having the number of layers below.  I'm recording this for comparison later, to see how much continuity there is in this bit of design:
• Seven Heavens (7)
• Twin Paradises (2)
• Elysium (4)
• Happy Hunting Grounds (3)
• Olympus (3)
• Gladsheim (3)
• Limbo (5)
• Pandemonium (4)
• The Abyss (666)
• Tarterus (6)
• Hades (3)
• Gehenna (4)
• Nine Hells (9)
• Acheron (4)
• Nirvana (1)
• Arcadia (3)

Well that's all.  It took quite a while to get through this book, given how large it is (and given that I'm recording a spell history for D&D, something I don't know that I've mentioned before and which takes a lot of time when reading through the spell lists).  But it was all worth it to read history in context and demystify so many of the game elements I had only heard stories about.  Join me next time as we dive into the very first AD&D module, Tomb of Horrors.

The Dragon #15, June 1978

• There's an article on dragon magic that's well thought out and details some new spells just for dragons.  The author wisely concludes that dragons wouldn't bother with memorizing offensive spells like Fireball - they would trust to their breath weapon and powerful attacks for offense - so instead they would focus on utility spells.  It doesn't seem that much of this content survived, but it is a good example of a high-quality fan submission (still somewhat a rarity at this point, in my opinion).
• As if to highlight that last point, the article is followed by a brief article containing random tables for pits.  Like pits a character can fall into.  You know, because it's oh-so-freaking-hard to come up with what might be at the bottom of a pit.  I'm really, really starting to get tired of this "everything needs a table" mentality.  It's a PIT.  It can be empty, it might have spikes at the bottom, or it might have a creature - JUST PICK ONE.  YOU DON'T NEED TABLES FOR THIS CRAP UNLESS THE PART OF YOUR BRAIN RESPONSIBLE FOR IMAGINATION HAS BEEN LOBOTOMIZED.
• What follows the article on random tables for pits?  ANOTHER FREAKING ARTICLE OF RANDOM TABLES.  Sorry, I'll calm down now.  This one is actually somewhat useful, as it details random events for towns and cities to spice things up when players visit and perhaps provide hooks for action.  I still say such things should be driven by the DM's story, or at least his whim and imagination, but to each their own.
• Jim Ward is back with another amusing "The Adventures of Monty Haul", this time describing a miniatures battle between German WWII troops and D&D monsters.
• Jim has another article on wandering monsters for dungeons.  It's meh.
• A random fan does a follow-up to Jim Ward's D&D tips article a couple of issues back.  He describes how he plays a character who's just a "normal" guy (i.e., no class as such - poor fighting ability, no magic or thief skills, etc.) who gets by with tricks and gimmicks, some of which are quite clever.  It's a terrific reminder that a character's success has more to do with the cleverness of the player behind him than it does with stats and powers.
• There's a really bizarre fiction piece that I think was supposed to be funny describing the origin of neutrality in the conflict between law and chaos.  Obviously it didn't accomplish it's mission.
• The Sorcerer's Scroll is from Gary again, this time discussing problems arising from the differences in scale of indoors vs outdoors in D&D, and how this affects the area of effect for spells, or something.  Being a child of an era when measuring actual inches on a tabletop for roleplaying games had become an artifact of history, I just honestly couldn't be bothered to understand the point at hand.
• One more article of random tables!  This one is for weather, and again I'm a little more sympathetic to this one.  I still believe that weather should just be set by the DM to match the tone (or perhaps help set the tone) of the current story events, but I understand people who want weather to be a random variable that can help or hinder the characters depending on circumstances.
• There's an excellent article on strategy for the Stellar Conquest game, such that I can tell it's an excellent article even having never played Stellar Conquest or even know exactly how it works.  A little research reveals that it was an early 4X-type game in board game form.  I'm probably a little biased as I do love a good 4X game.
• The rest of the issue is taken up by the first part of a Harold Shea short story.  I've vaguely heard of the Incomplete Enchanter series before, but knew nothing about it.  The vernacular the various characters talk in is a little over the top, but it's entertaining enough otherwise.  I'm not sure the rest of the stories will make my "to read someday" list though.

Next time we examine a monumental point in D&D's history - the very first Player's Handbook.  I'll see you then.

The Dragon #14, May 1978

The Dragon marches on:

• There is an article reviewing the Nomad Gods board game by Chaosium.  It is the sequel to the very first Glorantha game, White Bear and Red Moon.  I have had no exposure to RuneQuest or the world of Glorantha, but every little bit I encounter makes me want to dive into it someday.
• There's also a review of Cosmic Encounter, my favorite board game of all time.  To be fair, I never got to play the original Eon game reviewed here, but rather the more common Mayfair version that came out later.  Still, if you've never played a game of Cosmic Encounter you haven't lived yet.  Several years ago I spent nearly $200 to get a copy of the long out-of-print Mayfair version, along with the More Cosmic Encounter expansion.  One of the greatest board games ever, hands down.
• The Sorcerer's Scroll this month is from Gary Gygax himself, discussing the place of the recently-released Holmes Basic Set and the direction of the game.  He states that the Holmes set is specifically targeted at new players to the game, and that while it is designed to lead them on to AD&D, it can also lead them on to OD&D (the original boxed set) just as well, since the product was in fact a rewrite and simplification of those rules.  "Basic D&D" clearly does not yet exist as a separate concept in the mind of TSR, and would only grow out of the fact that the original boxed set continued to sell well, indicating a separate market for it.  No doubt there is also some hedging of bets here as well, out of concern that AD&D might not be received well.
• Jim Ward starts a new series lampooning the TSR staff called "The Adventures of Monty Haul".  It basically describes a gaming session with greatly exaggerated parodies of the TSR personalities.  Good for a chuckle.
• There's an article on lycanthropy that proposes a system for player characters to carry on as infected were-beasts.  Honestly I've never been much of a fan of D&D's lycanthropy.  I have strong opinions on all aspects of RPGs, but especially those relating to horror genre creatures.  So I don't find this system particularly compelling, even if the author does try to balance the power of lycanthropes with some disadvantages.

Several other non-D&D articles round out this issue.  The Dragon has become a monthly publication with this issue, so we'll visit June's issue, then it will be time for the Player's Handbook.

The Dragon #13, April 1978

Our march of Dragon issues continues:

• There's an article on how to calculate how much a giant weights.  No, really, it provides a formula and everything, assumes giants are proportioned similarly to humans, and even provides a table for calculating the weight of golems and other giant, non-flesh creatures assuming they are still humanoid in proportion.
• After dropping a stinker in last month's Sorcerer's Scroll, Rob Kuntz comes back this month in a bit of editorializing, explaining to people that D&D is not The Lord of the Rings: The Game, for people who complain that elves, dwarves, hobbits, etc. do not match up exactly with how they are described in the books.  In doing this project I have discovered that, while it's true that D&D was influenced by other fantasy works besides LOTR such as Conan the Barbarian, there's no mistaking that LOTR was far and away the biggest contributor, so I have mixed feelings about TSR trying to distance themselves from it.  I'm sure some of this is motivated by the legal trouble TSR got into with Tolkien's estate early on, considering they lifted a little too much for use in the game.
• There's an article on randomly generating demons - again an attempt to thwart players who have memorized all the monster entries.  It feels like it's been a while since we've had one of these "guidelines for randomly generating ___" articles.  I'll be interested to see when or if they peter out in the life of the game.  The tables are decently done, but what really strikes me about this article is the art:

I can't say why exactly, but I find this image particularly compelling.  I feel it has an artistic maturity to it that was extremely rare in these early days of D&D.  It vaguely reminds me of DiTerlizzi's Planescape art.

• We have yet another Supplement IV appendix, this time Japanese mythology.  I think I've made my feelings on these things clear.
• There's another Niall of the Far Travels story by Gardner Fox.  I'm really coming to like these stories and did a little bit of research on them.  It seems Fox was rather known for creating Conan knockoffs, having created a couple of others as well.  He only ever wrote ten short stories for Niall, all but one of which appeared in The Dragon, so I'm looking forward to more of them in the future.  It seems that Niall's world, instead of being a legendary past, is instead some kind of post-apocalyptic future, set at least a hundred thousand years in the future where technology is gone and magic exists again.  The moon has been destroyed and is now a ring of debris around the earth.
• There's a truly interesting article by Jim Ward on D&D playing tips.  Ward modestly titles it "Notes from a Semi-Successful D&D Player", but those who know know he was one of the best of the original players.  Some of his tips:
• Carry a small wand with Continual Light cast on it.  It's easy to make, can't go out like a torch, and can be thrown into dark rooms.  Even better, Continual Light arrows against creatures used to darkness.
• Transfer all those potions you find in breakable glass containers to steel bottles instead.
• Always carry a five foot steel rod - the uses are endless.
• Using Polymorph Other to turn a creature into a goldfish ensures a quick death for it.  On the other hand, you can polymorph a large, dangerous creature into a tiny one like a snail, then capture and keep it.  A proper placement of the snail and a Dispel Magic then gets you a creature to fight a future battle for you.

A few other articles of uninteresting non-D&D material round out this issue, so we'll wrap it up for now.  Two more issues, and then we get to the Player's Handbook!

The Dragon #12, February 1978

We have a few more issues of The Dragon to get through before our next product - the 1st edition Player's Handbook.  After that the pace of products begins picking up a bit more and we won't have to wade through quite so many magazine issues in between.

• An article on illusionists takes back up the class that originally debuted in The Strategic Review.  It gives a few updated rules and a few new spells, but I don't believe the content here really stuck going into the Player's Handbook - probably because it was already mostly complete at this point, being published only four months from now.
• We get a long list of the deities of Zoroastrianism Supplement IV-style.  I've already talked about what a waste that product was, so any information extending it is similarly so.
• Jim Ward has an article talking about how the initiative system introduced in Eldritch Wizardry was a great boon to wizards facing warriors, but that system was so ridiculously over-complicated I can't be bothered to care much.
• There's an article on the history of the druids, explaining the differences between our fantasy conception of them versus what little we know to be historically true.  It's interesting, but only really useful I suppose if you want to create your own historically accurate druid class.
• What could be more useless than a Supplement IV appendix for Zoroastrianism?  How about one for the freaking Lovecraft mythos?  Rob Kuntz wastes the second ever Sorcerer's Scroll on this.  That's right, Great Cthulhu himself gets the stat treatment!  Are you kidding me?  If there were ever one fictional pantheon of gods that should not be given stats of any kind, ever, it's this one.  The very first entry is for Azathoth.  Azathoth.  You can't fight Azathoth.  YOU CAN'T.  Even though the entry describes him as being the size of a star, he still has only 300 hit points (which seems to be the unofficial maximum possible hit points for any god).  Oh, and if you do kill him, the universe ends.  Yeah.
• The final entry of note in this issue is an excerpt from Andre Norton's upcoming novel Quag Keep.  This was the very first D&D-based novel and is set in Greyhawk, but apparently it did survive the test of time well, as I had never heard of it before getting into this project.  Still, I will be reading it as part of this blog when it comes up later in 1978.

That's all for now.  Join me next time for another Dragon issue.

AD&D Monster Manual (1st Edition)

Well here we are finally, the 1st edition Monster Manual and the first ever official AD&D product.  This one was well known for it's cover art, probably considering it was the first ever hardcover book.  Speaking of the artwork, we haven't really discussed the level of D&D art in a while.  It's...getting better, I guess?  It's still nothing to write home about, but it's starting to show some signs of maturity.

The format is instantly recognizable to consumers of later versions and set the standard template of a stat block plus a picture, then a few paragraphs describing the creature in more detail.  The tone here is still very much "here is a collection of numbers to fight".  Most of the text is taken up with the creature's combat abilities, with perhaps a brief visual description and maybe a sentence or two describing the creature's ecology and how it fits into a larger world.

Having said that, let's dive into some of the more interesting entries:

• Demons are back, and instead of just being "type X" demons, they now have the familiar names that would stick through later editions.  In addition we get some new demon princes: Juiblex and Yeenoghu.  Note that while demons are noted as coming from the Abyss, the concept of the demon princes each ruling over a layer of the Abyss does not exist yet.
• Not to be outdone, devils make their first appearance in D&D material.  Several arch-devils appear here too, namely Asmodeus (9th layer), Baalzebul (6th and 7th layer), Dispater (2nd layer), and Geryon (5th layer).
• In the text for the demons and devils we get the first glimpses of D&D theology.  In the entry for manes we have the note, "Those dead which go to the 666 layers of the demonic abyss become manes....Certain manes will be used to form shadows or ghasts (qqv), depending on the greatness of their evil in material life."  Similarly, the entry for lemures states, "The lemures are the form which the dead whom inhabit the Nine Hells are put in...After being in hell for a certain time lemures will be chosen to form wraiths and spectres."  There is also an entry for larva, noting that they are the souls of the selfishly (neutral) evil, and that hags trade them to both demons and devils to be turned into quasits and imps.  The entry for quasits mentions that they can be turned into type I or type II demons for successful service, so we have the beginnings of the concept that demons and devils are gradually promoted to higher and higher forms starting from the souls of the dead, although it is not quite explicitly stated.
• Gary must really have loved him some dinosaurs, because the list of them included here is...thorough.  In addition, there are a number of other prehistoric creatures such as mastodons and saber-tooth tigers.  It must have been an interest of his.
• The section on dragons re-introduces the chromatic and metallic dragons, both of which have already appeared in earlier material.  I've noted this in a previous blog post on the original boxed set, but rules for subduing dragons reappear here, and again, it's rather ludicrously easy.  But what makes it even better are the statements afterwards about what you can do with subdued dragons.  First, take this gem: "Larger towns and cities will usually have a market for dragons."  I'm just not even going to comment on the concept of a city having an active, ongoing trade in subdued dragons.  But the best?  "Subdued dragons can be ridden."  Hell yeah!
• A platinum dragon and chromatic dragon were briefly mentioned in Supplement I, but here they get full entries as the Bahamut and Tiamat we know and love.  Tiamat is listed as ruling the first layer of hell, while Bahamut dwells in a palace behind the east wind.
• I'm both amused and chagrined by creatures introduced just for the sake of making an adventuring party's life harder.  It's a symptom of the early sensibilities of the game where the DM's purpose was basically just to try to kill the player characters.  The Ear Seeker is a perfect example of that.  The intention is that every time a character puts their ear up to a wooden door to listen for noise, they might get infected by ear seekers, which naturally leads to death unless cured.  I tag these kinds of creatures as "adventurers' banes".  There are several more here, some of which we have seen before like the lurker above, and some which are new like the infamous mimic.
• Drow make their very first appearance here.  It's just a very brief blurb under the elf entry, however.  It will not be until module G3 Hall of the Fire Giant King that they really appear in earnest.
• The beholder appears again here of course, but we also get our very first beholder-kin: the Eye of the Deep.
• I discovered that it was this product that introduced X-were creatures, which I've never been fond of.  There is a lengthy section on lycanthropes, or course, all of which are "were-X" (werewolf, wererat, etc.).  But it also has an entry for the jackalwere, and briefly mentions the wolfwere.  Whereas a werewolf is a man who can transform into a wolf, a wolfwere is a wolf that can transform into a man, because why not?  Later products (and especially Ravenloft) would introduce a wider range of X-were creatures, but I've always felt they were rather ridiculous.
• As a final note, I find it amusing that the text blurb on the back cover for the quasit doesn't actually match the text in the creature's entry inside.

That's all for this product.  It's been fun seeing the very first monster book in its original form.  Some of D&D's most iconic elements are the monsters it introduced or at least codified that still heavily influence fantasy RPG concepts even today, and this is exactly why I set out on this project in the first place.  Join me again next time as we go back to the Dragon.

The Dragon #11, December 1977

Well, it's finally time to get back to the business of this blog, and that means getting back to Dragon issues.  Let's take a look at what's in this month's:

• Gary Gygax has a long article defending TSR's copyright policies in not allowing other companies to republish D&D material.  I don't find the topic particularly interesting, but it is notable for having the same prickly tone Gary has taken in his other articles defending D&D so far.  It's interesting to see this side of him that I was not aware of.
• Rob Kuntz provides an article detailing a system for handling grappling and punching in D&D.  Now hand-to-hand combat has always been a particular weakness of D&D rules, but unfortunately like most rules variants that have appeared so far this one is just too complicated to be useful.  Each round of combat requires: 1. a calculation, 2. a comparison, 3. a die roll whose results are looked up on a matrix, and 4. a tracking of a score.  What I'm beginning to believe as an explanation for why rules were so complicated early on is that in this era most roleplayers were also war gamers.  War games are by nature much slower in pace, and calculations and lookups are just a matter of course, so players in this era just thought that's the way things were and expected no different from their RPG rules.
• There's a delightful article discussing strategy for the Ogre game that's both insightful and well-written.  Again, I would love to play this game at some point, but what strikes me most when reading this article is that it really sounds no different than if you were reading a modern FAQ on an RTS or MOBA game.  It could have come straight off gamefaqs.com if it were not a boardgame.
• There's a short article (apparently a fan submission) discussing - gasp - roleplaying!  As you know if you've been reading this blog I've been astounded by the lack of actual roleplaying in early D&D, in the sense of playing a character with a real personality who takes part in a story as opposed to a collection of numbers who fights monsters for loot.  But here at last we have someone advocating for this aspect of the game.  It's a short article and just briefly covers the aspects of personality, character background, and not letting character memories and motivations bleed over from one character to another, but at last we have a sign of the game beginning to mature.
• This issue contains the very first Sorcerer's Scroll column by Rob Kuntz.  It's short and mostly just contains news on the status of D&D products, but would go on to be a key feature of Dragon in years to come.
• This issue contains a Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser short story by Fritz Leiber.  I've heard a lot about F&GM in the lore of fantasy literature but admit I've never read any of the stories myself.  I've always wanted to, but I have to admit that this story left me rather...underwhelmed.  Still, I'll give it a shot someday.
• In the same vein as the hand-to-hand combat rules above, Jim Ward has an article on a specialized quarterstaff fighting system, and all my comments similarly apply.

That's all for this month.  Next month we reach another milestone - the very first AD&D product, the Monster Manual!  Join me as we uncover yet more history of the game.

An Explanation and an Apology

So all zero of my readers have surely noticed that I haven't posted in over six months now.  I apologize for the hiatus.  I have not abandoned this blog, but instead life has been rather unkind to me these last several months.  My mother passed away in January, and that was just the biggest of several challenges we've been through recently.  But I fully intend to return to this blog as life is finally returning to a semblance of normalcy.  I just need a little time to catch back up with where I was and then the posts will resume.