I'm still here! After my last post I had read several Dragon issues and was most of the way through the Player's Handbook when the holidays arrived. Let's just say our holidays thoroughly sucked this year. Basically someone in our family (including myself) was either sick or injured continuously from Thanksgiving all the way through February. That took a chunk out of my free time for sure, and both this blog and my YouTube channel suffered for it. And of course as you know, once you get out of the habit of doing something it can be difficult to get back on the wagon. But here I am again at last, so let us continue.
Dragon #14
I did talk about this in the post for Dragon #14 before, but in re-reading it I was struck by the importance of the Sorcerer's Scroll article, where Gary talks about the future direction of the game. He discusses the meaning and purpose of the Holmes Basic Set, which was aimed at new players to bring them into the hobby, then steer them towards the upcoming AD&D game (the Player's Handbook would go out the following month). However, he also states that it can just as easily lead them to the original D&D boxed set. Speaking of which, he presciently states, "However, the first work [Original D&D] will never be done away with, for it offers a system which still attracts many persons."
There's definitely some interesting behind-the-scenes information regarding the choices here by TSR. It's well known that Gary wanted to create AD&D because he believed in a more structured, codified game, but also because TSR believed they wouldn't have to pay Dave Arneson royalties on a new game like the did OD&D (a claim Arneson would contest in court). But ultimately I guess they decided that selling more units of OD&D was better even if they did have to pay royalties, and that eventually extended to committing fully to the Basic D&D line.
In my collector's spreadsheet I have separate tabs for OD&D and Basic D&D. You might argue that this is unnecessary, since Basic D&D was really just OD&D continued, but the contents of this article reinforce my justification that the Holmes product was a watershed moment in the history of the game, one which definitively split the product line in two from its OD&D beginnings.
AD&D Player's Handbook
Moving on from there, I re-read the Player's Handbook cover to cover. A good refresher on the basic rules was in order before diving into the slew of modules that are coming up soon in the timeline. One thing that stood out to me very early on was the comments on character attributes. Gary states that the premise of the game is that player characters are intended to be above average compared to "normal" people in the game world. This has been a point of contention for almost as long as roleplaying games have existed. In one camp are people who insist that player characters are superior to "normal" people, and that's why they're adventurers instead of farmers or laborers. In the other are people who believe there's no difference between an adventurer and a commoner, other than the adventurer made the difficult choice to leave a normal life behind. This would all be merely philosophical if it didn't have ramifications for character attributes, providing justifications for different stat rolling methods that produce averages above a normal 3d6 distribution.
In this same section Gary then states that it is "usually essential" (his words) that a character have at least two scores of 15 or higher! It's statements like this that I love to find, as compared with later products it shows the evolution of thought in roleplaying games (or at least the differing perspectives of various writers). In the 2nd edition DMG there is a section basically devoted to the antithesis of this statement, that characters are more about what you do with them than their raw attribute scores. It gives a hypothetical example of a player who rolls up a very "average" character. As I recall their highest score was a 13, and they had at least three scores that were - <gasp> - below 10. The player is obviously disappointed and convinced that this character is basically a dead man walking - doomed to die an early death at the hands of some imagined foe. It then shows a couple of different ways you could interpret the scores and build a personality around them, turning them into an interesting character to play.
Ultimately I do not believe there is any right answer to these questions, but they come down to the preferences of a given DM and their players. Good stats do not mean a character will be played well, and bad stats do not mean a character cannot be successful. And sometimes the best roleplaying comes from the ultimate power gamer who has min/maxed their character to ludicrous levels - but the story of K'tak'ss the Thri-Kreen is for another day.
In the section on hit points Gary states that there are two methods for tracking them - one in which the players track their own, and another where the DM tracks them secretly, only letting players know in general terms how their characters feel - "strong", "very weak", etc. I've never known anyone who used the latter system, except possibly temporarily as part of the gimmick of a particular encounter. I'm curious if anyone out there has ever heard of this being done. I think 99% of modern players would balk at the idea - what do you mean I don't know exactly how many hit points my character has?
Personally I'm not opposed to the idea either as a player or as a DM, as I think it could add a decent amount of tension to decision making, but I do think it would require very mature players to handle. There's too much opportunity for hurt feelings among players from misunderstanding of the DM's descriptions - the player thinks "very weak" means they can risk one more blow from an enemy, while the DM thinks "very weak" means your character has 3 hit points left and you're going down if anything breathes on you too hard. It also raises questions about how to handle differences between characters due to differences in hit point maximums. Does a wizard at 14 out of 17 hit points feel "strong"? Presumably yes, but then what about a fighter at 14 out of 42 hit points? But of course the fighter probably has a superior AC to the wizard, so he has better survivability at the same hit point total, which further complicates how exactly to describe these situations.
I've made my feelings on alignment clear in previous blog posts, but I can't believe that in my original post on the PHB I didn't talk about alignment languages. Has there ever been a more ridiculous roleplaying concept? I love how in the section on alignment that it states that if you change alignment, you automatically forget how to speak your old alignment language. Apparently alignment languages work on some kind of cosmic-level magic where you automatically gain or lose them when you gain or lose that alignment. Gary sadly does not elaborate on this mechanic.
I'll admit that when I'm reading through the spell descriptions, I often glaze over the fine details, such as when it's describing the formulas for duration, size, damage, etc. However, this time the Create Food & Water spell caught my eye. It does exactly what it says on the tin, but just pay attention to this sentence: "each cubic foot of the material will sustain three human-sized creatures or one horse-sized creature for a full day". Each cubic foot. Cubic...foot. DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH FOOD THAT IS?!?!? Okay, so a human only needs one third of that per day, and we can divide that into thirds again for three meals. Still, I want you to imagine a cube 6 inches on a side. That's technically slightly bigger than 1/9th of a cubic foot, but it's a good enough approximation. Go ahead, get a ruler if you need one. Now imagine that entire cube is solid food. Even if it was your favorite food in the whole world, do you think you could remotely eat that much in one sitting? Sure, gun to your head you might, but I guarantee you 99.9% of the meals you've eaten in your life are less than 192 cubic inches worth of material.
Speaking of issues of realism, the venerable Fireball has this gem: "the heat of the fireball will melt soft metals such as gold." Just FYI, the melting point of gold is 1,947 degrees Fahrenheit. I'm pretty sure if a human body was exposed to that temperature - even for a brief moment like a fireball - it would flash boil all the water in your body.
Finally we arrive at the final pages of the book, which list other products for sale by TSR. There are some interesting things to be learned here:
- I never noticed this before, but I used to think "Basic D&D" was just a term created by the community and never actually supported by TSR. However, the first item on the list is "BASIC DUNGEONS & DRAGONS", referring to the Holmes set. I feel like this term got dropped pretty quickly, but it's nice to know it actually was official.
- Modules G1-3 and D1-3 are all listed as for sale here, even though they would only actually be released over the next three months following the Player's Handbook (and this is a 1st printing book that I'm reading).
- Outdoor Geomorphs sets 2-4 are listed as "future release", but sadly never came to fruition. "Walled City" was the only one ever published, but apparently there were plans for "Castle/Fortress", "Ruins", and "Rooms, Chambers & Passages".
