Generally speaking, getting a character from first level, up to the mid-levels of fourth, fifth, and sixth-level, and onwards into the seventh, eighth, and ninth levels is no small feat, especially considering the frequency with which most of us get to play, and the duration of a typical D&D campaign. In my view, any player character that makes it out of the levels 1 - 3 “mudcore cul-de-sac” is a character worthy of note.

One way I think about it is to consider how much effort and adventure it takes for a character to pass into those mid-levels and higher-levels, and to consider how many NPC’s in the setting can justifiably be said to have attained that level of experience through their actions.

With this considered, I feel like it doesn’t seem right to have a large number of high-level NPC’s present in the setting, roaming around the game world and encountering the player characters. This is especially true if the high-level NPC’s are largely “anonymous” or created on the spot as a result of a random encounter.

In this latter case, if I was a player in a game, and I “randomly” encountered a tenth-level character with no prior mention of them, I expect I would find myself thinking something along the lines of “so this dude is tenth-level, and I’ve never heard of him before? Never heard of this guy being mentioned in any rumours, never saw his castle on the horizon, never saw this dude travelling with his retinue, etc”.

I feel like if I this same encounter had some telegraphing (I hate that word usually, but we’ll use it here), I wouldn’t mind. If it was the case that from the start of the campaign, the players had been overhearing rumours about this high-level character and their retinue, and they’d seen him going about his work in different contexts and locations, and there had been a bit of prior exposure to this character and what he’s all about, then I think that’s completely fair game.

However, if the high-level character was essentially created from the aether on the spot, such as through the result of a random roll on a wilderness encounter table, I would sort of feel like the DM “pulled it out of their ass” without suitable narrative scaffolding in place.

To use a parallel that I’ve discussed before, it’s the same as referees who generate terrain on a hex map “as they go”, rather than doing it in advance, with the result being that a tall mountain or similar large landmarks seems to simply pop up in front of the players as they travel, when in reality, a landmark of that magnitude would have been visible from a great distance, and should have been described by the referee much earlier. However, because the mountain or landmark didn’t actually exist ahead of time, it does indeed seem to spawn in as the players enter the hex in question.

To be clear, I don’t disagree that it’s reasonable for there to be knights, court wizards, and village priests of various levels out here in the game world, but I think that if a character (NPC or player character) is fourth-level or above, they really should be telegraphed.

Like, a fourth-level Fighting-Man is a “Hero”, that means something. If I run into a “Super Hero”, an eighth-level Fighting-Man, I don’t want it to be “uh yeah, he’s some knight, he works for the local lord I guess”. Someone of that level should be a living legend, someone like Beowulf, Hercules, Lancelot, and so on. They should have a long list accolades and experiences, stuff like “oh, that’s the guy who felled the Beast of the Braymarsh” or “that’s the guy who climbed the Endless Tower” or whatever heroic feat you can think of.

Essentially, I don’t have a problem with the general of the emperor’s grand legions being a 9th-level Fighting-Men, or the emperor’s small handpicked cadre of bodyguards and personal champions being high-level as well, but it would seem weird and incongruous if every town guard captain or bandit chief had that level of experience and fighting power. I imagine that most people reading this would find this assumption fairly reasonable.

The same goes for powerful monsters that I would have present in my dungeon or wilderness. I would use whatever means were available to protect and encourage the development of the game’s “fictional reality. If it’s a giant, consider what effect that creature and its actions would have on the surrounding area. If it’s a dragon, same considerations should be made. The larger and more powerful a creature is, the greater “footprint” it’s going to have on the surrounding landscape. I could easily imagine a small band of goblin guerillas hiding in the forest, and this encounter wouldn’t need much telegraphing. On the other hand, imagine a “Godzilla” like creature hiding in the same forest, while supporting itself through hunting prey and everything else. There’s going to be more footprint in the later case.

On paper, the referee may be technically within their rights to declare “uh, you suddenly get attacked by 100 full-grown dragons” while your characters are walking down an otherwise ordinary forest path, but I’m sure you’d agree that this would really grate against our shared idea of what a cohesive and verisimilitudinous game world looks like in our combined imaginations. We’d say “was there really no sign of this huge dragon flock, like burned-out villages, people’s cattle and horses being eaten, people reporting that they’d seen flocks of dragons flying together, etc”.

I feel like with lower-power encounters, there’s less necessity to give the aforementioned type of warnings or “telegraph cues”. However, if I wanted to keep the high-level encounter, I would definitely make sure to telegraph and warn the party of a powerful adversary like this being in the area, by whatever means are appropriate.

The downstream effect of ignoring these considerations is that the in-game outcomes don’t adhere to the “fictional reality” that we expect from the imagined game world. It’s that sense of a consistent and cohesive “fictional reality” that allows us as players to immerse ourselves in the game, and to treat it as something more than a pure math exercise. Therefore, anything that damages or erodes this sense of a shared fictional reality is undesirable.

For an example of level inflation in the early rulebooks, consult the following excerpts from AD&D 1E:

I think these excerpts effectively represent the kind of “level inflation” that I’m talking about, with the potential for having eighth-level Fighters commanding patrols of 30 men, and this being a “non-unique” encounter, in the sense that there are presumably several of those patrols simultaneously operating in a baron’s domain. In this regard, OD&D isn’t much better to be honest. Consider the entry for Bandits, listed below:

After working a few characters up to the mid-levels through the course of sustained play, and seeing how much “adventuring” it took to achieve those levels, I find it very hard to believe that there are random groups of 200 bandits in the woods who have an eighth-level Cleric on staff, and an eleventh-level Magic-User. If there was one of these groups in the entire game setting, I could believe it, but the fact this is just a random encounter that could be replicated in the next couple of hexes is totally insane. I think this engaging in this style of level-inflated play with the assumption of large numbers of troops on both sides is “swimming upriver”, and is essentially playing to the weaknesses, rather than the strengths, of D&D as a game system, and of tabletop gaming as a whole.

I should note here that I don’t think every NPC has to have followed the same dungeon-delving life-path as the player characters are assumed to. I think it’s perfectly reasonable that veteran soldiers, experienced court wizards, long-serving temple priests, and so on would have character levels under their belt.

I should also note that this isn’t an “in world” thing, like no-one is explicitly saying “I’m a third-level Cleric”, this is more intended as an abstract measurement of the character’s capabilities. However, my objection is with the crazy inflation for pretty mundane stuff, like the aforementioned example of the 200 bandits with the eighth-level Cleric and the eleventh-level Magic-User.

I could easily imagine a group of 15 - 30 bandits (1st level F-M, leather armour) in the woods, led by a F-M or M-U of 3rd level. To me, that’s the perfect “random encounter”, like no need to add any further details, they can just be some bandits milling around in the forest. Once you start adding in stuff like the bandits being led by a sixth-level Fighter, and having a Cleric with them as well, that’s when I would want to add a bit of backstory for them, maybe a “Robin Hood and his Merry Men” type of scenario in this case, or a mercenary band turned to brigandry.

Out of all the entries in the books, I like the example in B/X the best, where it mentions that veteran soldiers returning from war are between 1st and 3rd level. I think that this is the most reasonable take on things, at least in the context of a random encounter. The entries in B/X are provided below:

The more I play and run tabletop games, the more I’m convinced that they’re better suited to a “Morrowwind” rather than a “Daggerfall” type experience. What I mean by this, is that it seems to work out better to have a small, highly-interconnected, hand-crafted sandbox setting created with deliberation and care, than a huge sprawling hex map filled with loads of disjointed filler content, whether that’s randomly-generated stuff, or stuff from third-party publishers.

I would rather have a small, but very detailed and interconnected sandbox, where the high-level characters are well-known named characters, with their own implied background and history, like it’s not just “a patrol of dismounted soldiers, led by a Super Hero”, it’s “Lord Hallister Giantsbane, and his fearsome retinue, the Ankle-Choppers”.

These named characters would be further distinguished by a in-world background or history (these dudes are known for bravely defending the land from a recent incursion of Hill Giants, which was led by Zogar the Wagon-Stomper, a feared Giant Chieftain), a unique and interesting appearance or “gimmick” (they all carry huge cleaver-like greatswords, designed to hack through the thick ankle tendons of giants, and bring them low), and their presence having a proportionate ongoing effect on the game world, like they wouldn’t be just showing up out of nowhere, and disappearing once their “scene” with the player characters was completed, the game world would have sufficient supporting narrative infrastructure surrounding them, like Lord Hallister’s keep would be a pre-set location that the players would be informed of as soon as their characters come within eyeshot.

This level of detail should be applied to every NPC of “Hero” status or greater. Of course, this requires more effort from the DM, but I think it’s an essential “best practice” for tabletop gaming.

For example, if I was going to be populating a region with an especially-large and fearsome 15 HD red dragon, I would go out of my way to ensure that it’s not just a “by the book” random encounter, I would make sure that the creature’s presence has the appropriate effect on the surrounding region. The dragon would effectively be a “named character”, like it might have a list of epithets and nicknames that further reinforce its place within the game world and its implied history. Consider the difference between encountering “red dragon, 15 HD”, and encountering “Gauelmogg, The Winged Terror, Scourge of the East, Devourer of Prince Julien, Razer of Brighthill Castle, etc”.

This post has already ran longer than I anticipated, so I’ll leave you here for the time being. If you’re interested in reading further on this topic, click here. As always, I hope anyone reading through this post has been able to extract something of value, which will be suitable for use in your own games. I have a couple of more articles to write up, so keep an eye out for these in the near future.

Until then, happy gaming, everyone (:

The key point we kept coming back to in the discussion was that much of the stuff you can do as a player character in Classic Traveller would be better suited to being experienced through the medium of a video game, whether that be something like Eve Online, the Elite series, the X series, the Wing Commander series, Freelancer, or any other of those well-regarded “space sim” games.

I understand that “back in the day” of 1977, there was no Eve Online that you could load up on your computer and drop into. If you wanted to have a “space sim” gameplay experience, then you’d have to play it out on paper as a tabletop game of some kind, as computers and video games capable of delivering the immersive experience that you’re looking for didn’t exist yet.

However, we’re in 2026 now, and computers absolutely can deliver that experience. The computer instantly takes care of the bookkeeping and bean-counting, leaving you to enjoy the engaging and immersive gameplay, with that engagement and immersion being reinforced by excellent visuals, audio, tactile feedback (controller vibrating), etc. As you can see, the computer has huge advantages in this case, so why not just play a video game?

If you wanted to play out a big wargame battle “back in the day”, you would have to get the physical table ready, create all the the terrain, purchase and assemble all the miniatures, paint all the miniatures, find an opponent at the wargaming club or elsewhere, schedule a game, and then finally play the game. It’s a very significant investment of time, effort, money, and everything else to get a game going.

Even worse, you’d have to repeat this whole process every time you wanted to switch genres. For example, you paint up your army of Civil War Confederates, play a few games, and then a fancy strikes you to paint up an Medieval English Army to do a War of the Roses game. It’s much more of a pain to “switch over” to the new army, and this “pinch point” repeats time and time again whenever you want to try something different, whether that’s a particular historical period, a different type of army, a different genre (fantasy, sci-fi, naval combat, etc), or whatever else.

In contrast, if you were playing out this a “mass battle wargame” scenario in a video game, it is vastly less expensive, less time-consuming, and less effort-intensive, as you can simply find a game that lets you play out the exact scenario you want to run.

I’m mainly thinking about stuff like the Total War games, the Mount and Blade / Bannerlord games, and others like that. In these games, you can get enormous armies clashing in real-time, there’s a huge range of time periods and genres to select from across the different games, and the game instantly does all the math for you, as well as taking away the need to buy, assemble, paint, and arrange the miniatures and terrain.

If you were to do this with a “physical” tabletop and miniatures, it would cost a fortune, and hundreds of hours, and take up loads of storage space in your house, and all the rest. In this instance, the video game is the superior option to meet this particular need.

In contrast, tabletop roleplaying games excel at that smaller-scale, “zoomed in” type of play, where you can get a more intimate understanding of the individual character’s experience.

To go back to the miniature wargaming example we used before, it occurs to me that if you’re playing a mass battle wargame, it means very little if a melee encounter occurs between a pair of individual infantry soldiers on some isolated corner of the larger battlefield. In the wargaming context, it’s simply a random encounter between two game tokens, who have ended up occupying the same piece of battlefield terrain by happenstance. A combat encounter is quickly resolved by a dice roll, and play quickly moves on.

There’s a world of difference between this detached, “birds-eye” view of the game world, and what it would be like to actually live out the experience of that particular game token. If we imagine ourselves “playing the role” of that individual figure on the battlefield, we can easily imagine how we’d be frightened, exhausted, battered, and filthy, things that are frequently glossed over or overlooked from the “top down” wargame perspective.

It’s one thing if it’s just a plastic game token encountering another plastic token in a piece of cardboard terrain on the table. It’s another thing if that game token is “your guy” who has chased their nemesis halfway across the continent, and now he’s got him cornered in a ruined house, and he will have his revenge.

In this context, it doesn’t really matter of there’s a raging battlefield nearby, that’s more of a backdrop or piece of stage dressing, the real focus is on the individual stories being played out. In my view, that sort of thing is leaning on the strength of tabletop gaming as a medium. This is especially true when combined with the other major advantage of tabletop gaming, that being the “living referee”, who is unconstrained by the limits of what a pre-programmed computer can do, or by the strict rules of a traditional boardgame or wargame.

In summary, I think referees would be well-served to consider what sort of gameplay experience they are trying to facilitate, and choose the right “tool for the job” in order to create that gameplay experience most effectively, rather than trying to shoehorn everything into one type of gameplay medium, whether that’s a board game, a war game, a video game, or a tabletop roleplaying game.

If the players reach the end of a hallway, and there’s a pair of doors there, there must be a meaningful differentiation between the doors.

What I mean by this, is that if one door is described as being made of sturdy wood, being wreathed in overgrown thorny vines, and reeking like sweet musky pollen, and the other door is made of gleaming metal, is covered with a coating of frost, and is ice-cold to the touch, then the players have been provided with a suitable level of information, information that allows them to make an informed, meaningful decision in the course of playing the game.

On the other hand, if the two doors at the end of the corridor are described as identical, with no difference between them other than their positioning on the wall, then the players are provided no opportunity to exercise their agency, and make an informed decision. At this point, the choice of doors is just a “coin flip”. This is very poor dungeon design, and should be avoided. This design principle applies to all aspects of running a tabletop game, not just dungeon design, but this will be expanded on later in the post.

When I’m designing dungeons, I try to think of each room as a “node” connected to other nodes. There’s no singular node off by itself, devoid of connection to other nodes. The dungeon is an interconnected structure, which the players explore by moving between nodes. In order to decide which nodes to navigate to, the players have to rely solely on the information provided by the referee.

This is another key point worth highlighting. Unlike other types of entertainment, such as video games and movies, players in a tabletop game are entirely reliant on the referee to “create the world” for them to engage with. If that world isn’t described well, or if the players aren’t provided with enough information, then the player’s ability to engage intelligently with the game is greatly reduced.

This is why I find it’s appropriate for the referee to be as clear and informative with their dungeon descriptions as possible, as the players are also facing the substantial difficulty of having no visual or spatial reference that they can use to orient themselves in real time.

Think about how you you navigate the world in real life, such as on your drive to work. In this real-world context, you have so much more information you can rely on to find your way. You can observe landmarks, recognise familiar routes, visually gauge distance, and so on. As a player in a tabletop role-playing game, you are deprived of all these natural means of navigation, and are instead forced to rely exclusively on the referee, as they tell you what there is to see. I’m sure it is apparent by now, how much information that the players are missing out on, that would be readily available to the player characters themselves.

With this considered, I advise referees to be very generous with the information they provide their players, and try to avoid situations where the players are forced to make a truly random choice. As a general rule, the greater the number of meaningful, informed choices the players are able to make, the more agency the players have, and the greater overall quality of the game as a whole.

The usefulness of this “node-based” design isn’t limited to dungeon-crawling, it can also apply to wilderness exploration, or to urban adventuring. In regards to wilderness exploration, I have previously mentioned how I feel that this is best handled as a kind of point crawl, with the player characters travelling down “corridors” of navigable terrain, whether that be a natural trail, a road, a canyon, a river, a ridgeline, or whatever else.

If you must have a hex map to help you gauge distances and travel time, then it should be kept strictly referee-facing. The players shouldn’t have to “count movement” while looking at a hex map, they should instead get naturalistic descriptions of the surrounding environment based on landmarks, as I’ve outlined previously.

In terms of urban adventuring, the players shouldn’t describe their maneuvering through the city in a “street by street” fashion. I know City-State of the Invincible Overlord does it this way, but I’d advise against copying this example. Instead, urban gameplay should be described more along the lines of “you’re in the crowded streets of the Market District, people jostle past you carrying bundles of wares, sellers call out from their stalls, and liveried city guards stand watch at the street corners”.

Once you’ve set the tone, that’s when you throw in stuff like “to the north, you see a tower of pale blue marble rising up over all the other buildings, this tower is said to be home to a reclusive wizard”, and you repeat this for all the directions, using all the player’s senses (sight, smell, hearing, etc), so you might hear solemn chanting, and smell the heady incense of a religious procession coming down the block from the west, even before you see them.

Continuing this example, the referee might describe how the player characters see two hot-headed “bravos” standing on the corner of the street to the east, arguing about whose duelling school is superior, with a crowd of fellow students forming around them egging them on. The referee can continue to add as many “points of interest” as they like, but I find that three or four is the “sweet spot”. I like to place a point of interest in each cardinal direction, especially in the context of a dungeon crawl.

This is how the game should be run, with a focus on this interesting set-piece situations, situations that will catch the player’s eye, and engage them in a way that leads to interesting gameplay. The referee’s role is to set up dynamic “powderkeg” situations, that will be highly reactive to the player characters getting involved.

My view is that for any tabletop game, the players don’t need to get caught up in mundane affairs. Instead, the game has to quickly move between interesting set-pieces. The players have to have real agency to decide how they move between these set-pieces, this is what makes it an actual game, instead of just a narrative being told to you.

The obsession some people have with “world simulation above all else” stuff is boring, as there’s many things not worth spending playtime on. A true “world simulation” would include spending time on characters brushing their teeth, going to the bathroom, and doing all sorts of mundane tasks. We’re not saying that stuff doesn’t happen in the game world, but we don’t focus on that as a subject of play, as it’s not worth spending time on. Play should be focused on the interesting stuff, like the same way a televised game of basketball or whatever doesn’t begin with the player’s daily routine three weeks before the game. We know they’re eating, we know they’re sleeping, we know they’re training, but the only thing we’re interested in as the audience is the actual game itself.

One thing I’ve learned from running PBP games is that the fastest way to kill momentum is having the players navigate their characters between completely arbitrary points. Instead, I’ve learned that every single update I put forward should bring the players to a point of meaningful decision, and that’s spelled out and made clear to the players.

To use an example from my recent Classic Traveller play-by-post, you shouldn’t say to the players “you’re slowly piloting your air raft through a maze of canyons, do you go right or left” without providing any context, and then repeat this same prompt five times, before saying “you suddenly encounter a giant alien lizard monster that tries to eat you”.

Instead, it would be better to describe this sequence of events as something like “you slowly pilot your air raft through the maze of canyons. After some time, you hear a snarl, and encounter an alien lizard monster. You could fly up out of the canyons, but if you did that, you’d risk getting spotted by the people you’re tracking. If you want to stay down low in the canyons, you won’t have the risk of being spotted, but the alien lizard can attack you and your air-raft”.

This is obviously a super simplified version of what happened in the actual game, so don’t read into the example too much, but you can see how in one post, I’ve moved the story forward a substantial amount, and then ended by presenting the players with a significant choice, which will have meaningful consequences whichever way they choose. I’m not having to have them make five separate updates over a week, to get to the essential decision point, like each post IS a decision point.

Readers, I hope that you got something out of this post, and can make use of anything useful you picked up in your own game. I have a couple more “essays” in the works, so expect some more musings from me soon.

Until then, happy gaming!

I hope you enjoy (:

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The graveyard sat high upon the hill, isolated from the town below like a victim of the pox. A wooden shack sat upon the hill, the soft glow of lamplight coming from within the only sign of human presence. A light snow was falling, piling up atop the gravestones that protruded from the barren soil like crooked teeth. Beneath the cold earth lay coffins, most of them chained shut, the dead inside manacled and bound in iron. Protective wards were scratched onto the inside of the coffin lids, serving as a defensive measure against the fell sorcery that compelled the dead to rise. Should the wards fail, the other precautions were usually sufficient to keep the creature contained.

Inside the shack sat Silas, leaning back on a low stool, his boots propped up carelessly on the table. As he lounged, he pondered how many ghouls might be writhing in their coffin’s claustrophobic confines at that very moment, thrashing back and forth in a vain attempt to escape their subterranean imprisonment.

Most of the creatures never made it to the surface. Occasionally though, through lack of time or resources, the dead were placed in unprepared coffins. The process of properly warding and reinforcing a coffin was costly, and many of the town’s poorer inhabitants chose to forego such precautions, instead attending their own ministrations of their dead, instead of rather than entrusting their deceased relatives to the attentions of the Church.

Often, the peasantry would pack their dead into whatever old crate they could find, bind their hands with rope, and drag the shoddy coffin to the fringes of the dark forest surrounding the town. With a shaking hand, they would scribe the sacred symbols across the coffin, muttering half-formed litanies and supplications, praying that their loved ones would not reawaken from their eternal rest. These forest graves were always very shallow, especially in winter, with the townsfolk finding the frozen, root-choked earth at the edge of the forest to be particularly resistant to their excavation efforts.

Sometimes, the townsfolk would take the time to plant a rudimentary grave marker, but they would never linger longer than they had to. They would flee back to their rustic homes, not daring to look over their shoulder, as the shadows around them seemed to lengthen and thicken, and unearthly calls and howls pierced the cold night air.

In Silas’s experience, the unfortunates who were buried in this manner made up the majority of those that returned. They would come shambling out of the forest, lurching towards the village like a drunkard beckoned home by a candle in the window.

Silas remembered the first one who returned. It had been the time of the plague, just over two years ago now. A young pauper succumbed to illness, brought on by the biting winter cold. With the town graveyard already crowded by victims of the plague, it was decided to bury the man outside of town, within the bounds of the forest. Even at that time, the forest had an uneasy atmosphere, brought about by the way the forest’s interior seemed to be perpetually cast in a strange sun-dappled dimness, the sun overhead being almost entirely blocked by the thick leafy canopy. The forest’s eerie silence was punctuated only by the harsh cries of crows, and the sound of the wind keening through the gnarled branches.

For the funeral however, these feelings of unease were kept at bay, at least initially. The burial itself proceeded without incident, the white-robed priest conducting his duties admirably, even as the village goodwives stifled their sobs with handkerchief. As the burial concluded, the mourners moved to an open clearing in the forest, where an array of rustic tables and chairs had already been prepared for the wake. As night fell, and the lanterns burned low, the revellers began to sense that something wasn’t right. There was an uneasy tension in the air, and as the merry atmosphere dissipated, the villagers began to feel the creeping sensation of cold fear.

Then, the pauper arrived.

He lurched out of the treeline, still in his burial clothes. Dirt clung to him, staining his clothing and coating his flesh. His dark hair was dank and matted against his skull, crawling with beetles and spiders, their black carapaces scuttling around amongst the tangled filthy locks that framed his face. The creature’s skin was of a deathly pallor, with swollen, spidery blue veins trailing up from its neck. The creature took a lurching, unsteady step closer. The guests were frozen to the spot, time itself seeming to stretch and crawl, until the creature broke the silence. The creature, that thing that had been the young pauper, spoke in a barely comprehensible gurgle, its voice reminiscent of like putrid bubbles seeping up from the bottom of a rancid pond.

“Blood…”

That was the last certain memory Silas had of that night.

He vaguely remembered his desperate flight back to the village, babbling in fear, trying to convince the remaining townsfolk of the reanimated pauper that attacked the attendees of the funeral. He was thought to have gone mad with drink, and was thrown into the stocks to regain his senses. Later, when the rest of the villagers had not returned from the wake, and no sounds of distant revelry could be heard from the forest, a search party was sent out to investigate. When they returned, ashen faced, Silas was promptly released. More clear-minded now, he told them what had occurred, and in turn, he was told of what the search party had found in the forest.

When they had reached the scene of the wake, it was a ruin. Tables had been overturned, chairs had been broken, and lanterns had been smashed. A few bodies remained, appearing as if they’d been torn apart, and partially consumed by some sort of wild animal. Of most of the townsfolk, however, there was no sign.

The first of the townsfolk returned four days later, transformed into grotesque undead. Five of them had attacked the town in the dead of night, climbing over the wooden palisade with ease, and setting upon anyone they encountered. Initially, the townsfolk were unable to mount an effective defence, finding their undead attackers to be particularly resistant to ordinary weapons.

It wasn’t until the break of day that the tide turned. Weakened and partially blinded by the Sun, the creatures were finally cornered in a barn on the outskirts of town, where the surviving townsfolk barricaded the exits, and burned the barn with the creatures trapped inside, leaving only charred skeletons amongst the ashes.

In the aftermath of the attack, there was much terror amongst the townsfolk, and additional fortifications were hurriedly erected. Since the initial attacks, the creatures had become far more wary, no longer mounting direct assaults on the town, but rather assailing those who strayed too far from the town walls while tending to their crops. Those who were attacked were dragged into the forest, and were later seen amongst the ranks of the bloodthirsty undead that were now the scourge of the whole region. It was by this process of transformation that the creatures continually added to their own number.

Silas suddenly snapped awake. He had been so lost in his memories of how the present state of affairs came to be, that he had slipped into an uneasy sleep. At his side, the oil lantern burned dangerously low, threatening to plunge the room into a cold, merciless dark. Cursing his own carelessness, he lurched to his feet and made his way over to the lantern, adjusting the lantern’s wick until the flickering flame steadied. Just as he finished fumbling with the lantern, he heard a quiet crunch from outside the shack, barely perceptible. Freezing in place, Silas felt the familiar tingle of fear, up high in his back and neck, across the base of his skull, like a thousand needles all pressing lightly against his skin. Deep in his ears, he could hear the pounding tattoo of his own heartbeat. He scarcely dared to breathe.

A long minute passed, then he heard the stealthy lope of something moving away from the shack, and he was able to let out a shuddering exhalation of relief. No sooner had the relief came, was it swept away again, replaced by a sense of grim duty. Silas knew that it was only by sheer luck that the creature had bypassed him as he slept fitfully in his shack, and that the creature would now be heading towards the village, where it would soon be feasting on the blood of the townsfolk.

Silas knew he couldn’t let that happen. Taking up the lantern, he stepped out of the guard hut, the sudden chill slicing into him like a frozen razor. As he passed the doorframe, he took hold of the shovel that had been leaning against the wall. It was a hefty, long-handled implement, with a square iron head and a sharpened edge set with silver. Since the initial attacks, the undead creatures had been found to have a curious vulnerability to this metal, a discovery borne out of a desperate encounter which saw the village priest defending the doors of his church with a heavy silver candlestick. The priest’s unexpected success saw that the townsfolk quickly set to work, ensuring that they had their own silvered weapon close at hand as the sun set that same day.

Stepping out onto the stunted, crooked grass that grew in patchy tufts about the graveyard, Silas looked out into the night. The snow swirled fiercely in the howling wind, stinging his eyes, but by the light of the moon, Silas saw a humanoid figure with his back to him, standing about twenty yards away. Gauging the creature’s position as best as he could in the sight-obscuring conditions, Silas took four measured paces to his left, hesitated, and then took a half-pace more in the same direction.

In position, Silas set his lantern down at his feet, and then loudly planted his shovel in the earth. The creature turned, its bestial nature quickly becoming apparent as its face came into view. The creature’s ears were pointed and elongated, as were the teeth. The skin was pallid, and pulled taut over harsh, craggy cheekbones. The bloodless lips pulled away in a snarl, exposing swollen purple gums. It sniffed at the air, animalistic and primitive. It cocked its head, and then in a single movement, it dropped to all fours, and bounded towards Silas, unleashing a piercing howl as it did so.

It cleared the distance between them in the blink of an eye, but just before it made the final leap, and bore Silas to the ground, there came a harsh metallic snap, and the creature’s eyes went wide in pain and shock. The iron jaws of a buried bear trap had sank deep into the creature’s leg, parting flesh and breaking bone. The creature let out another ear-splitting howl, a piercing siren that shattered the quiet of the night. In the moonlight, the jaws of the bear trap glistened. Like the townsfolk’s blades, the edges of the bear trap’s jaws had been set with silver.

The creature thrashed, trying frantically to tug free of the bear trap. A thick, stinking black ichor oozed slowly from the wound as it lashed out at Silas, who stood well out of reach. The creature’s claws carved furrows in the dirt, as they no doubt would have in Silas’s own flesh had he been any closer. The creature twisted and rolled, but the bear trap was secured to the ground with a heavy iron chain, with an iron stake driving deep into the soil, ensuring the trap could not be torn free from the ground. As the undead abomination continued to flail and screech, Silas decided to put an end to its pitiful struggles.

The shovel made a muted “clunk” as it impacted the beast’s skull. The beast crumpled to the floor, knocked senseless. Moving quickly, Silas stood over the creature, and placed the sharpened edge of his shovel onto the creature’s neck, then planted his boot on top of the shovel blade. Already, the creature was coming back to its senses, lips drawing back to reveal bloodied teeth. The creature stretched out a dirt-encrusted hand, gripping the shovel’s handle and snarling in a final gesture of futile defiance.

Silas pushed down hard with his boot, leaning his full weight on the shovel blade. The silvered, sharpened edge of the blade easily parted the flesh at the creature’s neck, slicing into the windpipe and tearing through the multitude of veins and arteries that lay behind it. Gouts of black ichor jetted crazily, coating his shovel blade as it cut deeper into the creature’s neck. The snarl turned into a gurgle as the blade pushed deeper, severing muscle and gristle alike before exiting through the back of the neck, and sinking into the cold soil beneath. The creature’s head rolled free, and its clawed hand relaxed from where it had fixed a death-grip on the shovel’s handle.

Silas bent and scooped up the head, observing that its face was frozen in a grimace of rage. Dropping the head into the burlap sack that hung at his waist, he closed the sack with a tug of a cord, before lifting his own face to the horizon. The grey, dreary sky was slowly brightening. In the distance, as the snowfall waned, the Sun began to rise, a golden disc that banished the shadows. The first weak beams caressed Silas’s weather-beaten face, and for the first time in what seemed like a long while, he smiled. Hefting his gore-slick shovel on his shoulder, he left the creature’s headless corpse where it lay, and began walking down into the town below.

Caeter has prepared his young apprentice as best as he is able, sending Gespin off with a knapsack full of travelling supplies,and with the knowledge of the “Slow Spell”, a powerful enchantment.

Caeter and Gespin live a short distance from the nearest settlement, the rustic hamlet of Pilgrim’s Rest. For many years, Caeter has occupied the crumbling stone tower that lies an hour’s walk from the village, acting as a sage, oracle, and folk healer for the people of Pilgrim’s Rest.

Gespin’s steps quicken as he travels down the tree-lined path towards the village. He is eager to return to Pilgrim’s Rest now that his formal apprenticeship has concluded. He hopes to meet others who are interested in exploring the world beyond the palisade walls that surround the village.

Upon arriving in the village, Gespin makes his way over to the local Church of Law. Entering, he sees Father Beyer, the elderly village priest, who doesn’t seem to notice Gespin’s arrival. The priest appears to be wholly occupied by the task of sweeping the church’s wooden floor with a straw broom, eyes downcast. Dropping a gold coin into the donation box at the door, Gespin approached the old priest, who jolted in surprise as Gespin neared.

“Good heavens my boy, you frightened me half to death, I didn’t hear you come in” wheezed Father Beyer. Gespin apologised for the intrusion, and asked the priest where he might find any old ruins nearby, somewhere where he could increase his knowledge of the ancient past. The old priest tells Gespin of a nearby pilgrimage site, for which the town of Pilgrim’s Rest was named. The site is the final resting place of a wandering saint from a bygone era.

The priest warns Gespin of dangers on the road, specifically cautioning Gespin to stay on the path and keep moving if he hears a woman’s voice calling from the woods, or if sees a fair maiden bathing alone in the river. The priest tells Gespin that many men have been lured to their deaths through temptations such as these. Gespin thanks the priest, and assures him he’ll be careful.

Leaving the church, Gespin considered passing by the village tavern to see if he could find any companions for his planned journey, but in the end, he decided to strike off on his own. In the course of his lengthy apprenticeship under Caeter, Gespin had become accustomed to spending long periods of time alone, so this present solitude was no great burden to him.

Late in the morning, Gespin left the village through the north gate, passing through the surrounding farmland, and reaching the boundary of the dense forest that lies to the north of the village.

Gespin paused at the edge of the forest, his exploratory resolve wavering as he cast a backward glance towards the bucolic village, but after a long moment, he turned and continued northward, following the meandering dirt path that led deeper into the forest.

Gespin trudged along the forest path for the remainder of the morning, accompanied only by pleasant sounds of nature. Just after midday, Gespin’s uneventful ramble was interrupted. As he rounded a bend in the trail, Gespin saw a white-furred stag, laying on its side with an arrow protruding from its torso. Red blood could be seen at the site of the wound, soaking into the stag’s pure-white fur, like red wine spilled onto a fine carpet. As Gespin watched from the bend in the trail, the majestic creature let out a last huffing breath, and went still.

A minute passed, yet Gespin remained where he was, scarcely daring to blink. There had been something uncanny about that white stag, something immaterial, as if it would disappear like morning mist as soon as he looked away. Just as this thought passed through his mind, Gespin saw movement at the edge of the trail. A tall figure emerged from the trees, carrying a long bow of bright wood. The figure was wearing fine robes befitting a lord at court, yet the style and cut of the clothing seemed utterly foreign to Gespin.

Strange too were the garment’s colours, changing as they did from red-brown in one moment, to green-gold in the next. The figure seemed to be wreathed in a faint shimmering luminosity, that somehow made it difficult for Gespin’s eyes to settle on them for any length of time. As Gespin stood mazed by what he was seeing, eight more of these glimmering figures emerged from the woods at the edge of the trail, and proceeded to assemble around the fallen white stag. There was a glint of silver in their hands, and as Gespin watched, they began to field-dress the animal where it lay, using elegant silver knives that gleamed like fire as they caught the gold-red sunlight.

Almost before he realised what he was doing, Gespin approached this band of unearthly hunters. As he closed, he noted that they were laughing and speaking gaily to one another as they worked, their language unknown to Gespin. One of the figures turned to Gespin with a smile, and he observed that the creature was broadly human-like in appearance, with fine sharp features. The creature’s hair was the colour of wet treebark, and their eyes were an uncanny violet-purple.

A small silver cup was thrust towards Gespin, held in the creature’s elegant pale hand. Numbly, Gespin took the cup, which was brimming with a milky-white liquid. Before he had a chance to think twice, he drained the offered cup, the liquid burning his throat and chest like strong brandy as he drank.

Seemingly impressed by Gespin’s willingness to share a toast with them, the creature switched to the Common tongue, and told Gespin that they’d be assembling at the moongate for a party four days hence, and that Gespin was invited. Gespin could only cough in response, his eyes watering, as the creatures began to carry away the field-dressed stag. The creature’s pale hand stretched out again, and pressed something flat and sharp into Gespin’s own palm.

“You’ll need this”, said the creature. “It will mark you as a friend amongst our people”. Gespin’s head spun from the sheer otherworldiness of the situation, as well as the effects of the drink. As the last of the creatures disappeared into the forest, Gespin looked down at his palm, revealing a bloodied silver arrowhead, the same one that had brought low the white stag.

Dazed as he was, Gespin kept enough of his senses to know that he didn’t want to linger around the gut pile from the stag, for fear of the forest predators that would be attracted to such a lure. Gespin stumbled onwards as if in a dream, until at last he came to a moss-covered stone bridge, which spanned across a fast-flowing river.

-

At the time of writing this post-game narrative, I have actually finished my short solo campaign. This campaign ran from 27/03/26 to 07/04/26. I completed about five seperate “sessions” during this time. I found the game itself to be quite enjoyable, and it also allowed me to “use up” some of the ideas I’ve had rattling around in my head for a long time, in the sense that I’ve been able to actually engage with these ideas in the context of actual play, instead of just having them as an ephemeral idea in my head, or in one of my notebooks.

On the other hand, I’ve found the “post-game write-up” portion of solo gaming to be undesirably time-consuming, so I don’t think I’ll go to the trouble of going through and doing a write-up for the full events of the campaign. I’m aware that a write-up or a session report isn’t strictly necessary for solo play, but as I’ve recently discussed with some other solo play enthusiasts, I sort of feel like writing a session report gives my solo gaming a greater sense of legitimacy in my own mind, rather than having it be nothing more than “guided daydreaming”.

In any case, I hope you enjoyed this write-up, which covered the events of the first session. As of right now, I don’t have anything “in the works” in terms of writing or gaming, other than my ongoing play-by-post game. That being said, I never know when inspiration will strike, so keep an eye open for future posts.

Until next time, happy gaming.

This exhibition of narrative fiction will be a bit different from my recent posts, which have mainly consisted of actual play reports, or general commentary on the subject of old-school D&D.
I hope that you enjoy this as much as you have my previous writing, and as always, I invite you to comment and contribute on what you read below.

“Maldito ladrona!”

“Get your hands off me!

The sharp retort was answered by the sound of a hard blow and a shout of pain, clearly audible through the thin walls of the apartment complex. On the concrete landing outside, Dalton and Wright looked at each other impassively, as the sound of a more serious struggle began from within the apartment.

“He’s distracted. Should we hit ‘im now?”

“Just a second, Dalton.”

From inside, they heard something fragile shatter. A plate, or more likely a bottle. There were two enraged voices, talking over one another, both rising in intensity. With the male voice, Dalton could make out some words and phrases in Spanish, none of them flattering. The woman’s voice was more indistinct, rising suddenly to a frightened, wordless shriek as the sound of heavy, angry footsteps rapidly crossing the floor reached the men on the landing.

“Wright?”

“Now.”

The flimsy apartment door splintered inward, the impact of Dalton’s heavy boot forcing the locking bolt clear through the soft wood of the door jamb. As the door flew open, Wright shouldered past Dalton, surging into the room like an enraged grizzly. In a glance, he took in the scene. The rooms occupants had been caught off guard, and were still frozen in a moment of shock and uncertainty.

A bald, heavyset Hispanic man, naked except for an unbuttoned blue work shirt, white boxer shorts, and a gold chain around his bull neck, was clutching the slender forearm of a naked young woman kneeling on the stained carpet. The man’s other hand was cocked back behind his shoulder, clenched into a tight fist. With her one free hand, the kneeling woman clutched the left side of her face. In her other hand, the one restrained by the Mexican, a battered leather wallet flopped open, loose change spilling onto the floor. Even from where he stood, Wright could make out the dark train tracks on the woman’s pale, upturned wrist.

Behind the pair, an 18-inch portable TV sat precariously at the end of a chipped, knee-high coffee table. On screen, two sweating middleweight boxers exchanged furious punches, driving their red-gloved fists into each other. The rest of the cheap table was occupied by empty bottles and drug paraphernalia, with more of the same strewn haphazardly across the floor nearby.

Wright was the first to move, taking two quick strides towards the man. Before he could close the distance fully, the man gave the woman a forceful shove, sending her stumbling towards Wright. Sidestepping her, Wright made a grab for the back of the man’s shirt collar as he fled into the kitchen area, brushing the worn fabric with his fingertips but failing to secure a proper grip.

The man crashed through the hanging curtain of brightly coloured beads that partitioned the apartment, tearing a few loose in his haste. Having entered the apartment just after Wright, Dalton followed close behind him, the technicolour plastic beads swept roughly aside as he pursued the Mexican into the kitchen. Dalton arrived just in time to see the man snatch up a cheap Hi-Point pistol that had been sitting on the kitchen benchtop. Before he could turn and bring it to bear, Wright cannoned into him at full tilt, driving him face-first into the thin wall of the apartment. In the crush, Wright drove his fist into the man’s kidney, eliciting a grunt of pain. He was about to follow up with a vicious rabbit punch to his pinned opponent, but before he could strike, the man thrust himself off the wall with a roar of effort, lashing out blindly with a wild elbow as he did. The desperate elbow strike caught Wright high in the chest, just left of the sternum. It wasn’t a decisive blow, but it gave the man enough of an opening to brace himself against the wall and shove Wright away with his forearm.

As Wright staggered back a pace, Dalton slipped past him, weaving deftly through the narrow confines of the kitchen. Dalton had been one step behind Wright as he had entered the kitchen, pausing only to seize a heavy cast-iron skillet from a wire wall hook. He smashed this skillet down hard onto the head of the Mexican, just as he began to raise his pistol. The Hi-Point clattered to the tile floor as the Mexican went limp, slumping senseless against the base of kitchen wall in a crumpled heap. Blood oozed from a wide laceration in his scalp.

“Fuck’s sake Dalton, we weren’t meant to kill him, just teach him a lesson.”

“He ain’t dead, he’s still breathing, look.”

Dalton gestured with the skillet. The Mexican was breathing shallowly, his barrel chest rising and falling.

“Well, what the fuck do we do now?”

“Get ‘im up, bring ‘im through to the other room.”

Together, grunting and sweating and cursing, the two men dragged the Mexican’s unconscious form back through into the living room, laying him down on the threadbare couch.

“Where’s the girl?”

“She bolted.”

“Fuck. Do you think she’ll go to the cops?”

“Nah.”

“What about this fat fuck?”

“Just gimme a minute, will ya? I’m tryna think.”

“Hurry the fuck up. This guy is starting to come around.”

“Hold on, I’ll look for something to tie him up or something. Get the gun from the kitchen.”

Turning, Wright crossed the room, entering into the darkened attached bedroom. As soon as he pushed open the thin door that separated it from the living room, he was met by the smell of sex, cheap perfume, cigarette smoke and skunk weed. The only light came in narrow white slits through the closed aluminium blinds on the far wall. Wright groped along the wall for the plastic lightswitch and flicked it on. The solitary, dust-coated lightbulb flickered on, illuminating the room in a sickly incandescent glow.

Most of the dingy bedroom’s space was taken up by a stained, bare mattress on a cheap wire bedframe, and a freestanding plywood wardrobe. Wright moved to the wardrobe and opened it, hoping to find a belt to use as a restraint. Sweeping aside a rack of white undershirts and button-front flannels, Wright spotted a black canvas belt sitting coiled on a shelf. As he reached for it, he noticed a loop of black fabric snaking across the floor, visible from underneath a pile of dirty laundry. Wright kicked the laundry aside, revealing a black nylon gym bag, stuffed into the back corner of the wardrobe.

Kneeling, he hurriedly unzipped the gym bag, revealing it to be stuffed full of crisp green banknotes, neatly arranged in half-inch stacks. Each stack was bound with a red paper currency strap, indicating the amount of money each stack contained. Wright turned away, drawing in breath to call Dalton, when the crack of a single gunshot rang across the apartment.

“He tried to grab the gun!”

Dalton stood over the Mexican’s lifeless body. Blood flowed freely from a ragged exit wound in the man’s skull, pulsing out in rhythmic spurts, soaking into the carpet almost immediately.

“Fuck Dalton, I told you we weren’t supposed to kill him.”

“I didn’t mean to shoot ‘im, he woke up and attacked me.”

“Couldn’t you have just hit him again?”

“I told you, he tried to grab the gun. It just went off.”

“Everyone would have heard that shot. The cops are probably on their way.”

“We have to get out of here. I’ll need to wipe down the room for prints an-”

“Wait a second, I need to grab something.”

As Wright doubled back into the bedroom, Dalton grabbed a dishcloth from the kitchen and began wiping down anything the pair had touched. Dalton tossed the cloth to Wright as emerged from the bedroom, lugging the black gym bag.

“The fuck is that?”

“I found it in the wardrobe. There’s at least... I don’t know, there’s a lot of money in here.”

“Let me see.”

“Not now, we have to leave! Take this to the car, I’ll be down in a second.”

Dalton slung the bag over his shoulder and disappeared through the door, the sound of his hurried footsteps echoing against the cold, grey concrete of the apartment stairwell. Wright was running the cloth over the pistol when he was interrupted by the sound of a vibrating mobile phone. He scanned the area, eventually spotting it wedged, half-concealed, between one of the seat cushions and the back of the couch. The brief text message was from a contact named “C” and simply read “be there in 5 bro.”

“Shit!”

As Dalton slammed the car door closed, two brightly-coloured lowriders pulled up outside the apartment block. Both cars were packed with laughing, gesturing Hispanic men. Their cars had barely come to a full stop before they were out, sauntering towards the main entrance of the apartment. As the last of the men disappeared into the building, Dalton pulled his phone from his pocket. Quickly, his thumbs danced over the screen, sending a warning text through to Wright.

Wright felt his phone vibrate as he tossed the cloth into the sink. He had thoroughly wiped down anything the pair had touched, destroying any traces of fingerprints that might lead back to them. He didn’t pause to check his phone, instead turning and hurrying towards the apartment door, hoping to escape before…He froze as he heard the sound of footsteps moving down the hallway that led to the apartment, accompanied by the voices of multiple men, speaking rapidly in Spanish. Cut off from the main exit, he turned away from the door and darted back into the kitchen, rushing over to the large window that led out onto the exterior fire escape. With a grunt, he slid it up and open, clambering clumsily through just as he heard the apartment door swing open behind him, followed by a shout of surprise. Using the iron railing for support as he scrambled clear of the window, Wright fled down the fire escape at a crashing run, trading stealth for speed as he put distance between him and the new arrivals.

As Wright neared street level, pursuit was announced by the sound of heavy footfalls on the fire escape above. Wright bounded down the last flight of stairs, his momentum carrying him into a wild sprint as he fled down the alleyway. Behind him came the sharp crack of a gunshot, the bullet gouging the brickwork to his left as it skipped off the alley wall. Ducking his head, Wright zig-zagged madly as he rushed towards the end of the alley, a second bullet whipping past and glancing off a rusting dumpster with a metallic clang. Clearing the alley, Wright surged into the parking lot, heart hammering as he made a beeline towards Dalton’s car.

The car was in motion when he came within reach, already nosing towards one of the carpark exits. Tearing open the rear door, Wright threw himself across the backseat in a clumsy tangle of limbs. His pursuer, a whippet-thin youth, had just appeared in the mouth of the alley, and was now rushing towards the car, brandishing a chrome-plated pistol.

More shots rang out, some striking the metal bodywork like hailstones. Wright reached between the seats, clawing at the handle of the glove compartment. It popped open, revealing a snub-nosed revolver. He snatched it up and brought it to bear, aiming back through the open car door. The youth was within strides of the car now, attempting to rush in and dispatch the pair from point blank range.

Wright fired first, his snub-nose driving a .38 round into the youth’s chest. It wasn’t an immediately fatal wound, not by a long sight, but it was enough to throw off the youth’s aim, enough so that his shot went wide, shattering the glass of the driver-side window and lodging in the grey plastic of the dashboard, rather than in Dalton’s skull.

At that moment, the car lurched forward, the engine roaring as Dalton accelerated towards the car park’s exit. A moment’s glance in the side-view mirror showed the youth sitting on the rough asphalt, both legs stretched out straight in front of him. One arm was straight, hand palm-down on the concrete, supporting him in sitting upright, while the other hand clutched the site of his wound, where a spreading patch of dark blood was soaking into his baggy shirt front. And in the next heartbeat he was gone from view, as the car swung out of the car park, and sped away down the street with a screech of tyres.

I admit I had a fair bit of disdain for milestone XP, as I sort of viewed it as “XP handed out by referee fiat”. I felt that the use of this method of character advancement took agency away from the players, as it made them dependent on following the referee’s pre-set story if they wanted to advance.

However, in the course of a recent game, I found myself thinking "I've got more gold than I know what to do with”. From an in-world perspective, I felt as if acquiring further treasure was utterly pointless. My character already had more than enough money to live comfortably on for the remainder of their lives, and I had already outfitted the character and their retainers with the best possible weapons and equipment, including barded war horses for each of them. It occurred to me that much of the in-world incentive for continuing to adventure would have abated for these characters. They had already had their “rags to riches” story. They were already successful. Anything that they wanted, they could buy it.

There was absolutely no reason for these characters to continue adventuring, especially in the context of delving down into dark dungeons in search of treasure. There’s easier ways to make money, especially for someone who has already accumulated significant financial capital and personal renown. Even if a character wanted to continue earning their living by their sword-arm, I’m sure they could find a position as a mercenary, bodyguard, or some other kind of “fighter for hire”. For characters like Magic-Users and Clerics, there are even more avenues for employment, avenues that are associated with substantially less personal hardship and risk.

In essence, once a player character has accumulated enough gold, it loses its value as an incentive for further adventure. At this point, “accumulated GP” is effectively a “high score” counter on the player’s character sheet. Now, for the next part of this post, we’ll need to consult the images below.

From these two excerpts from the OD&D rules, we observe that the absolute “maximum load” a character can carry is 3000 coins worth of weight. Ordinarily, much of this carrying capacity would be taken up by the weapons, armour, and equipment that the character is carrying into the dungeon with them, but for the sake of making the math easy in this example, we will assume that the character is carrying nothing else to encumber them, allowing them to carry a full load of 3000 gold coins.

Now, we can observe that there’s a certain point in the character advancement table where the sum of 3000 GP stops being very significant, when compared to the requirements for advancement to the next character level. Your opinion may vary, but I’d say that past the “Swashbuckler” level for Fighting-Man, an extra 3000 GP means fuck all. For Magic-Users, I’d say the threshold is at the Thaumaturgist level, and for Clerics, it’s Bishop level. It seems to me, anything past 15,000 is where the numbers start to “lose meaning”, when you consider that you’re hauling (at most) 3000 GP at a time, at least if the treasure is made up of standard gold coins.

In my view, once a character is past this 15,000 XP mark, picking up additional gold is largely pointless in terms of its “value-for-weight” ration, in the same way that even low-level characters will leave copper pieces where they lie, as they’re not worth the trouble of gathering up and carrying with the party. Once you have reached this stage of character advancement, it is my opinion that large amounts XP should be derived from carrying out great and notable deeds, rather than from grubbing around in the dungeon searching for money to pay the monthly upkeep costs.

Once a character is a Hero (or above), their adventures should look more like Perseus slaying Medusa, Beowulf tearing Grendel’s arm off, Bard shooting down Smaug, Hercules hacking the heads from the Lernean Hydra, and so on. Their adventures should feel larger than life, mythical in scope and challenge. Once characters are at these higher levels, their adventures should not consist of Warhammer-esque tales of rat-catchers and town drunkards chasing down mangy rat-men in the city sewers, emerging crusted in filth with only grimy coins to show for it, regardless of how many coins may have been accumulated under these circumstances. We can all agree that it is far more interesting for characters to get 1200 XP from killing a 12 HD fire giant, than it is for them to grub up 1200 gold coins from a battered treasure chest guarded by 2d6 giant rats.

Consider the fact that “small change” is never tracked in the course of play. When characters are resupplying in town, they don’t buy individual arrows, crossbow bolts, or sling bullets to replace those that they’ve used in the previous delve, they just buy another “full quiver” of whatever ammunition is applicable for their weapon of choice. I’m sure every referee can think of 1000 other examples of where players will basically just say “keep the change” to the shopkeeper as they grossly over-pay for mundane goods out of convenience, and for the sake of saving time. Of course, this is entirely appropriate, as actual real-life game time is the most important game resource, no one wants to spend half of the session quibbling and bean-counting.

This is not to suggest that the idea of seeking treasure should be entirely discarded once the player characters reach a certain level of advancement. Rather, the focus of the “treasure-hunting” aspect of the game should shift to the pursuit of what I’ve taken to calling “legendary treasures”, a term lifted from Book 3: The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures".

In my mind, these are unique “named treasures” that have a huge significance in the game world, beyond their immense material value. Something like the Arkenstone from The Hobbit comes to mind, as does the Golden Fleece sought by Jason and the Argonauts. Some contemporary examples include the famous “cursed” diamonds, the Hope Diamond and the Koh-i-Noor Diamond. Once a player character is past the low levels, these are the only sorts of treasures that the characters should be concerning themselves with. If the “treasure-hunting” part of the game is going to continue to be interesting to the players, then the stakes must be raised! As mentioned above, “ordinary” gold coins simply aren’t going to cut it anymore! They might as well be copper pieces as soon as the character gets past fourth level!

A piece of treasure is infinitely more interesting if it is extremely valuable, extremely portable, and extremely “notable” in terms of appearance. These guidelines for treasure lead to a campaign that remains enjoyable and dynamic at higher-levels, and does not degenerate into a boring, grinding, logistics-focused slog. You might think a “Smaug’s lair” dungeon with millions of loose coins and mundane treasures scattered across the floor is a good idea, but in the context of an actual game, the likely outcome is the degeneration of the game into a spreadsheet-driven logistics exercise, where game time is spent determining the exact carrying capacity of a mule, rather than engaging in exciting pulp fantasy adventure.

That’s all from me for now, readers. I hope you enjoyed this post, and I welcome your comments and contributions. My next “major project” in the gaming sphere is some solo gaming, so expect a post-session write-up of that coming out at some time in the near future.

Until then, happy gaming.

My immediate role in the referee’s campaign was to scour a local dungeon for the Wand of Death, a powerful magical artifact. A keyed dungeon map was provided, so I looked through my roster of characters, assembled a party, and began the game at the dungeon entrance. This was to be a solo game, with the referee’s intent being that my actions would have an impact on the main campaign.

My assembled party for this dungeon delve consisted of Lareth the Beautiful (Anti-Cleric 5), Toad-Knight Athona (Fighting-Man 5), Jorman the Slayer (Fighting-Man 4), and William the Crow (Fighting-Man 1). Most of these names will mean little to most readers (unless of course we’ve played together while I’ve been using one of these characters), but as you might expect from characters of 4th and 5th level, they’ve been through some serious scrapes.

One thing I’ve come to find enjoyable when playing characters is to record their various accolades and epithets on their character sheets. I find that this is a useful way of celebrating and memoralising the memorable moments I’ve experienced while playing that particular character. It’s cool to look through the list of accolades of a high-level character, and be reminded of the interesting stuff you’ve done in the course of advancing your character to those lofty heights. The well-known “Bob the Fighter” image sums this up well.

However, I’m sure you’re not here to listen to me talk about my precious characters, you’re here for a dungeon delve, and that’s exactly what you’ll get.

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The party gathered at the front entrance to the dungeon. It was an old ruined temple, the Tomb of Kahseneb. There wasn’t much description of the exterior of the dungeon key, but it was located in a desert on the overland hex map I’d been given, and the map icon was roughly triangular in shape, so I naturally imagined this structure as a crumbling pyramid, something right out of a travel brochure.

The party didn’t waste any time. They knew what they were here for. William the Crow lit up a torch, and they made their way inside, descending a flight of wide stone steps. As soon as they reached the bottom of the stairs, they were met with opposition. A pair of animated marble statues slowly emerged from the shadows of the tomb, both armed with stone scimitars.

The party paused at the threshold to the room, and Jorman drew his revolver (don’t ask how he aquired it, it’s a long story). Taking careful aim, Jorman opened fire on the nearest statue, striking it once, and missing the second time. Ears ringing from the sound of gunfire, the party gave ground steadily, retreating back up the stairs as the statues gave chase. Jorman fires twice more before the party reached the entrance, further damaging the leading statue, but the statue’s relentless advance continued. The party were forced back outside into the sunlight, and only then did the statues cease their pursuit. The heavily-damaged statue paused for a moment in the open doorway of the tomb, giving Jorman a chance to fire off his last two shots. This final pair of bullets struck the statue, shattering it into countless inert pieces.

Peering into the darkness, the party saw no sign of the second statue. Jorman discarded his now-empty pistol, having little hope of finding more suitable ammunition in a campaign world that’s more “vanilla fantasy” in theme. Still, it was fun while it lasted. Readying their weapons, the party descends again. In the entrance chamber, they again find the animated statue waiting for them, ready for battle. Lareth and Jorman piled into melee, while Athona hung back in reserve with William. I figured that Lareth and Jorman had suitable weapons for attacking a stone statue, given that they were respectively using a mace, and a greatsword with a stone-encrusted blade that handled more like a Japanese kanabo than an ordinary bladed weapon.

The melee was wrapped up quickly, with Lareth and Jorman being able to smash the statue to pieces without sustaining any damage to themselves. As the fight concluded, I rolled to determine if any wandering monsters had been drawn by the gunfire. The result was negative, so I surmised that they’d perhaps been scared off by the sound of the gunshots echoing through the tomb complex.

The party travelled east, finding a room with an iron chest. William levered it open with his crowbar, finding only copper coins inside. Poking at the grimy coins with the end of his crowbar, William was disgusted to see fat white maggots squirming amongst the coins. Not wanting to put his hand anywhere near these gross-looking grubs, William decided to upend the chest onto the floor, in order to search the bottom for secret compartments. Copper coins (and some wriggling grubs) spilled out onto the floor, along with something much more valuable. Half-buried amongst the coins, there was a circular golden amulet, with a thumbnail-sized sapphire in the centre. Jorman hooked this treasure from the floor with his sword, and pocketed it. No secret compartments or further hidden valuables were found in the chest, so the party continued on.

As the party returned to the main chamber, a enormous hairy spider (about the size of a full-grown wolf, perhaps a bit bigger) came rushing out from the darkness to the west, and leapt across the room at the party, dagger-sized fangs bared! The party were caught off guard, and it was only by the luck of the dice that Jorman wasn’t slain on the spot, as the spider’s venom-dripping fangs scraped across his armour, but failed to penetrate.

As the party came back to their senses, they jolted into action, hacking into the creature with their weapons. Between the efforts of Jorman and Athona, this spider was quickly splattered. At this time, I imagine that the layer of jagged grey stone that had encrusted the blade of Jorman’s greatsword was beginning to fracture and break off, given that he’d been using the weapon to batter some rock-hard stone statues. Bright steel was now visible in places underneath the cracked stony coating.

The party investigated the room the spider came from, finding six dead bandits. Searching them revealed 30 GP, hardly worth the time spent looting them. The party moved on, finding two seperate sets of stairs, one leading up, the other leading down. The party decided to clear the top floor first, before venturing into the depths.

Ascending the stairs, the party came to a wooden door, which they easily forced open. Faced with a passage running east-west, the party went right first, only to come to a dead end. The party had a pretty strong hunch that this was a secret passage of some kind, but they decided to leave this direction for later, and instead double-back and check out the other path.

After some time travelling in this direction, the party come to a room filled with large metal urns, all standing upright. Suspicious of a trap, William set down his torch, readied his bow, and loosed an arrow at one of the metal urns. The arrow glances off the urn with a metallic clang, and moments later, the metal lid of a nearby urn was pushed off from within, falling to the ground with a clatter. A serpentine head emerged from the urn, the head of a giant snake! The rest of the sinuous reptilian body quickly followed, as the giant snake slithered down the side of the urn, and began heading towards the assembled party. Lareth began uttering a spell, and extended his armoured hand towards the beast.

William pierced the snake with another arrow as it approached, following up with a second accurate shot in quick succession. The snake hissed in pain, but continued to advance. A heartbeat after the second arrow struck the snake, Lareth finished casting his spell. The air between Lareth and the snake seemed to shimmer for an instant, and suddenly the snake was reeling back, thrashing away across the floor as it was gripped by supernatural terror!

In the course of its frantic retreat, the snake knocked over several of the large metal urns. As the urns struck the ground, a hoard of silvery-white metal coins spilled from within. The snake fleeing disappeared into a crack on the far side of of the room, but not before being struck with one final arrow by William.

The party cautiously checked the urns that remained upright, tapping the outside with their swords before opening them. A few of the urns contained more of the same coins that were scattered on the floor. The party spent a turn gathering up the fallen coins (which they identified were made of platinum, rather than silver as they first thought), as well as those remaining in the urns. The party also retrieved several pieces of jewellery, that had been concealed in the urns.

After a turn spent resting, the party continued on, with Lareth carrying the sack of treasure. Coming to another door, the party heard muttered prayers in a Chaotic language coming from inside. After failing to force the door the first time, they succeeded on their second attempt. In the room beyond, they encountered a pallid ghoul, clad in the robes of a priest. The ghoul feigned friendliness, beckoning the party to come closer, but the characters were too seasoned to fall victim to this trick.

Lareth cast his “Command Undead” spell from the doorway, and the ghoul immediately became cowed and feel to his knees, crying out “my lord, forgive me, I didn’t know it was you”. With his head bowed in a prostrate position, the ghoul didn’t notice Jorman creeping closer. A moment later, Jorman’s sword swooped down, the jagged stone edge tearing through the back of the ghoul’s neck like an Aztec macuahuitl. The party continued, stepping over the body of the now-decapitated ghoul priest.

Lareth was struggling under the weight of his plate armour, combined with carrying the sack of 500 coins, so he passed the sack over to William (who was lightly-armoured), while he took hold of William’s torch. Coming to another door, they forced it open, revealing a huge room with a high arched ceiling, and two parallel rows of stone columns running up the length of the room. There as another door at the far end of the room, so the party went and kicked it in.

Inside, they found a strange hybrid creature, with the lower body of a lion, the wings of a hawk, and the upper body and head of a woman. In response to the party bursting in through her door, she gave a shrill scream of surprise and covered her nakedness with her hands, before quickly recovering her composure. The gynosphinx shrieked “don’t you know to knock, before barging in on a lady!”.

Lareth quickly apologised for the intrusion, and explained that the party were searching for the Wand of Death, this being their reason for entering the creature’s dungeon. Lareth offered one of the pieces of jewellery the party had acquired in the course of their expedition so far, in exchange for information relating to the Wand of Death’s whereabouts.

The gynosphinx likes this trade offer, and so tells Lareth that the Wand of Death is located amidst the hoard of the basilisk, which inhabits the dungeon’s bottom floor. The creature also tells Lareth that the elevator on this level is the easiest way to reach the basilisk’s lair, before offering to reveal more information, in exchange for more jewellery. The party declined this further offer, and departed the gynosphinx’s domain peacefully.

Knowing how deadly a basilisk can be, the party decided to return to town, and make some preperations before tackling this challenge. On their way out of the dungeon, they passed by the elevator that the gynosphinx mentioned. There were no further wandering monster encounters, so the party were able to escape the dungeon with no further bloodshed, ending the first delve of the evening.

I found that I was having a really good time with this solo game, like I was enjoying myself more than I expected I would. I decided to continue the game immediately, after the characters made a short stop in town to gather some supplies.

The party returned to the dungeon the following day, re-stocked on supplies, and with two retainers accompanying them. These two retainers (Bogvarth and Brindis) were carefully carrying a large silver mirror between them. The party made their way upstairs, passing through the secret door they had passed by the first time. After moving through the “column room” that they immediately recognised, they made their way to the elevator, and descended to the basilisk’s lair.

Stepping off the elevator, they were met by an uneasy silence. They wandered through lightless stone corridors for a while, encountering only broken chunks of humanoid statues, and scattered bones on the floor. Finally, they entered a room, and spotted a large six-legged lizard creature, which rose from where it had been sleeping, and turned its great alligator-like head towards the party.

The party had prepared for this. They averted their gaze, simultanously ducking behind the large silver mirror that was being carried by the two hirelings. There was a momentary flicker of neon-green light from the other side of the mirror barrier, and then the sound of heavy footsteps, coming towards the party. The basilisk had tried to use its gaze weapon, but had successfully resisted the effects of its own petrifying gaze. Finding its first course of action to be unsuccessful, the basilisk decided to enter into melee, and attempt to devour the party.

William’s arrows glance off the creature’s stony hide, causing no harm. Lareth strikes the creature with a strength-sapping spell, the little-used “Ray of Enfeeblement” from the Holmes Basic rules. The basilisk’s legs seem to buckle for a moment as the spell takes effect, but it lurches onwards, determined to tear the party asunder.

As the creature enters melee, Athona and Jorman strikeat it, seemingly to little effect. In retaliation, the creature fixes its huge jaws around Athona’s torso, her armour being crushed like a tin can as the creature exerts its monstrous bite force. With a whip of the creature’s powerful neck, Athona’s limp body is sent flying across the room, where it crashes into the stone wall, and slumps to the ground in a heap. Athona had been slain!

Lareth and Jorman fall back, again ducking behind the mirrored barrier carried by the retainers as the basilisk turns to them. I had ruled that the basilisk would make a gaze attack on every alternate round. On this second occaison, the basilisk made its saving throw again, and was not petrified. A new melee round commenced. Jorman inflicted some damage, and took some in turn. Lareth inflicted no damage, but managed to escape harm this round.

It was at this moment that I realised I had miscalculated the damage inflicted by the beast’s attack on Athona, as I had forgotten to take into account the effects of Lareth’s “Ray of Enfeeblement” spell. After a quick review of the hit points that would have been inflicted, compared to Athona’s HP, I found that Athona would not have been slain after all, and instead would be struggling onwards, with a mere 2 HP remaining.

With this correction made, I imagined Athona rising to her feet behind the creature, using her sword to help her stand, before plunging into the fray once more, bloodied but determined to fight to her last.

In the next round, the creature was once again unfazed by its gaze, having rolled exactly the result needed to save against petrification for the third time in a row. It looks like the creature will have to be slain “the old fashioned way”.

In the final round of melee, Jorman scored the killing blow, cleaving the beast’s head off, even as the last of the stony casing around his sword’s steel blade was sheared off by the force of the blow against the creature’s hard reptilian scales.

The party wasted no time in packing up the great haul of gold coins that were scattered around the beast’s nesting chamber. Like dragons, it seems as if the reptilian basilisk had an instinct for hoarding treasure. In addition to the gold coins, the party also discovered the Wand of Death amidst the basilisk’s hoard. With the treasure in hand, the party were preparing to leave, when they heard the scrape of metal on the stone floor.

Turning, the party saw a hulking minotaur standing at the entrance to the room, dragging a huge axe along the floor. The minotaur growled at the party, saying “you killed my pet”, but before it could take any aggressive action, Lareth struck the creature with a “Fear” spell, sending it fleeing in terror back into the darkness. Not wanting to spend any more time in the dungeons in their battered state, the party made their way back to the elevator, and ascended to the dungeon’s ground floor.

The party ran into a giant boring beetle on the way out, but Lareth cast a “Speak with Monsters” spell, and upon conversing with the beetle, informed it that it would likely be best off venturing down to the lower level, and devouring the corpse of the basilisk that the party had just killed. This was an agreeable course of action to the beetle, who got into the elevator, and allowed the party to send him down to the level below to feast on the basilisk’s remains. After this, the party was able to exit the dungeon with no further issues.

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All in all, this was a fun session to play through, as well as to provide a write-up for afterwards. I wasn’t planning on writing this much in the follow-up, but it just sort of happened. In future, I think I’ll try and keep my session reports much more succinct, but this was a useful exercise to get a better feel for solo play, something I haven’t done too much of at this time.

I have some ideas for a more involved solo play campaign, so keep an eye out for that in future. Thanks for reading, and hope to see you soon at the table.

As I have mentioned previously on a number of occasions, I find that many old-school D&D referees seem to have a strange fixation in common, that being an undue focus on book-keeping, bean-counting, and rules-lawyering in their games, rather than actually directing their attention to what’s actually worth playing out in detail in the course of a game session at the table. The well-known quote about a D&D session “being 20 minutes of fun condensed into four hours” comes to mind when I think about my experiences with these kinds of games.

With this in mind, I would like to put forward a potential alternative framework for old-school D&D games, one that I think would work to facilitate more enjoyable game sessions, while simultaneously discarding the undesirable elements discussed above. This post will be investigating the idea of treating the “low levels” of the game, namely character levels 1 - 3, as a completely standalone game system.

There is some precedent for this. The Holmes Basic and Moldvay Basic rulebooks only cover character advancement from levels 1 - 3, and yet both of these rulesets represent fully functional games, even when looked at independently from any supplementary material, such as the Cook / Marsh “Expert Set”, which is intended to be used in addition to Moldvay Basic.

I know that many will cry “mudcore” as they read this next paragraph, but I truly believe that there is serious value in running a “Basic only” D&D game. In this game, the referee could make use of either the Moldvay or Holmes rules (or a combination of both), in order to run their game. Mechanical character advancement would be restricted to third level at most. Once a character hits third-level, they’re considered to have “won the game”. At this point, the the player can roll up a new character and play again, perhaps trying out a different character class, race, or playstyle. Alternatively, they could decide to do something else with their life, aside from spending their time playing imaginary elfgames.

Should a player wish to continue playing their third-level character, they may find that there are many reasons to do so, as characters can advance in ways other than an ever-increasing reservoir of hit points. Characters can advance in power through gaining possession of powerful magic weapons and items, as well as through diegetic means such as acquiring influential allies, or by using their accumulated gold to assemble a mercenary warband. Other authors have already written extensively about this topic of in-world diegetic advancement, so I won’t retread that ground in this post.

I will mention that just because the player characters themselves can’t advance past third level in mechanical terms, there is no requirement that the referee abstain from including powerful monsters such as dragons, manticores, elementals and giants in their games. In a similar vein, the referee shouldn’t shy away from handing out powerful magic weapons and other magical items from the earliest levels. The referee should also be particularly generous when it comes to including consumable resources in their game, in the form of items such as potions, scrolls, magic wands, and the like.

I know that some may criticise this “Basic only” style of game as being too simplistic and minimalist, but in truth, I’m increasingly convinced that the “stripping-down” of D&D to the bare essentials isn’t a bad thing. Even in the early editions of D&D, I feel like so much “rules bloat” that quickly accumulates, particularly as time goes on, and various sourcebooks and other supplementary material are made commercially available. I feel like these extra supplements are primarily created for the material profit of the company producing them, and only serve to dilute and detract from the core essence of the game.

In my view, I truly believe that D&D works best as a pure “dungeon crawler”, where intrepid adventurers delve into a multi-layered dungeon complex full of fearsome monsters and deadly traps, with the overall aim of collecting as much treasure as they can, before escaping the dungeon and returning to civilisation with their spoils. I have previously described this mode of play as the “ur-game”, the headwater from which every other aspect of old-school D&D flows.

By its very nature, the constrained dungeon environment is highly conducive to facilitating desirable gameplay outcomes. Dungeon crawling in old-school D&D presents a strong focus on “risk-reward” gameplay and informed decision making based on the fictional context of the game world. In this paradigm, player characters are afforded plentiful opportunities for free-form creative problem solving, which typically leverages the use of teamwork to overcome the obstacles presented. Further, there is ample provision for fast-paced and highly-lethal combat, something that is certain to appeal to many players. When the aforementioned gameplay loop is so solid and compelling, it is no surprise that it has spawned an entire genre of tabletop and video games, as well as being represented in other forms of media.

In low-level D&D in particular, there is the added element of enjoyable suspense and tension that emerges from the “survival horror” aspects of the game, where the players must carefully manage their resources (torches, hit points, spell slots, surviving retainers, etc) as they progress through an environment that is actively hostile to to their character’s presence.

The key advantage to running D&D as a tabletop game, played with a human referee, is that it allows the game to be run as an true “immersive sim”, one with incredible depth and openness that cannot be matched by any computer game. As a referee, you have the ability to say “yeah, that would definitely work” when the players pull off something clever that you yourself hadn’t thought of ahead of time. The ability for a tabletop roleplaying game to organically evolve and adjust “on the fly” is one of the chief strengths of the medium, and this shouldn’t be overlooked.

I was initially planning on splitting this post into two seperate parts, but upon further reflection, I have decided to condense things, and combine all my notes into a single post. This last part of the post will contain my own “referee guidelines” that I use as reminders when making my dungeons, as well as some useful further reading that I have found to be worth further examination. As always, I welcome any contributions from my readers, and I hope you found something in this post that sparked some further thought and consideration in your own mind.

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Referee Reminders:

Core Gameplay Loop = Explore Dungeon, Acquire Treasure

Core Sources of Tension = Depleting Resources (torchlight, hit points, available spell slots, surviving party members, hands available to carry things) Wandering Monsters (deplete resources for limited gain, present significant danger) Presence of Traps and Hazardous Obstacles

Core Modes of Gameplay = Highly-lethal combat, creative free-form problem solving, teamwork, immersive sim elements. Keep it very fast-paced, keep it very clear. Make use of encounter tables and other “random generators” to maintain impartiality and encourage randomness.

Dungeon Design: Dungeons are porous, conflict between factions, make use of verticality, shortcuts, landmarks, hub areas, loops, interconnectivity, sight-lines and foreshadowing, “show the lock before the key”, multiple entrances and exits. Use sparse keying, strong theming, and avoid inter-level chokepoints. Lots of variety between floors. Keep dungeons dynamic, response and reactive through dungeon re-stocking, dungeons are not static. Maintain a strong sense of grounded “dungeon ecology”. Create emergent narrative through past dungeon history, combined with dynamic and evolving dungeon ecology.

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Further Reading:

https://icastlight.blogspot.com/2022/10/i-beat-moldvey-basic-d-and-leveling-to.html

https://icastlight.blogspot.com/2023/08/basic-is-still-expert-at-introducing.html

https://icastlight.blogspot.com/2023/08/the-d-in-my-head-in-only-6-load-bearing.html

https://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=27128&start=90

There is certainly an argument that a game needs a solid mechanical “backbone” to rely on, in terms of having established procedures and rules that allow the game to run smoothly. With this taken into account, I’ve found that there’s a lot of value to be had in entirely concealing the game’s mechanics from the players, and having the players focus on interacting with the game world in an entirely naturalistic manner, while the referee handles the mechanical elements of the game “behind the screen”.
In my own games, this is the approach I usually adopt when I’m running a play-by-post game, and in this format, I’ve found this method of refereeing to be highly conducive to fast, smooth, and immersive gameplay.

We can see some precedent for this style of play in some accounts of the earliest sessions of D&D, with players reporting that Gygax and Arneson would referee the game from behind a sight-obstructing obstacle, such as a filing cabinet with all the drawers opened, or a sheet of plywood with holes cut in it.

The primary obstacle to this style of play is that is requires a high degree of trust between the referee and the players in order to function well, as well as requiring an experienced, knowledgeable referee, who is capable of maintaining total impartiality. If these requirements are met, however, there are a number of notable advantages offered by this style of play, most significantly in the area of facilitating player and referee immersion, facilitating a high degree of player agency, and maintaining a fast pace of gameplay.

In my own case, I’ve found that Dungeons & Dragons is a game that very quickly becomes “more trouble than it’s worth”, in the sense that the actual gameplay experience at the table isn’t improved by additional effort put into planning and preparation for the game. Indeed, the best games I’ve ever ran have always been built off extremely minimal or zero prep.

In my recent games, I've really become sympathetic to the idea of stripping out many of the mechanical “working parts” of the D&D ruleset, and prioritising speed of play and player agency over everything else. For example, I think “counting squares” to determine movement distance is extremely overrated. This is one area where I’ve found that simply “eyeballing it” has been more than sufficient on every occasion.

Any decent referee is capable of considering the situation at hand, and ruling something to the effect of “the wargs that are pursuing you are way faster than you are, but since you had a short head start, you’ve got a single round to ready an action before they reach you. Let me know if you’re casting a spell, preparing to unleash some missile fire as they close in, or making any other preparations” or whatever is appropriate in the context of the game world.

I remember when I used to run tabletop games with my friends in high school, I’d add in many additional “ad libs” to the events that were occurring in-game. There wasn’t official provision for these additions in the rules, but I found that they made the game world seem so much more genuine and “alive”, rather than just being something set up as a backdrop for mechanical gameplay.

For example, if I had two characters fighting with swords, and one of the combatants rolled very high on their “to hit” roll, but then immediately rolled very low when determining how much damage their attack inflicted, I would often decide to make up some additional effect on the spot, something like “you give your adversary a shallow horizontal cut across the forehead, causing blood to run freely into his eyes, which will impair his vision and cause him to take a penalty on his next attack roll” or whatever else fit the situation.

These outcomes weren’t being drawn from a pre-existing critical hit table or something like that. Rather, it simply emerged organically, as I found myself really leaning into the “oracular power of the dice”, interpreting the results of the dice in a more open and “freeform” manner, and then describing what was going on in the game world based off that.

I recall one particularly memorable moment where a fight broke out in a smoky, dingy, crowded tavern. A player tried to give an opponent an overhead blow with their sword, only to find their sword blade getting stuck in a wooden crossbeam on the low tavern ceiling. Immediately afterwards, the opponent their character was fighting tackled them against the bar, leading to a wild brawl as both characters began grabbing bottles, flagons, and tankards, and started smashing each other with these improvised weapons. Meanwhile, other characters were getting thrown through tables, grabbing up wooden stools to fight with, and generally causing mayhem in a way that wasn’t strictly bound to the combat rules as they were outlined in the book. Altogether, this whole event was so lively and imagination-firing, and this “liveliness” was largely due to the more freeform, improvised, “made up on the spot” nature of my rulings, with the dice rolls acting as a general guideline that helped shape my rulings as I made them in the moment.

I have observed that this more “freeform” style of refereeing is commonly seen amongst referees who have been playing and running games for many years. It seems to me, that the “hidden truth” of tabletop gaming is that the game system you’re playing is of very little importance, compared to the importance of the referee and players having good chemistry with one another.

This post turned out lengthier than anticipated, but I’m glad I’ve written it up. As always, I welcome any contributions from my readers, and I encourage you to contribute in the comment section below, as well as on the usual Discord servers. Lastly, I would definitely recommend checking out the “further reading” section below, as I have found these sources to be particularly interesting, and of relevance to this topic.

Until next time, readers.

Further Reading:

https://darkwormcolt.wordpress.com/2018/09/17/professor-mar-barkers-rpg-rules-in-full-perfected/

https://hillcantons.blogspot.com/2010/10/mar-barker-on-rules-lite.html

https://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2012/07/helgacon-v-outdoor-spoliation.html

The recent play-by-post game featured a combination of dungeon-crawling and wilderness hex exploration. Overall, I would say that the game was successful, but there were a few aspects of gameplay that I felt could benefit from further examination and revision. The main issue I had with the overland travel system that I used was that it greatly diminished the player’s agency, as their success (or lack of it!) in navigating through the overland environment largely came down to a dice roll, rather than player skill or decision-making.

I was using the Outdoor Survival “getting lost” rules to determine how the player characters deviated from their desired path when the dice determined they had become lost in the wilderness. In conjunction with these rules, I used the following table from The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures to determine if the characters became lost while travelling, as well as to determine if they encountered a monster or wild animal. Since the party were adventuring in a dense tropical jungle, I used the values for the “swamp” column.

The outcome of this was that the party spent a lot of time lost, blundering blindly through the jungle, going in circles, and randomly running into monsters, and occasionally stumbling across a lair, settlement, or point of interest. From the referee’s perspective, I found this to be pretty undesirable. In contrast to wilderness exploration, I have found that the “intended gameplay loop” of D&D is much more clearly perceived in the context of a dungeon crawl, especially with “gold for XP” serving as a “baked-in” objective that the player characters can effectively engage with, and have this engagement be rewarded with mechanical character advancement.

I feel like if a referee wanted to run a game that was heavily focused on hex crawling, it would be better to use an alternative means of character advancement, such as “hexes explored for XP” or points of interest discovered for XP”. Indeed, I have previously considered the idea that any kind of “hex exploration” gameplay or similar instances of overland adventuring should simply be split off into its own standalone game, entirely seperate from (but broadly compatible with) Dungeons & Dragons.

In this seperate mode of play, the main focus of the game would be the player characters leading medium-to-large bodies of men (soldiers of various kinds, as well as support staff, non-combatants, etc) on exploratory journeys into the fantastical wilderness, in search of points of interest (clearing out monster lairs, investigating the rumoured locations of legendary treasures, scouting land to determine its suitably for constructing a castle, etc). The player characters themselves would be powerful warrior, wizards, and other figures of note, who have established somewhat of a name for themselves through their previous exploits.

In my mind, I feel like this style of gameplay would work best as a boardgame, something like Source of the Nile, or the video games Curious Expedition or Sunless Sea, where you’re sort of “playing as” the overall expedition as a whole, rather than a specific individual character. Maybe your “leader character” could be called upon on special occasions, like coming out to duel a powerful enemy in single combat, or something like that. Perhaps this alternative mode of play / alternative game could be called “Expeditions & Explorers”, or something like that.

If a referee didn’t want to go to this degree of effort, then I think it would be best to run any overland travel as a point crawl. Indeed, as I have looked into this matter further, I have come across a wealth of information that has soundly convinced me that pointcrawling is the way to go. I have linked a number of relevant blogposts and forum discussions at the conclusion of this post, which I sincerely feel are worth going through for any referee, especially those who are looking to run any sort of overland or “hex-crawling” game in the near future.

In the course of writing this blogpost, I considered going into a more detailed explanation about why I am now leaning towards point-crawling as opposed to hex-crawling, but I feel like if I were to do this, I would only be repeating the excellent content that has already been created in the additional blogposts linked below.

I will undoubtedly return to this list of resources again in future, as I prepare for my next game in which they’re applicable. As always, I hope that you will also get good use out of them.

Until next time, happy gaming.

Further Reading:

https://espharel.blogspot.com/2020/11/osr-how-big-should-your-open-world-be.html

https://wizzzargh.blogspot.com/2018/01/how-many-hexes-should-my-hexcrawl-have.html

https://silverarmpress.com/why-i-use-point-crawls-more-than-hex-crawls/

https://silverarmpress.com/the-wilderness-is-a-dungeon-jaquaysing-your-rpg-sandbox-setting/

https://silverarmpress.com/down-with-the-6-mile-hex-a-modest-proposal/

https://coinsandscrolls.blogspot.com/2019/06/osr-sienas-6-mile-hex.html

https://xbowvsbuddha.blogspot.com/2011/09/this-is-what-1-mile-hex-has-in-it.html

https://steamtunnel.blogspot.com/2011/09/how-much-adventure-in-one-6-mile-hex.html

https://beyondfomalhaut.blogspot.com/2019/04/blog-shallow-and-deep-wilderness.html

https://beyondfomalhaut.blogspot.com/2018/01/blog-formless-wilderness.html

https://trollsmyth.blogspot.com/2011/09/hex-mapping-part-14-what-do-i-see.html

https://harbingergames.blogspot.com/2014/06/modern-minds-and-medieval-distances.html

https://harbingergames.blogspot.com/2020/04/if-your-torches-burn-for-only-one-hour.html

https://hillcantons.blogspot.com/2012/05/unbearable-dullness-of-dnd-wilderness.html

https://tenfootpole.org/forum/index.php?threads/wilderness-adventures.26/

https://osrsimulacrum.blogspot.com/2020/04/making-wilderness-play-meaningful-some.html

https://odd74.proboards.com/thread/786/wilderness-architect

Of course, we know from the post-1974 supplements and later editions that Gary’s intention was for Clerics to be restricted to only using blunt weapons. However, when the 3 LBB are read as a standalone work, there is provision for Clerics being afforded the use of non-magical swords, spears, axes, and every other type of weapon.

At the present time, I’m sort of “on the fence” about this issue. On one hand, I like the idea of players being able to play as the archetypal “Crusader” or sword-wielding holy knight, but on the other hand, I recognise that giving the Cleric access to additional weapon types results in the Fighting-Man “having their toes stepped on” in a sense, given that Clerics can now use bows, spears, swords, and various other weapons, all of which have their own advantages on the battlefield, even if they are not magical in nature.

Again, I’m still deciding which way I want to rule this issue in my own game, I would be interested in hearing what others have to say about this topic. I wonder, would a wooden stake be permitted to be used by a Cleric? After all, it is a “pointed weapon”, and yet the image of a Cleric staking a vampire or other undead creature seems very thematically appropriate. I also notice that the amongst the “faithful men” that the Cleric attracts to their fortress, mounted crossbowmen and heavy cavalry are specifically mentioned, who would presumably be making use of piercing and cutting weapons. Hmmm, certainly a few things to consider here.

If you do want to adhere to the blunt weapon restriction in your own game, here are some in-world rationales you may like to provide to your players, rather than just leaning on “because that’s what it says in the book. As always, feel free to take it, leave it, or change it to suit your setting:

Clerics favour blunt weapons because they’re good for smashing up pagan idols and wrecking the temples of heretics.

Clerics favour blunt weapons because they’re good as a “peacekeepers weapon”. Yes, everyone knows you can can kill someone by smashing their head in, but something like a quarterstaff or a cudgel gives you a bit more flexibility to go “less lethal” than a sword or an axe would. This makes blunt weapons a good choice for a “man of Law” trying to keep the peace in a town or settlement, so that they can avoid accidentally hacking off a drunken farmboy’s arm while trying to subdue him during a tavern brawl.

Clerics favour blunt weapons because something like a quarterstaff or cudgel is a reasonable weapon for a pilgrim or travelling holy monk to carry on a journey, in order to defend themself from bandits, wild animals, or whatever else they might encounter on the trail. At the same time, these weapons aren’t “dedicated weapons” in the same manner as a sword, spear, battle-axe, or what have you. The Cleric is restricted to these more “simple weapons” in order to reflect that they’re a holy person first and foremost, rather than acting primarily as a warrior.

Clerics favour blunt weapons because they’re effective against the traditional enemy of Clerics, the undead. A arrow might just rattle around in the empty ribcage of a skeleton, but a mace will smash them into fragments. To translate this concept into mechanical terms, you could simply make all undead creatures immune to arrows and similar projectiles to start with, which I think is a good choice. In regards to blunt weapons doing more damage, I think it’s a common referee misstep to make this more complicated than it needs to be, with creatures taking half-damage from certain damage types and so on. This leads into further debate, where players insist that they’re “striking with the pommel of their sword” or “using the shaft of their spear like a quarterstaff”. This is undesirable in my view, as it leads to the erosion of the abstract nature of the OD&D combat system.

The way I do it instead, is that if there’s two skeletons, and they’re destroyed by non-bludgeoning means (swords, axes, spears, etc), then the damaged component parts of the two skeletons are ruled to be sufficiently intact to reform into one more skeleton. So, if you had six skeletons to start with, and destroyed them all with a sword, they’d reform into three skeletons, then if those three skeletons were destroyed, there’d be one skeleton remaining. Skeletons destroyed by bludgeoning weapons don’t reform in this way, as they are assumed to be smashed beyond their ability to self-repair.

Personally, I just like the idea that it’s simply a holy taboo, with no particular “logical” reason or rationale, like many things in various real-world religions (depending on your perspective, of course). For another fictional example, I like the holy taboos that the steppe people in the game “Pathologic” have, with only certain sanctified persons (including the primary player character) being permitted cut open bodies, whether they be of humans or animals. Overall, I feel like I’m coming around to the idea of Clerics being more like weird mystics or ascetcic priests rather than being “crusaders” or “paladins”.

Well, that’s all from me for the time being. Stay tuned for more, and until next time, happy gaming.

In mechanical terms, Elves have been handled a number of different ways throughout the various editions of D&D. In B/X, they’re very powerful, as they get all the benefits of a Fighter and a Magic-User simultaneously, acting sort of like a “spellsword” or “magic knight” type class, like you get in many fantasy computer games. The trade-off in B/X is the high experience costs they need to level-up, and of course the maximum level restrictions.

In 3 LBB OD&D, Elves are pretty weird, in that they can choose to be either a Magic-User, or a Fighting-Man, but not both at once, and they can consciously choose to “switch class” between adventures. This is something that’s quite different to anything that came later, and as far as I know, I don’t think this sort of interpretation has been used since in any computer games or even any other tabletop games. My game uses the 3 LBB as a mechanical chassis, so I was thinking about why Elves might have this “switch class” ability from an “in-world” perspective, and these are some of the concepts I came up with.

One of the first things that came to mind was the idea that being a successful “Fighting-Man” on the field of battle requires a particular mindset. I figure that when engaged in battle, a Fighting-Man’s conception of the world and associated thought patterns are very oriented towards a practical, physically-oriented, and tangible understanding of things that are occurring in the immediate material world. The Fighting-Man is concerning themself with tactics, logistics, strategy, as well as the moment-to-moment, instinctive, hot-blooded decisions made in the heat of battle, like “feint high, thrust low”. I feel that this sort of mental state is particularly contradictory to how I feel a Magic-User would need to mentally engage with the world, if they are going to be able to effectively perform their magic. I figure that if a Magic-User wants to successfully cast their spells, especially in a heated situation like on the battlefield, or in a dungeon, they’d need to keep a cool head, and adopt a very detached, analytical, intellectual mindset in order to flawlessly recite the previously-memorised occult incantations, while simultaneous performing the precise arcane hand gestures, all the while vividly visualising whatever the spell effect might be, and wholeheartedly believing that such a supernatural effect will occur, as a result of your own trained intellect and focused willpower. Aside from this more academic, analytical “memorise and apply the formula” side of things, I feel like a Magic-User’s mindset also has to be suitably receptive to the immaterial, the metaphysical, the abstract, the non-physical, the “wishy washy” ebb and flow of aether / mana / Vancian spell-demons / however it works in your setting.

I think you can see how these two separate “mindsets” are not conducive to operating together, in fact, they’re directly contradictory. You can use this as a “in-world” rationale when a player asks you why their Magic-User can’t simply “pick up a sword” or why their Fighting-Man “can’t even learn a basic level one spell”. It’s not just a case of training or prior experience, it’s also because the art of the magician and the art of the warrior are mutually contradictory. In essence, you can have “Sword” or you can have “Sorcery”, but you can’t have both.

Unless you’re an Elf, of course, and this brings us back to the original topic. I figure that since Elves are immortal (as in many typical fantasy settings), or at the very least have a very long natural lifespan, they’ve had sufficient time and experience to painstakingly develop psychological techniques to allow them to maintain both of these separate mindsets, by intentionally developing a kind of “split-personality”, with a separate “mental compartment” for the Fighting-Man and Magic-User sides of things, that the Elf can consciously choose to switch between.

Of course, this requires going into a kind of meditative trance, which is part of the justification why they can’t do it “on the fly”. You could rule that it takes a week of downtime to switch over (in line with the week of downtime that’s stated to occur by default in OD&D), or you could rule it takes an overnight rest, just like how memorizing spells does. You could take this concept a little further, and have each of the two mental compartments (the Fighting-Man and Magic-User, respectively) have different personalities or alignments. That might be something that’s interesting to explore, further playing up the alien, ephemeral nature of the Elves.

When I initially brought up this topic on Discord, a number of other posters also brought forward a number of very interesting contributions. I’d like to share some of these contributions below, and link the respective blogs of the commentators.

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This first contribution came from Ozarker. For ease of viewing, I will reproduce what they wrote on Discord below, but a general link to this user’s blog can be found here: https://vyrhex.hexbuddy.com/blog.

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The second contribution comes from the user PurpleDruid, and can be found on their blog: https://shadowoversojenka.blogspot.com/p/elf-details-race-as-class.html

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Readers, I hope you enjoyed this lengthy post, and the additional contributions from other users. I encourage you to write in with your own thoughts and ideas, I would be keen to read them.

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I envisage the “Moon People” as a race of tall, gaunt humanoids, with a blueish-grayish complexion, completely black eyes, and no body hair, sort of a combination of the classic “Grey alien” archetype, and the Harkonnens from Villeneuve’s Dune movies. I expect there would be very little sexual dimorphism amongst them, and no-one really knows how they reproduce. I imagine they’d be mainly nocturnal, and especially active when the moon is full.

Culture wise, I’m imagining that they’re all reclusive weirdos at this point, essentially hiding out on the shattered remnants of their destroyed home continent, which suffered a great catastrophe and sank beneath the waves (in the style of Atlantis, Valyria, Mu, etc) about 200 years prior to the “present day” of the campaign setting. The main “trait” for the Moon People (other than being skilled sorcerers) is that they’re notorious slavers, who see everyone (including other Moon People of lower caste) as literal livestock.

I’ve written up a few details about a city right on the edge of the south-west coast of my campaign setting’s mainland, with this city being the closest (geographically speaking) to the sunken continent where the Moon People used to live. This coastal city is fiercely anti-slavery, because they were one of the main targets for Moon People slavers, who would raid the coastal settlements, capture people, and then drag them back to their weird alien homeland further to the west, where they’d do all sorts of Drukhari / Melnibonean-esque stuff to their captives.

That’s all I have for this strange race of sorcerers, and at the time of writing, I haven’t used them in actual play yet. However, I expect that will soon change, so keep an eye out for the debut of the Moon People.

I have come to the conclusion that vast majority of people would be better served playing a video game rather than getting into D&D, and that D&D is itself a kind of “fad”, with tabletop gaming being a largely obsolete means of personal entertainment.

If someone asked me about getting into D&D, I’d honestly just recommend that they go and play a few well-regarded fantasy RPG video games instead, whether that’s something directly D&D-adjacent like Baldur’s Gate 3, or something like Dragon Age, Divinity, Dragon’s Dogma, Gothic, Diablo, Pillars of Eternity, Skyrim (or another Elder Scrolls title), or whatever other game that would fit their personal taste. You see, the advantage with video games is their incredible versatility, and ease of use. All the player has to do is turn their computer or console on, and start playing. There’s very little “friction” in this regard, there’s really nothing that stands between the player, and immediate enjoyment of the game.

In contrast, D&D (and other tabletop roleplaying games) require a good deal more set-up and investment from all participants. If you’ve been in VC with me recently, then you’ve likely heard me say something like “to get a good D&D game, you have to tick five boxes”, in the sense that the players have to be good, the referee has to be good, the content (either the referee’s own content or a third-party module) has to be good, everyone has to be in the right mood / mindset to play, and the actual gaming time has to be arranged in a way that’s suitable for the referee and the desired number of players.

With video games, the player can play at their own pace, gaming at a time that suits them, and when they’re done for the night, they can just close the game, and pick up from there next time whenever they want. Further, video games have the advantage of handling the cognitive “heavy lifting”, as the player can see what’s happening on the screen with no effort, and the good graphics of many modern video games mean that there’s a strong visual stimuli that the traditional pen-and-paper game lacks.

When these factors are considered together, I find that I can’t help but have a pretty discouraging thought come into my mind, that being the thought that D&D and tabletop games as a whole could be considered a mere “stopgap” method of entertainment, something that was valuable before computers and the internet became widely available, but is now obsolete, and should just be consigned to the dustbin of history now that complex modern video games are available.

On an individual level, I recognise that I have my own reasons for playing and running old-school D&D, but I know that my interest in this particular topic is pretty niche, and isn’t representative of mainstream recreational interests. For most gamers, I really don’t see what benefit they’d get out of playing D&D, as compared to playing a video game. This is particularly apparent when you look at the amount of fun you get out of a video game for the amount of investment and effort you put in, compared to how that equation shakes out when you apply it to a tabletop game.

If I was chatting to someone, and they were really insistent on getting into gaming in a “non-video game” sense, I think I’d try to divert them into casual boardgaming of some kind, or alternatively, some kind of miniature wargaming (probably Warhammer or some such) to try and help the, “scratch that itch” of playing a physical game at a real table with friends, since the community for these activities seems so much larger and more readily accessible than the old-school D&D scene. If someone was still really pushing the “no, I want D&D!” impulse, I think I would advise them to stay away from everything other than 5E, because I figure that for most people, their priority would be being able to readily access games, as well as being able to seamlessly “drop into” the mainstream tabletop gaming subculture.

In regards to “Dungeon Masters”, or those who run tabletop games, I’m convinced that 90% of them are just frustrated novelists and “worldbuilders”, who lack the work ethic and staying power to actually write a book, create a video game, or make anything more ephemeral than a half-baked D&D session, which won’t even develop into a campaign, instead fizzling out shortly afterwards. These Dungeon Masters are nothing more than terminal “ideas guys”, who don’t have it in them to commit to making anything worthwhile, so they just run shitty D&D games as a way of venting that sense of frustration.

This whole thing might seem like ragebait, or like a troll post or whatever, but I know I’m being 100% genuine. I don’t mean to sound too dramatic, or to suggest that I have hard feelings about where I’ve found myself in this gaming hobby. In fact, I might write a companion post to this piece, talking about why I really enjoy playing old-school D&D, and the many unique merits of tabletop gaming as a whole. However, I felt like I needed to put down these cynical thoughts in writing, perhaps as a way to excise them from my mind.

Thank you for reading this piece, and I would particularly welcome your own thoughts and contributions, so I encourage you to leave a comment below.

I have previously spoken at length regarding my dislike for the endless proliferation of new character options (races, classes, abilities, etc) that seems to come part and parcel with almost every kind of tabletop gaming supplement or product, so I won’t repeat myself here.

However, it seems like I have contradicted myself (many such cases) today, as I have gone ahead and put together a couple of new playable classes for use with OD&D. These are the Druid, the Barbarian, and the Ranger. This creative endeavour was inspired by reading the description given for Druids in Greyhawk, seen below.

Using this description as a rough guideline, I put together a more fleshed-out version of the Druid, as well as a some Fighting-Man variants that would be suitable to represent the “barbaric followers” of the druid. Read on, and enjoy.

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Druid:

Prime Requisite: Wisdom

Advances As: Magic-User (Men & Magic)

Saves As: Cleric (Men & Magic)

Alignment Restriction: Neutral

Other Restrictions: Druids are subject to the same weapon and armour restrictions as Magic-Users (daggers only, and no armour permitted). May “free cast” any known spells in the same manner as Clerics.

Special: Druids may change shape three times per day, once each to any reptile, bird and animal respectively, from size as small as a raven to as large as a small bear.

Spell List:

1 - Commune with Nature (5th Level Druid Spell, Eldritch Wizardry)

2 - Faerie Fire (1st Level Druid Spell, Eldritch Wizardry)

3 - Growth of Animals (4th Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

4 - Growth of Plants (4th Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

5 - Locate Plants (2nd Level Druid Spell, Eldritch Wizardry)

6 - Pass Plant (5th Level Druid Spell, Eldritch Wizardry)

7 - Plant Door (4th Level Druid Spell, Eldritch Wizardry)

8 - Speak with Animals (1st Level Cleric Spell, Men & Magic)

9 - Speak with Plants (4th Level Cleric Spell, Men & Magic)

10 - Warp Wood (2nd Level Druid Spell, Eldritch Wizardry)

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Barbarian: As Fighting-Man, except adds a + 2 to their “to hit” rolls in melee due to their ferocity. May only wear leather armour, but may use a shield. Barbarians make their saving throws as if they were a Fighting-Man four levels higher (a sixth-level Barbarian is equal to a tenth-level Fighting-Man).

Ranger: As Fighting-Man, except may not wear plate armour. Rangers have a 2-in-6 chance of automatically detecting any secret door they pass. If a Ranger is actively searching for secret doors, their chance of successfully locating them is increased to 4-in-6. Rangers are skilled at moving stealthily through wooded terrain. While moving through this type of terrain, they have a 4-in-6 chance of surprise. While wielding a bow, Rangers may perform split-move and fire.

Rules for Split-Move and Missile Fire:

If an eligible unit is engaging in “split-move and missile fire”, it occurs during that unit’s Movement phase. The unit engaging in this type of manoeuvre may move up to one-half of their normal movement distance, immediately resolve their missile fire, and subsequently move out the remainder of their normal movement, so long as this latter phase of movement does not exceed one-half of their normal movement distance. While the unit engaging in “split-move and fire” is resolving their own missile attacks, they may simultaneously be fired upon by the opposing side’s missile troops, as part of the opposing side’s Pass-Through Missile Fire phase.

I have also included my Chainmail-inspired “Man-to-Man” combat rules for the sake of completeness, but I haven’t used these in a long time, instead preferring the d20-based “Alternative Combat System”, which I imagine is the default in the vast majority of old-school D&D games. I’ve found that the ACS is the best choice for the vast majority of combat situations that arise in the context of D&D, especially considering that the player characters can expect to be fighting such a wide variety of fantastical foes, ranging from swarms of smaller creatures (like giant rats, bugs, and so on), creatures that are roughly human-like in terms of shape and size (orcs, gnolls, lizard-men, etc), and creatures of great size, or distinctly non-human anatomical configuration (giants, dragons, slimes, beholders, etc). The ACS does well to handle this variety, which wouldn’t be required if the referee was running a “strict historical” type of game, or a game that was exclusively focused on simulating a particular type of combat (17th century unarmoured duelling with rapiers, for example).

However, I do feel like it’s important to apply a few choice rules when using the ACS, such as Weapon Priority, bracing spears, and giving some weapons a greater chance to inflict additional damage. These rules are explained in greater detail below, but they essentially combine to ensure that the use of two-handed weapons isn’t simply a mechanically-inferior “dud choice” in your old-school D&D game.

There are occasions where I’d use other methods of combat resolution. I’d use Chainmail’s “troop combat” where if I wanted to quickly deal with large numbers of combatants. I see this as sort of an “auto-resolve” combat system, where the referee might need to quickly sort out 50 Light Foot bandits jumping out of the woods and ambushing the player’s caravan, which is guarded by 30 Heavy Foot mercenaries.

I know you can get more complex with setting up proper Chainmail battles, where you use all the rules, but for my purposes (focusing on OD&D as a tabletop roleplaying game, with Chainmail as a supplemental gameplay aid, rather than as a standalone wargame) using the troop combat system as an auto-resolve system works well for me.

At the greatest level of abstraction, there’s also the Fantasy Combat system. I’d use this for abstract “clash of wills” or what not, where it’s more about the raw power of the combatants, rather than what exact weapon or tactic that’s being used. An example of this might be the battle between Gandalf and the Balrog, or some of the fights in Dragonball, where two combatants spend the duration of the episode yelling like crazy while “charging up their blast”, before unleashing their attack and seeing who’s left standing when the smoke finally clears. I imagine that a referee might also like to use this system as a simpler alternative to the existing jousting tables, in order to quickly and decisively resolve the outcome of a joust or mounted combat scenario.

Alright, that’s enough preamble, here’s the rules.

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The only additional complexity in these rules arises from detailing how to resolve a few “if-then” propositions, such as what happens if the results are tied, or what happens if the defender wants to reverse the grapple, or what happens when the attacker wants to strike their grappled opponent with a weapon, and so on. As always, I encourage any reader to use only what works for them in their own games, and to discard or modify the rest.

If anyone has any particularly interesting situations arise in their games from the use of grappling rules, feel free to comment below, I’d be interested to hear about it. In games that I’ve played, I’ve had a few occasions where a powerful wizard was “hyped up” by the referee as being a significant threat, only for the wizard to be caught by surprise and unceremoniously “dog piled” by a group of low-level characters before they could unleash their terrible spells.

I recall one instance where the party narrowly avoided a guaranteed TPK by way of Fire Ball in this way, and a seperate incident where a referee’s “plot-critical NPC” was thrown off the towering battlements of an island fortress, splattering on the boulder-strewn shore far below. I admit that this last occurrence was quite a petty gesture on my part, borne out of frustration at the referee’s blatant favouritism of Magic-Users over every other class, but it was really funny, and I’d do it again.

Anyway, that was a bit of a digression, so before we get even further off-track here’s the grappling rules.

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Grappling:

While grappled, a character cannot move, attack, or cast spells.

A character may initiate a grapple instead of making a standard melee attack. If a character attempts to grapple an opponent, they may not make any standard melee attacks in that same combat round. The outcome of a grapple attempt is determined at the end of the Melee phase, after all normal weapon attacks have been resolved.

Barring exceptional circumstances, a target cannot be grappled if it is significantly larger or stronger than the attacker (a Man-sized creature typically cannot grapple an Ogre-sized creature, for example).

In order to resolve the outcome of a grapple, both the attacker and defender roll a number of D6 equal to their character’s number of hit dice. If there are any modifiers attached to the character’s hit die, these particular modifiers are only applied to the first of the character’s attack rolls for that round. If a character has a Strength modifier, then this modifier is applied to all of the character’s attack rolls.

This will be hereafter referred to as a “contested grapple roll”. The character who ends up with the greater overall total is the winner of the grappling exchange. In the event that the results of a contested grapple roll are tied, the character defending the grapple wins.

The winner of the contested grapple roll is able to successfully grapple their opponent. The winner of the grappling exchange may also elect to disengage from the grapple. Disengaging ends the grappling exchange, with combat continuing as normal immediately afterwards.

A character who is grappled is entitled to an attempt to escape the grapple in each subsequent combat round, at the end of that round’s Melee phase. In order to successfully escape, the grappled character must make a contested grapple roll against their opponent, and get a greater overall total. If this occurs, the grappled character is able to escape the grapple. This functions identically to disengaging from a grapple.

Upon winning the contested grapple roll, a character who successfully escapes a grapple may instead elect to reverse the grapple. In this case, the previous attacker immediately becomes grappled. From here, the grappling exchange continues as previously described, with the newly-grappled character entitled to their first escape attempt during the end of the next combat round’s Melee phase.

If a character has successfully grappled an opponent, they may strike them during the Melee phase of the following combat round. If the attacker is using a Spear, Two-Handed Sword or Polearm, then they are not permitted to make any weapon attack against an opponent they are simultaneously grappling. If the attacker is using a Dagger while they are attacking a grappled opponent, they resolve their attack with a + 4 “to hit” bonus. All other melee weapons allow the attacker to resolve their attacks against a grappled opponent as normal.

As you deliberate which spell you will select to aid you on your adventure, you ponder the rumours that you’ve overheard in the village tavern, and by combining the information you’ve gained with a preliminary assessment of the surrounding geographical terrain, regional climate, and local cultural landscape, you try to anticipate what sort of opposition you might come up against, and what might be the best choice of spell to overcome the obstacles you are likely to face. Finally, you reach a conclusion, selecting “Read Languages” as the spell that you feel would be of the most value to you on your hazardous expedition.

Just kidding. You didn’t do any of that. Anyone who has played a Magic-User in an old-school D&D game will know that many spells in the rulebooks are total “dud picks”. In the context of 3 LBB OD&D (my game of choice), first-level Magic-Users are typically drawn to spells such as “Sleep” or “Charm Person”.

These spells are very powerful, and perhaps more importantly, they can be effective in a wide variety of situations. Of course, some types of monsters (such as Undead) are immune to this kind of mind-affecting magic, but for the most part, the fearsome reputation of these spells is well-earned, as they have proven to be almost-guaranteed “instant encounter enders” for many of the combat situations that a low-level Magic-User (and their adventuring party) might find themselves involved with.

The issue that arises from the obvious dominance of certain spells (and the obvious near-uselessness of others) is that it can lead to the emergence of an undesirable element of repetitiveness and lack of variety in the game, especially for lower-level characters.

It’s true that a clever player can go far in an old-school D&D game, regardless of their character’s class and level, but there’s only so many times someone can enjoy playing what essentially amounts to a walking “spell container”, with a single one-shot spell up their sleeve, when they’ve already made use of that same spell on many previous occasions, enough for any novelty to have long since worn off.

In order to address this issue, and to introduce another element of desirable variety into my games, I spent some time putting together a few curated spell lists, which featured a hand-picked assemblage of spells drawn not only from the pages of the 3 LBB, but also from the Greyhawk and Eldritch Wizardry supplements, as well as from other editions, namely B/X, Holmes Basic, and AD&D. The spells that made it onto the finalised list have been carefully selected, as I didn’t want there to be any “dud picks”, or anything that wouldn’t be of genuine value to a player in the course of a real game.

The instructions for the use of these expanded spell lists can be found at the bottom of this post, along with the expanded spell lists themselves. I have been using these expanded spell lists for a good amount of time now, and I have found that the game is greatly improved. When this system is used, players are exposed to a much greater variety of spells, including seldom-used spells that are normally only available to high-level characters. The reader should note that in this ruleset, no “spell levels” are used. Instead, all spells may be cast from first level, if the spell is known and prepared.

For an example of what this looks like in the course of actual gameplay, check out this post: https://diosdungeons.substack.com/p/session-report-lair-of-the-fomorians-13d

Alright, that’s enough prelude, here’s the important stuff. I hope that this material improves your game as much as it has improved my own.

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Expanded Spell Lists for Magic-Users:

If the use of these expanded spell lists is permitted, the Magic-User should roll 1d6 to determine which of these new spell lists to roll on, then 1d20 to determine which individual spell from that list they know at the beginning of play. On a roll of 5 or 6, the Magic-User should determine their known spell using the standard list of spells, included below.

* This indicates that the damage caused by this spell will be in proportion to the level of its user, in the same manner as the Fire Ball and Lightning Bolt spells.

** This indicates that this spell is cast by means of an unarmed “touch attack”, which takes place at the end of the melee round, after all other melee attacks have been made. Under normal circumstances, declared spells are automatically disrupted if an attacker enters into melee with the caster. This spell is an exception to this rule, as it is not disrupted by melee engagement alone. However, if the caster receives any damage or fails any saving throw before the spell is cast, then the spell is disrupted as normal.

Magic-User Spells - Standard List (3 LBB):

1 - Charm Person (1st Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

2 - Confusion (4th Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

3 - Dimension Door (4th Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

4 - Fire Ball (3rd Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

5 - Growth of Animals (5th Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

6 - Growth of Plants (4th Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

7 - Hallucinatory Terrain (4th Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

8 - Haste Spell (3rd Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

9 - Infravision (3rd Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

10 - Invisibility (2nd Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

11 - Knock (2nd Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

12 - Levitate (2nd Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

13 - Light (1st Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

14 - Lightning Bolt (3rd Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

15 - Magic Jar (5th Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

16 - Passwall (5th Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

17 - Sleep (1st Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

18 - Slow Spell (3rd Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

19 - Wall of Fire (4th Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

20 - Wall of Ice (4th Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

Magic-User Spells - Expanded List 1 (3 LBB):

1 - Animate Dead (4th Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

2 - Bless (2nd Level Cleric Spell, Men & Magic)

3 - Cure Disease (3rd Level Cleric Spell, Men & Magic)

4 - Cure Light Wounds (1st Level Cleric Spell, Men & Magic)

5 - Detect Evil (1st Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

6 - Detect Magic (1st Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

7 - Dispel Magic (3rd Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

8 - ESP (2nd Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

9 - Hold Portal (1st Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

10 - Neutralize Poison (4th Level Cleric Spell, Men & Magic)

11 - Protection from Evil (1st Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

12 - Protection from Normal Missiles (3rd Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

13 - Purify Food and Water (1st Level Cleric Spell, Men & Magic)

14 - Remove Curse (4th Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

15 - Speak with Animals (1st Level Cleric Spell, Men & Magic)

16 - Speak with Plants (4th Level Cleric Spell, Men & Magic)

17 - Telekinesis (5th Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

18 - Turn Sticks to Snakes (4th Level Cleric Spell, Men & Magic)

19 - Water Breathing (3rd Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

20 - Wizard Eye (4th Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

Magic-User Spells - Expanded List 2 (3 LBB + Greyhawk):

1 - Animate Objects (6th Level Cleric Spell, Greyhawk)

2 - Cone of Cold (as Wand of Cold, Monsters & Treasure)*

3 - Darkness 5’ Radius (2nd Level Magic-User Spell, Greyhawk)

4 - Fear (as Wand of Fear, Monsters & Treasure)

5 - Find Traps (2nd Level Cleric Spell, Greyhawk)

6 - Find the Path (6th Level Cleric Spell, Greyhawk)

7 - Fire Resistance (as Potion of Fire Resistance, Monsters & Treasure)

8 - Ice Storm (4th Level Magic-User Spell, Greyhawk)

9 - Insect Plague (5th Level Cleric Spell, Men & Magic)

10 - Magic Missile (1st Level Magic-User Spell, Greyhawk)

11 - Magic Mouth (2nd Level Magic-User Spell, Greyhawk)

12 - Mirror Image (2nd Level Magic-User Spell, Greyhawk)

13 - Monster Summoning I (3rd Level Magic-User Spell, Greyhawk)

14 - Pyrotechnics (2nd Level Magic-User Spell, Greyhawk)

15 - Shield (1st Level Magic-User Spell, Greyhawk)

16 - Silence 15’ Radius (2nd Level Cleric Spell, Greyhawk)

17 - Speak with Dead (3rd Level Cleric Spell, Greyhawk)

18 - Speak with Monsters (6th Level Cleric Spell, Greyhawk)

19 - Ventriloquism (1st Level Magic-User Spell, Greyhawk)

20 - Web (2nd Level Magic-User Spell, Greyhawk)

Magic-User Spells - Expanded List 3 (3 LBB + AD&D):

1 - Affect Normal Fires (1st Level Magic-User Spell, AD&D Player’s Handbook)

2 - Burning Hands (1st Level Magic-User Spell, AD&D Player’s Handbook)**

3 - Dancing Lights (1st Level Magic-User Spell, AD&D Player’s Handbook)

4 - Dominate Dragon (as Potion of Dragon Control, Monsters & Treasure)

5 - Enchanted Weapon (4th Level Magic-User Spell, AD&D Player’s Handbook)

6 - Enemy Detection (as Wand of Enemy Detection, Monsters & Treasure)

7 - Feather Fall (1st Level Magic-User Spell, AD&D Player’s Handbook)

8 - Forget (2nd Level Magic-User Spell, AD&D Player’s Handbook)

9 - Gaseous Form (as Potion of Gaseous Form, Monsters & Treasure)

10 - Jump (1st Level Magic-User Spell, AD&D Player’s Handbook)

11 - Mending (1st Level Magic-User Spell, AD&D Player’s Handbook)

12 - Message (1st Level Magic-User Spell, AD&D Player’s Handbook)

13 - Metal Detection (as Wand of Metal Detection, Monsters & Treasure)

14 - Shatter (2nd Level Magic-User Spell, AD&D Player’s Handbook)

15 - Shocking Grasp (1st Level Magic-User Spell, AD&D Player’s Handbook)**

16 - Spider Climb (1st Level Magic-User Spell, AD&D Player’s Handbook)

17 - Stone Shape (5th Level Magic-User Spell, AD&D Player’s Handbook)

18 - Stone Tell (6th Level Cleric Spell, AD&D Player’s Handbook)

19 - Treasure Finding (as Potion of Treasure Finding, Monsters & Treasure)

20 - Withering Touch (as Staff of Withering, Monsters & Treasure)**

Magic-User Spells - Expanded List 4 (Eldritch Wizardry, B/X & Holmes Basic):

1 - Animate Rock (7th Level Druid Spell, Eldritch Wizardry)

2 - Anti-Plant Shell (5th Level Druid Spell, Eldritch Wizardry)

3 - Call Lightning (3rd Level Druid Spell, Eldritch Wizardry)

4 - Commune with Nature (5th Level Druid Spell, Eldritch Wizardry)

5 - Contact Higher Plane (5th Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

6 - Control Winds (5th Level Druid Spell, Eldritch Wizardry)

7 - Creeping Doom (7th Level Druid Spell, Eldritch Wizardry)

8 - Faerie Fire (1st Level Druid Spell, Eldritch Wizardry)

9 - Floating Disc (1st Level Magic-User Spell, B/X)

10 - Locate Plants (2nd Level Druid Spell, Eldritch Wizardry)

11 - Lower Water (4th Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

12 - Obscurement (2nd Level Druid Spell, Eldritch Wizardry)

13 - Part Water (4th Level Magic-User Spell, Men & Magic)

14 - Pass Plant (5th Level Druid Spell, Eldritch Wizardry)

15 - Plant Door (4th Level Druid Spell, Eldritch Wizardry)

16 - Protection from Lightning (4th Level Druid Spell, Eldritch Wizardry)

17 - Ray of Enfeeblement (2nd Level Magic-User Spell, Holmes D&D)

18 - Resist Cold (1st Level Magic-User Spell, B/X)

19 - Striking (3rd Level Cleric Spell, B/X)

20 - Warp Wood (2nd Level Druid Spell, Eldritch Wizardry)

Regardless of my own feelings on this issue, I know there are many referees who permit the Thief class to be used in their own games. As written in the Greyhawk supplement, the Thief class is rubbish, and a great deal more complicated than it needs to be. To that end, I’ve put together my own revised Thief class (something that seems to be a rite of passage for every old-school D&D referee).

Given the immense surfeit of homebrew Thief classes that are floating around out there in the old-school gaming blogosphere, the questions remains, why would you choose this one? The answer is simple. It’s the fastest and easiest to use out of all of them, and allows you to get on with the game with the least amount of bean-counting and rules fumbling. The details of the class are below, but there’s one last thing I want to state for the record.

In my own game, I don’t allow the use of the Thief class.

-

Thief:

Prime Requisite: Dexterity

Advances As: Cleric (Men & Magic)

Saves As: Cleric (Men & Magic)

Alignment Restriction: Neutral or Chaotic

Other Restrictions: Thieves may wield daggers, swords, shortbows and slings, as well as magical versions of these weapons. Thieves may only wear leather armour, and may not use normal shields. However, Thieves may make use of bucklers, which offer no meaningful protection from missile fire, but provide the normal bonus to AC when the Thief is attacked in melee.

Special: Thieves have access to a number of special skills. Thieves can climb almost sheer surfaces (both upwards and downwards), pick pockets, open locks (either by picking them or overcoming magical closures), disarm and remove small trap devices (such as poisoned needles), move with great stealth (moving silently and hiding in shadows), read most languages (including magical writings, allowing them to make use of spell scrolls), use magical devices (such as wands and staves), and effectively eavesdrop or listen for noise from behind closed doors.

When the Thief attempts one of these actions (or a comparable action), they will be successful if they roll under the “Hear Noise” chance for a Thief of their level. Disregard the rest of the Thief abilities table (Greyhawk, Page 11), instead simply refer to the “Hear Noise” value in order to determine the outcome of the Thief’s attempt to use any of their specialist skills.