[OSSR]Advanced D&D(tm): DUNGEON MASTERS GUIDE

[tussock]

This is epic, people. OK, it's no 2nd edition Monstrous Manual review (a project covering about a thousand pages on other boards), but this thing is 240 pages of 9-point font with fuck all art in it. The sheer volume of rules and tables and twelve-letter words is quite the chicken on which to choke.

http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=54459

That was my quick look at the 2nd edition version, for those just joining us. Expect this one to be ludicrously positive and please feel free to poke much fun because of that.


Advanced D&D(tm): DUNGEON MASTERS GUIDE
ESSENTIAL REFERENCE INFORMATION FOR GAMEMASTERING ADVANCED D&D(tm)
I seem to have the "revised edition" of December 1989 to view, should it matter.

So here goes nothing. Note the title? This is a guide for "dungeon masters" all, as a collective group throughout the hobby, unlike 2nd edition's guide belonging to each dungeon master separately. Nitpick? Perhaps, but they changed it in 1989 because they thought it mattered.



FOREWORD
Mike Carr (TSR Games & Rules editor) gives us the point of thing.

... - it is your primary tool for constructing your own "world", or milieu.

and suggests several times that being the DM is a lot of fucking work, and that you shouldn't imagine yourself to be all that much good at it.

Take heed, and always endeavor to make the game the best it can be - and all that it can be!

The Table of Contents is four pages, including an index to every table and chart, of which there are well over 100, even treating the 20-page table of monsters as one.


PREFACE

What follows herein is strictly for the eyes of you, the campaign referee. As the creator and ultimate authority in your respective game, this work is written as one Dungeon Master equal to another. Pronouncements there may be, but they are not from "on high" as respects your game. Dictums are given for the sake of the game only, for if ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS is to survive and grow, it must have some degree of uniformity, a familiarity of method and procedure from campaign to campaign within the whole.

OK, so we've got the thing where players should not know the rules ( ) but leaving that aside, the opening interests me.

First a note on the challenge, and making the bastards earn it.

Participants will always be pushing for a game which allows them to become strong and powerful far too quickly. Each will attempt to take the game out of your hands and mold it to his or her own ends. To satisfy this natural desire is to issue a death warrant to a campaign, for it will either be a one-player affair or the players will desert en masse for something more challenging and equitable. Similarly, you must avoid the tendency to drift into areas foreign to the game as a whole. Such campaigns become so strange as to be no longer "AD&D". They are isolated and will usually wither.

EGG talked on dragonsfoot about having 20+ players in his "game", while noting the sessions of it where just for one or two high level characters (all off doing their own thing in the wider world, sometimes going PvP with their armies and such), or a band of 6-9 lower level ones (still hammering away at the communal dungeon, under Castle Greyhawk for EGG's own game).

Limitations, checks, balances, and all the rest are placed into the system in order to assure that what is based thereon will be a superior campaign, a campaign which offers the most interesting play possibilities to the greatest number of participants for the longest period of time possible.

Not for the average 4+1 player game, but for as many as possible, eh. 20+. Most of the games at that time were that way, because DMing was seen as a huge job and hardly anyone wanted it. Nor did people really understand how to do it because they were a total in-club and trying to remain a bit exclusive. This book didn't exactly help that.

You, as referee, will have to devote countless hours of real effort in order to produce just a fledgling campaign, viz. a background for the whole, some small village or town, and a reasoned series of dungeon levels - the lot of which must be suitable for elaboration and expansion on a periodic basis.

Or buy the Village of Hommlet, T1, advertised later. Lots more published in fairly short order. People don't like that sort of work if they can afford to pay you to do it, which is good for business. They never did publish a big dungeon though (ToEE is as close as it got in 1st edition), apparently didn't think it possible for a price anyone would pay.

To obtain real satisfaction from such effort, you must have participants who will make use of your creations: players to learn the wonders and face the perils you have devised for them. If it is all too plain and too easy, the players will quickly lose interest, and your effort will prove to have been in vain. Likewise, if the campaign is too difficult, players will quickly become discouraged and lose interest in a game where they are always the butt; again your labors will have been for naught. These facts are of prime importance, for they underlie many rules.

That's an example of why I don't see 1st edition as being near as hard-assed as most people do these days. Some of the rules are clearly punitive against certain player types that Gary didn't like ( ), but there's not much of that compared to the sheer number of rules in this thing that are about being fair, without being predictable or easy.

Anyway, continues as an apology for content. Tried to keep out fiddly stuff (fail), tried to keep in wonder and fantasy (success, in it's own nut-kicking way).

Returning again to the framework aspect of ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, what is aimed at is a "universe" into which similar campaigns and parallel worlds can be placed. With certain uniformity of systems and "laws", players will be able to move from one campaign to another and know at least the elemental principles which govern the new milieu, for all milieux will have certain (but not necessarily the same) laws in common. Character races and classes will be nearly the same. Character ability scores will have the identical meaning - or nearly so. Magic spells will function in a certain manner regardless of which world the player is functioning in. Magic devices will certainly vary, but their principles will be similar. This uniformity will help not only players, it will enable DMs to carry on a meaningful dialogue and exchange of useful information. It might also eventually lead to grand tournaments wherein persons from any part of the U.S., or the world for that matter, can compete for accolades.

Ah, competitive D&D play at tournaments. Becoming a greatly skilled player of the game is another thing that changed over the years. Skill now is in creating characters (or looking them up online) and the play mostly rolls out from there, activating your character sheet to do the work for you. Tournaments are about dressing up, having fun, and making friends.

Heh. Wargamers. They had no idea what they were creating, did they.

As this book is the exclusive precinct of the DM, you must view any non-DM player possessing it as something less than worthy of honorable death. Peeping players there will undoubtedly be, but they are simply lessening their own enjoyment of the game by taking away some of the sense of wonder that otherwise arises from a game which has rules hidden from participants. It is in your interests, and in theirs, to discourage possession of this book by players. If any of your participants do read herein, it is suggested that you assess them a heavy fee for consulting "sages" and other sources of information not normally attainable by the inhabitants of your milieu. If they express knowledge which could only be garnered by consulting these pages, a magic item or two can be taken as payment - insufficient, but perhaps i t will tend to discourage such actions.

... So, OK, I guess that's an in-game rationale for ... fucking hell Gary. If losing the wonder of ignorance is hurting them, then it's already fucking-well hurt them and you don't need that shit.

I can see already it will be a very hard job defending this thing. But, defend it where fair is a task that I hope to find enlightening.

The CREDITS are a note that Gary lost his notes about who to credit everything with, but he did work up a list of names for the credits anyway.

Also thanks Judges Guild for growing the hobby, which is much nicer than the later bullshit lawsuits.

If by any chance I have neglected anyone, please forgive me, as the task of finishing the DUNGEON MASTERS GUIDE has taken some two years; and during that time I have read hundreds of pages of suggestions, done thousands of pages of researching, and written about twelve hundred pages of manuscript. A job begun in 1976, often interrupted, has at last been completed. Notes made months or years ago have a way of getting lost in the last minute rush at the finish.

Amateur hour at the publishing house. Ah well, they were a pretty small company, and Gygax is still quite new to the job of actually writing things for a living. Having read most of Dangerous Journeys and Lejendary Adventure, it's fair to note he never got much better at it either (feuds and lawsuits over terminology not helping in the slightest, long story). Of course, in a lot of ways, it's positively delightful because of his amateurish Vance-like style. I'll try to highlight the odd gem as I go.


Oooh, dear. This is going to take a while. Must quote less, summarise more.

[hogarth]

... So, OK, I guess that's an in-game rationale for ... fucking hell Gary. If losing the wonder of ignorance is hurting them, then it's already fucking-well hurt them and you don't need that shit.

The weird thing is that 80%+ of the book is stuff that wouldn't count as "spoilers" for players anyways. Is a player's sense of wonderment going to be lost if he looks at a list of properties of gemstones, or different types of insanity, or synonyms for "prostitute", or conversion rules for Boot Hill (tm)?

The only real spoilers I can think of are the list of magic items and the condensed list of monster stats, and even those are pretty weak spoilers.

EDIT: I guess there's also stuff like the rules (suggestions?) for how spells work underwater or potion miscibility; a real asshole DM might enjoy surprising his players by having a wizard electrocute himself with a Lightning Bolt or having a fighter poison himself.

[shadzar]

Expect this one to be ludicrously positive

which should be read as "i have masturbated all over my issue of Dragon with Gary's picture that the black & white photo has now turned all white and yellow."

[shadzar]

... So, OK, I guess that's an in-game rationale for ... fucking hell Gary. If losing the wonder of ignorance is hurting them, then it's already fucking-well hurt them and you don't need that shit.

The weird thing is that 80%+ of the book is stuff that wouldn't count as "spoilers" for players anyways. Is a player's sense of wonderment going to be lost if he looks at a list of properties of gemstones, or different types of insanity, or synonyms for "prostitute", or conversion rules for Boot Hill (tm)?

i think the point is, but lsot in translation, that the players shouldn't be using the rules to play the game, but use the rules when something comes up in the game to answer a question.

aka don't metagame.

Gary just goes for the throat on this in an angry tone, which is WHY many people think this book heavy-handed. WE know what it means, but in reading it, it gives off something totally different. again the recent livestream playtest of DDN where James Wyatt tries to metagame right from the start is EXACTLY what Gary was trying to prevent.

not trying to help you tussock in defending the book, just stating what everyone i know at the time thought. "What an asshole! Let's just play and see what happens and look up things we have disputes on. which later became. We can';t find shit in these books, lets play those red books instead!"

but you will see his attitude in the writing is what gives this book so much damnation to many.

[tussock]

@Chapters: I don't see the attraction to chapters once you have a detailed ToC and Index here. This isn't a story that changes tense or scenes, just a big book pressed for space. It'd be better with coloured headers, but not for colour printing costs in 1979.

@Spoilers: I do recall being pretty chuffed at seeing a few firsts in my earliest days. There might be something in it for first time players. I think it's just an attitude that you're supposed to earn your player skills, damnit. Is there a "get off my lawn" emoticon?


Moar DMG.

Welcome to the exalted ranks of the overworked and harrassed, whose cleverness and imagination are all too often unappreciated by cloddish characters whose only thought in life is to loot, pillage, slay, and who fail to appreciate the hours of preparation which went into the creation of what they aim to destroy as cheaply and quickly as possible.

I suppose it's the black humour of the man that I like. Cloddish characters picking their fights and taking the treasure with as little delay as possible are exactly what he's recommended in the Player's Handbook. That experience can sting a touch though, along with the one where people are amazed at the detail and logic of something I just made up on the spot. And yet, work on the campaigns goes on.


THE GAME

APPROACHES TO PLAYING ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS

... but in no case something to be token too seriously. For fun, excitement, and captivating fantosy, AD&D is unsurpassed. As a realistic simulation of things from the
realm of make-believe, or even as a reflection of medieval or ancient warfare or culture or society, it can be deemed only a dismal failure.

I wondered how folk landed on those terms for the GNS theory stuff, and here they are back in the dawn of time. I'm sure there's an anti-story-teller rant in here somewhere too.

DICE is one of the better dice explanations I've read, 3d6 bell curve table and everything. Basically shows how to read the platonic dice for any random range you want: d5, d32, 5-50, or whatever. Even gives an example of using funky poker dice for stuff. Note that your d20 was also your d10 at this time, numbered 0-9 twice, where you'd colour half of them to be 11-20 (and maybe colour both 0's, eh).

USE OF MINIATURE FIGURES WITH THE GAME is recommended for speeding the game in combat and settling many potential arguments, but in a different way to how later versions of D&D describe their use.

So there's no map or cover rules or any shit, minis just sit on a 1 inch grid in marching order. There's "HO" 25mm fantasy figs around at the time, so that's 6' squares. Only that's just used for distance approximations and such, and the width scale is 3 squares per 10' so your PHB facing space rule gets characters a square each, unless they use weapons which require a larger spacing to use, or fight over each other's shoulders with spears. Following still? Good.
Then you can also ignore the other bit of the scale when you don't need it and just use three inches per 10' fowards too, unless you don't, in which case just squeeze the figures closer on that axis. So easy!

AIDS TO PLAYING ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS gives another nod to Judges Guild and also White Dwarf mag, while warning the perils of unauthorised "compatible" products (which I guess is the Arduin Grimoire).


CREATING THE PLAYER CHARACTER
GENERATION OF ABILITY SCORES
I have no idea what the fuck 2nd edition was thinking with suggesting 3d6 in order given the bonuses start at 15 or 16. The dice you get here are
[*]Best 3 of 4d6, six times, arrange to suit.
[*]3d6, twelve times, keep the best six, arrange to suit.
[*]3d6 six times, best is your STR, repeat for INT/WIS/DEX/CON/CHA in order.
[*]3d6 in order as a set, repeat 12 times, choose any one set.

For which the median sets are, near enough
[*]16/14/13/12/10/8, arrange to suit.
[*]16/14/13/12/11/11, arrange to suit.
[*]16/15/15/14/14/13, in random order.
[*]... I'd have to monte carlo the last one, but looks like you can get 2 (maybe 3) bonus stats somewhere and the rest will be widely spread beneath, the only one really likely to give stat penalties.

High level NPCs stats should just be written to suit, Plebs should all be 7-14 for no combat stat mods (roll 3d{2,3,3,4,4,5}), and Henchmen 3d6 in order except for their "key stats" which use a PC method and so average about 13. Which is to say, the people you can hire or talk to do not normally have combat bonuses, and so PCs are strait up better, even if they only get +1 damage or some crap.

Anyway, you get roughly one bonus stat where you want it, or 2-3 located at random, and most of your stats only need a small boost to get something more (from race and so on).

THE EFFECT OF WISHES ON PLAYER CHARACTER ABILITY SCORES is that you stop wishing once you have a 16 because otherwise you're wasting them, but there's no actual limit until 90 more wishes gets you a 25.

CHARACTERISTICS FOR PLAYER CHARACTERS says use random height and weight (which is another way you can't use the Hammer of Thunderbolts) and ignores any effects from stats to set a fine tradition there. Players are strictly to enforce their own personality (except for you enforcing their alignment, I guess, more on that later).

PLAYER CHARACTER NON-PROFESSIONAL SKILLS are vague, which goes back to the note that vague rules are where you should make your own if you care about that shit. But there is a random table for the MTP here anyway. I suspect EGG's game simply never dealt with stuff outside the adventure (PCs apparently used their castles to stop other PCs casually killing them and taking their stuff, for reals).

STARTING LEVEL OF EXPERIENCE FOR PLAYER CHARACTERS is 1st. That's more of that stuff where you've got to earn it. Up to maybe 4th if it's a new player joining a high level group headed deep in the dungeon.
There's a suggestion that new players who TPK a time or two at 1st level should be handed some mid-to-high level characters for a one-shot at G1 or something, to give them a taste for what surviving eventually gets you should they learn to do it.

AD&D is so fucking hardcore. Kids these days, with their starting at 7th level, or where the game doesn't even have a proper 1st level to start at?


Next up: why you can have some free stat bonuses, and why they won't last.

[Bihlbo]

Kids these days, with their starting at 7th level, or where the game doesn't even have a proper 1st level to start at?

Is that common? 1st level is handy if you're not pretty familiar with the game already, because it eases you into things. But even when the whole group are veterans to the game most of my games start at levels 2 to 4.

With the exception of the one time I had fun in 4th edition and we started at level 30. Actually a pretty good game; I don't recommend the other levels.

[Whipstitch]

Level 2 at the lowest almost invariably becomes the informal standard for playing rookies in 3.x. At level 1, a 14 con wizard can be one shot by a short bow if Mr. Bandit happens to be rolling well that day. Level 2 gives people more breathing room without adding more complexity in the form of additional spells per day for the full casters. Starting at 3 or 4 isn't bad either, particularly since you spend less time throwing Silent Image, Color Spray or Sleep at every problem--it's nice to have generically good training wheels spells and all, but those three take things a bit far.

[shadzar]

@Chapters: I don't see the attraction to chapters once you have a detailed ToC and Index here. This isn't a story that changes tense or scenes, just a big book pressed for space. It'd be better with coloured headers, but not for colour printing costs in 1979.

@Spoilers: I do recall being pretty chuffed at seeing a few firsts in my earliest days. There might be something in it for first time players. I think it's just an attitude that you're supposed to earn your player skills, damnit. Is there a "get off my lawn" emoticon?

@chapters, the problem is with the TOC that is there, you have NO idea what to even look for to try to find things, and it just runs on and on and on....a heading for something starts on a page, then you get half a sentence and have to flip the page to read the rest. shove another damn Papers & Paychecks type comic down there and star and finish something on one page. sure there is no reason for 2e full page art, but if you have nothing left on the page don't leave it blank like 4th, put something there, another example, a picture depicting what was said... you realize the internet has nearly killed newspapers even as well as magazine cause there is none of this "continued on pg 85" shit unless you are on someone's stupid blog that tries to emulate such with "pages" for a single article, right?

@spoilers: there is also just some things the player doesn't need to know all the time, but you don't have to sound like an ass about it in the DMG.

take for example 3.0 PHB having the magic items. well what problem did that cause and solve?

cause: players want to buy the shit now cause it has a GP value for these treasures, even though the GP <-> XP concept for treasure was removed so magic items no longer NEED a GP value.so without GP <-> XP they needed a reason to have the GP value, so they created WBL. and of course this leads to the wishlist where players think and the system enforces the need of EVERY damn magic item to be allowed to be had by the players and DM's shouldn't be trusted to make their own magic items cause they will violate "treasure parcels" or WBL because the game is that tightly bound it can't handle adaptation.

solve: players no longer needed to write down every magic item verbatim to have all the info if it was something that was common to have in games, or they already knew or "identified" all the functions of the item, AND the item worked as written and say the ladder-function of the Rod of Lordly Might wasnt removed by the DM to turn it into a new magic item with only the weapon functions. then again 3.0 didnt need to do that cause they made and sold cards of magic items like other things in the "Decks" series called a Deck of Magic Items... i have 3 of them.. why couldn't other people buy them? great for DMs and players alike.

oddly RC doesn't have that cause problem, so it must be something the players brought to the game though. and those players as i always say the game can do without them.

[shadzar]

Kids these days, with their starting at 7th level, or where the game doesn't even have a proper 1st level to start at?

Is that common? 1st level is handy if you're not pretty familiar with the game already, because it eases you into things. But even when the whole group are veterans to the game most of my games start at levels 2 to 4.

With the exception of the one time I had fun in 4th edition and we started at level 30. Actually a pretty good game; I don't recommend the other levels.

EVERY player i know that plays 3.x hates starting at 1st level for some reason, though they can never explain why other than "we want to be able to start with the good stuff". if it were really D&D, then it would ALL be good stuff.

also the concept of 4th where you are a superhero to start, if about 10th level or so already on the AD&D scale, for 4th edition level 1 characters.

add the crazy ass races allowed in 3.x in conjunction with ECL then you have to start some races beyond 1st level otherwise they aren't available for PC races, and the unified XP levels means that everyone has to be the same level as those ECL or LA'd races.

so yeah since AD&D, there has not really been that much 1st level play.

[Whipstitch]

Already explained it: it's in large part due to arrow heebie jeebies. People fear ridiculous death traps and at level 1 some of the characters are so flimsy that a frigging crossbow-string-doorknob rig can fill that role fairly easily--hell, if anyone in the group happens to be an elf wizard they could conceivably die to a single dart trap. At that level, the smart thing to do seems to be picking up odd jobs in the wilderness until you level, or at the very least swindling a couple red shirts recruiting a few brave young villagers to walk ahead of you if you go raiding lairs, which to many people seems like kind of a cowardly dick move that they'd rather avoid. That it's in large part a hitpoint issue can be rather aptly demonstrated by the fact that groups made up entirely of clerics and warriors tend to be way more receptive to the idea of starting out at level 1 than groups made up of scholarly types. Because, you know, people enjoy playing their characters as if they were real people and most real people who felt like they weren't up to the job would suddenly be struck by a case of brains to the head and leave Deathtrap Dungeon rather than fuck around until everyone dies.

[shadzar]

this is where White Plume Mountain isnt an adventure for 1st level characters.

i still say EVERYONE should play through (N4) Treasure Hunt.

pretty much 1st level if for finding road bandits or something. to get you wet behind the ears, not only in the game itself, but int he world you are playing in. make those "connections" DDN wants to turn into a mechanic or backstory freebie, to NPCs.

some people DO want to play dirt-farmer done good, others want to play 4th edition Justice League superheros.....

[Whipstitch]

There's a place for being dirt farmers, but dirt farmer games are generally pretty damn simplistic or MTP because much of managing danger boils down to fights=bad or figuring out how to turn the weird widget you found into asymmetric power. Beyond that, after you play long enough it can become hard to get excited about the mandatory Dirt Farmer prologue given that it's just one piece of a much, much larger world you could be interacting with. Frankly, a lot of the things you seem annoyed about with 3.x comes down to the fact that a lot of the players were previous edition guys who simply refused to do the shit you seem to love mostly because they had already done the guard-the-caravan-thing like a half dozen times before WotC even existed.

Beyond that, in 3.x, the big paradigm shifting stuff tends to be acquired on the odd levels, with the even levels mostly being hitpoint & BAB filler--a level 1 cleric and a level 2 cleric don't actually play all that much differently aside from the fact that the latter is considerably more durable. So if you run level 2 characters through level 1 kobold adventures, you'll find that things don't actually change that much aside from the characters being more durable--They're not going to just cave in the warren with mighty magics, because in the ways that most matter they're still just scrappiest guys in the village militia rather than bad asses who are slumming it for no reason.

[shadzar]

lets give tussock a chance to get to the combat rules before we start discussing too much into dirt-farmer combat at level 1. that way those that do NOT know, will have something, even if cherry-picked to go on based on the "rules" themselves other than "damn house-cat killed another wizard!"

[hogarth]

@Spoilers: I do recall being pretty chuffed at seeing a few firsts in my earliest days.

By stuff that was specifically from the DMG? Like what?

[tussock]

@Spoilers: long time ago and I was barely a teen, but every single item was something I'd never seen before, so even bullshit stuff like a potion of healing was amazing and puzzling in trying to figure out when best to try for the unknown number of hits back. I recall my first +1 sword was barely of note, because other PCs already had one when I started out and I already had a sword that was almost as good anyway.

I had to relearn all that when I ran games for young folk a few years back. Don't tell them how shit works and they want to puzzle it out, which is fun for them. That bullshit about experimenting to make wands work is fun the first time or two.

@Starting Levels: Oh good, other places I've raised that have been pretty hostile to the idea of starting below mid levels, and damning of starting anyone under 4th. The idea of starting at 1st (IMO) is you learn to avoid relying on your dice mods, because they suck. Seeing the dice as a chance of failure to be avoided if possible. Climb walls is OK, levitation better still, climbing a sturdy ladder even more better, not climbing the fucking wall is best of all.

@Correction: Stats above 18 (/00, give or take) don't quite exist yet, so you can't actually Wish for a superhuman value in any stat. The charts don't go that high and the examples above 18 contradict each other.


MOAR DMG! :nomnomnom:

CHARACTER AGE, AGING, DISEASE, AND DEATH
CHARACTER AGE
So another random requirement, PCs and Henchmen must roll their age. Subtle advantages are given to each class and race with the results, Half-Orc multiclass being mature for nice stats, where Humans tend to be young for not-so nice stats. Dwarf Clerics start old, Human ones young (though you're not allowed to be a Dwarf Cleric yet, not until Uncle Gary got around to making up some details on the Dwarf gods for you to worship).

The net adjustments (given in steps-to-be-accumulated in the DMG, pre-accumulated by me here) are ...
[*]Young: -1 Wis, +1 Con.
[*]Mature: +1 Str, +1 Con.
[*]Middle: +1 Int, +1 Wis.
[*]Old: -2 Str, +1 Int, +2 Wis, -1 Dex, -2 Con.
[*]Venerable: -3 Str, +2 Int, +3 Wis, -2 Dex, -3 Con.

Which is nice, in that most characters start with bonuses to what they want. The penalties can't take you below your class minimums, and bonuses can't take you over your racial maximums (usually 18), and there's a bunch of dead space in the stat mods to dump your penalties anyway.

Unnatural Aging is the spells that now cause you to move up the age table and get better casting stats. There's totally a mini-game to be had here with ghosts & age magic with Potions of Longevity.

Not to mention gaming your Magic-User spell list. Most people don't know, but 1st edition makes you reroll the check to learn all your spells every time your chance to learn them changes, which it does every time your Int changes. Happy 41st birthday, you can no longer cast Fireball. No one knows that rule because no one would ever use it.

DISEASE
Ho lee shit. OK, so there's a bunch of tables, and you have to check them when you do anything stupid, like dig through poop searching for treasure (which is sometimes hidden in poop, for reals, because 1st edition). So, you now have a terminal case of the shits and will be dead in 1-12 weeks.


Though after a careful check of all the tables I'd note that can't happen at all. Not just that it's only a net ~0.5% chance even if you're very careless, but having 10+ Con means it's no chance at all. So it's more how your heavily wounded, venerable, Con 5 Illusionist, who already has syphilis and liver flukes, shouldn't go digging through piles of shit for treasure in a warm, rainy swamp just before lunch. Not unless he's looking for a potion of longevity, anyway.

DEATH
While disease and parsites probably won't take you ...

The character faces death in many forms. The most common, death due to combat, is no great matter in most cases, for the character can often be brought back by means of a clerical spell or an alter reality or wish.

I get the feeling EGG handed out a lot of wishes. You sort of see it noted here and there as a general panacea for characters of all levels.

There's some pointlessly complicated maximum age tables, which results in quite a long explanation of them and how you can raise people who die of old age they just tend to die again quite quickly. Demihumans generally don't care. Half-Orcs who see ghosts are in a lot of trouble.

Plus a note that Raise Dead doesn't cure Poison or Disease. That's traditionally why you can't raise a stoned person, as they'd still be stoned and immediately die again.


Next up, some minor clarifications from the Player's Handbook.

[tussock]

Oh, what the hell.

CHARACTER ABILITIES
Just repeats the flavour text for abilities from the PHB, in slightly more words. Only point of interest is the typical Strength of some humanoid monsters and NPC demi-humans. Humans (of the active farmboy type) average Str 10 ...

By way of comparison, kobolds will have an average strength rating of 9, goblins 10, orcs 12, hobgoblins 15, gnolls 16, bugbears 17, ogres 18, and trolls a strength rating of 18+. Gnomes have an average strength rating of 10, dwarves 14, elves 12, halflings 8, and giants 19 and up.

Those stats would've been awesome in 3rd edition.

Though I should just applaud the notion of Dwarves having 8-18 strength, average 14, with PCs having a +0 Str mod, on the grounds that it works and doesn't force you to choose a matching class even when the NPCs mostly do. Mechanically, the stats offer more player freedom than 3e/4e, but they're also mostly in the PHB so that's just an aside.

CHARACTER RACES
You have to randomly roll your height and weight, but humans should be taller than that table you'll find later in this book so here's a fix for that.

So you know the stupid stereotypes about the demi-humans? Yes, here is where that came from. Dwarves are dour and courageous drunks with gold-fever who don't like the sea.

Considering that their women tend to be bearded too, it is not surprising that some dwarves are somewhat forward in their behavior towards females not so adorned.

This may be a good place to note that EGG had a course sense of humour which some found hurtful and was divorced not so long after writing this book. Or that may be totally unrelated. Rumour is he was all ale, gold, and whores actresses out in Hollywood after that though, eh. Or maybe it's never a good place to note that.

Meanwhile ... Elves are forest hippies with many virtues and no vices at all except that they really like magic. But then, this is AD&D and you will really like magic too. At least it notes that their companions (the other PCs) are always considered their equals, so you're not to be a dick about how awesome you are.

Gnomes are bastards practical jokers who are like dwarves that prefer gems to gold rather than the other way around, and also farm, but less than Hobbits.

Halflings are boring gnomes. No strikeout there, it's a quote.

Halflings are quite similar to gnomes, although they eat more and drink less. ... Halflings love stories and good jokes and are perhaps a trifle boring at times.

There was a thing where where we tried to differentiate Halflings and Gnomes? Turns out when 3e made Halflings slightly less boring, less fat, and more talk-backish that was the only difference they had thrown strait in the trash. 3e Halflings are Gnomes. 4e said they didn't have Gnomes, but what they really didn't have was Halflings. All they had was being shorter, fatter, and nicer.

Not that Gnomes are different to Dwarves either, but still.

Half-Orcs are the opposite of elves. All the vices, none of the virtues. Not even a little bit of dancing and singing when there's people to bend to your will. I'm going to guess that had more to do with chucking them out of 2nd edition than the half-breed angle.


Next bit, underway, turns out to be huge, notes on Character Class abilities not otherwise specified, or otherwise specified but changed, or some new stuff that is awesome for free.

[talozin]

@Correction: Stats above 18 (/00, give or take) don't quite exist yet, so you can't actually Wish for a superhuman value in any stat. The charts don't go that high and the examples above 18 contradict each other.

I think the table in the PHB that gives maximum stats by race notes that half-orcs, elves, and dwarves can have a 19 in Strength, Dex, and Con respectively. But I'm also pretty sure the tables in the PHB don't actually go to 19, in either an editorial oversight or Gygax fucking with players again.

[hogarth]

@Spoilers: long time ago and I was barely a teen, but every single item was something I'd never seen before, so even bullshit stuff like a potion of healing was amazing and puzzling in trying to figure out when best to try for the unknown number of hits back.

Right. So that matches what I was saying above that spoiler stuff composes a small minority of what's in the DMG. Seriously, if EGG was serious about separating out the "DM's only -- KEEP OUT!" aspect of the DMG, he could have put the list of magic items in a DMG-only pamphlet and then the DMG could be called the Everyone Mastery Guide instead.

[shadzar]

@Spoilers: long time ago and I was barely a teen, but every single item was something I'd never seen before, so even bullshit stuff like a potion of healing was amazing and puzzling in trying to figure out when best to try for the unknown number of hits back.

Right. So that matches what I was saying above that spoiler stuff composes a small minority of what's in the DMG. Seriously, if EGG was serious about separating out the "DM's only -- KEEP OUT!" aspect of the DMG, he could have put the list of magic items in a DMG-only pamphlet and then the DMG could be called the Everyone Mastery Guide instead.

it is more the point of who needs this info most to play. the things in the DMG as used to play the game, but the page count wouldnt make a book that would last very long combining both, so the PHB contains what the players truly need. they learn the rest though play and have most of the info that gets them INTO the game. the book even says "the sense of wonder would be lost" is players read it, or something like that. but the monster movement or monster attack rules and monster HD calculations arent something a player needs since they dont create the monsters to fight, the DM does.

@Starting Levels: Oh good, other places I've raised that have been pretty hostile to the idea of starting below mid levels, and damning of starting anyone under 4th. The idea of starting at 1st (IMO) is you learn to avoid relying on your dice mods, because they suck. Seeing the dice as a chance of failure to be avoided if possible. Climb walls is OK, levitation better still, climbing a sturdy ladder even more better, not climbing the fucking wall is best of all.

nothing gained by starting at a higher level really. except as you say people tend to stop playing and rely more on number crunching to "win". but i still say it is more than jsut learning the game rules, as that may be why most people stop playing 1st level cause they thin that was all there is to learn, but also to learn the game world. no two worlds are alike, no matter how codified the rules become because the DMs will run them as their own even in "events", which lets you learn your DM with that lower level as well, and DMs other run different world differently, only their rulings remain constant between them for like things.

[tussock]

MOARRR DMG.


CHARACTER CLASSES

FOLLOWERS FOR UPPER LEVEL PLAYER CHARACTERS
Clerics get ~112 zero-level grunt types, including ~30 cav.
Fighters get a 5th-7th level Fighter to lead their ~80 grunts.
Rangers get Ho Lee Shit it's the Ranger followers tables.

So your chance of getting a Storm Giant as a buddy is ... about 10% of characters would get a roll on that table and 5% of those rolls would be it: 1 in 200 characters. Normally you'll get about a dozen NPCs of various classes (mostly Fighter) and races (mostly Human) of level 1-5 or so, and often a black bear and a hippogriff too.

Thieves get a less crazy set of tables than rangers. You get 4d6 Thieves, usually one or two of 6th-7th level (by complex means) and the rest below that.
Assassins get four assassins of about 4th level and a dozen first level ones, but they expect you to roll an awful lot of dice to find that out for no good reason.

The Paladin's Warhorse is a bit tougher than a normal one, but you have to run a solo adventure to go find it. It gets roughly +1 hp/level (by complex means) until maxing out at 45 hit points at 16th level. Which is OK, because you'd only have 70 yourself, and the Wizard just got Power Word Kill so you're totally dead anyway.



SPYING is a set of tables for NPC mission success when spying, plus a bit about what they might find and how the enemy responds, and what happens if they fail, in a fairly complete abstract minigame that should get out of the way reasonably quickly given the level of detail.
The recommendation is that PC spies just play out the adventure. 2nd edition removed the table and asked the DM to play out the NPC spy's adventure in their head, which is a tiny way in which 1st edition is a much better game.


THIEF ABILITIES is the section wherein EGG insists that thief abilities basically don't fucking work. It's supposed to be there to help prevent "abuse" by thief characters, but ...

Hide In Shadows: As is plainly stated in PLAYERS HANDBOOK, this is NEVER possible under direct (or even indirect) observation. If the thief insists on trying, allow the attempt and throw dice, but don't bother to read them, as the fool is as obvious as a cool pile in a ballroom. Likewise, if a hidden thief attempts movement while under observation, the proverbial jig is up for him or her.

Which is sort of true, except the PHB only specifies direct observation and then gives (1e PHB pp105) a combat example where a thief moves from plain sight to hide behind his own party (who have torches) on round one, then moves right around the fight while hidden and backstabs the enemy caster to death on round two. So, ... ? I guess he agrees with his own example from a year earlier but doesn't want you doing that outside a fight or something? Maybe people were using it to strait up backstab guards in the face?

Climbing walls goes from being a dangerous but possible job to one where you'd jump higher a lot of the time. It's just ... AD&D Thieves are very weak and don't need nerfed.


THIEVES AND ASSASSINS SETTING TRAPS is fortunately not another nerf. Infact, it's totally awesome. You can use your Find Traps skill to set traps, simply by drawing it for the DM and paying a modest fee for any necessary specialists to furnish any parts you lack. See, awesome. Failing to set the trap uses the chance of failure as a new chance of hurting yourself on it, but you can just try again after that.

Which means when you disarm a trap you can just pick up the parts and make your own traps. Buy some springs, daggers, some poison, and go trap-crazy. Shame your Find Traps skill is a bit difficult and you don't have many hit points or good saves. Keep a Cleric handy, I guess.


ASSASSINATION EXPERIENCE POINTS is where auto-killing someone in the surprise round gets you bonus XP ontop of the XP for killing folk. I guess that's nice and all, but I can't imagine why it's needed.

ASSASSINS' USE OF POISON a secret class feature where you can use poisons even better, after ludicrous time to study, though it's basically just -1 to their save.
There's also a bunch of poisons for stabbing people with and putting in their food that aren't as good as the default monstrous one where they just die. Oh, and people who are not Assassins now give up +2 on saves vs poison, because I guess it's kinda rude to give mundane people save-or-die effects. But, kill a poisonous monster, you can dip your sword in it's poison sacks and just fucking kill people with it, which is nice.



THE MONSTER AS A PLAYER CHARACTER is where there's a whole page on playing monsters! Here's the detailed rules …

The considered opinion of this writer is that such characters are not beneficial to the game and should be excluded. Note that exclusion is best handled by restriction and not by refusal. Enumeration of the limits and drawbacks which are attendant upon the monster character will always be sufficient to steer the intelligent player away from the monster approach, for in most cases it was only thought of as a likely manner of game domination. The truly experimental-type player might be allowed to play such a monster character for a time so as to satisfy curiosity, and it can then be moved to non-player status and still be an interesting part of the campaign - and the player is most likely to desire to drop the monster character once he or she has examined its potential and played that role for a time. The less intelligent players who demand to play monster characters regardless of obvious consequences will soon remove themselves from play in any event, for their own ineptness will serve to have players or monsters or traps finish them off.

… …

Thus, the DM is supposed to make a Hill Giant or whatever into such a bad option that the powergamers do not want, but good enough that the curious can survive it, but bad enough that it doesn't save anyone who can't make the most of it. And EGG doesn't want to support Giant PCs any more than that because it's hard to do properly and boo hoo hoo powergamers. Ah well, the 2nd edition version was usable without being a power option, and that would work here well enough if anyone cares these days. -1 for 1st edition.


LYCANTHROPY is where you losing half your hit points to a lycanthrope makes you a lycanthrope, which is another secret the players get to find out the hard way. Only not you now, because I just spoiled it, and you owe your DM a +1 sword or something. Which is funny, because then you won't be able to kill the werewolf.
Anyway, it goes into a little theatrical advice about how to be subtle about letting anyone know they've turned, like dragging the recent victim into the hunt for the werewolf terrorising the villiage, even though that's secretly the newb.

The rules for being one are a slow, grinding end to your character (to discourage powergaming it). 2D6 months to shift to it's alignment. Two years before you can turn deliberately or not turn when 30% wounded, and three years to change back willfully or not change on a full moon. The changed form is a monster controlled by the DM, for which you earn no XP, and eventually you ... run away to live in the woods.

There's tables for chance of changing (which becomes fully controlled at 6 years, a very long time after you're an NPC), and table for how much it hurts to rip out of your armour.

Yeh, I don't want to be a werebear in first edition either, even if it is basically massive free power when anything hurts you. So, uh, well played that man. Power for NPCs and monsters that works the same for players and I do not want it.

One might almost suggest that doing exactly the same thing for Monsters as PCs in general would've worked very well, given the identical goals of play a bit out of curiosity or ignorance and then go NPC.


Next up, alignment, bitches. A topic that's promoted enough arguments over the years to be it's own internet.

[tussock]

Wait, was I trying to defend this thing? Because oh, shit, here comes the alignment section. It is not good. Assume the worst and skip more than usual.

ALIGNMENT
NB: The alignment system in the PHB and DMG is different to the one in the Monster Manual, which uses Holmes Basic alignment with just the four corners and Nuetral, at least for the greatest part. Here we get the full nine, with all the confusion that ensues.

The overall behavior of the character (or creature) is delineated by alignment, or, in the case of player characters, behavior determines actual alignment. Therefore, besides defining the general tendencies of creatures, it also groups creatures into mutually acceptable or at least non-hostile divisions.

Which is basically alignment as team jersey. If you're on team Lawful Good, you're going to normally side with Lawful and/or Good folk against the Chaotic and/or Evil types. Nothing wrong there, it's at least functional.

Thus, alignment describes the world view of creatures and helps to define what their actions, reactions, and purposes will be. It likewise causes a player character to choose an ethos which is appropriate to his or her profession, and alignment also aids players in the definition and role approach of their respective game personae. With the usefulness of alignment determined, definition of the divisions is necessary.

It's a shorthand tactical package for monsters and NPCs (useful when a DM haven't laid out anything more detailed), and a role enforcer for certain classes of Player Character (so Thieves are somewhat anti-social and Druids aren't on anyone's team but brutal nature). Again, no real problem and as a scheme it finally didn't suck too bad twenty one years later in 3e.

Law And Chaos: The opposition here is between organized groups and individuals. That is, law dictates that order and organization is necessary and desirable, while chaos holds to the opposite view. Law generally supports the group as more important than the individual, while chaos promotes the individual over the group.
Good And Evil: Basically stated, the tenets of good are human rights, or in the case of AD&D, creature rights. Each creature is entitled to life, relative freedom, and the prospect of happiness. Cruelty and suffering are undesirable. Evil, on the other hand, does not concern itself with rights or happiness; purpose is the determinant.

Clear as a bell then. Good is Chaotic (relative freedom), and Law is Evil (mindful of purpose over individuals). Or something.

But then you stick them together and they become different. Because, uh, … something. If you've ever wondered how alignment got to be such a mess, here's my take on the mess it started as.

NUETRAL is defined in opposition to everything, and as everything has already been defined by opposition to it's other half, Neutral must be Good and Evil and Lawful and Chaotic, which is elsewhere defined as insane. So there you go. It suggests almost no one can be Neutral, which is fair enough.
NUETRAL GOOD opposes Law and Chaos equally, unless they produce more Good. Which is to say, they oppose all Non-Good creatures, which is in itself a Lawful trait where you ignored their freedom. Ah well.
NUETRAL EVIL is unbridled libertarianism. As long as the rich are getting richer, and no one's helping the needy, everything is fine. Remember kids, trying to help people only hurts them.
LAWFUL GOOD says that only Law can be truly Good, which is lies, because Law is clearly Evil.
LAWFUL NUETRAL says Good doesn't matter as long as there's Law, which is basically the same as what Evil says.
LAWFUL EVIL is exactly the same as Nuetral Evil. Not even kidding this time.
CHAOTIC GOOD is where people's rights and freedoms are just as important as their rights and … freedoms. Because Chaotic is Good. Which we already knew.
CHAOTIC NEUTRAL is mad. They insist that Law is Good and … ugh, therefore death is freedom or some shit. They're basically nihilists, and fuck nihilism.
CHAOTIC EVIL is even madder. Basically, they oppose everyone, the same way that Neutral folk do, only for themselves rather than for their ethos, as an ethos.

Each of these cases for alignment is, of course, stated rather simplistically and ideally, for philosophical and moral reasonings are completely subjective according to the acculturation of the individual. You, as Dungeon Master, must establish the meanings and boundaries of law and order as opposed to chaos and anarchy, as well as the divisions between right and good as opposed to hurtful and evil.

Which is another secret the players aren't allowed to know. Which, considering the punishments that are about to come up ....
Anyhow. By carefully kidding myself, I conclude that this lightly-treated subject of little rules is therefore something I should change for the better and here I do just that.

So there's malevolence and benevolence (to give either woe or weal), and your feelings for the povre or the noble (low or high mindedness).
So Noble Bonus is where you serve the desires of the Nobility, and Povre Malus is where you deliver suffering to the Proletariat. Batman is Povre Neuter (concerned with the underclass for both good and ill) and Robin Hood is Noble Neuter (concerned with the Nobility and tax collection rights and shit like that). Goblins want to overthrow your system of government while Orcs and Trolls just want to torture the weak.

Or, back in EGG's idea, where Lawful societies serve those at the top, and Chaotic ones have those at the top serve the masses. Which is again where Lawful is Evil and Chaotic is Good.

Alignment With Respect To The Planes is where there's 16+1 outer planes and only 8+1 alignments so that doesn't fit. I'll deal with the planes when they appear more fully (or not, as that's in the PHB for some reason).

Graphing Alignment shows us where Lawful Stupid came from.
Frank and others mentioned this a couple places around here recently, the DM records your actions as a drift in your alignment and changes your alignment when you drift too hard. While it's only intended as a swift kick in the nuts rule to people who don't fucking roleplay at all, it's also written in a way that'd make you think you're supposed to randomly surprise anyone who fails to start fights with other PCs over alignment by stealing their character levels for bad roleplay without warning. Because that's what it does. Totally. Paladins are called out as required to be total buzz-kills and such.
OK, so it warns you in the PHB that the DM will do this, and the descriptions of alignment are fairly fucking loose, and you do have to basically go nuts to go anywhere on the graph, it's still completely fucking stupid.

Then because it's such a random mindfuck on deviating from alignment, people ended up playing their LG Paladins and so on as stupidly Lawful and stupidly Good at all times just in case. So whatever the fuck kind of aberrant behaviour EGG was ratting on about here? He went way the fuck over the top with the response and it caused far worse.

ALIGNMENT LANGUAGE is not as stupid as most folk would say, but it still very stupid. Small saving grace being that it's not really a language at all and you can't call people out with it or anything. As far as I can tell it's just there so Paladins can stick to hiring Lawful Good henchmen like they're supposed to, by having a conversation about social welfare and the importance of the nobility therein.

Or something. It's not really super clear, so it could just be as stupid as everyone makes out. And given the rest of this section, probably is.

CHANGING ALIGNMENT is the other shoe dropping from the Graphing Alignments part.
NB: Up to and including 2nd level, you can change alignment without any penalty at all, other than classes which need a certain alignment and they don't lose much yet anyway. So if you're consistent, it probably happens then and won't further come up. At least that was probably the idea. One hopes. Otherwise …

Immediately upon alignment change actually occurring, the character concerned will lose one level of experience, dropping experience points to take him or her to the very beginning of the next lower level, losing the hit die and/or hit points, and any abilities which accrued to him or her with the lost level. If the alignment change is involuntary (such as that caused by a powerful magic, a curse, etc.), then the character can regain all of the losses (level, hit die, etc.) upon returning to his or her former alignment as soon as is possible and after making atonement through a cleric of the same alignment - and sacrificing treasure which has a value of not less than 10,000 g.p. per level of experience of the character.

So putting on a helm of opposite alignment? Lose a level. But you can get it back for a very high price! Also a quest will work. If you change voluntarily, no backsies applies.

I have to say, that's actually a whole bunch cheaper cost than 2nd edition where they made you pay double XP to level up. It reads more punitive, but the net XP loss is smaller.

EGG "clarified" (i.e., totally changed) this whole section in dragon magazine over the next few years. Killing Orc babies was fine, and not Evil at all. Paladins could totally be sneaky and smart and shit (until they became Cavaliers and couldn't). Who knows, but they clearly described their own self-centred genocidal maniac characters as being Lawful Good around the same time. Maybe it was just supposed to be team jersey? Who you work for and who you ally with? War and adventure was still for keeps no matter what? It might make sense then, only it doesn't fit with the given examples.

Oh, bullshit tussock. Everything here is horrible and sad and caused a lot of real problems for gamers for a very long time. There's a reason there was so many endless bullshit arguments about alignment in D&D for so long, and a good few people are still butt-hurt about it.


Rah, rah, 3e, finally got this shit right. Go 3e. Skip, Monte, and Jonathan got the business done, and well done to them. Fuck AD&D alignment.


Next up: money, AC, henchmen, & hirelings.

[hogarth]

Oh yeah...I forgot about that table that says how much damage a wereboar takes when it bursts out of banded mail, etc. That's 1E-riffic!

[ishy]

Do you have to pay the followers wages?
I seem to remember that being the case?

[Username17]

Do you have to pay the followers wages?
I seem to remember that being the case?

There are different flavors of mooks. Followers, Henchmen, and Hirelings. Hirelings need money, Followers don't, and Henchmen require money to recruit but you have the choice to pay them or not and it adjusts their loyalty percentage.

-Username17

[shadzar]

Wait, was I trying to defend this thing? Because oh, shit, here comes the alignment section. It is not good. Assume the worst

no disagreement here ever. the 9-rings for the humans just shouldn't exist. it should be a 2 axis system rather than a permutation/distribution system.

Rah, rah, 3e, finally got this shit right. Go 3e. Skip, Monte, and Jonathan got the business done, and well done to them. Fuck AD&D alignment

yes, go! far away from D&D cause you still don't know how to make it work, thus why none of you are with D&D and able to work on it any longer other than via the OGL.

Do you have to pay the followers wages?
I seem to remember that being the case?

There are different flavors of mooks. Followers, Henchmen, and Hirelings. Hirelings need money, Followers don't, and Henchmen require money to recruit but you have the choice to pay them or not and it adjusts their loyalty percentage.

-Username17

of course if you let followers die often you will attract less of them, but if you ONLY have henchmen and let them die, you don't have to pay them, and odds are future ones wont be affected by the death of the previous henchmen, just get more from Tortuga!

so if you play your cards right, you have to pay nobody. just don't mix followers and henchmen, and let henchmen be the ones that travel with and get killed while followers stay home tending your stronghold for you.