There are a lot of "E"s I could have gone with today. Epic. Encounter. Heck, even Eclipse and how it relates to D&D. But there is really only one "E" I want to talk about, and that is the Expert Set.

The Expert Set is the follow up the Basic Set I covered on Tuesday. Just like there is more than one Basic there is more than one Expert.

So, a bit of background.

The Expert Rules for D&D follow the Basic Rules. So these books are compatible with the Basic-era of D&D, the so-called "B/X" rules (Basic/Expert) and the "BECMI" rules. They are not, and I would later discover, part of the same line as Advanced Dungeon & Dragons.

The first Expert set was out in January of 1981. This is the one I started with.  Edited by David "Zeb" Cook with Steven Marsh it is sometimes called the Cook/Marsh Expert or B/X Expert.  I have a lengthy review of it here: D&D Expert Set.

The second Expert set was edited by Frank Mentzer, so it is sometimes called the Mentzer Expert or most often the BECMI Expert. BECMI was for the entire series of Mentzer edited/authored Basic line of Basic, Expert, Companion, Master, and Immortal rules.  I reviewed this Exper set here: BECMI: Expert Set review.

I discussed these differences for my B post, B is for Basic Set Dungeons & Dragons.

The two sets are largely compatible with each other with just minor changes that I detailed in the BECMI Expert review. 

The focus here is higher level characters, levels 4 to 14, and moving out of the dungeon into "Wilderness" and, therefore, more dangerous adventures. This is the end of the B/X line but that actually is a feature, not a bug. The adventures from levels 1 to 14 represent some of the most exciting adventures you and your character can do. It was true then and still true today. Many of the official Dungeons & Dragons adventures end at level 15 (even though the limit now is 20), and the post-popular "D&D" adventure out now, Baldur's Gate 3 video game, has a limit of level 12.  While the BECMI moves on to level 36 (C & M) and beyond (I), I still think this is the sweet spot for most gamers.

"That's Not REAL D&D!"

I got my start with Holmes Basic then quickly moved on to Moldvay Basic and it's companion Cook/Marsh Expert. And I was very, very happy with that for the longest time. While it is not a perfect overlap, I always equate this edition with my gaming in Jr. High.  My then regular DM, Jon Cook, and I would play a lot of this. He also had the B/X books but he also had Advanced D&D (published in 1977) and we played a mix-mash of them both (something I later on discovered was very typical). Sure I wondered why things were different between the games. Clerics had slightly different spell progression and everyone was a bit tougher in AD&D, but I was content. I was happy. Until one night.

This would have been near the end of Jr. High, I know because the Mentzer Expert had not been released yet. I think I must have been about 12 or so. Anyway, Jon and I got invited to a "real" D&D session with some highschool kids. Now let me step back a second here and set the stage. At this time D&D was popular enough that we had a lot of local groups playing completely independent games. I can remember sitting in the lunch room in my Jr. High and listening to friends talk about their D&D games, I was in awe and wonder (of course, I later learned that many of them were just stealing from things like Dune like I was Dark Shadows!).  So we got to go to this game and we were told just bring out PHBs (Player's Handbooks), I didn't have one, I had an Expert book.

Well. I got told in no uncertain terms that what I was I playing was NOT REAL D&D. I was like, "what are you talking about?" Gygax's name was on the insider cover. It was published by TSR. I had very nearly the same rules you did. 

My friends, I had entered into my first battle of "The Edition Wars," and I did not come out unscathed. "Edition Warring" in D&D is the misguided (and stupid, yeah I said it) notion that one edition is better than the other. There were only two editions (maybe four) editions of D&D out at this point and I am already getting shit for it? The effect it had on me was enough that I can still remember it over 44 years later, AND it kept me from playing the BECMI version of D&D for nearly half that time. 

Which is, of course, stupid. It also was not the last time I'd make a bad choice based on editions, but at least the next time was all my own doing. I'll detail that on Sunday.

Today, if I am going to go back and play some "Classic D&D" chances are real good I mean the B/X versions of Basic and Expert.  

It is also my favorite to write and publish for with four of my books designed specifically for the B/X rules in mind, via the Old School Essentials clone game.

• The Craft of the Wise: The Pagan Witch Tradition
• The Warlock
• Monster Mash
• Monster Mash II: A Midsummer Night's Dream

Much like what I said for the Basic Set any future "Basic" or Introductory set of D&D needs to do what these sets did. Introduce me to the game, give me some options, an adventure to play, and if possible, some dice! I still have my original Basic and Expert sets of dice.

Tomorrow I talk about a topic that has dominated my posting all year long, The Forgotten Realms.

$3.97 in the 80s. A LOT more now.One topic spans the years and editions of Dungeons & Dragons and many other Role-Playing Games.

DICE!

One of the features of D&D has been the use of and inclusion of "polyhedral" dice. Each is used for various things in the games, which can sometimes lead to confusion with new players, but a lot of fun for experienced players.

The dice are used for various random numbers.  A typical set includes the following:

• d4 Four-sided dice
• d6 Six-sided dice (the most common)
• d8 Eight-sided dice
• d10 Ten-sided dice (for percentile roles)
• d12 Twelve-sided dice
• d20 Twenty-sided dice (the most popular)

These dice got their start as various Platonic Solids and were originally from a teacher supply store to teach math. I have in turn used them to teach my own kids math and used them in my stats classes to teach probability.

The old Basic sets all used to come with dice, except for the Holmes set. There was such a demand for dice then that TSR had to ship many set with "chits" instead of dice.

Like many gamers I have a lot of dice. Even though they are all just variations of the same 6 dice, I have different sets I like to use for different games and different themes.

This is the set I use when playing Ravenloft of any other Horror themed D&D-like game. Made up of black and red dice with some Castles & Crusades dice.

These are my main D&D dice right now.

My Ghosts of Albion Dice.

I got a bunch of Drow Dice at Gen Con and have used at Gen Con when running the GDQ series.

Some of my oldest dice. Used these throughout high school.

Various witch-themed dice.


Halloween-themed dice!

More old dice to add to my collections.

Some "Holmes-themed" dice, including some Gary Con ones.
Here are two of my newest sets.

These are replicas of the old "Basic era" dice that shipped with the Cook/Marsh Expert set, and the Mentzer Basic and Expert sets. Yes, I had to use a crayon for these!

I got this set at Gary Con, so they are only about two weeks old. I got them at The Bewitched Parlor at Gary Con. The dice bag is from my wife from this past Christmas.  Since I loved themed dice for my characters, the old-school blue set will be for when I play Sinéad, and the purple set will be for Taryn.

Dice have even become a secondary market catering to Gamers. And there are some really nice ones out there.

Places like Dice Witchery, ZucatiCorp with their Holmage Dice, Threshold Diceworks, and so, so many more.

Tomorrow, I take a step back to talk Expert Sets to round out my week of some Classic D&D themes. 

 One of the biggest cultural phenomenons to come out of modern D&D has been the success of Critical Role. It was successful because of D&D 5th Edition and, in turn, made D&D 5th Edition more successful.

What is Critical Role? 

The voice actor players.

It is a streamed "actual play" Dungeons & Dragons 5e (for the most part, more on that) game. Each session is about 4+ hours long (resulting in over 2,000 hours of content) and features a group of voice actors: (top L-R, picture above) Sam Riegel, Taliesin Jaffe, Marisha Ray, Dungeon Master Matt Mercer, and (bottom, L-R) Liam O'Brien, Laura Bailey, Ashley Johnson, and Travis Willingham.

They began just as a group of friends (Travis and Laura were either already married or dating, Matt and Marisha were dating) playing a D&D 4th Edition and then a Pathfinder game.  When D&D 5e came out, they moved over to that. You can even see some rule confusion in the early episodes.

The characters. Can you match who is who?

They soon became wildly popular. How popular? Well there is an Amazon series based on their first campaign ("Vox Machina"), there are several books about and by the Critical Role team, their Gen Con shows are sold out months in advance, and they also sold out Wembley Arena back in October of 2023. A live event to watch a bunch of friends play D&D, and they sold out a space that had previously seen sold-out shows of the likes of Led Zeppelin, Genesis, David Bowie, Queen, The Who, The Grateful Dead, and more.

While they were not the first online Actual Play D&D streamers, they are the biggest, and they made this into not just their own genre of entertainment, but they have been making an absolute ton of money. 

There are three campaigns featuring different groups of characters. Campaign 1 featured the above characters in Vox Machina. Campaign 2 was their big breakthrough campaign featuring the Mighty Nein. This also introduced Laura Bailey's character, Jester Lavorre, the tiefling that inspired a thousand cosplays. 

There have also been four published books for the D&D 5e game.

The cultural phenomena that is Critical Role has not been without some critics. There are those that complain that they are not really gamers. Or that they are not really playing. Or that the "Mercer Effect" has ruined what people expect from D&D.

To those critics, I say, "Do you remember exactly when it was when you let fun die in your life?"

Look. The hobby space that D&D occupies now is not the same as it was in the 1980s. This is a good thing. 

People can watch Critical Role and enjoy it without rolling any dice of their own. They can watch the show and then think, "Hey, this looks fun. I want to try this." They can cosplay Jester, Keyleth, or FCG. They can enjoy the Amazon Prime series.

For me, it is all great fun. I started watching the old streams (still on Campaign 1!), and I enjoy them. They have also given me ideas for my own games. Between Campaign 1 and "Stranger Things," there is a whole new generation of D&D fans out there. Yeah, so sometimes I get 20-year-olds excited to tell me all about Vecna (the BBG in both), but hey, they are excited.

The Future

Critical Role has been a huge money maker...for Critical Role. It should not surprise anyone that the Powers That Be at Hasbro (the current owners of Wizards of the Coast and D&D) wanted in on some of that action. So last year in January, Hasbro/WotC wanted to put out some new guidelines on what various creators can do with D&D material, essentially walking back on 23+ years of access and goodwill.  Well, people naturally were angry.  It was enough that I even stopped using the very permissible Open Gaming License to produce my own works and spent most of 2023 working on solutions. Others did the same. One of those solutions for the Critical Role team was to build their own RPG that they controlled and had all the rights to. It is a very good idea.

They began with an actual play series and a new game called Candella Obscura. It is a quasi-Victorian, horror-themed fantasy game, so you know I am interested! I have not played it yet, but we have the hardcover and it looks fun.  You can try it out for free with their QuickStart Guide. 

Their newest game is called Daggerheart. It is still being playtested, and I discussed it a while back. Will people leave D&D 5 for it? Well, there is some indication that D&D 5 sales dipped in 2023. Was that because of Wizards of the Coast's series of PR blunders or because D&D 5R (One D&D) is due out at the end of this year, and sales ALWAYS dip after these announcements? Hard to say, but it's likely a combination of both. But in any case I wish Daggerheart and the Critical Role team nothing but the best and hope they are wildly successful.

Even if you don't like Critical Role. The Stream, the Amazon show, their D&D 5e content, or new games, you have to like the attention they have brought to this hobby. Even if only 1/10th of the people drawn into this stick around for other games, that is more than we had before.

Tomorrow, I'll talk about a topic that is very near and dear to the hearts of many gamers. Dice!

Check out the April A to Z Challenge

This is also my first entry of the month for the RPG Blog Carnival, hosted by Codex Anathema on Favorite Settings.

Yesterday I talked about the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game.  Today I want to take a step back and talk about the Basic D&D game.  Though there are several sets that can make the claim of being the "Basic Set."

Regardless of how many or for which edition they all share some things in common.  The Basic set is usually a simpler or stripped-down version of the D&D game designed to introduce new players. They typically come in a boxed set and very often have the very first set of dice a player will own.

My own history with D&D begins with the Basic game. 

Moldvay D&D Basic

Christmas 1981 will forever go down in my memory as the one where everything changed.  I was in Junior High and had been playing D&D for about two years, off and on.  I had read the Monster Manual and I had a copy, badly xeroxed, of the Holmes Basic set.
Christmas though was the turning point. I got two box sets that year; the Ballantine Books boxed set of Lord of the Rings and the "magenta" Basic Set.
Inside was finally my own book, not a copy of someone else's book. I had my own dice (finally!) and a complete adventure.
I devoured that book. Cover to cover. Every page was read and read over and over.

A lot of people talk about "the Red Box." My Red Box was magenta and had Erol Otis on the cover.  For me this was the start of what became "my" D&D. Not someone else's game, but my own.

In 1981, I felt fairly proficient in D&D. But with Holmes D&D, I always felt like something was missing. I only learned later about the "Little Brown Books" and how "Basic" actually came about.

The Moldvay Basic set had almost everything I ever needed for a game.  Plenty of classes and races.  More monsters than I expected (it had dragons!!) and what then felt like tons of spells.  I made dozens of characters, some that saw actual game play, but I didn't care, for me it was the joy of endless possibilities. And that was just in the first couple of dozen pages.

Everything I know about exploring a dungeon, checking for traps, carrying holy water and a 10' pole began here.  I learned that ghouls can cause paralysis (unless you were an elf!) and that zombies always attacked last in the round.  I learned that Thouls was a magical cross-breed between a hobgoblin troll and a ghoul. No, I still have no idea how they are made. I got to meet Morgan Ironwolf herself.
There was a sample adventure in the book, but I never really looked over. I don't think anyone did. It was called the Haunted Keep by the way. Though I very recently was reading that someone put it under the Keep in the famous adventure, Keep on the Borderlands.

This magenta-colored box with strange art on the cover also had other prizes. There inside was my first set of real D&D dice.  No more raiding board games for six-siders, though I learned those dice were properly called "d6s," and my new ones were "polyhedral."  I had a set of blue dice with a white crayon to color them in.  They are not great dice, even then, I knew.  But they were mine, and that is all that mattered.

I want to pause here a second and come back to that art.  Let's look at the cover again.  A woman casting a spell, a man with a spear. Fighting some sort of water dragon (that didn't even appear in the rules!). But look how awesome it is. Do you need to know anything else? No. They are fighting a dragon! That box is why so many gamers fell in love with the art of Erol Otis.  Inside are some equally important names; Jeff Dee, James Roslof, David LaForce, and Bill Willingham.  They gave this D&D a look that was different than AD&D.  I love that art in AD&D, but in this book, that art was just so...timeless. It was D&D.

In that box was also the adventure The Keep on Borderlands. I don't think I need to go into detail there. We have all been to the keep. We have all taken that ride out along the road that would take us to the Caves of Chaos. Nevermind that all these creatures, who should by all rights be attacking each other, never really did anything to me. They were there, and they were "Chaotic," and we were "Lawful." That was all we needed to know back then.

What treasures in such a small box!
The Moldvay Basic set was more than just an introductory set to D&D. It was an introduction to a hobby, a lifestyle. The rules were simply written and organized. They were not simple rules, and re-reading them today, I marvel that we all conquered this stuff at age 10-11. It may have only covered the first three levels of character growth, but they were a quality three.

I bought the Expert Set for my birthday in 1982. For the longest time, that was all I needed. Eventually, I moved on to AD&D. I discovered those Little Brown Books and even picked up my own real copy of Holmes Basic. I love those games, and I love playing them still, but they never quite had the same magic as that first time I opened up that box and saw what treasures were inside. I did not have to imagine how my characters felt when they discovered some long-lost treasure. I knew.

Today, I still go back to Tom Moldvay's classic Basic book. It is my yardstick for measuring any OSR game. Almost everything I need is right there, just waiting for me.

Basic D&D is a very popular topic for me on the old A to Z Blogging Challenge. Here are some other "Basic" posts I have done in past years.

• 2011 Basic D&D
• 2012 B is for Basic Clones (games that play like Basic D&D)
• 2016 A to Z of Adventure! B is for Basic Adventures

Other Basic Sets

It would be very remiss of me not to mention that there were other Basic sets as well.

Holmes Basic, also called the "Blue Book," was my start. Sort of. The rules I used back when I began were a hodge-podge of Holmes Basic and AD&D, particularly the Monster Manual. This was fine, really, since, at the time, 1979, these game lines were a lot closer to each other. I have talked about this in my "1979 Campaign" posts.

Edited by Dr. John Eric Holmes, this book took the original D&D books and re-edited them to a single cohesive whole, though limited to 3rd level, as a means to get people introduced to the D&D game.  The Original Rules (see "O" day!) were an eclectic collection of rules that grew out of Gary Gygax's and Dave Arneson's playstyles. Debate continues on who did what, and I am not going to provide anything close to a definitive answer, but the game sold well but had a steep learning curve to others who were not part of that inner circle or came from War Games. The Holmes Edition attempted to fix that.

Mentzer Basic, or the BECMI (Basic, Expert, Companion, Master, Immortals) rules, was published after the Moldvay Basic, Cook/Marsh Expert sets. The rules between the B/X and BECMI rules are largely superficial (I will discuss this more), and the BECMI rules go past level 14 into the Companion rules (more on that tomorrow).

There is evidence that the Mentzer Basic set, also known as the "Red Box," was one of the best-selling editions of D&D ever, even outselling the flagship line of AD&D at times. It was also sold in more countries and more languages than any other version of D&D. If you recall Sunday's post, the D&D Basic line was in play for 22 years, covering the same time period as AD&D 1st and 2nd Edition rules. And it is still widely popular today. 

Basic books from England, the USA, and Spain

Is Basic D&D the Game for You?

Basic D&D (all three varieties) are all remarkably easy to pick up and play. Character creation is fast, and the play is super flexible.  It is also one of the main systems I still love to write about and publish for.

Basic D&D has great online support regarding books from DriveThruRPG and other "Old School Renaissance" creators. But it is an older game. One of the oldest in fact. So, some things made perfectly good sense back then that would cause people to scratch their heads at the various design choices (Descending Armor Class? Level limits?), but that doesn't detract from the fun. Finding a Basic game or even people to play it with will be harder.

Any future version of D&D (or any RPG) needs to use Basic D&D as its model for introduction to the game.

Tomorrow, I will talk about a newer topic, Critical Role.

Check out the April A to Z Blogging Challenge

 I meant to do this one earlier, but I got busy writing something else. Honestly, I am a little surprised I haven't done this before now.

"Larina" by Djinn and "Spirit of the Night" by David Martin

Larina Nix

I first rolled Larina up in July of 1986. At first, she was a "magic-user," and I would play her like a witch. She had a few adventures that year, but that was also when my then DM was heading out of town, and I was getting ready for my senior year at high school. 

Then Dragon Magazine #114 came out in October. 

I read it all over and wondered how I should convert her. The answer became obvious to me right away. She was a witch, only pretending to be a wizard so she could go to Glantri's School of Magic. I kept her magic-user levels and then went on to advance her as a Dragon #114 witch. In the game, I said she ran out of money to keep going, so instead, she got a job at the library in hopes of paying her tuition. 

I updated her sheet and declared her birthday was October 25, but she tells everyone it is October 31st.

As the game progressed, she became less the magical powerhouse I envisioned and became more the group's sage, occult expert, and polyglot. So when it came time to level her up, I took the spells that gave her more social and mental power/aspects. If the choice was to take a power/spell/magic item that gave a blasty power OR say, learn a new language, then I always took the language.  This was also the origin of the "From the Journals of Larina Nix." 

I kept playing her over the years. In college, I kept notes on her and how she played, including her witch spells and powers vs. her magic-user/wizard ones.  I combined these notes with notes I had started back in 1983 on a witch class, and eventually, they became my first Witch class. Since she was so focal in those experiments, I also re-did her as one of my new witches and featured her in a bit of fiction when she was six years old and discovering that she was a witch.

But in the meantime, here is Larina circa 1987-88.

Larina by Gabe FuaLarina Nix
10th level witch / 1st level Magic-user (Dual classed)

Strength: 9
Dexterity: 12
Constitution: 12
Intelligence: 18 
Wisdom: 18
Charisma: 18
Comeliness: 21

Hit Points:  
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
AC: 2 (Bracers of Protection AC 2)
Saving Throws (base)Paralyze/Poison: 10Petrify/Polymorph: 13Rod, Staff, or Wand: 14Breath Weapon: 16Spells: 15
Languages: Common, Alignment, Drow, Undercommon, Elf, Infernal, Dragon

Powers
1st level: none
2nd level: none
3rd level: Brew poisons & narcotics
4th level: Brew truth drug
5th level: Brew love potion
6th level: Manufacture potions & scrolls
7th level: Candle magic9th Level: Use all-magical items10th Level: Aquire Familiar (cat, Cotton)

Spells 
First: (5+3+1) Charm Man I, Cure Wounds, Darkness, Give Wounds, Light, Magic Disk, Mending, Read Languages, Sleep (MU)
Second: (5+1) Bless, ESP, Identify, Locate Object, Seduction II, Speak with Animals Third: (4+1) Calm, Clairvoyance, Lightning bolt, Phantasmal force, Remove Curse Fourth: (3+1) Cure Serious Wounds, Infravision, Levitate, ShockFifth: (1) OracleHSO: (1) Prismatic Spray
Magic Items
Dagger +2, Staff of Enchantment, Broom of Flying, Crystal ball w/ ESP.

Welcome to the A to Z blogging challenge for 2024!  As I have been talking about all year, 2024 marks the 50th Anniversary of the first commercially successful (and in many ways the first in all respects) role-playing game. Dungeons and Dragons.

All month long, I hope to celebrate this with my A to Z of D&D.

Today, I start with the edition of D&D that most people who grew up in the 1980s think of when someone says Dungeons & Dragons.  That would be the 1st Edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.  This is the edition that we see the kids playing in "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" and on "Stranger Things." This is the classic 1980s version of D&D. The one from the Satanic Panic.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons

This game was created in 1977 by Gary Gygax in response to the overwhelming popularity of the Original D&D game.  While the original game relied on some knowledge of wargames at the start, its popularity grew to people who had no experience with war games.  Also, many rule variations began to pop up in terms of both official publications and non-official ones. Gary felt that a gold standard of rules should be written.  There was also the idea that a new game, with a different name, could be used to keep royalties out of the hands of Dungeons & Dragon co-creator Dave Arneson, but more on that in a bit.

The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game was not just evolutionary but revolutionary in it's own right as well.  Until now, most RPGs were printed as softcover books, many in digest format.  AD&D featured full 8.5x11 hardcover books with color covers and improved interior art.  The game was divided into three separate books. A Player's Handbook for everyone, a Monster Manual for all the creatures encountered and most importantly a Dungeon Master's Guide for everything the Dungeon Master (the Game Master or Referee) needed to run the game.  Soon, all other games sought to emulate this style.

While hard figures are not easy to come by, a lot of legwork and deep investigation by Ben Riggs, author of "Slaying the Dragon," points to AD&D having its best years between 1980 and 1984. Some of these sales are also likely from the D&D Basic Set, which I'll talk about tomorrow.

What made it Advanced?

Well. That's a tricky question. The official line was always this. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was a "new game" that covered a variety of rules for all sorts of situations, but mostly for tournament-style play and "official" events. The notion came from the idea that Gary Gygax saw all sorts of things going on in D&D that was not what he considered part of the rules, so he collected all his notes and made this new game and one he hoped people would follow as opposed to his prior game, Dungeon & Dragons.

That was the story.

Since that time, there have been accusations that Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was created as a legal loophole to keep royalties of the game out of the hands of Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Dave Arneson. When Arneson left TSR, the company producing Dungeons & Dragons, he was owed quite a bit of royalties. The word is that TSR and Gygax didn't want to pay those (and wouldn't until a later lawsuit was brought in).  

Gygax denied this back in the day, of course, and soft-pedaled it later when all the dust had settled. However, there was a lot on the pages of Dragon Magazine at the time to try to make the point that D&D and AD&D were two completely separate games.  

None of us paid much attention to that. In those early days, we mixed our Basic D&D and Advanced D&D rather freely. It was not until later in my game-playing that I became dogmatic about D&D and AD&D being distinct. 

What were the Differences?

Drama and inside baseball aside, some key elements made Advanced D&D different? 

AD&D had classes (occupations) and races (species) as explicitly separate. Basic D&D had four human classes and three demi-human classes. AD&D expanded on all of these. More classes and more races. The levels went higher than Basic D&D did at the time (the BECMI sets would fix this later), and there was just more everything.

Additionally, there were a lot of rules to handle a lot of specific situations. Gary always imagined that D&D (via OD&D) would be the one people played however they wanted. AD&D was going to be for serious and tournament gameplay. He saw AD&D as having a solid set of rules and judgments like Chess. In practice, though, the average gamer didn't care about all that. We played AD&D much like D&D/OD&D. We ignored all the extra rules we didn't like (weapon speeds?) and kept the ones we liked (like the new monsters and expanded alignments).  So, all this noise about AD&D and D&D being separate and having different games was always a little lost on me. Of course, I learned that others did not see it the same way. I learned when I took my D&D Expert book to an AD&D game. 

Today, the differences again seem very minor to many. The same can be said about AD&D 1st Ed and 2nd Ed, which are still largely compatible. 

For me, AD&D 1st Ed was my game in high school, and I played a lot of it. Despite appearing over 35 years ago, AD&D 1st edition is still played and enjoyed today. If my recent Gary Con trip was any indication, the old games are still doing well. And thanks to Print on Demand you can buy brand new copies of the original AD&D game now for a fraction of the cost of the book in the aftermarket or even the originals.  

• Dungeon Master's Guide
• Monster Manual
• Players Handbook

And additional books for more classes and spells and monsters.

• Unearthed Arcana
• Monster Manual II
• Fiend Folio

I like having these in softcover for my game table, and that way, my originals no longer get abused.

Tune in tomorrow, and I will talk about Basic D&D.

Check out the April A to Z Blogging Challenge

 I am going to use Sundays of this Challenge to talk about the various Editions of the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) game that have been published over the last 50 years. 

One of the challenges people have when getting into a game like D&D is where do you start? Generally speaking, you are always best starting with the edition that people around you are playing. If they are playing the newest edition (right now, 5th Edition), then great! This will make finding products easier. If it is an older edition, then great! All editions are fun. 

But what are the Editions? Are there 5 then? Well...it is a bit more complicated than that. Hopefully, this graph (making its rounds on social media and started on Reddit.) will help. The editions are all only sort-of compatible with each other. I'll explain that throughout the month. 

So there are, by some counts, 15 different versions of D&D. Some are 100% compatible with each other, some less so. 

For my posts, I am likely to focus on Basic era D&D (1977-1999), Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1977-1988), and D&D 5th edition (2014-2024).  Right now "One D&D" is not out yet. It is due near the end of the year, and by all accounts, it should be 100% backward compatible with D&D 5. We will see. 

Here are a couple of notes for people who don't know (or care) about the differences in these games.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition is the edition made popular by Stranger Things and E.T. the Extra-Terristrial. It was the one popular in media in the 1980s, though there is some evidence that it was D&D Basic (edited by Frank Mentzer, aka "The Red Box") sold better.

Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition is the edition made popular by Critical Role. 

I hope that this month I can help with some of the confusion and mystery and maybe, just maybe, make so new players out of you all.

In addition to doing the April A to Z challenge, I am also doing the Ulitmate Blog Challenge. 

AND

I hope to have some good entries in the RPG Blog Carnival, hosted in April by Codex Anathema on Favorite Settings.

 Gary Con is not just a great place to see old friends, play some great games and sell some books. It is also a great place to meet some new friends. I want to spend some of the next few #FollowFridays featuring some of the great folks I got to meet.  Up first Luna and Blaise at The Bewitched Parlor.

Luna is in charge of this eclectic shop located in the aptly named Salem, WI. So they are local to Gary Con and this was their first con.

They were selling some fantastic handmade witch hats, journals, leather goods, and yes, even some dice. Actually, everything is handmade by Luna, except for the dice, but you can choose those...so a handmade set.

Shop owner Luna

Elf Lair Games with a new Witch Hat

Plus, they had the coolest looking booth and even a fireplace!  Luna and Blaise were fantastic, and I wish them all the best!

You can check out all their links below. Head over to her website and pick something up!

The Bewitched Parlor 

• Website, https://www.thebewitchedparlor.com/
• Bio.site, https://bio.site/TheBewitchedParlor
• Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/thebewitchedparlor
• Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/thebewitchedparlor/
• Threads, https://www.threads.net/@thebewitchedparlor
• Pinterest, https://www.pinterest.com/TheBewitchedParlor/
• Twitter/X, https://twitter.com/BewitchedParlor

I needed a bit of a break before tackling this one.

I covered Gary Gygax's Dangerous Journeys: Mythus on Tuesday. I also wanted to go over the second (or third) volume of his Mythus game, the book of magic called, easily enough, Dangerous Journeys: Mythus Magic (1992).   I will not go into as much detail on this one for the same reasons I actually find this book more interesting, it is largely a collection of spells and rituals.

Gary Gygax's Dangerous Journeys: Mythus Magick (1992)

Gary Gygax with Dave Newton. 384 pages. Color covers. Black-and-white interior art.
Published by Games Designer Workshop.

We open this book and it is described as "the Colossus (or more appropriately, the Merlln) of all magick books!" Well...it is certainly large and very in-depth.

I will start in the middle and mention that a full 270 pages of this book are "Castings," so Spells, Cantrips, Rituals, and the like. They are interesting in a very academic sense. If you are going to play this game (ve con Dios) and play any type of spell caster, then this is a must-have book.  IF you are the type like me and love reading about different sorts of magic and magical systems, then this is a very interesting book with some RPG applications. I am not about to try to convert these to any form of D&D mind you. It just would be easier to convert something like Judika Illes' "The Element Encyclopedia of 1000 Spells." And at least Illes writes in a way that can be plainly understood. 

The spells range from the useful (Heka Bolt, Find Traps) to the oddly named (Acclumséd—make someone clumsy) to the largely unneeded (Candlemake Formula—make 10 beeswax candles. Still need 10 BUCs of supplies; might be cheaper to buy them.) That's fine; it's hard to come up with 1,400 different spells. All of these spells are split up by vocation. So, at least, we have that going for us. 

Returning to the beginning, we get a repeat of the material from the core book on what Heka is. Or rather, I should say the core book summarizes what is here. 

We learn more than we ever wanted about the sources of Heka. To be fair, there is some material that people might find useful in their games. However, I will point out that a lot of this can be found by going to other sources. No, I am not saying that Gary copied anything here! These are some classical ideas (crystals, times of day, times of the year, places) that have more or less magical energy. Gary takes these ideas and codifies them for his game. Again, similar information can be found in other sources that are a bit more approachable. Bard Games' "The Complete Spellcaster" comes to mind. Still, this is much easier to read than, say, Isaac Bonewits' "Authentic Thaumaturgy."

There are chapters on Heka Users, Replenishing Heka, and the Structure of Magick. Look. I like reading this stuff, but there is more here than any RPG needs. 

This covers the first 30 or so pages. We learn that Heka (and it's pronounced "HEE-ka" not "Heck-Ah") is the sum of your Heka-producing K/S STEEPs, and every casting level has a base Heka cost and sometimes extra costs.

Remember all of those Spell Points and Mana systems for AD&D that started appearing on the internet (and before if your town had a good-sized gamer population)? Well, this is that dialed up to 17. If you play a caster, then your books are going to get used—a lot.

After all the spells there are sections on how to create new castings. Useful, for this game, but not others. It would be easier to create your own. There is even a section for on the spot creation. I think someone got a glimpse of Ars Magica or Mage and realized that for 1992 this was already an old and clunky system.

There are chapters on non-human Heka using HPs and Heka-based powers.

The last Chapter covers various magic items, which makes it a good read. 

There is a huge Bibliography that dwarfs Appendix N. What stops it from being truly useful are a complete lack of publication dates and publishers. I mean, yeah I can figure them all out (and have more than a few in my own library) but it seems...well, sloppy.

We also get a tome sheet for all the spells you can cast.

So, maybe even more than the Core Rules, I enjoy reading this book for the content, and I hate it more than the Core Rules in terms of playability.  There is just so much dense text here geared toward such low returns. People point to D&D Basic and Expert (B/X) as a masterpiece of word economy. In just 128 pages total there is everything you need to play to last years. That's not hyperbole, that is a documented fact at this point. Something that Mythus can't do in 800 pages (so far). This is yet another example of how a good editor is worth their weight in gold. 

If we look at this game as a Fantasy Heartbreaker, we can be amused and laugh a little at some of the ridiculousness of it all, and then brush of our heavily marked characters sheets and try to play a session. No one though in 2024 is going suggest playing a regular game of this though. Fun for an experiment while one of the regular players is away and you put the campaign on hold.

If we look at this though as something that was supposed to be the Magnum Opus of the father of RPGs, then we can't help but come away a little confused and maybe even a little sad about it.  What went wrong here? How did this get out of Gary's hands and into mine? Was it hubris? Was it something else? Was there so much desperation here to keep this from looking anything like D&D that good ideas were thrown out in favor of bad ones? I honestly have no idea. But here is the score right now, Gary made two games (or 1½), D&D and AD&D, that are nearly universally loved to this day. Then he made Cyborg Commando and Dangerous Journey, which are nearly equally reviled. 

I was going to spend some time figuring out Larina's spells, but honestly, I really can't anymore.

A Note About Mythus: Epic of Ærth

I had this book once upon a time and I will readily admit I enjoyed it. For fluff it was great stuff and reminded more of the Gygax of old. Yes I also remembered there were some questionable bits in it, but nothing I can recall off the top of my head. It was enough that I unloaded years ago at a game auction.

Ærth in the Mythus books reminded me a lot of the sort of Earth one sees in games like "Man, Myth, & Magic (1982)" or "Lands of Adventure (1983)." A mythical Earth that only exists in some sort of dreamtime.  Mind there is nothing wrong with this as a game world. In fact arguments could be made that these sorts of Earths are great for gaming. Obviously, I am a fan of the idea and would 1000% do a "Crisis on Infinite Ærths" one day.  If trying to get those three to work together didn't drive me insane first.

At the end of this I find this is where I am at. Mythus does not give me anything that Man, Myth, & Magic didn't also do 10 years before. Even as a Fantasy Heartbreaker, it doesn't live up. But I keep coming back to it, hoping to find something here that I missed. 

Sadly, due to the lawsuits that did come from TSR, Game Designers' Workshop was forced to close in 1996, leaving games like Traveller, Twilight2000, and Dark Conspiracy adrift for a number of years.

Today is the Spring Equinox, an in-between time of light and dark, winter and summer—the perfect time to talk about Fairies and Elves. My reading of this has already been fruitful, with two more monsters added to my Basic Bestiary: the Trollkönig and Rübezahl. I am sure there are more to come. Many of the Faerie Lords you will find in my Basic Bestiary can also be found here, in one form or another. So let's get into it.

Fairies and Elves

by Editors of Time-LIFE Books, 1984 (144 pages) 
ISBN 080945212X, 0809452138 (US Editions)

There is a certain Euro-centrism to this book and that is to be expected, though there are plenty of creatures that are similar to Elves and Fairies around the world. This gets better with other books and we saw this in the Wizards and Witches and the Lore of Love books.

Like all the books, this one is hardcover with canvas-like covering (this time green) illustrated by John Atkinson Grimshaw.  This volume has four chapters. Also like all the books this one is lavishly illustrated with both new and classical pieces. 

Chapter One: Lands Behind Enchantment's Veil

We are introduced to the worlds of the faeries and their myriad of names; the Daoine Side, the Tylwth Teg, and the Tuatha Dé Danann. Sometimes, they are also divided into camps of light and dark, like the Seelie and Unseelie or Liosálfar and Döckálfar. And all have multiple spellings. But all are immortal, or nearly so, and are members of a world long since gone by the time humans, or at least Christian humans, enter their lands.  But for a time, a brief time the Fair Folk and humans could live side by side and these tales would enter into the legends of a later time. 

Here, the fairies were more similar to humankind, with an air of regalness and otherworldliness, and of course, there were tales of their magic. One how the mere touch of the Queen of the Seelie court cured a young knight of his curse. Other tales on how trees would spring magical fruit or fountains of ale and wine. 

Some lived on the land, but many lived under it or even under the sea like the chieftan O'Donoghue. These lands, regardless of where they were had the same otherworldliness about them. 

A World in Miniature 

The great peoples of the fairies reduced in nature and size, so when the lands they had lived in were settled, it was believed that they had shrunk and were living, somewhat literally, under our noses. 

Chapter Two: Guardians of Field and Forest 

Here, many different types of fairies are discussed, and we move further afield than just Northern Europe. We meet the changeable Leshy, who could grow from diminutive size to that of a giant. Sylphs, some as small as mice, would flit about in the air. Hobgoblins like Robin Goodfellow, also known as Puck, were tricksters, but others like Churn-milk Peg were malicious. Willow fairies from Czech legends were as common as German wood nymphs and the mountains of Rübezahl.  Nearly every type of natural setting had a multitude of faeries of all shapes, sizes, and dispositions. 

And that was the problem. Wander too far off into a fairies' home territory and one ran the risk of becoming lost and not finding their way home for years, if ever.

Not all faeries were human in appearance, either. The Kelpie was an underwater horse that drank the blood of swimmers, for example. 

Others fit a theme. Russia's Father Frost was the lord of Winter, except in Denmark where that role was taken by the Snow Queen, and in Scotland it was the dreaded one-eyed hag, the Cailleac Bheur that ruled over winter and the cold. 

All faeires were considered to be part of and guardian of their locales or area. From the dread three Faerie Lords and Ladies of Winter mentioned above to the tine Brown Man, who was content just to protect one small house.

The Myrtle Tree's Sweet Tenant

This is the tale of a dryad of the Myrtle tree and her love of a human prince, and the women who were jealous of her and the extent they would go. To match with the theme the tree from which the dryad came from was in the prince's palace courtyard. She would come to the young prince at night for lovemaking and disappear before sunrise.  This infuriated the women he had been pledged too and must choose among them a wife. They stripped the leaves from her tree and broke of branches.  Out came the dryad and the women turned on her, stabbing her and breaking her bones. The prince distraught, gathered the bark, the leaves, and the bones and tried to fix the myrtle tree, but could not. He stayed in his chambers, distraught. The rains came and new tree grew and when it had bloomed, the dryad stepped out again. The Prince married her and cast his former mistresses into his dungeons.

Chapter Three: Of Fairy Raids and Mortal Missteps

The last chapter had a happy ending, but that was not always the case when it came to fairy and human interaction. Princesses were abducted by fairy kings. Faerie maidens seduced otherwise virtuous knights, and faeries of all sorts made sport with the poor wives and daughters of locals. Sometimes though the mortals were the ones looking for trouble, stepping into faerie rings to become lost or seeking out their feasts, or, as in the case of the infamous Goblin Market, find their wares. 

Faeries were notorious for stealing children, leaving ugly, mal-formed changelings in their place. Sometimes the babes could be found and rescued, other times, most times, they could not.  

Tam Lin 

It wasn't always the maidens that had to fear from the intentions of faeries, often mortal men were the target. Such was the case of Tam Lin the son of the Earl of Roxburgh. He had caught the eye of the Fairy Queen. He would have been lost forever had it not been for the courage, strength, and love of a mortal woman named Janet, who was able to turn Tam Lin away from the Fairy Queen. 

Chapter Four: The Heart's Far-Carrying Call 

Love between a mortal and faerie was never an easy path to take. Swan maidens could love a mortal, but only if the mortal hid their feather cloaks from them. Lamias craved the love mortal men, but equal craved the flesh of their children. Tales abound that if a mortal man ever struck his fairy bride she would leave him forever; maybe good advice for mortal brides as well!

Though not all tales ended bad, but all had a common theme; the road to true love is a hard one. We saw that in Lore of Love as well. Such is the next tale.

Trials of a Charmed Passion 

Sir Launfal was a knight in King Arthur's court. By chance, one night, he spied a fairy lady of such beauty that all thoughts of mortal women left him. She also saw him and would visit him whenever he wished for her by name, Tryamour. The Queen, though, became jealous and asked him who it was that had given him so much happiness. He then insulted his Queen by saying she was not as beautiful as the fairy lady's lowest handmaiden. An insult, of course, and one that nearly got him burnt at the stake. But Tryamour comes to the court, and all agree that there is no way that Sir Launfal is lying or insulting. They ride off together, leaving the mortal world.

Again, like Wizards and Witches, the theme here is that once there was magic in the old world, but now it is gone. Though that theme is less overt here and more of a given. Faeries, creatures of magic, were once part of this world and now they are not.

Again the stories tend to bleed into each other and there is the feeling of half being told a story and half reading a factual account of things that had happened. The effect is an engrossing one. 

It reflects what I have felt games like D&D have been missing. While yes, there is a Feywilde and lands of Faerie in many versions of the game, there is no real magic to them, if you know what I mean. There is nothing about them that brings them to life. There are few, if any, Faerie Lords and Ladies, and no reasons for them to do what they do. This is a book I'll come back to for more ideas and certainly more names and ways to use them.

Next time: Here there be Dragons! (for real this time)

 This week is Gary Con, so I thought while I am celebrating 50 years of Dungeons & Dragons, I would also spend some time with Gary Gygax's other two games he made after leaving TSR, where he created D&D. This week, I am coving Dangerous Journeys: Mythus.

A bit of background for those not 100% up to speed. Back in 1985, D&D brought in a lot of money, but the publisher, TSR, was in debt of $1.5 million. These reasons have been explained better and in more detail elsewhere; suffice to say that by the time the dust settled (almost), Gary Gygax had been kicked out of the company (but not yet the industry) he helped create.  He spent some time doing some novels with his New Infinity Productions where he also published his near-universally reviled Cyborg Commando. No, I am not going to review that one. Plus I don't own it.

After a little time away he returned to RPGs in 1992 with his new game, "Dangerous Dimensions," or DD for short. Well, TSR was not going to have any of that and threatened to sue (in fairness, it is from a playbook that Gary helped write), and his new game became Dangerous Journeys, and Mythus became the fantasy setting. 

Dangerous Journeys would be his new core system with Mythus, the Fantasy RPG. There was a mention of the supernatural horror game Unhallowed, which would have been fun. Plus, I would have loved to have had a fantasy RPG and a supernatural horror RPG that used the same system. 

Eventually, more pressure from TSR would kill Dangerous Journey, leaving only Mythus produced.

But what is Dangerous Journeys, and what is its setting, Mythus?

Gary Gygax's Dangerous Journeys (1992)

Gary Gygax with Dave Newton. 416 pages. Color covers. Black-and-white interior art. Some full-color art plates.
Published by Games Designer Workshop.

First some clarifications.

Dangerous Journeys is the system being used here. Mythus is the Fantasy RPG that uses the Dangerous Journeys system/rules.  Mythus is also divided into Mythus Prime, which is a basic game and Mythus Advanced, which is the advanced or full game. This book covers both the Mythus Prime and Mythus Advanced games.

This game was designed to address some of the perceived shortcomings of AD&D, though Gary could not come right out and say that. He had to be a bit oblique about it.  This book is huge and there is lot going on. 

Welcome to the Mythus Game

This introduction introduces us to the game and some RPG ideas like what an RPG is, what a Gamemaster is, and so on. None of which I think are needed here to be honest, its a bit much. But the meat is the Game Premise and, in some ways, the most interesting to me. Mythus takes place on Ærth, a world like our own but 1000 years in the past, so at the time of publication, 992 CE. Here, the myths of old are real, and we know about them because of Ærth's connection to Earth. So elves, dragons, and vampires are stories here, but there they were/are real. The trouble I am having with Ærth as presented is there is very little to differentiate it from our Earth save for window dressing. This is disappointing really since I feel there is something here if given the chance to grow a little. The maps and hints throughout the book are tantalizing but not enough.

Here we are also introduced to the next two books in the line "The Epic of Ærth" and "Mythus Magic." Of those two, I only have the Mythus Magic book. We are also introduced to the concept of the Basic and Advanced games. 

Your character in the game is a persona, or Heroic Persona, or HP. This game uses regular d6s and d10s for all the rolls. There are also d3 and d5 rolls here, but most will d%.

Mythus Prime Rules

Note: There is also a "Basic Set" sold separately as "Mythus Prime" that is a 144-page book. It is essentially the same as this section, with some expansions. 

This is the "Basic" game designed to get people started in the Mythus game. It is like the Advanced Mythus game in many ways but obviously simpler. I am not going to delve too deep here. I have read it many times over the years and I like some of the ideas here. But I can talk about them when I cover the Advanced Rules. This does cover the next 45 pages or so. Reading the chapter Creating your Heroic Persona, though, is a good one since the Advanced Mythus points back to it for character creation. There is more in the advanced game.

HPs (remember, Heroic Personas) have three Traits: Mental, Physical, and Spiritual. It is not a bad division, really, Tri-Stat would later do it to much success. In this Basic section all the steps are outlined by an example. So choose SEC (Socio-Economic Class), Traits, Vocation (not a class...), choose K/S (Knowledge/Skills), and STEEP points (Study, Training, Education, Experience, Practice); get your finances and possessions., and round off your character.  Compared to the flipping through pages, one has to do with AD&D 1st ed. This is an improvement, but compared to other games from around 1992, like, say, Vampire the Masquerade, it already felt dated. Still better than World of Synnibar, released the year before.

All characters get three K/S for free, Perception (Mental), Perception (Physical), and Riding/Boating.

There is a chapter on rolling and success. I go into that in detail with the advanced game. The same is true of the chapter after the next on Combat.

The third chapter is on Heka, or the force of Magic in the Mythus world.  Now this was an interesting one to me. In the 90s I was dying for a new magic system. It is interesting but wildly crunchy. Heka is determined by your HP's magical K/S. Again, more on this in a bit. 

Improving Skills & Abilities is after Combat, and the rules here as simple enough. you spend APs (accomplishment points, our XP stand-in) to improve. This one also gets more complicated in the Advanced Game.

A Chapter on Playing your HP, moving to the Advanced Game and some Gamemaster advice.

I like the idea of a simpler game to introduce the more complicated one, but I can't help but feel that the real game, the one that would been more successful, isn't somewhere in between. I mean we all did the same with Basic and Advanced D&D.  Feels like the same mistakes are being made here for completely different reasons.

There is a brief adventure for the Basic game, High Time at the Winged Pig, at the end of this section. To be honest, it's not really all that interesting, especially given that this is the same guy who gave us B2 and the TGD series. I mean the HPs meet in a tavern. Fine for 1974-1977, but 1992? We deserve better than this really.

Advanced Mythus

Now 55 pages later, we are now in the Advanced Mythus game.

We are referred to the Basic Mythus game often, but the steps for character creation are pretty much the same.

1. Determine Socio-Economic Status. It may not be the best way to run a game since no one will go here first anyway. People choose a concept and/or a class first. This, though, does have effects on what your HP can and can't do. A table of the percent of the population of every SEC level is also presented. Not sure if it is here for illustrative purposes or if you are supposed to have your character population conform to it. I should point out though that frequency distribution for "rolled characters" will never match the SEC Populations table, no matter what you do. This is why I wonder why it is here.  A lot depends on your HPs SEC. If the acronyms get to be too much, remember this is a Gygax game, and there will be a lot more. Now personally, I am not a fan of so much to be dependent on my HPs SEC (damnit now I am doing it), I mean I have my Taxes for that. I want to make kick-ass characters. Honestly, I'll just choose my vocation and then find an SEC that fits it.

2. Generate numbers for Traits/Categories/Attributes. We have the same traits as before, Mental, Physical, and Spiritual. These are divided into two categories each. Mnemonic/Reasoning (Mental), Muscular/Neural (Physical), Metaphysical/Psychic (Spiritual).  Each of these six has three Attribute scores: Capacity, Power, and Speed. So a total of 3+6+18=27 numbers to describe your character, I mean HP. That seems a bit excessive. Granted, we only need to roll up 18 of those (OR assign 6 in the point spread) and the others are derived. These scores range from 6 to 20, with 8-11 as the average. The maximum of any human attribute is 30 for physical (cap, pow, or spd) and 40 for mental or spiritual (cap, pow, or spd). There are two ways to get these numbers. The first is a point distribution method. You get a range of numbers to divide among the 6 categories the split them up for the cap, pow and spd scores and then add them up for Mental, Physical and Spiritual. The second is a 2d6+8 rolled for all 18. Again, examples are utilized here which helps. These numbers are used to determine "Critical Levels," "Effect Levels," "Wound Levels," and "Recovery Levels." They will also be used to determine an HP's Heka. 

3. Calculate STEEP for the HPs Knowledge/Skill areas. Players are encouraged to look over the vocations to see what areas they need to increase here. The same basic vocations are here, but a lot more are added. Now, vocations are not classes. Classes are picked in other games and then the skills are given. Here you start with the skills. While there are vocational packages that feel like classes, you could in theory ignore them and build a vocation of your own. There is an Appendix (E) here for that.  STEEP scores are 00 to 91+ with 00 as "no knowledge" and 91+ as Ultra-genius. There is a K/S of "Witchcræft," and it is sadly presented as nothing but pure evil. Even Demonology here is not so vilified.  Yes. I am taking this as a challenge.

4. Choose the HPs K/S sub-areas. This goes along with the various vocations. In the advanced game, there are three additional automatic skills, Etiquette/Social Graces, Native Tongue, and Trade Phoenician, which is the "Common" of Ærth.

5. Determine Personal information. This can be random or chosen.

6. Calculate the HPs Resources.  This is random based on SEC. The unit of currency is the BUC or...Basic Unit of Currency. So 50' of rope costs 10 BUCs. I am not sure if this is clever or irritating. 

This all covers about 70 pages. I glossed over a lot of it. 

Core Game Systems

These are our core rules. Rolls are made with the K/S areas. The six difficulty levels all have a multiplier to the HPs STEEP. They are Easy (x3), Moderate (the default x2), Hard (x1 [one would think a x1 would be the better default]), Difficult (x0.5), Very Difficult (x0.25), and Extreme (x0.1).  So if I want to read a scroll and my K/S in Dweomercræft is a 20 then if this were an Easy Challenge, then my chance to succeed is 20 x 3 or 60%. Moderate is 40% (20x2); if it is Very Difficult, then 20x0.25 or 5%, and 2% for Extreme. While so, a lot of the math is front-loaded on figuring out those K/S scores. These are roll-under abilities (roll under or equal). So, rolling 96% or above can be considered an automatic or even a special failure. 

We get guidelines for combining efforts, for rolling a K/S vs another K/S and so on.

There is also something called a Joss Factor (JF) which work like luck or hero points. At least...I think they do. There is not much here about it at all. If there are rules about how to regain Joss (and WHY is it called that?? Oh, I found an "in game" reason that explains nothing.) I have not found them. 

Spending APs is also covered for Traits and K/S areas. For this, advanced K/S descriptions are given. 

Combat is largely an application of the appropriate K/S areas. Combat is done in units called Critical Turns (CTs) of about 3 seconds each. The initiative is a d10 roll.  Armor reduces damage so HPs can take a lot of damage.  Combat can target hit locations, given the names with damage multipliers of: Non-Vital (x1), Vital (x2), Super-Vital (x3), and Ultra-Vital (x4). This is to account for creatures that might have different sorts of vital parts. It feels weird, but given what this game was trying to do, I can see the utility here. 

There is an insanity and madness mechanic, but as I have said before, I am never very fond of these. 

Heka & Magic

Heka was the god of and the word for magic in ancient Egypt (or Ægypt in this book). Now I will freely admit, this is also one of my favorite sections. It is a wonderfully complicated system that would have made Isaac Bonewits proud. We get a few spells, but there are more in the Mythus Magic book (Thursday).

More on Personas

This covers anything that can change in an HP, like a change in SEC to becoming a vampire. This also covers some basic monsters.  There are some examples of NPCs, or er...NHP? Oh, actually, they are OPs, or "Other Personas."  The "monsters" are divided into three categories: Evil Personas (EPs), Monstrous Personages (MPGs), and Mundane Personas (MPs).  Other than being descriptive, there is no real difference between these that I can tell, save for name/label. Maybe if they had different point spreads.  There are also Friendly Personas (FP), which are what they sound like. 

Magickal Items

Pretty much what is says on the tin. There isn't a lot of stuff here.

Condemned as Galley Slaves

An adventure for new HPs. 

Appendices follow.

So. This game. 

Let's be honest. It is not good. It's actually kind of embarrassing how bad it is. Not to say there are not good things in it.

There are a lot of things I do like about it, though. I love the idea of Ærth, and Necropolis is still a fun adventure. The Mythus Magic was also a lot of fun, and I am looking forward to going over it again on Thursday. That said, I love some of the fluff here and there are things I could use, but it is a lot od shifting wheat from chaff here. 

Larina ferch Siân of Ærth

The over-heavy-handedness of the "Witchcræft is pure evilTM!" and the inclusion of "wicca" vis-à-vis through the Wisewoman/Wiseman vocation (or Mystic, the book is not very clear on this) is just too tantalizing to pass up, even if character creation in this system has been universally reviled.  I think I will try the character today and some spells on Thursday.

I did find some character sheets online, but I am going with the one in the back of the book.  I considered doing the point spread, but I opted to roll up a new character instead. The numbers I got were a bit higher, but not very different from the point spread or the sample character. It also works out since I wanted a character similar to her AD&D stats.  

I admit that rolling up the characteristics and getting my derived scores was much faster than I expected. But then I got to the K/S area, and things ground to a halt. It is not that it is hard, just tedious.

Note: For all the talk that this is a Class-less system, the Vocations are classes in all but name really. 

So, our basic K/S skills are figured out as follows:

• Etiquette/Social Graces: SEC Level (6) x 5 = 30
• Native Tongue (Welsh/Keltic): 30 (above) + MMCap (16) = 46*
• Perception (Mental): 2d10 + MRCap (15) = 31**
• Perception (Physical) 2d10 + PNCap (12) = 28
• Trade Language: SEC (6) x 3 +MMCap (16) = 34
• Riding: SEC (6) x 5 = 30

* In some places it says SEC x5 for language others SEC x3.
** The formulas are reversed for these in the book. 

Now, I have to pick my Vocational K/Ss. I picked Wisewoman for Larina since that fits well, but be sure I'll be bumping up her Witchcræft. Since this is a spiritual Vocation, I can choose which perception to use, so I chose Perception (Mental). I think I could figure out how to knock together a "White Witch" option per Appendix E, but instead, I am just going to tweak the Wisewoman a bit.

For this, I just shifted the same K/Ss around and kept the same number of STEEP points (248).

Crap. Forgot to adjust for age. Not going to do it. Say I rolled the appropriate number, and those above are the adjusted ones.

Attractiveness: Got a 16. Not bad. Should adjust for age or other factors I am sure, but not going too.

Joss: Rolled a 62, so 10 Joss factors. 

Not rolling for birth rank, despite some fun things for a 7th child of a 7th child. This character is way established in my mind as the 1st born daughter. 

She is from Cymru (Wales), and her birthplace was near Gŵry (Gower).

Quirks: A bit of roleplaying fun here. A lot like Qualities and Drawbacks in point-buy games. I'll choose two as long as they don't change any trait numbers (good or ill). I am not recalculating all of this. I'll take Psychic Awareness and Heka Channeler. For "Conter Quirks" I'll take Obsessive/Compulsive and Low Tolerance to Alcohol. 

Connections: She gets two of these, so I am giving her access to the local Druid Hierarchy and an Apothecary; both of these are due to her parents.  

Results below.

Larina ferch Siân of Ærth

Ok. That was fairly tedious, but in the end, I got a character that I think will be fun to use IF I ever play this game.  I'll figure out her Heka and do spells on Thursday.

I need a mental break now.

 News came out last night that former TSR writer and game designer Jim "Drawmij" Ward had passed.

Jim was responsible for some of my favorite books—not just the amazing "Metamorphosis Alpha" and later "Gamma World," but also "Gods, Demigods and Heroes" and "Deities & Demigods," to which I owe a lot of virtual ink here at The Other Side.

Jim was always very nice to chat with. I wanted to make sure I included his point of view on the whole Cthulhu Mythos issue in D&DG when it would come up since there was always so much misinformation about it. He had been sick for a bit, so while last night news was not a shock, it is still a loss.

I got the chance to chat with him a couple of times at the Troll Lords Games booths at various cons. He was always nice.  I was disappointed when he began hitching his wagon to Justin LaNasa, but I had assumed he just wanted to make games and saw this as a chance.

Of course, that doesn't matter now. I had been hoping to see him again at Gary Con in a couple of days, even if I knew that chance was very, very slim.

It has been a bad three months for loosing people in this hobby for me. So if there is any advice I can give at this time, if there is someone out there you want to talk with, do it now. Don't wait for "oh we can meet up this summer" or "Oh, I catch them at the next con." No. Do it now.

"Rübezahl" by Moritz von Schwind (1859) I am working on a post for tomorrow, and while doing some reading, this guy came up. Since I am still in the middle of editing the "F's," I figure I might as well add him. 

The concept of having Faerie Lords in my games goes way back—maybe to the first time I read "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The machinations of Oberon and Titania were so much fun that I had hoped the whole play had just been about them. I added them to my games immediately, and I was disappointed that AD&D had nothing of the sort then. Faerie Lords next appear in Ghosts of Albion and many of my WitchCraft games. 

Adding them to my Basic games is a no-brainer, really.

Faerie Lord Rübezahl
Krakonos; Lord of the Mountains
Medium Humanoid (Fey, Faerie Lord)

Armor Class: 2 [17]
Hit Dice: 14d8+42 (105 hp)
Move: 120' (40')
Attacks: 2 fist slams, 1 weapon (staff) 
Damage: 1d6+2 x2, 1d6+2
Special: Magic resistance (25%), immune to poison; can communicate telepathically, Magic +1 weapons to hit, grow to giant size, druid spells, alter appearance
No. Appearing: 1 (unique)
Save As: Monster 14
Morale: 10 (NA)
Treasure Type: C x5
Alignment: Chaotic (Chaotic Neutral)
XP: 6,100

Languages: Elven, Sylvan, Telepathic, Goblin

S: 17 (+2) D: 16 (+2) C: 18 (+3) I: 14 (+1) W: 15 (+1) Ch: 20 (+4) 

Faerie Lord Rübezahl lives in a large mountain range and avoids civilized human contact. He often appears as a tall (6'5") wild man with long gray, unkempt hair and a beard. He wears very tattered clothing and looks like a wild man or a woodwose. He can also appear as a gruff stone giant or a beautiful young maiden. He takes pleasure in transforming between all his forms to confuse and bedevil others who enter his lands. He is the lord of bugbears, ogres, trolls, and other wild fey creatures not given over completely to evil. 

His true form is shrouded in mystery, but his presence is undeniable.  Rüberzahl is a force of nature, as unpredictable as the mountain storms he commands.  While he protects the mountains and those who respect them, he delights in testing mortals by shifting his form and blocking passages with rocks and fallen trees.  He is the guardian of his range of mountains, and he does not tolerate the greedy, arrogant, or environmentally destructive who cross his path, for Rübezahl may lead them astray or unleash the fury of the mountains upon them.

Rüberzahl is a formidable opponent in combat.  He wields his staff with devastating power.  His true strength lies in his magic, however. In addition to being able to change his form to a giant, he also has the abilities and spells of a 14th-level druid. He will use spells to deal with large groups and shift to giant form to attack (use Stone Giant for combat). He is fond of casting barkskin on himself and call lightning on large groups.

Rüberzahl is a solitary creature who does not need companionship. His capricious nature makes it difficult for him to get along. However, he has a grudging respect for other powerful beings who dwell in the world's wild places. He avoids the other faerie lords, and they avoid him. The stone giants give him respect, and he avoids getting into their affairs. He has been known to aid those lost in the mountains in finding their way out. Whether he does this out of benevolence or simply to get people out of his mountains is not entirely clear. 

His home is a large cave near an expansive field of turnips. This has also given him the title of Lord of Turnips. A name he does not much care for. 

--

The editing of Basic Bestiary continues.

 There were so many this week, and so many were good ones. Let's get going.

Tales of Voracious: Ragnarok

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bluestocking/tales-of-voracious-ragnarok?ref=theotherside

Kate Bullock is back with a new set of erotic horror monster tales.  This one covers the nine realms fo Norse Myths. If it is anything like her first book in this series then it should be a lot of fun. This one has the added benefit of a connecting theme.  

Kate is a great write and great person to boot, so I'd love to see this one do well.

Fey Earth

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/brambleheartgames/fey-earth-1?ref=theotherside

I have been following this one for a while now, and their Kickstarter is live. It is set in the 19th Century and has Fey races, magic, and more. That sounds exactly like my cup of tea, to be honest.  Add in some witches and that makes it a must buy! 

So yeah, I know next to nothing about the system but the premise sounds good and the art is great. I also want this one to do well.

The tiers are nice and simple. Easy to figure out what I want.

THE EXPANSE Collectible Action Figures

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thenacellecompany/the-expanse-collectable-action-figures?ref=theotherside

Before it was a TV Series, or a Green Ronin RPG, or a Book Series, the Expanse was a d20 Modern game. I just learned that today.  This Kickstarter is for action figure line. Because really, you need Chrisjen Avasarala and Camina Drummer figures!

As of this writing this has not hit it's goals yet, but I am sure it will get there.

Gary Gygax's World Builders Archive

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ckg/gary-gygaxs-gygaxian-fantasy-worlds?ref=theotherside

Troll Lords continues to add weight to their claim that Castles & Crusades IS the spiritual successor to AD&D. This Kickstarter brings new Gygax material to C&C.

There is so much here that I can't get into it. If the name Gygax means anything to you then click on this and see what they have.

BX Advanced Bestiary, Vol. 2

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thirdkingdom/bx-advanced-bestiary-vol-2?ref=theotherside

More monsters are always great! The only I like more than making monsters is reading about them so this one is also a must-get for me.

Legend of Seven Golden Demons & Slime Pits of Sewer Witch

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/marktaormino/legend-of-seven-golden-demons-and-slime-pits-of-sewer-witch?ref=theotherside

Mentioned this one last week, but it is worth repeating!

NOW some upcoming ones.

Djinn Unboxed - NSFW Artbook

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/djinnintheshade/djinn-unboxed-nsfw-artbook?ref=theotherside

Djinn is a great friend of the Other Side. I feature her art here a lot. She is coming out with her own art book and it should be great.

Not live yet, but please sign up for updates.

Murders at Lorelahc Manor - a mystery campaign for D&D 5e!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/margomods/murders-at-lorelahc-manor-5e?ref=theotherside
This one is also not out yet. But a murder mystery for D&D? Hell yes!
There is also a pre-launch page for it on Backerkit.https://www.backerkit.com/call_to_action/1a3ccacf-6061-4c0f-a4c0-40a34400abfa/landing

Sign up for more details.

And of course, this one!

Thirteen Parsecs

http://tinyurl.com/13psignuptim

Thirteen Parsecs is coming! Please sign up to get notified of our launch of the Backer kit.

We really want this game to be your sci-fi RPG of choice, so help us make that happen.

 The minds behind Critical Role have come up with their new Fantasy RPG and honestly, it has some things going for it.

Daggerheart Fantasy Role-Playing is now in Open Beta Playtesting and you can grab a copy for free from DriveThruRPG or their website. 

Galapa, one of the new Ancestries. Art by Jessica Nguyen

I began reviewing it yesterday and quickly decided to take the plunge to print out the entire 375+ page playtest document so my kids and I can try it out.

You can see the DNA of many systems and games here, which they acknowledge.  I have not read a bunch, but there is a very interesting world here and one I think many will like to play in.

I know most of my readers are "old-school D&D" so I'll say this. If there is something about D&D 5 you dislike chances are good it is here and turned up to 11. 

That all being said there is a really interesting game here. 

Will this game be a "D&D Killer?" too early to say. I mean we didn't see Pathfinder taking D&D's throne when 4e was out, but then it happened. And when was the last time an RPG Playtest made the pages of Business Insider the day of release?  Do not underestimate the fanship of Critical Role, who, in their nine years, has only seen their popularity rise. Sooner or later, Hasbro will do something boneheaded again, like the OGL or maybe even AI art, and people will look for more options. 

One thing is for certain, the crew at Critical Role will make the game look great to play. Cases in point, they have already produced some videos for it. 

• How to Play Daggerheart | Open Beta (16:18)
• How to Make a Character in Daggerheart | Open Beta (31:55)
• Critical Role Creates Characters in Daggerheart | Open Beta (2:00:05)
• Critical Role plays Daggerheart | Live One-Shot | Open Beta | LIVESTREAM (4:33:57) 

I am watching the One Shot now, and the game looks fun. The feel is a solid fantasy RPG. Their enthusiasm is infectious. 

Character Creation

I have gone through character creation. It will be faster once I know the system better, but it is still very fast. There are a lot of options. LOTS. If you are the type that looks at D&D 5's choices of species and shakes your head then this will not be the game for you.

Daggerheart is a Class and Level based system, so that will be familiar to most; especially what I perceive as their main target, D&D 5e players. 

So, there are nine classes, each with two sub-classes (Foundations) and 18 ancestries. Like I said, there are lots of choices. Watching the "How to Make a Character" video is helpful here, but I just dove right in. That's how we did in the 1980s! The video shows Travis Willingham of Critical Role rebuilding one of his Campaign 3 characters, Bertrand Bell, in this game.  I can relate. 

Each class has two "Domains" and these overlap. These help decide what sorts of powers, abilities, and spells they can take. For example "Arcana" is magic and is the Domain of Druids and Sorcerers. But Sorcerers are also "Midnight" which is sneaky, shadowy stuff and also a Domain of Rogues. 

You choose a Class, then a Foundation (which gives you benefits), then your first-level powers/abilities.

Choose your Heritage (Ancestry and Community) which gives you yet more powers/abilities. There are nine Communities. Think of these as being like your background. 

So where are we? We have 9 classes, 2 foundations, 18 ancestries, and 9 communities. So 2,916 combinations at level 1. 

There are Traits, which line up more or less with d20/D&D abilities. 

Damage Thresholds are bit like HP, with a tracker. Damage gets deadly really fast.  Oh and damage to you also damages your armor. 

A note about Death. This game has a great rule that I might steal for my home games. 

I like the whole "Embrace Death and Go Out in a Blaze of Glory." You die and stay dead, but you do it with style. Oh, it also seems that coming back from the dead is rare and not at all easy. When a character does, they permanently lose one point of the Hope resource.  I have not talked about the Hope and Fear resources yet. But they are spent like Drama or Hero points depending on the situations. These use the oft-neglected d12.

You choose your abilities/powers/spells based on your Domains. The feel is similar to some of the choices for characters seen in D&D 4e.

There are Background questions. They are optional, but they are fun.

Experiences are fun. These are bits on your background that you can use a bonus to your Hope roll. These are figured out in Session 0 and work best if they complement (or aggravate!) the other characters.

Connections are similar. This has a solid Blue Rose feel to it. 

Character creation is fun and would work best during Session 0 with your group. 

Larina Nix in Daggerheart

Of course, I am going to try this with my Drosophila melanogaster of character creation experiments. There is no witch class here, so the first thing I need to do is figure out what her class is. 

While the playtest materials give me plenty to create a class (and the videos use them) there are other options. One is the Character builder at the Daggerheart Nexus at Demiplane.app. This is what I did for my witch Larina. 

Looking through my options here and with the playtest I am opting for Sorcerer over Wizard. Larina knows things, but they didn't all come from books (which she loves) plus I like the idea of the Midnight Domain for her, so she is a Sorcerer. For her Foundations (subclasses), I gave her Primal since her magic needs to feel a little old and a little wild. Her ancestry is human, and in this reality, she is Loreborn to tie into her connection to reading and books. 

Background I can skip over since this not with a group yet, but I do want to cover her Experiences here. For her +2 Experience I went with "I understand that! (Magical Scholar)" so she can spend a Hope die anytime something magical needs to be explained or figured out. For her +1 Experience, I went with "Wait, I need to read this (Seeker of Magical Secrets)" to cover that sometimes her curiosity overrules her common sense. So that +1 to her Hope die would be great in situations where she is trying to read a magical inscription on a tomb wall while avoiding getting hit by a mummy. 

For my Domain Cards (yes there are cards, but also slots on my sheet) I took one Arcana and one Midnight out of my choices of three each. I wanted to try a balance of the two. 

The effort was fast, really fast. And I am pleased with the results. 

Yeah, I am quite pleased with this character and character creation. But the proof is in the playing.
So now, after reading, making a character, watching some videos, and retweaking the character, I'll try my hand at making a character from the start again to see how long it takes. For this I will do my other active character Sinéad.  She is also a sorcerer, but I want to see how different two characters of the same class can be. Then I'll also try her as a multi-classed Bard.

Sinéad in Daggerheart

In D&D Sinéad is a half-elf Magic-user (Sorcerer)/Bard. Now her history is very, very much tied to the Forgotten Realms. So unlike Larina, her home is a very integral part of her. It will be interesting to see how that works in a game like Daggerheart.

Ok, that took about 4 minutes. While I can get into the details, suffice it to say that this worked well for me and I was EASILY able to capture the concept here that this is character who can't control her magic and is working on figuring out how.  She isn't a bard yet. But that also fits in well with my starting concept of her.  For her item, Family Heirloom, I have it as her father's lute.

In Daggerheart, you can multi-class starting at the 5th level, so I am going to try that. When Multi-classing, you choose one of the two Domains of the second class. I rather like that. The Bard Domains are Grace and Codex. While Codex would be great for the added magic, concept-wise, Grace is a better fit.  She also chooses one of the Foundations (Subclasses). For Sinéad, I picked Troubador so she can get some game advantage from her lute.

Level 0 to Level 5, plus making screenshots? 25 mins.  A PDF export would be nice here.

So, despite Larina and Sinéad both being Sorcerers in Daggerheart, they do look and feel different.

There is a lot to try out for this game and I am looking forward to seeing where it goes.

Links

• Main Website
• Daggerheart Nexus (character creation)
• Daggerheart Open Beta Playtest rules, DriveThruRPG

 I have a slight sidestep today. I have been playing around with something for a bit. You all know I am a fan of Mark Taormino's Maximum Mayhem adventures from Dark Wizard Games. I have been getting his latest in both the 1st Ed and 5th Ed versions, one for me and one for my kids. I have also mentioned that while they are designed overtly for "First Edition Rules" or what I call "The Advanced Era" the adventures top off at the 14th level, making them compatible "in spirit" with my beloved B/X rules.

The obvious solution to this was to run some sort of mutant B/X-Advanced hybrid. The ruleset that won out was Old School Essentials-Advanced Fantasy Edition. While there are some bumps, it is a surprisingly good fit. To be honest, I would love to test out OSE-Advanced vs. 1st Edition vs. OSRIC and see how they all fare with the same sort of character. I have not done this, nor do I think I will. I think that the differences would be so minor as to be unnoticeable in actual play. 

But I do have the characters. 

A while back, I introduced a lovely druid couple, Maryah and Asabalom. They were OSE characters from the very start. They have connections to previous characters of mine, but nothing major. I see Asabalom as the grandson (or maybe great-grandson) of my "Beastmaster" character, Absom Sark. Because of this, I am fudging things a little and giving him the ability to wild shape into a wolf at the 4th level. He just doesn't have the control a 7th-level druid does. Right now, he can only shift into a wolf. 

For a variety of reasons that are too minor on their own but added up, these two characters are my natives of Mark's Maximum Mayhem world. One that uses OSE-AE. They are the ones I am taking through these adventures, and their son, Áedán Aamadu, will go through the 5e versions. 

The biggest issue has been finding the time to do these. With his new Kickstarter now live, I figured I needed to get caught up. 

So. I will review these, knowing I really can't go through them anymore. Sorry, Mad Master! I am reviewing these in "campaign order" and not in release order.

Maximum Mayhem Dungeons #0: Village on the Borderlands

by Mark Taormino, 64 pages. For levels 1-3. Art by Justin Davis, Jacob Blackmon, Carlos Castilho, Daniel Commerci, Jeff Dee, Felipe Faria, Mark Lyons, William McAusland, Brian McCranie, Matt Morrow and JE Shields. (How's that for a who's-who among OSR artists?)

First Edition PDF (DriveThruRPG). First Edition PDF and Print Dark Wizard Games Store.

Fifth Edition PDF (DriveThruRPG). Fifth Edition PDF and Print Dark Wizard Games Store. 

The first edition has "blue" maps, and the fifth edition has full-color maps.

A lot of us freely mixed Basic D&D and Advanced D&D back in the early 80s. It was not uncommon then to find groups that had gone through B2 Keep on the Borderlands and T1 The Village of Hommlet. Mark knows this, and this adventure is a nod and homage to that experience.  This is also Mark's biggest adventure to date.

While this could have come off as pastiche or, even worse, a bunch of hamfisted clichés, instead it is a nod and even an homage to not just how much fun those old adventures were, but also to the experiences we all had. Don't get me wrong, there is a great a adventure here; but if you were playing the Keep or the Village or Giants series back in the early 1980s then this will hit differently. 

The is best described as "what if the Village of Hommlet was set outside the Cave of Chaos and not the Keep?"  You have a local village in need of help. There are roving bands of ogres and weird fungi and skeletons. Whats a local farmer to do? Easy, call upon some brave, and expendable, adventurers for help. 

There are some hooks for the adventure but for me they are unneeded. THOUGH I will add that the whole Valley of the Moon was a great hook for me. Not just because the name is similar enough to where my characters Maryah and Asabalom were from, but it is nothing if not a nod to one of my earliest crushes, Moon Unit Zappa. 

We have all sorts of classic monsters, rumor tables, nods to (in)famous NPCs, tarot readings, standing stones, name puns, an inn to meet in, places to buy equipment and weapons. 

The Inn of the Whistling Pig is wonderfully detailed and loaded with all sorts of characters. In fact, while reading, I half expected to see stand-ins for Duchess and Candella. 

I said, "Caves of Chaos," but there are only a few caves where a lot of the "out of town" action takes place, and that is plenty. The Hill Giant cave is the first. There is also the Forest of Fallen Oaks, the Ruins of Sternholm Keep, and the Caverns of the Wicked Peaks.

A great non-linear adventure where the party can start at the Inn and head out in any direction to find adventure. They can come back, heal up, spend their loot and go back out, OR keep going. That last one is not advisable as everything here has a good reason to see the PCs dead. 

There are hooks here to other Maximum Mayhem adventures, too.

The plot and organization of the first and fifth editions are the same. The Fifth edition version features color maps.  

Maximum Mayhem Dungeons Mini Adventure #1: Shadow of the Necromancer

by Mark Taormino, 16 pages. For levels 1-3. Art by Phred Rawles, Chet Minton, Adam Black, Brian Brinlee, Carlos Castilho, Bradley McDevitt, and Phred Rawles.

First Edition PDF (DriveThruRPG). First Edition PDF and Print Dark Wizard Games Store.

Fifth Edition PDF (DriveThruRPG). Fifth Edition PDF and Print Dark Wizard Games Store. 

The first edition has "blue" maps, and the fifth edition has full-color maps.

This is a mini adventure, and the first one Mark has done. Much like his Vampire Queen adventure I have used a figure called "The Necromancer" in my own games. Get out of my head Mark!!

These are designed to be played in one or two sessions. We managed to get through it in three short sessions. It has a great "Hammer Horror" vibe to it, and honestly, I rather love it.

The adventure comes with a map, in beautiful old-school blue for the 1st ed version and full color for the 5th edition version. The module is 16 pages (one page for title and credits, one page for OGL , and one-page blank).  The adventure is a simple "strange things are going on! The PCs must investigate!" situation. It turns into "stop the minion of the Necromancer from finishing his evil plans." It's tried and true, and it works fine here.  As with many of the Darl Wizard/Maximum Mayhem Dungeons, the adventure is a deadly affair. Not as deadly as the Hanging Coffins of the Vampire Queen, but it is not a walk in the graveyard either. It is a fun romp and really captures the feel of old-school playing. Both versions are great, and I can keep the 1st-ed version for myself and give the 5th-ed version to my kids to run.

Exactly what you want in an adventure. Despite the size and scope Mark gives this one the same love and attention he does to all his larger adventures.

The plot and organization of the first and fifth editions are the same. The Fifth edition version features color maps.  

Maximum Mayhem Dungeons #7: Dread Swamp of the Banshee

by Mark Taormino and Alan Chamberlain, 48 pages. For levels 4-8. Art by Jacob Blackmon, Brian Brinlee, Ed Lacabanne, Mark Lyons, Brian McCranie, Matthew Ray, and Phil Stone.

First Edition PDF (DriveThruRPG). First Edition PDF and Print Dark Wizard Games Store.

A noblewoman has returned to her family estate and finds it has been taken over by a swamp. Worse, there is an evil banshee stalking the lands. But what is the noblewoman hiding?

This adventure is for characters of 4th to 8th level. But I will say this. 4th and 5th level characters are going to die. This is not a meat-grinder like Hanging Coffins, but it is deadly. There is a mystery here too so, so it is not all fireballs and swordplay. But there is a lot of that too.

Like the adventures of old, there are also new monsters here. Mark always adds a little something like that. I also get the vibe that Mark and Alan were reading a lot of B3 Palace of the Silver Princess. Not for the plot but just the feeling. It works here to be honest. 

In the series, I would run this one after Vault of the Dwarven King and have the characters between the 5th and 8th levels. Not that Vault is easier, just not as deadly as this one. 

Maximum Mayhem Dungeons #6: Moving Maze of the Mad Master

by Alan Chamberlain, 40 pages. For levels 6-10. Art by Jacob Blackmon, Alan Chamberlain, Ed Lacabanne, Mark Lyons, Brian McCranie, and Phil Stone.

First Edition PDF (DriveThruRPG). First Edition PDF and Print Dark Wizard Games Store.

This one is by Alan Chamberlain, who was also on The Dread Swamp of the Banshee and Vault of the Dwarven King. So the feel is right. In fact, until Mark kickstarted his Maximum Mayhem #8: Funhouse Dungeon of the Puppet Jester, THIS was the funhouse dungeon. 

The premise is simple but very effective. A bunch of metal monsters are attacking small towns and villages, and the PCs decide to help. What we get is an honest-to-Gary, Mad Scientist building all sorts of clockwork and autonomous horrors. To get to him, you need to get through his maze of deadly traps and clockwork terrors. 

If the other adventure is a meat grinder, then this one is a food processor. It's brutal, but of course, the fun is just as great.

You could get this one for the circular maze map and all the stats of the clockwork creatures alone (6) for a total of 11 new monsters. 

It's insane, really.

I am not sure any character can survive this campaign.

Don't forget Mark has two more of these adventures on Kickstarter now: Legend of Seven Golden Demons & Slime Pits of Sewer Witch both for 1st Edition and 5th Edition rules.

 I am finally releasing my latest project based on the Roman-Norse Myths I was playing around with last year. 

Myths & Monsters Vol. 1 - The Black Forest Mythos

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/473864/myths-monsters-vol-1-the-black-forest-mythos?affiliate_id=10748

This is the first of a series of myths and legends that began as a thought experiment about gods, monsters, and syncretism of beliefs. These gods did not exist, at least not in the classical sense. They are, however, great for a fantasy adventure game where elves, dragons, and magic are real. They are also based on some of the most well-known myths in the world.

This product is the start of a new series of smaller publications aimed at covering the Gods, Demigods, Heroes, Demons, and Monsters of various mythologies. Some will be thought experiments like this one, a set of syncretized Roman and Norse/Germanic myths. Others will be reconstructions of some ancient and less well-known myths.

These aim to provide your Advanced-era game with new gods and goddesses, as well as new monsters, demons, and other adversaries. 

Myths & Monsters Vol. 1 - Black Forest Mythos covers the myths, gods, and monsters of the people of the Black Forest.  This began as an idea; what if Roman pagans and Norse/Germanic peoples met up somewhere in the Black Forest region of Germany circa 600 CE and combined their gods into one pantheon?  And what if I had created this pantheon based on what I knew of both groups back in 1986?

Roman-Norse (Black Forest) Pantheon 

Imagine, if you will, some Roman Pagans, say circa 300-900 CE. While Christianity is becoming the Empire’s official religion, not everyone is taking up the Christian Gods. There is still a mix of Pagan Roman gods, Greek Gods, local gods and spirits, house gods, and more. The further you are from Rome (and later, Constantinople), the more likely you will still hold on to your local gods.

Now, far to the North, there are the Nordic-Germanic tribes. They are the “barbarians” of Roman lore; they want Rome’s treasures and power. But most of these people just want to find new lands to grow food on. While the Viking raids to England and Ireland are so stamped into our collective subconscious there were other forays into other lands. Some we know went South. But most of these did not happen till the 800s CE when most of Europe was firmly Christianized. We know that the Romans interacted with the Norse and made connections between their respective sets of Gods. Romans were rather practical when it came to religion.   

Imagine a time between 300 CE and 900 CE when not all Northmen were Viking raiders, and not all Romans were Christians. Let’s say that a group of Roman pagans and Northmen headed south and north, respectively, but ended up in the Black Forest region of Southern Germany, moving slightly westward. Instead of going to war, they decided to build a community together by finding common ground in their beliefs. Since both groups were polytheistic, they could accept each other’s gods. As time passed, the gods merged, just like the people. For the purposes of this story, let’s assume it was around 600 CE.

This is that project. Now, it is updated and edited, and the art is all from Larry Elmore (used with permission).  This first volume has 24 Gods and Goddesses and 17 monsters. 

This volume features art from Larry Elmore, but future volumes will feature new art from other artists. I just have to make enough from this one to pay them. 

So get your copy. Any and all feedback is welcome. I want to make this series something people will find helpful. 

 It is that time of year again. Time to reveal my theme for the annual Blogging A to Z challenge.

This is the year I have known what I would do for a long time. Since it is the 50th Anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons and I am spending the year celebrating, for April, I am doing the A to Z of Dungeons & Dragons.

Granted, this might not really be much of a "challenge" for me, but I hope to inform and maybe even get some people into this weird little hobby of ours.

Who knows. Maybe I'll learn something new myself.

Catch all the other A-to-Z-ers doing theme reveals this week here: https://tinyurl.com/mv4nhbmj 

The main Blogging A to Z website is here:  http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/ 

 A special double feature today because I have a bunch I want to share.  Lets get to it.

#FollowFriday Oneiropolis

I mentioned this one yesterday, but I wanted to make it special today. Oneiropolis is the new Patreon from game designer Joseph D. Carriker. I worked with Joseph on Six of Cups for Green Ronin Publishing's Blue Rose. He was in charge of a product featuring various cities in Blue Rose's World of Aldea. I got the wonderful chance to put my little mark on Garnet. 

So yeah, Joseph knows his cities. He is now on Patreon and detailing cities in FRPGS. He posts about every two days so far, and he certainly doesn't lack inspirational material. I am coming back to this one for any and all Waterdeep lore.

I have always wanted to do a pure urban campaign. This is giving me more material to work with and use to make that real.

So, absolutely check it out. While you are at it check out his DMsGuild offerings.

Friday is settled, let's talk weekends and Kickstarters. I have one on both ends of their funding calendars.

Metanthropes: Introductory Zine

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/legitamine/metanthropes-introductory-zine?ref=86o0n7

This is a zine-sized TTRPG where the characters are Metanthropes or "Beyond Human."  The author is building Foundry support and the mock-ups of the books look great. It has a super-hero vibe, but also something more akin to Exalted. The rules are easier though.

The PDF is only 10€ and the physical book is 20€. So, not a bad price, really.

It looks interesting and I think I'll give it a try.

Legend of Seven Golden Demons & Slime Pits of Sewer Witch

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/marktaormino/legend-of-seven-golden-demons-and-slime-pits-of-sewer-witch?ref=theotherside

Does this guy or his adventures even need an introduction here anymore? Mark is back with FOUR adventures. Ok, two...one and a mini adventure, but both for 1st Edition and 5th Edition. Which is perfect for me. One Kickstarter, an adventure for me (1st Ed) and one for my kids (5e).

Now he FINALLY is giving me a witch adventure AND it takes place in the sewers, so it ties into this week's mini-theme of urban adventures.

Mark's adventures are crazy, fun and rock solid. The only thing that runs better are his Kickstarters for them. He is a model of how to do Kickstarter right.  Grab these.

 I am going a little out of order today with my Forgotten Realms reviews. I still have one (or two) 1st Edition products to review, but I wanted to cluster these three together—all three, not my originally planned two—since I am opting to add in a PDF when my original plan was only to review items on my shelf. So, I am breaking all my rules in one post. It does tie into the mini-city adventure I did with them this weekend.

Given some recent movie announcements, I could not help but popping in my well-worn soundtrack to "The Crow."  Every city in the 90s was dark and rainy. 

I also want to state that NONE of these products were what I once thought they were and I often mixed them up.

FR1 Waterdeep and the North

Design and Development: Ed Greenwood, Product Coordination: Jeff Grubb, Editing: Karen S. Martin, Cover Art: Keith Parkinson, Interior Art: Chris Miller. Maps: Frey Graphics and David Sutherland, Heraldic Escutcheons: David E. Martin, Typography: Kim Janke, Keylining: Stephanie Tabat.

1987. PDF, Full-color covers, and maps. 78 pages.

I am basing this review on the PDF from DriveThruRPG only. If I can find a good copy (game store auction tomorrow night!) then I will grab it. And this is one where the boxed set would be nice to have.

This is the first proper Forgotten Realm reference, with the Moonshaes the second. 

You might have noticed that I listed everyone involved with this product above. The Realms, in this iteration, has become a joint effort. Yes, Ed Greenwood is the father to this brain child of the Realms. He has suitably impressed me here and in the pages of Dragon Magazine. Ed's position here is solid and secure. But if "it takes a village," it takes much more for a city like Waterdeep.  Even *I* know about Waterdeep, I still call myself a novice here.

This book introduces us to Waterdeep, the "City of Splendors", and the surrounding countryside of "The North."

It is a good introduction really, starting with Chapter 1: An Introduction to the North. The surrounding lands are detailed. While I knew of some of these, this put them into better relationship with each other. For me? I like having a map open to see where I am while reading. There are no maps of this area in this product. Not a huge deal, really, since they are with the Forgotten Realms boxed set. But a small one might have been nice, at least of the area in question. Thankfully there are also plenty of good maps for this area online.

Chapter 2: An Introduction to the City of Waterdeep, takes us to the City of Splendors. We get some history, some names of important people, and (most importantly to me right now) the city's legal code. 

Chapter 3: The City Wards divides the city up into various wards. As a Chicagoan, this makes a lot of sense, and I am sure to anyone that has ever lived in a good-sized city, it will as well. I will point that while this is all about Waterdeep there is an assumption here that you can use this information to also build your own cities. Each ward has a name (Castle Ward, Sea Ward...) and various locales are mentioned. Some are just a name and what they are ("The Blue Jack," Tavern) so it leaves a lot of room to expand on what you can do with own Waterdeep. There are over 280 named locations, not counting the sewers, here.  There is a lot of life here and almost none of it is detailed. YES, I mean this as a GOOD thing. I don't want the names and detailed back stories of every magistrate down to beggar orphan here. I want room to discover and grow. Give me enough and then back off. 

Chapter 4: Life in the City. (Yes...Despite listening to the Crow Soundtrack, this is the song going through my head as I type this. Any resemblance between my Sinéad and Kate St John of Dream Academy is purely coincidental, I am sure.) Everything that makes a city work. Religion, money, goods and services. This is the life blood of any city and Waterdeep is livelier than most. There are notes about spending the winter in Waterdeep as well. The Forgotten Realms always says the quiet part out loud, and this is a world full of adventurers. To paraphrase the old saying, "All roads lead to Waterdeep." And while you are there, behave yourself. There is even a section on the going out at night, manners and dress. Now I want all my characters to go out an buy some nice part clothes for an after-hours party.

Chapter 5: The Guild and Factions of the City covers exactly that. Ever since Fritz Leiber (and of course WAY before) and Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, FRPG Cities have had thousands of thieves' guilds, merchant's guilds, secret guilds, and, in a Forgotten Realms trademark, Adventuring Guilds. The guilds of Waterdeep are listed in three columns and then detailed in the next 7-8 pages. Again, there is the tacit notion here that you can lift these and use them in your own Forgotten Realms city. This becomes more implicit in future products.

Chapter 6: Noble Families of Waterdeep gives us some names and crests, the most "Greyhawk" like chapter so far.  

Chapter 7: Selected Non-Player Characters of Waterdeep covers some notable NPCs in greater detail. It would not be a Forgotten Realms product without some notable NPCs.

Next are adventure hook chapters.

Chapter 8: Beginning a Campaign in Waterdeep covers exactly that. And there are some great ideas here too for such a short chapter. Though to be honest if you get to this chapter and don't already have ideas then this one won't help you.

Chapter 9: Adventures in Waterdeep is the one chapter I wanted to read the most. Chapters 1-7 are great and full of ideas, but I want to discover this city as an adventurer, not as a scholar. Back when I lived in Southern Illinois, right before I moved to Chicago, I had a map of the city on my wall. I would go over that map for hours on end just fascinated by it. When I moved to the near West Side (just a notch north of Little Italy and west of the Loop) I was surprised for how little that prepared me for all of it. The City is a living place. Chicago is. New York is. And so should Waterdeep.

There are seven "mini" adventures here. I ended up using none of them!

After this (what would have been the inside covers), there are maps of the major wards and a large piecemeal map of the city for the next 10 pages. Yes, I could print them out, but I am holding out for now.

This is not the final nor most authoritative word on Waterdeep by any stretch. It is a start though and a good one. 

The next two products should have probably swapped names. 

City System

by Ed Greenwood and Jeff Grubb, Editing: Karen Boomgarden, Typography: Betty Elmore, Cover Art: Larry Elmore, Keylining: Stephanie Tabat, Cartography: Dennis Kauth and Frey Graphics.

1988. PDF and Print on Demand. Full color covers and maps. 

Again this one takes a lot of work from a lot of people. This book follows quickly on the heels of FR1 Waterdeep and the North.  It was a boxed set, but for this review I am considering my PDF and Print on Demand versions from DriveThruRPG.

There is some repeated information in this set from the Waterdeep set. For example the entire legal code on Page 7 of this product is the same to the one in FR1 Waterdeep and the North starting on page 18. I am not 100% sure if I mind this though. I mean in truth back in 1988 this might have bothered me, but now? Well, I have the PDFs I could print them out and put them into a big binder called "Waterdeep" and organize how I see fit. I might do that in fact.

This book is more like a tourist directory to Waterdeep. The laws are discussed, the buildings are numbered and given a name. The BIG attraction to this set are the maps (which are printed here and given as a separate ZIP file.) Well, the Larry Elmore cover is striking as all hell to be honest. 

If you like random tables then this is your book. Lots of tables on encounters, goods, items gained from pick-pocketing, and more. 

Ignoring the use of this as an independent product it makes for a great addition to FR1 Waterdeep and the North. The two together would be a perfect product really.  Looking ahead to my other Forgotten Realms books I see I don't actually have a giant map of Waterdeep. Should I rectify this?  The maps in this product are gorgeous, and it would be worth my time, effort, and money to get them combined and professionally printed. Or burn through my printer ink to do it on my own and mount them to some cardboard with Scotch tape. Depends on how much I end up playing here. If I don't, it certainly will not be for lack of options!

FR8 Cities of Mystery

by Jean Rabe. Art Larry Elmore (cover), Dennis Kauth (buildings), Christopher T. Miller (interior art).  Editing Kim Mohan. Product Manager Bruce Heard. 

1989. Boxed Set and PDF. 64 page book, 2 large 25mm compatible maps, 4 6-page card stock buildings.

This is a fascinating product, and there is a lot going on here. I am reviewing my boxed set for this. There is a PDF and a softcover Print on Demand from DriveThruRPG as well. 

What do I love about it? Well, for starters, that Larry Elmore cover is one of my favorite covers of all time. Really. I love how if looks and while the old adage is true, this cover made want to buy this product. When my old DM and I talked about our "Urban Survival Guide," this was the cover we thought about. 

Also it came out in the liminal time between 1st Ed and 2nd Ed with a note on the cover that is was compatible with both. That is not entirely true. It is broad enough to be compatible with ANY fantasy RPG that has a city. There are almost no game stats here save for the adventures at the end. 

In truth this product should have been called "City System" since that is what it is. This not about Waterdeep except in the most broad of terms. 

The first part is a 64-page book that covers all sorts of details on building your city. This includes details like where it is (and how that changes the city), how big is it, taxes, defences, the government. Everything that was laid out for you in the Waterdeep and the North and City System sets are now up to you to figure out. 

There is also a section how make Characters work in a city based adventure. Honestly that would have been the gold right there. 

The rules are put to use in Sauter, City by the Sea, and there are five mini-adventures to help the DM and Players along. Honestly I want to run the Maltese Roc based on the name alone.

If that were all then yes, this would be a fine product. Not great, but added to the Waterdeep and the North and City System books it would make a great trilogy of playing in the city (sounds like a Stevie Wonder album). But that is not all there is. 

There are two large double-sided maps for 25mm scale minis and four packages of 6-page cardstock building to build.

Since it is a boxed set, I am also keeping duplicates of old Dragon magazine articles about cities in it. 

This is from 1989. D&D would not get this mini-focused for another 11 years. And it all still works with any edition you care to play with it.  I read that this was going to be the first of some similar products to expand the cities even further. But honestly I am not surprised that there were not more. This looks like an expensive thing to make. 

Sinéad encounters two desperate thieves
For the PDFs you would need to print out the maps and buildings to build them. I would glue them to some cardstock or print them on cardstock if your printer can do that. The advantage of the PDF and this system? As long as you can print, you can have as many of these buildings as you need.

Looking at All Three City Sets

FR1 Waterdeep and the North, City System, and FR8 Cities of Mystery are all great for that late 80s feel of the Forgotten Realms AD&D.

While each product is good individually and does what it sets out to do, one of the others points out its minimal shortcomings. Combined, they work fantastically together. So well, it makes me wonder whether I even need to leave the city! 

Regardless of what city in the Realms becomes my home base (I am still partial to Baldur's Gate, but Waterdeep might win me over) I have the tools and the means to expand on it all.

Ill Met in Waterdeep

So, for my first foray into Waterdeep, the characters were all arrested. No "we met in a bar." It is "we met in jail." Sinéad, Arnell, and Rhiannon meet up with Nida (I wanted her introduction to be memorable), Jaromir, and Argyle. Who are these characters? Well, Nida, I have talked about already. Argylle is my experiment on having a character from another world end up in the Forgotten Realms. In this case a Dwarf from Rockhome, aka Mystara and the D&D B/X set. In his world his class and race is Dwarf. Here he is now a Dwarf Fighter, but I started him off as a BX Dwarf. My oldest loved that since he is playing an alternate game with his groups using D&D Basic. 

Jaromir is my first real barbarian character ever. I will full admit I am playing him like I played Minsc in Baldur's Gate 3. In the video game Minsc is a Ranger, but I always gave him levels in Barbarian. Jaromir is my Minsc stand-in. Big, dumb, blonde, but a heart of fucking gold. He is so very different than anything I have ever played before. Well...he is Rashemi (like Minsc) and he is on his Dajemma. But he set out without a witch (I have no idea why yet; I only recently learned about Dajemma), so he has decided that Rhiannon MUST be his witch. Which gets him fighting with Arnell, who turns into a wolf. Nida is there picking pockets in the ensuing chaos (gotta use those tables!) and the lot of them get thrown into jail.

Since I am moving ahead in time with my reviews I also opted to use the revised AD&D 1st Ed sheets here. Except for Argyll's he has a Basic Sheet.

I wanted to get a bit further than that, but this is where I am now. I know that the characters are bailed out by a minor magistrate named Eldrith Dunslaughter, a rather pompous and unpleasant human with designs of his own. I also know the characters need to work together to find a minor stolen item called the "Stargazer's Compass," which he claims was stolen from his own collection. I have my doubts it was his. (note: no idea if this is related to the MTG item of the same name. No one here plays.)

Find the compass, and their debt to society is paid. Fail? Well, there is always community service. 

Hope to learn more soon!

If you like cities and the Waterdeep in particular I highly recommend checking out Oneiropolis, the new Patreon site from game designer Joseph D. Carriker.  He was the one who helped me bring Garnet to life in Blue Rose, and now he is taking his skills to a wider audience. Well worth checking out.