It has often been said that all you really need to enjoy Dungeons & Dragons is some rules, dice, paper, pencil, friends, and Imagination!

TSR 1983 Product Catalog

This is pretty much true.

Unlike Monopoly, Scrabble, or even war games from which it is descended, D&D largely exists as the "theater of the mind." There is no board. Your character sheet is just a collection of items and numbers. Same with the monsters being fought. The Dungeon Master, DM, describes what is going on, and you have to picture it in your mind.

This was particularly true in the early days. Yes, there were miniatures, in fact, Original D&D recommends them, but they were only being made by a few companies, and they were expensive (relatively speaking), and you had to paint them yourself. As opposed to today where those options are still available and there are cheaper plastic minis and even ones you can design on your own.

There is no board. Today, we can get maps where 1" = 5', perfect for 25mm minis. If you wanted to see what was going on, you had to imagine, and that was pretty good, really.

Back in 1983 TSR, the company that published Dungeons & Dragons, had an ad campaign with the tag line, Products of Your Imagination. It worked really since by 1983 they had moved out to other types of games and toys as the 1983 Product Catalog above reveals.  

They also had a somewhat cheesy TV spot with a very young (Pre-Farris Bueller) Alan Ruck and very young (Pre-Lost Boys) Jami Gertz. It's a bit silly, but does capture the excitement well.

If you have been reading here since B-day, you will see that the actors are playing the Moldvay Basic set, but the ad appears to be for the Mentzer Basic set. Which tracks well with 1983.

Today we have all sorts of great things we can use for D&D. But there is something to be said about the whole use of your imagination to see how your adventure unfolds.

Tomorrow is J, so I will talk about Jennel Jaquays and the Judges Guild.

 Well, I finally picked up another "Holy Grail" item. It makes me glad I didn't spend a lot at Gary Con.

This is the "companion" game (I am not sure that is what this really is) to the Witchcraft Ritual Kit (1974) I talked about back in 2020. Both are from Avalon Hill.

Let me just start off with this. Man, the '70s were weird. 

This "game" has a board that looks like an altar set up from an occult bookstore's own manual of rituals. There are a lot of pieces here with various names of demons and angels on it. There is a "Rule book" and a "Manual of Interpretation," just like the Witchcraft Ritual Kit. It is also written by the same "Dr. Brooke Hayward Jennings," whom I still have found nothing of.

What I said about the Witchcraft Kit holds true here, too. It's 1974. The biggest movie in the world right now is "The Exorcist." Time Magazine is talking about the Occult Revival and the Return of Satan. An maybe, just maybe, Avalon Hill knows about a game featuring fantasy magic and wizards coming up. Well, they do know about it; they rejected it just a bit back.  Hippies have not yet become the Yuppies and they are searching for "alternative experiences."  What is a game company known for its war games and battle simulations to do?

Knock together some vaguely occult-looking games, put them into their standard "bookcase games" box, and slap some softcore porny covers on them. Next step...profit! 

Maybe. I don't think these games ever sold very well. There are so few of them on the aftermarket and the ones I do find are really expensive. I got this one from eBay from someone who I don't think knew what they had (based on their other sales), but I was bidding against someone who did know. Thankfully, the amount I set aside for this was much less than my final bid.

I got it just over the weekend.

What treasures are to be found here?

I love it for the cover alone!

AND, as a special bonus (and one of the main reasons I like buying these used games), someone included their own spell!

It has the same production values as the Witchcraft Ritual Kit and the same head-scratching "What do I even do with this?"

"Hey babe, come back to my pad, and I'll show you some magic."

You've got to love the covers, though. It makes me wonder what Avalon Hill product 712 was. (ETA doesn't look like there was one.)

According to BoardGameGeek, quoting the company history, "Top management decided to leave the realm of games and produce a couple of do-it-yourself kits entitled BLACK MAGIC & WITCHCRAFT." These were both advertised for a short while as a "Leisure Time Game." Neither come with, or need, dice (an Avalon Hill staple) and candles and incense are not included.

Both of these "games" are very strange, and I am not sure what events led to their publication, except for the ones I have outlined in speculation above. Neither game appears in the catalog included in the box.

Long-time readers know of a condition called "Traveller Envy," where I am constantly looking for board games to supplement my D&D experience, particularly my campaign "War of the Witch Queens." This is certainly why I bought it, but I am still stumped on how to add it. 

I mean, the demons all seem to be taken from The Lesser Key of Solomon, so I have that working in my favor since so many other games do the same thing. 

Honestly, just reading through it all is fun. It also gives me some ideas for my 1976 and 1979 campaigns. Though in different ways.

In any case, it is a wonderful curiosity from the 1970s Occult Revival and is sure to confuse anyone who tries to clean out my collection after I am gone!

 "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."

A very unassuming start to an epic adventure. Not just the epic adventure that propelled the hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, and his dwarf companions from the quiet of the Shire to a dragon's hoard and a great battle, but also how it shaped what would become Dungeons & Dragons.

It doesn't take a scholar of either J.R.R. Tolkien or of Dungeons & Dragons to see the similarities between the two. Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Dragons, Were-bears, Goblins, Trolls, Hobbits-er Halflings, and Dragons. Ancient underground areas, dark forests, and a grand adventure. 

It was enough that "Chainmail" and the first version of Dungeons & Dragons (often called the "Original Edition" or 0 Edition), had Hobbits, Ents, and Balrogs in it. Which got TSR a lot of threatening letters from the Tolkien Estate. So instead, we now have Halflings, Treants (Tree + Ent), and Balors (like the Irish Balor, but in name only).

Where it Began, Part 1: Chainmail

Prior to D&D there was Gary's first game, Chainmail, described as "Rules for Medieval Miniatures."  These rules were for War Gamers and not Role-Playing games, which did not really* exist yet.

*Yes there were and have been close games and others that were RPGs in all but name, but the term and the genre did not exist yet.

Chainmail allowed you to play medieval war games with minis. Most often made of lead and played in a large sandbox.  It was released in 1971, but there are claims that the rules in one form or another, existed in Gary's basement since 1968 after the first Gen Con. As people played with these rules, they expanded on them. One of the expansions was the Fantasy Supplement. Here, creatures like dragons, orcs, elves, Balrogs, Ents, and Hobbits were added.

These additions proved to be very popular among some, and not so popular among older War Gamers. Yes. Even then the Edition Wars had their first salvos. 

This popularity and the notion that people wanted to play individual characters led to the first drafts of what would become Dungeons & Dragons.

The Tolkien Estate, of course, noticed. 

While sales stopped on TSR's "Battle of the Five Armies" (1975), copies of Dungeons & Dragons and Chainmail had to be edited to change to the more "Tolkien-approved" terms. My copy of Chainmail above still has Hobbits, Ents, and Balrogs. My 1st printing of OD&D has them, my more complete 3rd-4th printing does not.

Of course, there were missives in Dragon Magazine on how D&D was not even remotely inspired by Tolkien, but honestly they rang as hollow as the ones of D&D and AD&D being completely different games. Likely for similar reasons.

Years later on TSR had the chance to do a Lord of the Rings/D&D game and somehow managed to mess that deal up.  Competitor Iron Crown Enterprises (I.C.E.) would have their own Middle-Earth Role-Playing Game, and it was wildly successful. 

Where it Began, Part 2: Rankin/Bass

It is hard to think about a time when The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings were exclusive to literate geeks. We are far removed from the time when you could see patches on student's backpacks that proclaimed "Frodo Lives!" While today we have the massive Peter Jackson movies, back in the 1970s we had Rankin/Bass and "The Hobbit."

The Rankin/Bass Hobbit movie, appearing on TV in 1977, was my generation's gateway drug to D&D. I consider myself the 2nd (maybe a little on the 3rd) generation of D&D gamers. I did not come to this hobby because of wargaming. I came here because I read The Hobbit.  In fact, the book pictured above was the one I got for Christmas in 1981 along with my Moldvay Basic set because I was tired of borrowing other people's copies.  I had first read it in Jr. High and had already been exposed to D&D; this was exactly the right book at the right time in my life. I would later go on to read the Lord of the Rings and try to read The Silmarillion. I would finally succeed years later. 

For me, and many others, the Hobbit/Lord of the Rings and D&D are deeply linked. I have even joked that everyone is allowed one "Tolkien rip-off" character while playing D&D. Mine was a Halfling with the completely uninspired name of "Bilbo Perrin."

I reread the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings every few years or so. They are still among the best "D&D" tales out there, even if Gandalf only has the spell-casting power of a 6th-level D&D Wizard.

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Tomorrow is I, and I will talk about Imagination.

 I can't talk about Dungeons & Dragons and not at least mention the man who made it all possible, Gary Gygax.

Gary is often credited for creating Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, but he really co-created with fellow game enthusiast Dave Arneson (gone 15 years ago yesterday). I discussed this a bit with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons on A Day.  In truth, it would have been difficult for either man alone to have produced this game, but one thing is certain: it was Gary's vision (and thanks to Gary's oldest daughter for the name) to make Dungeons & Dragons the worldwide phenomenon it is today.

I spent a lot of time last month talking about Gary and his games. Dungeons & Dragons, Mythus (1992), and Lejendary Adventure (1999). Yes, that is spelled correctly.  I also was at Gary Con this past month, a celebration of his life and games well played. 

It is kind of strange in a way, my relationship with Gary. I grew up, like all gamers my age, knowing and even revering his name. I went on and began to recognize some of the all too human flaws we all have. To a point where he emailed me out of the blue to thank me for my "Mystery Science Science Theatre 3000" parody of "Dark Dungeons."  We share a writing credit, Unearthed Acania, and chatted online until his death in 2008. 

Before D&D, he created Gen Con, the world's largest gaming convention. It was named because it took place in Lake Geneva, WI, a play on the Geneva Convention. Gen Con is now in Indianapolis, IN, and Gary Con is held in Lake Geneva. This con was initially devoted to his love of war games. 

Dungeons & Dragons itself grew out of these classical wargames and soon became its own new thing.

Greyhawk

He also created the World of Greyhawk, a fantasy world he created for his Dungeons & Dragons games. It was the forerunner to the Forgotten Realms and is still preferred by many of the old guard.

The name of the planet of the World of Greyhawk was Oerth and was supposed to be an alternate Earth. It is the world I combined with Mystara (from D&D Basic) to get Mystoerth.

There is no way I can do Gary's story justice here. So instead I am going to refer you all to some books that talk about him and the creation of Dungeons & Dragons.

• Empire of Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons & Dragons by Michael Witwer. One of the best treatments.
• Rise of the Dungeon Master: Gary Gygax and the Creation of D&D by David Kushner (Author) and  Koren Shadmi (Illustrator)
• Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and The People Who Play It by David M. Ewalt. By a fan, for the fans.
• Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons & Dragons by Ben Riggs. One of the most meticulously researched of all of these.

There is also a DVD/BlueRay I meant to pick up at Gary Con but forgot to.

• The Dreams in Gary's Basement.

I spent a lot of time trying to dig up an obituary I wrote for Gary back in 2008, but it has eluded me.  Which might be better, really. My opinion of him has changed over the years; reading about his life, reading his games, and mostly talking with his children. I had a wonderful conversation with Luke Gygax at Gary Con. We talked about his dad, Dave Arneson, and the recent loss of Jim Ward. 

Sometimes we forget that these "Big Names" we read about are human until they do something all too human. But also, it is nice to remember that they are human and quite approachable. 

Tomorrow is H, and I will talk about Hobbits.

Larina by Beatriz SanguinoAgain, I'm surprised I haven't posted something like this already. Given that I talked about AD&D 2nd Edition earlier today, I thought this might be a good time to discuss the different witches from the AD&D 2nd Ed era. 

I have talked in the past about how the AD&D 2nd edition era was a good time for all sorts of witch classes. By my count, there were at least four official classes from TSR (and later WotC) for AD&D 2nd Ed, and quite a few unofficial ones. 

I have compared a few witch classes with each other at varying levels of detail over the years and will likely do it more when I take my deep dive into the Forgotten Realms for AD&D 2nd Ed. But looking back, I see I never taken the time to compare the AD&D Second classes to each other. The closest I have come was comparing two AD&D 2nd Characters to each other, Nida and Sinéad, and Sinéad is no longer even a proper witch. 

One day, I'll do more, but I want to look at one official witch and two unofficial ones for today.  I think I'll save Nida when it comes time to discuss the other official witches. Plus, using Larina here is much more appropriate. 

As I mentioned earlier today, AD&D 2nd Edition can be seen as an extension or continuation of the AD&D 1st Edition line. The games are very compatible. So, my characters often moved from 1st to 2nd Edition without so much as getting a new sheet. Larina here is no exception. She began in 1986 with AD&D 1st Ed and moved to AD&D 2nd Ed in 1989 without a blink. But I did make new sheets for her eventually.

Let's go back a bit before AD&D 2nd edition came out. Back in July 1986, I created a witch character, Larina, to test some ideas I had about doing witches in (A)D&D. When Dragon Magazine came out in October of 1986 I started using that. But all the while, I am collecting my notes and ideas. Moving forward to 1989, AD&D 2nd Edition was released. There were a lot of new ideas in that and I was looking forward to trying out my collected notes. One set of notes became my Sun Priest kit for Clerics, another became a pile of notes for the Healer, another the Necromancer/Death Mage, but the largest would become the Witch. It would be almost 10 years before it would see publication but it did and Larina was a central figure in that work.

In those 10 years, there was a lot of writing and playtesting. 

While I kept my Dragon #114/AD&D1st ed witch version of her, I created a parallel version using my new witch rules. This version was supposed to be the same person, just with a different set of rules to govern her. While that happened, two other witch classes were published to help me make other choices. I also set her up for these rules and played all three (or four, really) versions to see how she worked in different situations.  So, if you have ever wondered if I have run out of things to say about witches or even this witch in particular, the answer is no, I have spent more hours with her than any other character I have.

So I would like to present her for AD&D Second Edition, but three different witch classes.

• AD&D Complete Wizards Handbook, Witch Kit
• Mayfair's Role-Aids: Witches
• My own Netbook of Witches and Warlocks

Larina Nix for AD&D 2nd Edition

This version(s) of Larina is just the continuation of her AD&D 1st Edition incarnation.

Base Stats (same for all versions).

Larina Nix
Human Witch, Lawful Neutral

Strength: 9
Dexterity: 17 
Constitution: 16
Intelligence: 18 
Wisdom: 18
Charisma: 18

Movement: 12
AC: 1
HP: 86

Weapons
Dagger, Staff

Defenses: Bracers of Defense (AC 1)

Languages: Common, Alignment, Elven, Dwarven, Dragon, Goblin, Orc, Sylvan
Ancient Languages: Primordial, Abyssal, Infernal

So, in this version, her dex and con were raised by some magic.

The Complete Wizard's Handbook

Class: Wizard
Kit: Witch
Level: 15

Saving Throws (Base)
Paralyze/Poison/Death: 11
Rod, Staff, Wand: 7
Petrify/Polymorph: 9
Breath Weapon: 11
Magic: 11

THAC0: 16

Proficiencies: Ancient History, Astrology (2), Herbalism, Reading/Writing (4), Religion (2), Spellcraft (4), Animal Handling, Artistic.
Weapons: Dagger, Staff

Secondary Skill: Scribe

Powers
3rd level: Familiar
5th level: Brew Calmative
7th level: Brew Poison
9th level: Beguile
11th level: Brew Flying Ointment
13th level: Witch's Cure

Spells
1st level: Burning Hands, Charm Person, Comprehend Languages, Copy, Chromatic Orb
2nd level: Blindness, ESP, Tasha's Hideous Uncontrollable Laughter, Knock, Ice Knife
3rd level: Clairvoyance, Hold Person, Hovering Skull, Iron Mind, Pain Touch
4th level: Dimension Door, Fear, Magic Mirror, Remove Curse, Fire Aura
5th level: Advanced Illusion, Cone of Cold, Feeblemind, Telekinesis, Shadow Door
6th level: Eyebite, Dragon Scales
7th level: Shadow Walk

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Mayfair Role-aids: Witches

Class: Witch / Wizard
Tradition: Classical
Level: 15 / 1

Saving Throws (Base)
Paralyze/Poison/Death: 13
Rod, Staff, Wand: 9
Petrify/Polymorph: 11
Breath Weapon: 13
Magic: 10

THAC0: 16

Proficiencies: Ancient History, Astrology (2), Herbalism, Reading/Writing (4), Religion (2), Spellcraft (4), Animal Handling, Artistic.
Weapons: Dagger, Staff

Secondary Skill: Scribe

Powers
Herbalism

Spells
1st level: Feather Fall, Identify, Read Magic, Sleep, Chill Touch, Protection from Evil, Color Spray
2nd level: Flaming Sphere, Locate Object, Forget, Ray of Enfeeblement, Strength
3rd level: Cure Light Wounds, Dispel Magic, Clairvoyance, Delude, Mystery Script
4th level: Call Lightning, Fear, Fire Shield, Magic Mirror, Wall of Fire
5th level: Feeblemind, Shadow Magic, Dream, FAlse Vision
6th level: Geas, Legend Lore, True Seeing
7th level: Shadow Walk

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The Complete Netbook of Witches & Warlocks

Class: Witch (Priest Sub-class)
Level: 15

Saving Throws (Base)
Paralyze/Poison/Death: 5
Rod, Staff, Wand: 9
Petrify/Polymorph: 8
Breath Weapon: 11
Magic: 10

THAC0: 12

Proficiencies: Ancient History, Astrology (2), Herbalism, Reading/Writing (4), Religion (2), Spellcraft (4), Animal Handling, Artistic.
Weapons: Dagger, Staff

Secondary Skill: Scribe

Powers
1st: Turn Undead
3rd level: Read/Detect Magic
6th level: Chill Touch
9th level: Candle Magic
12th level: Immune to Fear
15th level: Fascination
11th level: Brew Flying Ointment
13th level: Witch's Cure

Spells
1st level: Create Fire, Katarine's Dart, Witch Light, Dowse, Wall of Darkness, Painful Wounds
2nd level: Burning Wind, Acquire Witch's Familiar, Blackfire, Dance Trantra, Minor Hex, Pain Armor, Protection vs. Elementals
3rd level: Lesser Strengthing Rite, Beguile III, Astral Sense, Lethe, Witch Writing, Rite of Remote Seeing
4th level: Spirit Dagger, Cloak of Shifting Shadows, Broom, Cleanse, Card Reading, Grandmother's Shawl, Middle Banishing Rite
5th level: Rite of Magical Resistance, Starflare, Dolor, Bull of Heaven
6th level: Anchoring Rite, Greater Banishing Rite, Kiss of Life
7th level: Demon Trap

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The biggest differences are in the powers and the spells. 

I kept her HP the same in all three cases to keep combat a fixed variable, the same with her weapons and non-weapon proficiencies. 

The Wizard's Handbook from TSR strikes a good balance of powers and spells. The Mayfair Role-aids Witches book has some great spells. Of course I am fond of my own Complete Netbook of Witches & Warlocks. Of course, after 25 years, there are things I would do differently now.

Playing All Three

Playing all three in a game was interesting but also a lot of fun. I'd generally alternate between them, choosing which one to use in combat beforehand so I could measure the utility of the spells. So when I say I have played her more than any other character, I really mean it. I kept her "real" sheets as notes in MS Word 2.0/95/97 to make easy changes to them as I played with my CNoW&W one as the "official" character sheet. 

This also gave me the idea that all her incarnations are aware of each other. It has nothing to do with any of the game mechanics I have written, but it is aa fun little role-playing exercise. 

In 1999, on October 31st, I was sitting in the hospital. My wife had just had our first baby, Liam, and I had my laptop. Just after midnight, I released my "The Complete Netbook of Witches & Warlocks" for free on the web. Larina was featured in that book as a 6-year-old who discovered she was a witch.

All the playtesting would then lead to my "The Witch: A sourcebook for Basic Edition fantasy games" released exactly 14 years later.  It would also lead to my 3rd Edition books on witches, but I'll talk about them next week.

I know that in the A to Z Challenge we skip posting on Sundays, but since we have enough Sundays here I am going to use them to talk about the various editions of D&D that otherwise would not get talked about.

Up this Sunday?  AD&D 2nd Edition.

 

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition

AD&D 2nd Edition was released starting in the spring of 1989, 12-10 years after AD&D 1st Edition. The game was met with great anticipation by many, myself included, and by trepidation by others.

Trepidation since was going to be the first major edition of Dungeons & Dragons with Gary Gygax's name on it. Now to be fair, the Mentzer BECMI also did not feature Gary's name on the cover, but his fingerprints if not his tacit and implicit blessings were all over it.

This edition did not have that and there were some that felt it could not live up.

I was not necessarily a Gygax loyalist. Sure I knew he had been ousted from TSR, the publisher of D&D and the company he helped create, but D&D by this time had had a lot of names on it.  D&D, in my mind then, was bigger that Gary Gygax alone.  

So when AD&D 2nd came out I was in. I got my books as soon as they were released and I went head first into this new game. For reasons that seem silly now, I always felt I was behind the curve when it came to AD&D 1st Ed. That there were people who had gotten in early and "knew" more than me. This was not going to be the case for 2nd Ed! 

In truth, I enjoyed the game for a very long time, but it was also the game that would nearly turn me away from D&D.

I bought AD&D 2nd Edition and I put up, and eventually loaned out, all my older D&D rule books. That was a HUGE mistake. First off, save for minor details, AD&D 1st Ed and AD&D 2nd Ed were still very compatible. I could move characters, monsters, and adventures between the two with relative ease. In some cases the changes were also improvements in my mind. The Bards were better; the initiative used a d10 and not a d6, which made a lot more sense, and the monsters were far more detailed.  In fact, I spent a whole series of posts on the monster books.

Though it was not without it's own problems. The "splat" books (called that because the * often used as a wild card is also called a 'splat') began to get out of control, and each one introduced new levels of power creep. For example, I loved the new Bard class and HATED "The Complete Bards Handbook." 

There was also a level of enforced morality in the game. Spells like Bestow Curse were now gone, Assassins and barbarians as classes were gone, and demons and devils were also gone. Now honestly I didn't mind all of that, I could, and did, add my own material.

The Campaign Settings

The REAL selling point for AD&D 2nd Edition for many of us were the Campaign Settings.  I talked about the Forgotten Realms yesterday and I'll talk about Ravenloft later. Mystara had a few brief moments, and there were others. And that was part of the problem. Ravenloft people like me didn't buy Forgotten Realms books. Forgotten Realms fans didn't buy Birthright or Red Steel or Mystara. People who bought Planescape never bought Spelljammer. There were too many settings and too many books in each one and no one was buying them all. Or at least not enough to matter.

So when TSR finally went bankrupt and was deep, deep in debt, it was not a surprise really.

My History with AD&D 2nd Ed.

When AD&D 2nd Edition was released, I was living in the dorms at my university as an undergrad. When the next edition was released in 2000, I had been married for five years, had been living in a new house for three of those and my oldest son was nearly one year old.  Talk about changes. 

Also, at that time, I went from "AD&D 2nd Ed is the game for me" to "I will play ANYTHING but AD&D."  A few factors went into that. First was the power creep I mentioned above. The worst books for this were the Skills and Powers books, an attempt by TSR to patch all the leaky holes the AD&D system (now 25 years old) was showing.  Also, AD&D didn't support the type of game I wanted to play anymore.

Then, there was the issue with how TSR was treating the D&D players online.

In the early days of the Internet, there was a rush to share ideas, particularly D&D ideas. Netbooks became very popular. TSR responded by trying to sue anyone that talked about D&D online. So much so they became known as "They Sue Regularily."  Hard to imagine in today's post-OGL and Creative Commons world. People also forget how bad it was and how Wizards of the Coast, the next publisher of D&D, essentially gave away their rules for free to use.

Today. My stance on AD&D has softened a lot, and I am back to loving it again. 

Will I ever play AD&D 2nd again? I don't know, I'd love to, to be honest.

Tomorrow, we are back to the regular schedule, and I have G for Gary Gygax.

In the mile-high tower of the Spire, the Aelfir—the High Elves—enjoy lives of extreme luxury, waited upon by the Destra—the Drow—whom they have subjugated and continue to oppress the criminal revolutionaries that would rise up and overthrow them. In the City Beneath, where heretical churches have found the freedom to worship their forbidden gods and organised crime to operate the drug farms that supply the needs of the Spire above, the Aelfir find themselves free of conformity, the Destra free of repression. They are joined by Gnolls and Humans. Some simply live free of the stifling Aelfir control, whether by means lawful or unlawful, others are driven to beyond the Undercity, delving ever deeper into the bowels of the world in search of the fabled Heart, or perhaps their heart’s desire. Yet even life in the City Beneath is enough for some. Together with like-minded folk, they seek out refuges away from both the oppression and the conformity of the Spire and the chaos of the City Beneath, where their shared values and ideals can build a community of their own. There is hope in this effort, but ultimately horror, for there are dangers down there that have been hinted at in rumours, and when written about, dismissed as the mitherings of a cheap hack!

Sanctum is a supplement for Heart: The City Beneath, the roleplaying game that explores the horror, tragedies, and consequences of delving too deep into dungeons, published by Rowan, Rook, and Decard Ltd. In Heart: The City Beneath, the Player Characters are concerned with what lies beneath, delving ever deeper below the City Beneath, closer to the Heart, exploring a wild frontier and a desire to know what is out there, if that is, the wild frontier is the equivalent of a mega-dungeon and the desire to know what is out there, is the yearning to know what calls to you far below. What Sanctum does is take that idea of the frontier and shift it from being somewhere to explore to somewhere to settle, but again if that frontier is the equivalent of a mega-dungeon. And then, have the Haven and its inhabitants face threats from without, threats that come to them, rather than the Player Characters going out on long Delves and facing threats along the way as they would normally in Heart: The City Beneath.

A campaign revolving around a Haven begins with its creation. This is a collaborative process between the players and the Game Master. Together they decide on its Domains, Tier, its unique feature, its Art, the Faces within the Haven, the Role that each Player Character will undertake as inhabitants of the Haven, what Threats it faces, and ultimately, what Ultimate Questions remain to be answered through play… Domains represent experience of an environment or a knowledge of some kind and consist of Cursed, Desolate, Occult, Religion, Technology, Warren, and Wild. The Haven will have one or two of these in addition to the Haven Domain. The Tier indicates how close the Haven lies to the Heart, the closer it is, the weirder the surrounding terrain. Most Havens are found on the upper Tiers, but they are sometimes found between Tiers, as well as possibly being mobile or found in extra-dimensional fractures. The Haven will also have something unique about it that makes it stand out and also be the reason why people visit the Haven or even why the Haven is threatened. The Faces within the Haven are its primary NPCs, primarily presenting those who support the status quo, who wants to shake things up, and who represent the bulk of the populace. These need not be NPCs, as Player Characters can fulfil their positions within the set-up, but their primary role is to establish tension within the Haven. The Art can be art, or it can be craftwork or entertainment, that represents the Haven and adds to its uniqueness. The Roles are functions that the Player Characters and their Classes perform in the Haven, whilst Threats—tied into one or more of the Haven’s Domains—are the dangers that the Haven faces. Penultimately, a Haven requires a name, and lastly, the players define what they want to discover during play, the questions which remain unanswered.

The creation process is simple and straightforward, and it is supported by suggestions and ideas throughout and then a fully worked out example, that is essentially, ready to play. Altogether, this is a very well written process and engagingly encouraging.

Mechanically, a Sanctum campaign differs from a Heart: The City Below campaign only slightly. The Haunts, locations where a Player Character can obtain healing and resupply in exchange for resources, to remove Stress or downgrade Fallout are moved within the Haven and so flesh out the Haven. Not all of the Player Characters’ Haunts need be placed within the Haven, and like Resources, can be located outside of it, thus presenting a motive for the Player Characters to leave their Haven, conduct a mission, and return. This is how a Sanctum campaign is intended to be played. Not just to go to remote Haunts or the sites of Resources, but also to go to deal with threats and actually Delve down to Landmarks (probably more than once) as in the standard play of Heart: The City Beneath. Landmarks also need to be added to the surrounding terrain as part of the creation process, but this is a task for the Game Master rather than the Game Master and her players. In the long term, there is guidance too for how Fallout, the consequences of Stress suffered by the Player Characters, can affect the Haven itself. Again, there are numerous examples. One last option given for a Haven is for it to have its own story beats, such as repelling attackers who after the valuable resources held within the Haven or creating communal art which enhances the Haven and its sense of community. These provide objectives for the Player Characters and reward them by enabling them to remove stress which they have shifted onto their bonds in earlier play. These range from simply being in danger and being infiltrated to the Haven having fallen and no longer being habitable and someone that the Player Characters care about being killed.

Penultimately, Sanctum presents the Game Master with a set of major threats to any Haven—Angels. These are emissaries of the Heart itself, so they can also appear in a standard campaign of Heart: The City Beneath as well. Encountering them though is rare, and they are usually only spoken of as myth and rumour. Sanctum introduces four new Angels in addition to the one in the core rulebook. These are protoplasmic, bone-clawed ink-blackness of the Blossom Angel, the chitin-armoured Cacophony Angel whose approach is heralded by the razor-sharp songs from its dozen mouths, the lurker in the cupboard that almost does not want to be known that is the Locos Angel, and the one that walks amongst us in the skin of another whispering dissent, the Penumbra Angel. These are major threats, dangers that ultimately cannot be destroyed, only temporarily defeated.

Lastly, Sanctum includes a selection of equipment and items that the Player Characters cannot purchase, but might be able to find. These all belong—or belonged—to Gris Hanneman, a pulp fiction author in the world of Spire: The City Above and Heart: The City Beneath, who fled into the City Beneath after his novel sales dried up and went looking for inspiration. In the resulting book, Beyond the Edge of Madness: A Year in the City Beneath, Hanneman claims he spent time in various Havens and encountered and discovered new Angels. Excerpts from the book pepper the supplement, providing an in-game commentary on Heart: The City Beneath and on the new Angels described in Sanctum. In fact, they are the only descriptions given of them besides the raw stats. The fiction adds plenty of flavour as well as a more nuanced view of the setting. The items to be found that once belonged to Hanneman include ‘The Pistol that Cris Pulled from a Corpse’s Hands in Redcap Grove’, (anti) ‘Angel Bullets’, and ‘Gris Hanneman’s Fingers, Conspicuously Missing From His Hand When He was last Seen’. Using his gear nicely brings Cris Hanneman into the world even though he is dead!

Physically, Sanctum is a slim, very well-presented book. The artwork is excellent and the book is easy to read and understand.

Sanctum presents a different campaign focus and set-up for Heart: The City Beneath, but whereas Vermissian Black Ops takes the Player Characters back into the Spire above, Sanctum is firmly set in Heart: The City Beneath, or rather, below the Heart: The City Beneath. However, rather than follow the transience of a campaign involving a series of ever longer Delves as in Heart: The City Beneath, what Sanctum does is shift play to a campaign where permeance and survival of community and family comes to the fore. This is no less dramatic than the delving of Heart: The City Beneath, only that the stories are different.

 This one might feel like a bit of a recycle; I have been talking about the Forgotten Realms all year long so far and will keep at it. But today is different, I think.

For people new to D&D and my blog, the Forgotten Realms is a campaign setting, a world filled with people, creatures, gods, and history for use with the Dungeons & Dragons game. It was created as a world to tell stories in by Ed Greenwood. It was first published for the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition game system back in 1987. I reviewed that set earlier this year. Now I was playing D&D when this game came out; I was about ready to enter my second decade of playing, so I was not a newbie. But I felt the Forgotten Realms was the "Johnny come lately" of D&D, and I really wanted no part of it. 

That was a mistake on my part.

Well...I mean at the time I going to University, my funds were limited and soon I would be HARDCORE in another campaign setting, Ravenloft. I will talk a bit about the Campaign settings for AD&D tomorrow and about Ravenloft on R day. 

So, going back a few A to Z Challenges (2016), I posted about how I was changing my mind about the Forgotten Realms. It actually began back in the 3rd Edition days, and solidified to me in 4th Ed days. Now, in the later days of 5th Edition, I find myself drawn to it more. And I have REALLY had a great time with it. 

The Realms are wildly popular. There is over 35 years of RPG publications, hundreds of books with many as New York Times best sellers, a few dozen or so video games including the amazing Baldur's Gate 3, comics, an actual play podcast (I am sure there are more), and yes the most recent Dungeons & Dragons movie.

I freely admit, I was gearing up for a big push into the Forgotten Realms anyway, but it was Baldur's Gate 3 that really pushed me over. 

Me and the Realms

My regular readers know I have a campaign world that I really love, Mystoerth, which combines aspects of two other published campaign worlds Mystara (published with Basic D&D) and Oerth, the World of Greyhawk (designed for Advanced D&D). These two worlds were smooshed together so my old High School DM and I could have one world. This suited me well for a very long time. 

But there is something to be said about living in a shared world. You can talk to others about adventures in a place, and they have their own stories. It makes the world alive in a way I can't really do with my Mystoerth. 

These blog pages document my attitude shift towards the Realms fairly well. However, they don't really capture how much I disliked them initially, especially in the 1990s. 

I was never a fan of Forgotten Realms. I dismissed it in the 1980s as an "upstart," ignored it in the early 1990s, and actively disliked it in the late 1990s. But it seems my ire was misplaced. Around the time the 3rd Edition Realms book came out, I was beginning to soften my stance. By the 4th Ed era, I considered moving a campaign to the Realms. In the 5th Ed era, I made it official, more or less.

It was my coverage of Ed Greenwood's work in Dragon magazine that changed my mind. 

To this end, I have amassed a small collection of Forgotten Realms books—nothing special, just ones that I have easily come by either at game auctions, Half-Price Books, or, as in the books pictured above, Print on Demand from DriveThruRPG. So, I have been going through them in detail throughout the editions.

The Forgotten Realms to me was always viewed through the eyes of a character, whether that was Elminster or Drizzt or whomever. Likewise, I am going to look into the Realms through the eyes of a new character. So I am opting to also experience the Realms through the eyes of my characters. The one I am starting with is Sinéad. She began as an AD&D 2nd Ed character, moved over to become a very successful Baldur's Gate 3 character, and now she is my "Ego" character for my Realms games.  She even has her own set of dice.

I have some others that I have discussed and there will be more.

So far, this has been nothing short of fantastic. There is not a moment of this new series of posts and these new explorations I do not love. If you are here from the A to Z Blogging Challenge, I recommend coming back to check these out if you want to learn more about the Forgotten Realms. I know a little bit more than you do, so we can all learn together.

Tomorrow is Sunday and normally not a day we post in the A to Z. But I am doing my Sunday Specials again this year and posting about numbers. Tomorrow is AD&D 2nd Edition.

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

Quick-starts are means of trying out a roleplaying game before you buy. Each should provide a Game Master with sufficient background to introduce and explain the setting to her players, the rules to run the scenario included, and a set of ready-to-play, pre-generated characters that the players can pick up and understand almost as soon as they have sat down to play. The scenario itself should provide an introduction to the setting for the players as well as to the type of adventures that their characters will have and just an idea of some of the things their characters will be doing on said adventures. All of which should be packaged up in an easy-to-understand booklet whose contents, with a minimum of preparation upon the part of the Game Master, can be brought to the table and run for her gaming group in a single evening’s session—or perhaps too. And at the end of it, Game Master and players alike should ideally know whether they want to play the game again, perhaps purchasing another adventure or even the full rules for the roleplaying game.

Alternatively, if the Game Master already has the full rules for the roleplaying game for the quick-start is for, then what it provides is a sample scenario that she can still run as an introduction or even as part of her campaign for the roleplaying game. The ideal quick-start should entice and intrigue a playing group, but above all effectively introduce and teach the roleplaying game, as well as showcase both rules and setting.

—oOo—

What is it?Coriolis: The Great Dark Quickstart introduces the sequel to Coriolis: The Third Horizon, the Middle East-influenced Science Fiction roleplaying game published by Free League Publishing. It is a roleplaying game inspired by 19th-century expeditions, deep-sea diving, and pulp archaeology in which Explorers delve into ruins in search of secrets, resources, and answers on the edge of civilisation.

It is an eighty-eight page, full colour book.

The quick-start is extensively illustrated, the artwork is superb, capturing the majesty and mystery of the setting.

How long will it take to play?
Coriolis: The Great Dark Quickstart can be played through in a single session, or two sessions at most.

What else do you need to play?
Coriolis: The Great Dark Quickstart requires multiple six-sided dice in two colours.

Cards numbered from one to ten are also required. These can be taken from a standard deck of playing cards as necessary.

Where is it set?
Coriolis: The Great Dark is set far beyond the Third Horizon of Coriolis: The Third Horizon. A Diaspora fled the war growing there, looking for a haven and following a faint signal emanating from the depths of space. The signal was lost in a system the Diaspora called Jumuah, where unable to proceed further, it was forced to adapt and settle in massive, hollowed out asteroid called ‘The Ship City of Coriolis the Eternal and Jumuah the First and Last’, or Ship City. Although the Portal that should lead out of the system is dead, the Slipstream known as the ‘River of the Stars’ has enabled the Explorers Guild to send Greatships out into the unknown where mysterious ruins have been discovered in other systems.

Expeditions into the ruins require careful planning and resources which must be carried by the explorers or carefully placed at staging camps. Chthonian in size and nature, they are often protected by ancient defence systems and creative construction to hinder intruders. These, though, are not the primary danger that explorers face in delving into ruins. The primary danger is Blight, a plague that corrupts both structures and biology, that can kill and destroy, but also leave its sufferers with strange visions. One way to mitigate the effects of Blight is to be accompanied by a Bird, an automaton of unknown origins capable of detecting and withstanding its effects and protecting the explorers.

Who do you play?
There are four ready-to-play Player Characters given in Coriolis: The Great Dark Quickstart. They consist of a Wreck Diver, experienced in delving into ruins, a Guild Soldier capable with blade and bullet, a Vacuum Welder, good at fixing things as well as blowing them up, and an Algebraist Apprentice, a failed scholar. They are accompanied by their Bird, a constant companion on their delves, capable of scouting the ruins and detecting Blight.

How is a Player Character defined?
A Player Character has six attributes—Strength, Agility, Logic, Perception, Insight, and Empathy—and three stats—Health, Hope, and Heart—which measure how much trauma he can suffer before he is broken. He also has several Talents which either provide a single benefit or between one and three bonus dice to particular actions. For example, ‘Bird Handler’ enables a Player Character to talk to Birds and grants a bonus die when attempting to extract information from a Bird whilst ‘Sixth Sense’ prevents a Player Character from being surprised. A Player Character also has a quirk and keepsake, the latter which can give him hope.

Collectively, all of the Player Characters share Supply. This is a combination of air, food, water, and power, tracked over the course of an expedition. It is used one Supply at a time per marker of Depth travelled.

How do the mechanics work?
Mechanically, Coriolis: The Great Dark Quickstart and thus Coriolis: The Great Dark, uses the Year Zero engine, first seen in Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days. To have a Player Character undertake an action, a player rolls a number of Base Dice equal to a combination of attribute and applicable Talent, plus Gear Dice. A single roll of a six (or the symbol on the custom dice for Coriolis: The Great Dark) indicates a success. Multiple successes improve the outcome, especially in combat and conflict. If the roll is a failure and no sixes are rolled, or a player wants more successes, he can Push the roll. This enables him to reroll any dice which did not result in a one or six. A roll can be Pushed once and any rolls of one on the Base Dice indicate that the Player Character loses a point of Hope, whilst any rolls of one on the Gear Dice indicate that the item of equipment used is damaged and needs to be repaired. Other Player Characters can help another on a task, each one contributing an extra Base Die to the player making the roll.

How does combat work?
Conflict in Coriolis: The Great Dark Quickstart uses the same core mechanics. The rules for conflict cover both ranged and close combat, plus social conflict. Reactions, such as blocking or dodging, are counted as actions and so use up a Player Character’s action in a round. Extra Successes in close combat can be used to wrestle an object from an opponent, trip him, or push him away. Ranged combat allows for aimed fire, full auto, cover, and so on. Armour has the potential to protect against damage, requiring a roll and successes to be rolled, to be effective. If a Player Character suffers more damage that reduces his Health to zero, he is Broken and cannot act. Critical damage is inflicted if the number of successes rolled are equal to, or exceed, the ‘Crit Threshold’. A ‘Critical Injuries – Physical Damage’ table is included.

How does Blight work?
Heart is degraded by exposure to the Blight. It is acquired by delving into Blight-infested ruins, from the Blight attacks of certain creatures, and particular locations. When a Player Character’s Heart is reduced to zero by Blight, he has been Broken by Blight and suffers a Blight manifestation. The player must then roll on the ‘Blight Manifestation’ table. This can result in the Player Character being stricken with ‘Shivers’, uncontrollable shivering, sapping his strength and causing him to become Exhausted, or having ‘Nebulous Breath’, in which his breath visibly manifests as a nebulous, swirling mist, suggesting the alien transformation within, forcing everyone nearby to become Shaken if the sufferer is not wearing a helmet, whilst he be Distracted if he does. Typically, these effects last for a few hours, but it can be days or weeks. Unless permanent, a Blight manifestation can be recovered from and Heart also recovered.

How do Delves work?
Each Delve is categorised by Class and Depth, the latter measured as a series of Markers. Class is its estimated difficulty and Depth its size and indication how much Supply is required. During the Delve, Explorers take one of four roles—Delver, Scout, Burrower, and Guard. The Scout is primarily in charge of the Bird who accompany them on the Delve, determining where incidences of Blight are located, whilst a scanner is used to gain an initial map of the ruin. Throughout the Delve, the Explorers will expend Supply for each Marker reached, each combat engaged in, each act of strenuous activity, and after resting. Descending further into a ruin without Supply will inflict damage, Despair, or even Blight on the Explorers.

What do you play?
The adventure in Coriolis: The Great Dark Quickstart is ‘The Sky Machine’. The Explorers are hired to mount a rescue mission on the asteroid-moon of Moubarra 4 where a group of prospectors went missing in a newly extablished claim. The Explorers are not the only ones on Moubarra 4 with an interest in the outcome of the new rescue mission, though whether their interest lies in the successful rescue mission or in the recovery of any artefacts found in the claim remains to be seen.

‘The Sky Machine’ introduces the players and their characters to a little of the politics of Coriolis: The Great Dark, but in the main focuses on the Delve, which is a linear affair whilst still showcasing the core mechanics of the roleplaying game. There is a genuine sense of ‘diving’ into the unknown, of reaching something mysterious and odd, yet majestic. There are signs here of technology far beyond that of ‘Lost Horizon’ of ‘The Ship City of Coriolis the Eternal and Jumuah the First and Last’. The Player Characters are not expected to understand it, merely recover it and return it to the surface.

The scenario includes six handouts and maps. These are decently done.

Is it easy to prepare?
The core rules presented in Coriolis: The Great Dark are easy to prepare, especially if the Game Master has any experience with the Year Zero engine. The scenario itself is quite straightforward. However, the background to Coriolis: The Great Dark and its concepts do require some close study in order for the Game Master to impart them to her players. A handout or two towards that end would be useful and easy to prepare by the Game Master.
Is it worth it?
Yes. Coriolis: The Great Dark Quickstart is an excellent introduction to its setting and its concepts, supporting with a good starting scenario and illustrating them with some excellent artwork that captures the grandeur and loneliness of its setting. Coriolis: The Great Dark Quickstart has a rough, frontier feel to it coupled with a sense of wonder at the universe above and below.
Where can you get it?
Coriolis: The Great Dark Quickstart is available to download here.

—oOo—
The Kickstarter campaign for Coriolis: The Great Dark can be found here.

Willow lies far up a river, on the shores of its source, the Lake of Tears, deep within a vast forest. The lake is famed for the weeping willow trees which line its shores, their branches hanging low into the water. Willow once flourished as a settlement where good folk could find refuge from the outside world and its demands, far from the greed and demand of other men. It built up a fishing industry on the lake, the catches being transported down river and in return, grain and other goods being ferried back up. Of late, however, the backwater town has fallen on bad times and the mood of its inhabitants has turned despondent. Ferries have been attacked on the river and trade has stopped. Food supplies are dwindling, not just due to there being ferries delivering goods, but also because something has been eating them. Strange noises echo and emanate from the strange tunnel accessed by a set of steps that stands behind the Blue Brew Inn, though nobody in the town talks about either the noises or the tunnel. This, combined with the mood of the townsfolk is enough to drive any visitor away, staying no more than a single night, and this is what would have happened, were it not for the fact that none of the ferries are running. Whether they stumble into Willow by accident, come to investigate the loss of trade, or perhaps because one of them wants to become an apprentice for the reclusive wizards who live outside of the town, what do the Player Characters do? Do they investigate the attacks on the ferries, look into why the grain is going missing, or go in search of rare plants?’

Willow: A Grim Micro Setting is a mini-sandcrawl, published following a successful Kickstarter campaign, from the same author as The Toxic Wood, The Haunted Hamlet & other hexes, and Woodfal. Although written for the Old School Renaissance, it is not written for any specific retroclone. Similarly, there is no suggestion as to what Level the Player Characters should be to play Willow, but it is likely to be between low and medium Level. That said, there are some incredibly powerful threats lurking out in the woods surrounding Willow that will take more than brute force to defeat. The supplement details a surprisingly small region, focused on the town of Willow, the NPCs within the settlement, various factions that have an interest in its future, and numerous monsters and plants. The advice suggests that Willow be somewhere that the Player Characters find themselves stuck in for a while, perhaps whilst on a longer journey elsewhere. What they find is a dreary place caught under grey skies and constant rain, with many of the town’s inhabitants and those unable to leave wearily suffering their situation, either in silence or complaining to whomever will listen.
Although the various places in and around Willow are described, the emphasis in the book is upon the NPCs and the factions and their relationships with each other. Places within the town include the Blue Brew Inn, run by Troubled Tina, and currently home to a number of stranded guests slowly running out of money as the proprietress is raising her prices due to the growing food scarcity; Haggard Henge, the stone circle outside the town which is said to be cursed and definitely not the containment field for a dragon’s egg; the mill where the grain stores have been stolen from nightly; and the Tree House, where the town’s children gather to discuss what exciting things they might do in the face of their boring lives in the town. Beyond its confines in the surrounding woods stands an ancient, but ruined fortress, in which stands a Dragonwood tree, famed for the suitability of its wood for the use in wand construction; the Wizard Tower, whose occupants live in bibliographic isolation, their only interests being books and alchemy; pack Rat Folk and tribes of Crow Folk warring against each other; and more…

The primary NPCs in the town include its leader, Morose Morgan, a witch-hermit who rarely leaves her island home except for the annual land fertility ceremony, to adjudicate problems and disputes (settling them by gutting a fish and reading its entrails, no less), and to visit the Seaweed Shrine behind the Blue Brew Inn; the River Ranger, an incredibly lazy man who has been appointed by a council of druids to protect the river; several merchants and smugglers stranded in Willow; and Sania, the daughter of one of the river merchants who unlike the rest of the townsfolk, always has a positive outlook and hatching some exciting scheme or plot to add some excitement to her life. All of these NPCs are given decent descriptions accompanied by handy bullet points of what each wants and what they might be doing at any one moment. Their connections and relationships are neatly plotted between the main NPCs in the town, between Troubled Tina and her guests at the Blue Brew Inn, and moving out to summarise those between Willow and the various factions outside of the town, and then between those factions. All together this builds a network of connections that the Player Characters can follow, pick apart, or strengthen through their actions.

The major adventure site in Willow is the Seaweed Shrine, the dungeon behind the Blue Brew Inn. Its entrance is obvious, but only Morose Morgan is allowed to enter. However, that will not bother some of the adventuresome inhabitants of the town as events in Willow play out. It is relatively short, but a tough adventure, especially in its final few rooms. The dungeon lies below the Lake of Tears and was once the home of a tribe of Aquatic Elves, forced to turn to dark magic to keep themselves from truly dying when they were struck down by a fatal sickness. Now they only exist in a half state, repeating actions from their former lives in desperation… The dungeon is clearly mapped, with locations of important items and wandering monster routes marked, and it is nicely thematic, strewn with coral and seaweed, and even seaweed-based monsters. One issue perhaps is that the Player Character actions can lead to the dungeon being flooded, thus preventing their eventual exploration, which may become necessary if some of the NPCs decide to explore it.

Beyond the confines of the town, various locations and factions are detailed. These include the book-obsessed wizards in their tower, the Crow Folk distrusted by the townsfolk, but at war with the Rat Folk whom nobody in the town knows about. Several packs of these lurk in tunnels beneath the forest. Lurking out in the forest is its corrupted guardian, spreading the poison of an ancient artefact. Several monsters are included, including the Ashen Dryad, which the guardian uses to spread its foulness throughout the forest.

Willow is primarily a player-driven adventure, alongside the descriptions and details are tables that enable the Game Master to respond to their actions. The biggest is the ‘Willow Town Cause and Effect List’, which lists how the townsfolk will respond to the Player Characters’ actions. Many of these will actually result in the townsfolk exiling the Player Characters, so they have to be careful about their actions. This is not the only ‘Cause and Effect List’, there is one each for the Crow Folk and the Rat Folk, but the other big table is the ‘Timeline of Possible Events’. These start off fairly mundane, but grow increasingly ominous and dangerous as time goes on. There is time here for the Player Characters to deal with everything, but they will need to be careful about their timekeeping and they do need to be lucky in finding some of the items that will help them.

Physically, Willow is a fairly busy book, but everything is neatly organised and for the most part, easy to use when the Game Master needs it. The artwork is excellent and so is the writing. Although it does have an introduction, it does not explain what is fully going on until a fair way into the scenario. It does need an edit in places and the author is not clear whether Willow is a town or village.

Willow feels far more constrained and much tighter than the other scenarios from the author. Consequently, it is both easier to place in a Game Master’s campaign, but it still needs a little pulling apart by the Game Master to understand how it works. Some advice on running it would not have been amiss, especially when it comes to defeating the more dangerous threats to the town and a possible suggestion as to possible Player Character Level would have helped too. Even an overview might have been useful. Willow also feels divided between small problems and big threats with nothing really in between and the means to deal with the big threats hidden away with no hint as to their existence, which contributes to the feeling that the Player Characters are often going to have no idea quite what to do or where to go. Consequently, Willow is underwhelming in terms of how it handles the big plots and threats. On the other hand, it really shines in terms of the NPCs and the factions and the connections and relationships between them. If perhaps the Game Master can seed the NPCs with more information that the Player Characters can then learn and decide how they want to use, then there is the potential to overcome the issues in terms of plot between the big threats and the small problems. Ultimately, Willow: A Grim Micro Setting is a toolkit which gives the Game Master everything she needs to run the setting and bring it alive, but she will need to work a bit harder to engage the players and their characters with its bigger plots.

 Do you know how you said you wanted to support real human artists who are doing real human art? Well RIGHT NOW is your chance. Here are three Kickstarters, one starting, one ending and one getting ready to go and all need your eyes on them.

And yes, they do in fact all have witches.

The Pinup Book: The Art of Brian Brinlee

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bbrinlee/the-pinup-book-the-art-of-brian-brinlee?ref=theotherside

Friend of the Other Side, Brian Brinlee, has a new pinup book he has been working on. It looks like a lot of fun and has a modest goal. I love Brian's art and really need to get him to do a cover or something for me. 

This one is a repeat, but ending in a few days.

Djinn Unboxed - NSFW Artbook

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

Djinn has been a good friend for a long time, and she has wonderful characters. She began doing illustrations of her D&D character, Solaine, a witch with a knack for all sorts of trouble, and they took off.

If you have seen her work in the past, you know what to expect here, and it should all be fun. She is in Italy, so the books will be shipped from there, which will cause extra charges for shipping and handling. 

I am hoping this is a big success. Djinn is a great person, and we all want to support real human artists; well, here she is!

Get on this one before it is too late.

The Witches of Oz #1 - A Mature Magical Queer Romance

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/comicuno/the-witches-of-oz-1-a-mature-magical-queer-romance?ref=theotherside

I did promise witches. This is the new one from Kat Calamia and Phil Falco of Lifeline Comics. They have a lot of great titles out. I had featured "Beast and Snow #1" and "Nightmare in Wonderland #1" here in the past, and this one is part of the same universe. Plus it features the Wicked Witch of the West. So, how can I possibly say no?

This one does not start till next week or so. But sign up for notifications.

Enjoy your weekend!

 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.

The very latest entry in the Ticket to Ride franchise is Ticket to Ride: Paris. Like those other Ticket to Ride games, it is another card-drawing, route-claiming board game based around transport links and like those other Ticket to Ride games, it uses the same mechanics. Thus the players will draw Transportation cards and then use them to claim Routes and by claiming Routes, link the two locations marked on Destination Tickets, the aim being to gain as many points as possible by claiming Routes and completing Destination Tickets, whilst avoiding losing by failing to complete Destination Tickets. Yet rather than being another big box game like the original Ticket to Ride, Ticket to Ride: Europe, or Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries, it takes its cue from Ticket to Ride: New York, Ticket to Ride: London, Ticket to Ride: Amsterdam, Ticket to Ride: San Francisco, and Ticket to Ride: Berlin. Part of the ‘City’ series for Ticket to Ride, it is thus a smaller game designed for fewer players with a shorter playing time, a game based around a city rather than a country or a continent. The entries in the series are also notably different in terms of theme and period.
Published by Days of Wonder and designed for play by two to four players, aged eight and up, Ticket to Ride: Paris is easy to learn, can be played out of the box in five minutes, and played through in less than twenty minutes. As with the other entries in the Ticket to Ride ‘City’ series, Ticket to Ride: Paris sees the players race across the city attempting to connect its various tourist hotspots. All of entries in the ‘City’ series are both set in their respective period times and have a theme representative of their city. Thus, Ticket to Ride: New York had the players racing across Manhattan in the nineteen fifties via taxis; Ticket to Ride: London had the players racing across London in the nineteen sixties aboard the classic double-decker buses; Ticket to Ride: Amsterdam took the series back to the seventeenth century and had the players fulfilling Contracts by delivering goods across the Dutch port by horse and cart and claiming Merchandise Bonus if they take the right route; Ticket to Ride: San Francisco continued the lack of trains in the series by having the players travel around ‘The City by the Bay’ aboard its icon form of transportation—the cable car and in Ticket to Ride: Berlin, the series goes across the ‘Grey City’, either by the trams that crisscross the city or the underground which encircles it—or both! And all in the nineteen sixties. Ticket to Ride: Paris takes the players back to the ‘City of Lights’ during the Roaring Twenties, along the Avenue des Champs-Élysées after a visit to Le Louvre to the Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile and the Tour Eiffel—and they can find the Tricolour, they will be able to celebrate Fête nationale française, or Bastille Day.
Inside the small box can be found a small rectangular board which depicts the centre of Paris, from Père Lachaise Cemetery in the east to the Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile and the Tour Eiffel in the west, and from Montmartre in the north to Montparnasse in the south.In between are numerous routes, none of them, notably, longer than three sections long. This means that a player will score no more than four points per route claimed. The scoring track, from zero to forty-nine, runs around the edge of the board and overall, the board has an art deco feel to it. Besides the board map, the box contains sixty Buses, fifteen in each colour—red, blue, white, and green, forty-six Transportation cards, twenty Destination Ticket cards, four Scoring Markers, and the rules leaflet. The Bus pieces are nicely sculpted and come in the standard colours for Ticket to Ride, but are illustrated with a different form of transport for each colour. So black is illustrated with a motor car, white with a river cruise boat (presumably along the Seine), yellow with a tram, purple with a delivery van, orange with a Métro carriage, and the wild card with a bus. This really makes the cards stand out and easier to view for anyone who suffers from colour blindness and the range of transport options give the game a greener feel. Similarly, the Destination Tickets are bright, colourful, and easy to read. Most score either four, five, or six points upon completion and the most that any one card will score is eight points. As expected, the rules leaflet is clearly written, easy to understand, and the opening pages show how to set up the game. It can be read through in mere minutes and play started all but immediately.
Play in Ticket to Ride: Paris is the same as standard Ticket to Ride. Each player starts the game with some Destination Tickets and some Transportation cards. On his turn, a player can take one of three actions. Either draw two Transportation cards; draw two Destination Tickets and either keep one or two, but must keep one; or claim a route between two connected Locations. To claim a route, a player must expend a number of cards equal to its length, either matching the colour of the route or a mix of matching colour cards and the multi-coloured cards, which essentially act as wild cards. Unlike many Ticket to Ride variants, the map for Ticket to Ride: Paris has no black routes and more importantly, it has no grey routes, which means that Transportation cards in the correct colour or wildcards, or a combination of the two, have to be played to claim any route.
The other difference between Ticket to Ride: Paris and other Ticket to Ride variants is that it introduces a new means of scoring points, a distinctly French means of scoring points. When a player claims a red, white, or blue Route, he can keep one of the Transportation cards that he played, except if the card played was a multi-coloured wild card or he already has a Transportation card of that colour. The Transportation card kept is placed in front of the player, face up. At the end of a player’s turn, if he has one red, one white, and one blue Transportation card in front of him, he has created the Tricolour and can celebrate Bastille Day. This scores him four points. All three cards are discarded and the player can start claiming red, white, or blue routes on subsequent turns.
However, the number of red, white, and blue routes are not equal. There are eleven white, twelve blue, and thirteen red. Both the red and the blue routes are one space in length, whilst the white routes are two spaces long. So, the former are going to be easier to claim than the latter, and white Transportation cards are a more important resource than the other colours because there are fewer routes of their colour. That said, Ticket to Ride: Paris cannot simply be won by creating the Tricolour again and again. Essentially, celebrating Bastille Day and scoring points in this way is a bonus.

Physically, Ticket to Ride: Paris is very nicely produced. Everything is produced to the high standard you would expect for a Ticket to Ride game.

As with other entries in the ‘City’ series for Ticket to Ride series, Ticket to Ride: Paris offers all of the play of Ticket to Ride in a smaller, faster playing version, that is easy to learn and easy to transport. This is one of the easiest entries in the ‘City’ series to learn and play, with the Tricolour scoring mechanic similarly being one of the easiest to learn and play. Plus it does not require any other components, such as extra tokens or multiple types of playing pieces. Of course, along with the world famous locations on the map board, the Tricolour scoring mechanic are what enforce the Parisian and the French theme of Ticket to Ride: Paris. Overall, Ticket to Ride: Paris has a Gallic simplicity that makes it a decent introduction to the ‘City’ series for Ticket to Ride and Ticket to Ride in general.

$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.

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another Dungeon Master and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. However, not all fanzines written with the Old School Renaissance in mind need to be written for a specific retroclone. Although not the case now, the popularity of Traveller would spawn several fanzines, of which The Travellers’ Digest, published by Digest Group Publications, was the most well known and would eventually transform from a fanzine into a magazine.

The publication of The Travellers’ Digest #1 in 1985 marked the entry of Digest Group Publications into the hobby and from this small, but ambitious beginnings would stem a complete campaign and numerous highly-regarded supplements for Game Designers Workshop’s Traveller and MegaTraveller, as well as a magazine that all together would run for twenty-one issues between 1985 and 1990. The conceit was that The Travellers’ Digest was a magazine within the setting of the Third Imperium, its offices based on Deneb in the Deneb Sector, and that it awarded the Traveller’s Digest Touring Award. This award would be won by one of the Player Characters and thus the stage is set for ‘The Grand Tour’, the long-running campaign in the pages of The Travellers’ Digest. In classic fashion, as with Europe of the eighteenth century, this would take the Player Characters on a tour of the major capitals of known space. These include Vland, Capitol, Terra, the Aslan Hierate, and even across the Great Rift. The meat of this first issue, as well as subsequent issues, would be dedicated to an adventure, each a stop-off on the ‘The Grand Tour’, along with support for it. The date for the first issue of The Traveller’s Digest and thus when the campaign begins is 152-1111, the 152nd day of the 1111th year of the Imperium.

To best run ‘The Grand Tour’, the Referee will need access to The Atlas of the Imperium, Supplement 8: Library Data (A-M), Supplement 11: Library Data (N-Z), Supplement 7: Traders and Gunboats (or alternatively, Supplement 5: Azhanti High Lightning), as well as the core rules. In addition, other supplements would be required depending on the adventure. For example, ‘Of Xboats and Friends’, the opening part of ‘The Grand Tour’ in The Travellers’ Digest #1 requires the supplement, The Undersea Environment, and adventure, The Drenslaar Quest, published by Gamelords, Ltd., are both useful for running underwater adventures—though they are really only useful if the Referee develops adventuring content beyond that presented in the issue. Alien Module 4: Zhodani may also be useful. Of course, that was in 1985, and much, if not all, of the rules or background necessary have been updated since. The campaign is also specifically written for use with four pre-generated Player Characters. They consist of Akidda Laagiir, the journalist who won the Traveller’s Digest Touring Award; Dur Telemon, a scout and his nephew; Doctor Theodor Krenstein, a gifted-scientist and roboticist; and Doctor Krenstein’s valet, ‘Aybee’, or rather, ‘AB-101’. The fact is, AB-101 is a pseudo-biological robot, both protégé and prototype. Consequently, the mix of Player Characters are surprisingly non-traditional and not all of them are easily created used the means offered in Traveller or MegaTraveller. This is addressed within various issues of the fanzine.
The Travellers’ Digest #2 was also published in 1985 and moved the date on from 152-1111, the 152nd day of the 1111th year of the Imperium to 244-1111, the 244th day of the 1111th year of the Imperium. The opening ‘Editors’ Digest’ looks both backward to the first issue and forward to future issues, as well as commentating on the editors’ success at Origins in Baltimore that year. It highlights the success of the fanzine right from the off and how the editors’ thoughts on various aspects of Traveller align with those of its designer, Marc Miller.
The second part of ‘The Grand Tour’ in The Travellers’ Digest #2 is ‘Feature Adventure 2: Journey of the Sojourn Moon’. In addition to the standard books required by the campaign, the adventure needs the supplement The Desert Environment and the scenario, Duneraiders, both originally published by Gamelords, Ltd, since the adventure takes place on a desert world. The adventure breaks down the Universal Task Profile used throughout and again, presents the four pre-generated Player Characters. The adventure itself opens with some colour fiction which explains why the quartet decide to travel to the world of Wal-ta-ka. This is because Akidda Laagiir, the journalist who won the Traveller’s Digest Touring Award, is in search of a story. The terms of the award demand that he submit a regular story highlighting cultural diversity in the Imperium and on Wal-ta-ka, there is a culture which rejects technology. Could that be the basis of a story—let alone a scenario?
Wal-ta-ka is a tidally locked world in the Atsah Subsector of Deneb Sector. A seismic quake destroyed the original mining colony in 234 and the population thought to be wiped out. However, some managed to survive and their descendants evolved into their own nomadic sub-culture. Notably, the nomads reject all technology beyond Tech Level 2 and see its use as blasphemous. The scenario is initially driven by Akidda Laagiir, who wants to make contact with the ‘San-de Wal-ta-ka’, one of the hunter-gatherer tribes living on the bright side of the world. This is actually easily achieved as the tribe welcomes visitors so long as they leave all advanced technology behind. The tribe also sees the journalist’s interest in it and its culture as flattering. However, the Player Characters will make a terrible cultural faux pas. Either the ‘San-de Wal-ta-ka’ discover that they have brought an item of advanced technology with them (if they did) or a duel is provoked with ‘Aybee’ and discover that ‘AB-101’ is actually a pseudo-biological robot—and thus not human! This all needs to be done in order to set up the major part of the scenario and that is the Player Characters being forced to survive in the desert of Wal-ta-ka.
All members of the tribe are expected to make a ‘Sojourn’ into the desert at the age of fourteen. They are expected to survive alone in the desert for fourteen days and soo to are the Player Characters. This is essentially to atone for their cultural transgression of bringing technology into the tribe, but in the process, it can also make them members of the tribe. The scenario details what the Player Characters need to survive and what resources and dangers can be found out in the desert. This includes plant and animal descriptions, a list of possible environmental encounters, and there is both a map of the planet and the region where the Sojourn is to take place. There are notes too on how the NPCs were created using and diverging from Citizens of the Imperium, plus the tribe’s particular skills such as Guard/Hunting, Falconry, Riding, and Herding. In particular, there is a guide to roleplaying ‘Aybee’ because his role is important in the scenario as it probably triggers the major events of the story. Lastly, the notes for the Referee also talk about motivations for the other Player Characters to go on the Sojourn, such as Akidda Laagiir wanting a good story and Dur Telemon, the scout, wanting to prove that he can survive on this world.
‘Feature Adventure 2: Journey of the Sojourn Moon’ does feel forced as an adventure, and it does set up a situation where the Player Characters are expected to survive in a situation without recourse to their technological devices. Players instinctively hate this, being forced into a situation that is outside of their comfort zone and that of their characters. However, given the Player Characters of ‘The Grand Tour’, they actually have the motivation to do this. At the same time, the Game Master needs to make this adventure interesting and keep her players engaged. Lastly, it should be pointed out that the setting of ‘Feature Adventure 2: Journey of the Sojourn Moon’ and elements of its story, are inspired by Frank Herbert’s novel, Dune, and its desert world of Arrakis, as does The Desert Environment and Duneraiders, right down to there being a chemical substance which could have wider implications beyond the world of Wal-ta-ka. This is not Spice, of course, but the pollen of a cactus plant that induces hibernation and has potential medical uses. The Atsah Subsector of Deneb Sector is detailed and accompanied by its own Library Data, though this applies more to ‘The Grand Tour’ as a whole rather than the scenario.
One of the Player Characters in ‘The Grand Tour’ is Akidda Laagiir, a journalist. However, there is not the means to create a Journalist Player Character in Traveller, the version of the rules available at the time, though there is one now in the current edition of the rules. ‘Journalist Character Generation’ presents the new Career in the same format as that of Mercenary and High Guard, introducing the new skills of Persuade and Interview. Interview can stand in for the Interrogation skill, but is not as effective. An overview of journalism at various Tech Levels is given in ‘Recording Devices’, the last article in the issue, covering text, sound, and image recorders. It is a good complementary piece, which should provide the Journalist Player Character with everything he needs to carry out his job.

Penultimately, The Travellers’ Digest #2 returns to the major focus of The Travellers’ Digest #1 and that is robots. ‘Robot Design Revisited, Part 2’ continues the expansion on the ‘Ref’s Notes’ article, ‘Robots’ which appeared in The Best of the Journal of the Travellers’ Aid Society. It includes some examples a Tech Level 12 Cargo Robot and a Tech Level 14 Zhodani Warbot, introduces the Universal Robot Profile or URP, plus all of the codes necessary and their explanation, and presents both the Warbot and ‘AB-101’ as URP examples. The accompanying ‘Easy Task Resolution’ is written exclusively with the pseudo biological robot in mind and covers some of the tasks that his creator, Doctor Theodor Krenstein, will likely have to undertake in order to repair him. It is quite handy, especially given the encounters that ‘AB-101’ is likely to have in the scenario, ‘Feature Adventure 2: Journey of the Sojourn Moon’.
Physically, The Travellers’ Digest #2 is very obviously created using early layout software. However, that layout is surprisingly tidy and if some of the artwork is created using a computer too, it is not actually that bad.
The Travellers’ Digest #2 is already an improvement over The Travellers’ Digest #1. The inclusion of the Journalist as a Career is an excellent addition and together with ‘Robot Design Revisited, Part 1’ supports the scenario in the issue, ‘Feature Adventure 2: Journey of the Sojourn Moon’ in the short term, and ‘The Grand Tour’ campaign in the long term. The scenario itself does feel somewhat forced, but it plays to the motivations of the Player Characters and it is far more coherent and playable than ‘Of Xboats and Friends’ from The Travellers’ Digest #1. Overall, The Travellers’ Digest #2 is a solid second issue, a good follow up to The Travellers’ Digest #1, with some decent content.

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

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another Dungeon Master and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. However, not all fanzines written with the Old School Renaissance in mind need to be written for a specific retroclone.

Ascoleth: The Last Great City was published in June, 2022. It is a collaborative project between Monkey Blood Design and Rabid Halfling Press, a systems-neutral weird science-fantasy fanzine that describes a city in the end times and as a toolkit provides the Game Master with numerous tables of prompts and ideas that she can use to bring it to life. It is part one of ‘The Finisterre Trilogy’, although sadly, the other two parts have yet to appear. The setting for the fanzine is a sliver of land in the eschaton, the last days, called Finisterre. On it stands an entity that is both alive and a city, a final refuge in the very uncertain times. It is so large that districts within are almost cities unto themselves, each with their own distinctive architecture and often purpose. Nominally ruled by The Lord-Executor Ampiranx III, it is the Consortium which actually runs the city, though in many cases the various districts are autonomous, some with ties to the Consortium, some with not. Finisterre itself could be a complex machine found in the dusty basement of a wizard’s tower or the ever-expanding dreamworld of a sleeping child-god, as seen from within. Only three of Ascoleth’s districts are  detailed, and like all districts in the city, they shift, rotate, and move, but there are the means included as well to create others, as the Game Master is likely to want to create more.

The three major districts are the Magitek Praecinctum, the Necrosian Borough, and the Pariah Conurbation. Each is given entries for something ‘Dominating the Skyline’, a ‘Site of Interest’, a ‘House of Worship’, and the ‘Faction in Control’, plus quick lists of its demographics ongoing problems. This is followed by a table of the district’s neighbourhoods. For example, the Necrosian Borough accommodates the city’s undead citizens, but not very well since there is of course more undead than can be supported by the district’s amenities. Living visitors are advised to wear corpse paint lest their flagrant flaunting of their living status cause offence, so there are professional corpse painters at the entrance to provide this service as well as blood banks since blood is legal tender in the Necrosian Borough. Dominating the skyline is ‘The Triangle of Tragic Truths’, a huge, inverted pyramid of bloodstone atop which is an enormous disc that turns to face the sun and so block the district and its inhabitants from direct sunlight. The ‘Hall of the Eternal Smile’ is the ‘Site of Interest’ where the undead go to meet and discuss their undeathly issues, plus attend KrptoCon, an event dedicated to magical technology related to death and undeath. The ‘House of Worship’ is ‘Rigorous Mortis’, an old, decrepit prison where the undead use the execution platform and torture chamber to ritually torture and execute each other as acts of devotion. The ‘Faction in Control’ is ‘The Gatekeepers of Yore’, a fanatical group of monarchists under Archking Akoscion XIX, a partially mummified halfling vampire, currently in a guerilla war with The Sanguinista Urban Liberation Front. Of course, the district is home to all manner of undead, plus necromancers and anyone with an interest in the dead and undead. Its ongoing problems include massive class divides, overcrowding, and the vampire insurrectionists.

The neighbourhoods of the Necrosian Borough include the Royal Quarter where too many undead royals live, leading to murderous feuds in an effort to reduce numbers and so increase space, but this is hampered by the fact that the undead are very difficult to kill. Then there is the Black Light District which should be left to the reader’s imagination!

Beyond this treatment of the three neighbourhoods, over half of Ascoleth: The Last Great City is dedicated to creation tables for the city. Tables include ‘Who Do You Bump Into?’, ‘You Took A Wrong Turn And…’, ‘Whose Face Is On That Wanted Poster?’, and more. Lastly, the ‘District Generator Tables’ enable the Game Master to create districts of her own. For example, the ‘Adventurer Generator’ might create a hook such as the Player Characters being hired to eradicate a former saint, now corrupted, from a pearlescent tower or infiltrating an illusion of the underworld inhabiting a very scary Halfling, not actually undead, but wearing corpse paint. Of course, the Game Master will need to develop these further.

Physically, Ascoleth: The Last Great City is very well laid out and engagingly written. With its splashes of red, the artwork varies from the bizarre to the grim, but it fits the strange tone of the setting.

Systemless, Ascoleth: The Last Great City would work as well with Old School Essentials, Into the Odd, Troika!, or even Numenera. The Game Master will need to provide stats and details as necessary, but the pages of Ascoleth: The Last Great City are rife with ideas and prompts that are entertainingly inventive and will form the basis of some great.