[D&D] [Review] Art & Arcana first impressions

I received my copy of the Dungeons & Dragons Art & Arcana Deluxe Set in the mail yesterday, and while I've only had a few brief minutes to peruse it so far, my first impression is very positive - that this is a substantial and very interesting book that does everything the previous D&D art books (from 1986, 1989, and 2004) did not. While the focus is on the "visual history" of the game, they've taken a much more expansive view of that concept than the previous books, including not only art from the rulebooks and modules, but also extensive discussion and examples of things like logos, trade dress, maps, advertisements, etc.

The book is arranged in chronological order, from the earliest days of Chainmail and the Castle & Crusade Society up through the latest D&D 5th Edition releases, but there are sidebars interspersed throughout - on topics like the evolution of mapping and how different characters and monsters have been depicted throughout the years - that keep the "early edition" content that I'm interested in present throughout pretty much the entire book. I haven't actually read any of the text (aside from some photo captions) yet, but from flipping through the book there is a ton of stuff of historical and nostalgic interest, not just reproductions of art (cover and interior) and old ads and pictures of oddball 80s-era licensed products, but really cool unpublished tidbits as well. Some of this is stuff that people who follow historically-oriented D&D blogs (like Playing at the World) and ebay auctions (like those from  The Collector's Trove) will already have seen - like Gary Gygax's original "Great Kingdom" map that eventually became The World of Greyhawk, and pre-publication versions of some of the famous TSR cover art, but there's also stuff that is new (or at least new to me), such as Gary's hand-drawn maps of the village of Hommlet and the upper works of the Temple of Elemental Evil from his 1976 home campaign, that are intriguingly different from what was later published by TSR (Hommlet is the same but smaller - the "main street" around the Inn of the Welcome Wench is exactly the same, but many of the outlying buildings - the church, the jeweler, the brewer, and the tower - aren't present; while the Temple upper-works are almost completely different). The book is over 400 pages long, and I've only looked through a small portion of it (I confess I got so distracted by studying the TOEE maps that I didn't really look much further after that) so there may well be more surprises of that nature that I haven't spotted yet.

It's worth mentioning that (again, in contrast to the earlier D&D art books) this book is very solidly and well-produced. It is heavy. The paper is thick and glossy and all of the reproductions are very clear - many of them looking better than their original appearances. This feels like something you'd get in a museum store, and justifies its high pricetag.

An even higher price (which, of course, I paid) gets you the "deluxe edition" which includes not only the book with a special matte cover, but comes in a box (with the same cover art) that also includes a pouch of extra swag - loose prints of various key pieces of D&D art through the ages (text-free versions of the cover art of the AD&D Players Handbook and Fiend Folio, Dave Trampier's glorious art from the original AD&D Dungeon Master Screen, and various pieces of later-edition art) that are theoretically suitable for framing, though the larger ones are folded and have visible creases, and most intriguingly a reproduction of the original 1975 tournament version of Gary Gygax's Tomb of Horrors. This is a typescript of a dozen or so pages, a hand-drawn map, and 20 or so illustrations, just like the 1978 module version (but the art is by Tracy Lesch rather than Trampier and Sutherland, so it's of considerably lower quality). The map and at least most of the encounters appear to be the same (though even in a very brief skim-through I spotted at least one or two differences). The summer of 1975 is very early in D&D's history, long before TSR became a professionalized operation, but it's interesting how much of what later became the standard for TSR's modules is already fully formed here - the only real difference between this version and the 1978 version is the production values of the art and map and the typesetting of the text.

And, as a bonus to the bonus, and even more intriguing, the TOH booklet also includes a reproduction of a short dungeon (5 hand-written pages and one map covering 14 rooms) that D&D fan Alan Lucien sent to Gary and that inspired him to create the Tomb of Horrors - the "Tomb of Ra-Hotep." As the name suggests, and which has gone curiously un-commented-on that I've seen in a brief scan of other previews and reviews of this book (and the introduction within the book itself) is that Lucien's dungeon seems to have been a very close and direct inspiration not just for the TOH, but for Gary's later expansion of the same concept as Necropolis: The Tomb of Rahotep. Not only is the villain's name the same, but so is the map and many of the traps and encounters! Lucien was acknowledged with (presumably non-royalty-bearing) "special thanks" in the 1978 TOH module for inspiring its design, which is probably appropriate, since although the idea was similar the specifics are not really. But he curiously was not given any such thanks or credit for Necropolis, even though roughly half of that adventure's tomb section is directly lifted from his dungeon.

The deluxe version costs a lot more than the book version. I don't know that the TOH reproduction, even with the bonus Ra-Hotep content, justifies the price difference, but I'm still glad to have it.

Is this product (either version) worth buying? That really depends on where your primary interest in D&D lies (and, of course, how much disposable income you have). There's little if anything in this book that you will ever use directly in a game - its value is strictly historical and nostalgic and meta. If you're interested in the history and development of D&D you also probably already know most of what's in here and have seen most of the art and maps and ads and ephemera before (and maybe even own most or all of the products). This isn't a utilitarian product by any means - it's a toy, a luxury, a way to feel like you're still connected to the D&D culture even if you haven't purchased a D&D game-book in a quarter-century or more. And, on those terms, it's a winner. It's a very attractive, very well-produced set that will look nice on your coffee table, that you'll have fun perusing, and that might even make some of your non-gaming friends and family more interested in giving this thing a try than they would be from a dry (and, potentially musty) set of vintage rulebooks.

Community-spirit bloggy quizzy thing

Saw this quiz for "OSR" (i.e. old-school rpg) bloggers making its way around the 'net. Figured I might as well participate:

1. One article or blog entry that exemplifies the best of the Old School Renaissance for me:
The Other Moathouse

2. My favorite piece of OSR wisdom/advice/snark:
Mornard's Three Laws of RPG Rules

3. Best OSR module/supplement:
Classic Dungeon Designer's Netbook #4: Old-School Encounters Reference

4. My favorite house rule (by someone else):
Jeff Rients' table for what happens to PCs who don't make it out of the dungeon before the end of the session

5. How I found out about the OSR:
We were talking on the forums at dragonsfoot.org sometime c. 2003ish about how it seemed like there was increasing interest in older approaches to D&D exemplified by stuff like Necromancer Games "3E rules, 1E feel" slogan and Hackmaster and the Dungeon Crawl Classics modules aping old TSR trade dress and Troll Lord Games' plans to create an OGL 1E-like system that Gary Gygax could use as the basis for his "Castle Zagyg" reskinning of the original Greyhawk Castle Dungeons, and so on, and someone said "it's almost like there's an Old-School Renaissance on the horizon" and the phrase struck a chord and we started using it after that, as a joke at first but a few years later people (mostly "come-lately" types like James Maliszewski) started using it more seriously.

6. My favorite OSR online resource/toy:
Dungeon Robber

7. Best place to talk to other OSR gamers:
Around a table, playing a game

8. Other places I might be found hanging out talking games:
Dragonsfoot, Doomsday Message Boards, the 1e AD&D Round Table group on Facebook

9. My awesome, pithy OSR take nobody appreciates enough:
That D&D is better and more fun when you include the material Gary Gygax added to AD&D in the early 80s that was originally published in Dragon magazine and later collected in the Monster Manual II, Unearthed Arcana, and the World of Greyhawk boxed set, and when you continue to expand beyond it in the same aesthetic spirit. You can still have fun with D&D without needing to (a) remain permanently frozen in amber in 1979, (b) embrace all the lazy and tonally-dissonant garbage TSR and Wizards of the Coast churned out after 1985, or (c) reimagine D&D into something so "gonzo" that it's no longer recognizable to what we fell in love with as kids.

10. My favorite non-OSR RPG:
King Arthur Pendragon, by Greg Stafford (R.I.P.)

11. Why I like OSR stuff:
Because, before the OSR, D&D (versions 3.5 & 4.0) had gotten to be almost totally about math and bean-counting and "character builds" and had lost sight of the freewheeling spirit of actual play, and the OSR reminded folks (including/especially younger folks who missed the "old-school" era the first time around) that it wasn't always and didn't need to be that way.

12. Two other cool OSR things you should know about that I haven’t named yet:
i) Midkemia Press is selling (and in some cases even giving away) their old books in pdf format. Their book Cities is still one of the best, most useful rpg products ever published IMO.

ii) You can purchase legal Print-On-Demand hardcopies of a lot of the 1st Edition AD&D rulebooks and modules (and pdfs of most of the rest) at RPGNow. Tip to the wise: don't bother with anything published after 1985 ;)

13. If I could read but one other RPG blog but my own it would be:
Mortal Worm - Just Keep On Rollin' with Gene Weigel

14. A game thing I made that I like quite a lot is:
AD&D Companion (my "fan-fic" compilation of uncollected AD&D material by Gary Gygax combined with my own house rules and additions that try to maintain the same spirit and show that old-school-style AD&D can still be a vital, growing thing)

15. I'm currently running/playing:
Nothin.' But I've got a growing hankering to run another game someday, if I can find the time and energy. We'll see...

16. I don't care whether you use ascending or descending AC because:
The rules don't matter. They never mattered. If you think they matter, you've missed the point.

17. The OSRest picture I could post on short notice:

[D&D] Assorted Monsters and Treasures

Back in the 70s, before D&D became Advanced, TSR hadn't caught on to the idea of pre-written adventure modules yet. Instead, they released several "toolbox" accessories - a few sets of "geomorphic" maps (little map-sections that could be combined in a large variety of ways) for both dungeons and towns, and three sets of pre-rolled monsters and treasures, covering dungeon levels 1-9. The former are interesting in their own right, both because the style of the maps shows an earlier conception of dungeons as intricate maze-like spaces that had already fallen out of fashion before the turn of the next decade, and because each of the sets included a few colorful sample encounters that seemed to provide a taste of what play was like in Greyhawk Castle. Maybe someday I'll talk more about those here (even though they fall outside of my primary focus on 80s-era D&D), but for the time being I'm focused on the latter product - the three Monster and Treasure Assortments released by TSR in 1977 (sets 1-2) and 78 (set 3), right on the cusp between Original and Advanced D&D.

To be honest, there's really not much to these products. Each of them was a set of 8 cardstock sheets, three-hole punched, unbound, that included 100 pre-rolled monster encounters and 100 pre-rolled treasures for each of three dungeon levels (set one had levels 1-3, set two levels 4-6, and set three levels 7-9). There's a bit of historical curiosity because they (the first two sets, anyway)  were released before the AD&D Monster Manual so they give full stats for various animal types that were mentioned but not detailed in the original rules, some of which are different than the AD&D versions, and also because they include a bunch of creatures that were probably mysterious to the audience at the time - not only monsters from the various D&D supplements, but also various creatures that appeared in The Strategic Review (TSR's house-organ newsletter that later evolved into Dragon magazine) and even the super-limited distribution Lost Caverns of Tsojconth tournament dungeon written by Gary Gygax but published by the Metro Detroit Gamers.

However, they're fun to me, like all of the Original D&D stuff - the geomorphic sets, the early magazines, and third party products from the likes of Wee Warriors and Judges Guild - because they're a glimpse into an era that had already long since disappeared by the time I started playing D&D in 1984. This was the era of the "funhouse dungeon" where randomness was not just accepted but expected, and the game seems to have been treated much close to something like a traditional wargame than what it eventually became, with more of a focus on worldbuilding and storytelling and things that tried to make sense. These products offer some of the few published glimpses we get (outside of the rulebooks themselves) of the era when D&D was just about the referee (the term "dungeon master" hadn't been coined yet) drawing a map of a maze, filling it with monsters, traps, and treasures, and a group of adventurers going in to explore it and get rich or die trying. It didn't matter how the monsters got there or why they didn't eat each other or where the treasure came from, it was all just accepted as the premise of the game. And in that context, lists of 100 random monsters and 100 random treasures make sense. Combined with the geomorphic maps, it's almost everything you need (the individual referee had only to supply his or her own tricks and traps).

So I've always kind of liked looking over ands studying these things, and trying to figure out how they were made and if there are any interesting hidden patterns, any lessons that other DMs could learn about what TSR c. 1977 saw as being appropriate challenge-levels and treasure rewards for characters of various levels (remembering that in the early conception of the game dungeon level was supposed to be equivalent to character level - so 4th level characters were balanced against the challenges and rewards on dungeon level 4, and so on).

Gary Gygax's son Ernie says that he rolled up everything in these products from tables as an after-school project, which is believable - the results certainly seem random - but also intriguing (at least to me) because they're definitely not the product of any published tables. A dozen or so years back I did an exhaustive listing of all the monsters for all nine levels, noting on which levels and in what quantities by level each of them appeared. The results seem fairly close to what you'd see from the Random Encounter Tables in the back of the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide (though not exactly, since those tables include "new" monsters introduced in the AD&D Monster Manual that weren't present here) which makes it likely that Gary had given his son an early draft version of those tables to work from. The most interesting takeaway is how the number of monsters of each type changes depending on which level they're encountered on - a single "overpowered" monster may appear on one level, a small group (say 1-4 or 1-6) on a lower level, and a large group (say 2-20) on a much lower level. Even deep in the dungeon monsters like orcs and giant rats still show up on the lists, but in groups of 5-50 or 6-60. All of that data is preserved at the Knights and Knaves Alehouse message-board if anyone's interested in taking a look.

At the time I never got around to doing a similar analysis of the treasures lists, which is what brings me here now. One thing that's immediately clear is that the lists are not based on the guidelines for random treasure hoards in D&D Volume III. In searching to see if I could find anything else they might have been drawn from, I came across the Solo Dungeon Adventuring rules published in issue #1 of The Strategic Review (and later reprinted as Appendix A of the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide). The way that table produced treasures of a single type (i.e. one type of coins, or gems, or jewels, or a magic item, but not mixed together) and the proportions between them - the low value coins the most common, higher value stuff less common - looked similar. And, lo and behold, at least for the first three levels when I tallied up and compared them the results were really similar (not exact, but that's because Ernie was presumably actually rolling the dice each time rather than just using the statistical values). So this was almost certainly the table Ernie used. However, on the later levels some anomalies appeared - magic items became way more common than the table would allow (3%), and mixed hoards of coins start appearing on the lower levels. Plus, while that table gives a fixed number of coins per level - 1000 CP or SP, 750 EP, etc. - these tables showed more variation (but, notably, only within the last thousand - i.e. instead of 4,000 SP on dungeon level 4, you see anywhere from 3,100-4,200). These latter values may have just been chosen to provide an illusion of variety, but since they generally seem to align to dice-ranges, I suspect they may also have been rolled.

So, taking all of that together, I've reverse engineered what seems to be a fairly close recreation of the tables that were used to generate these treasure lists. There are some anomalies on the lists - some that appear to have been the result of transcription errors (5,200 where it should probably be 2,500, etc.) others that may have just been inserted arbitrarily (perhaps as some kind of obscure inside joke reference?). But 90% or more of the results fall within these ranges. Whether viewed as nothing more than an historical semi-curiosity, or used as a tool by DMs who want to generate random treasures of their own in line with what TSR c. 1977 felt were "best practices," here it is:

Step One - Magic:

5% chance per level the treasure is a magic item, up to a maximum 25% at levels 5 and higher.

Step Two - Non-magic treasures type:

If the roll in step one does not indicate the treasures is a magic item, roll d% on the following table to determine treasure type:

01-25 Copper Pieces (Combined Hoard on levels 6 and higher)
26-50 Silver Pieces
51-65 Electrum Pieces
66-80 Gold Pieces
81-90 Platinum Pieces
91-96 Gems
97-00 Jewelry

Step Three - Treasure quantity:

Level One
Copper - 1d12x100
Silver - 1d12x100
Electrum - 3d6x50
Gold - 1d10x50
Platinum - 2d6x10
Gems - 1d4
Jewelry - 1
Magic - 1

Level Two
Copper - 1d24x100 (i.e. 1d12+"control die" for +0 or +12)
Silver - 1d24x100
Electrum - 300 + 3d6x50
Gold - 200 + 1d10x50
Platinum - 1d6x50
Gems - 2d4
Jewelry - 1d3
Magic - 1

Level Three
Copper - 2,000 + 1d12x100
Silver - 2,000 + 1d12x100
Electrum - 500 + 3d6x50
Gold - 500 + 1d8x50
Platinum - 200 + 1d4x50
Gems - 3d4
Jewelry - 1d3
Magic - 1 (25% of potions are two potions of same type)

Level Four
Copper - 3,000 + 1d12x100
Silver - 3,000 + 1d12x100
Electrum - 1,000 + 3d6x50
Gold - 500 + 1d6x100
Platinum - 200 + 1d6x50
Gems - 4d4
Jewelry - 1d4
Magic - 1d2*

Level Five
Copper - 5,000 + 1d12x100
Silver - 5,000 + 1d12x100
Electrum - 2,000 + 1d6x100
Gold - 1,000 + 1d6x100
Platinum - 300 + 1d4x50
Gems - 5d4
Jewelry - 1d6
Magic - 1d2*

Level Six
Copper - 6,000 + 1d12x100
Silver - 6,000 + 1d12x100
Electrum - 3,000 + 1d6x100
Gold - 1,500 + 1d6x100
Platinum - 350 + 1d4x50
Gems - 6d4
Jewelry - 1d6
Magic - 1d3*
Combined Hoard - Copper and Silver

Level Seven
Copper - 7,000 + 1d10x100
Silver - 6,000 + 1d10x100
Electrum - 4,000 + 1d8x100
Gold - 2,000 + 1d6x100
Platinum - 400 + 1d4x50
Gems - 7d4
Jewelry - 1d8
Magic - 1d4*
Combined Hoard - Copper, Silver, and Electrum

Level Eight
Copper - 8,000 + 1d10x100
Silver - 7,000 + 1d10x100
Electrum - 5,000 + 1d12x100
Gold - 3,000 + 1d8x100
Platinum - 500 + 1d4x50
Gems - 8d4
Jewelry - 1d8
Magic - 1d4 (50% of potions are two potions of same type)
Combined Hoard - Copper, Silver, Electrum, and Gold

Level Nine
Copper - 9,000 + 1d10x100
Silver - 8,000 + 1d10x100
Electrum - 6,000 + 1d10x100
Gold - 4,000 + 1d8x100
Platinum - 600 + 1d4x50
Gems - 9d4
Jewelry - 1d10
Magic - 1d6*
Combined Hoard - All coin types

*If a treasure includes two potions, 50% likely the second potion is of the same type as the first; if three or more potions are included, the third and subsequent are rolled normally for type

Jim Henson: Genius

Yesterday my wife and I finally made it to the Jim Henson exhibition that has been running all summer at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles and will be closing in two weeks. It's got puppets, drawings, models, and videos from across his entire career, from the 50s to his untimely death in 1990. It was a great experience, drawing a huge multi-generational crowd where the parents were just as excited and emotional as their kids. I couldn't resist getting a photo with the oracular pile of offal that gives this blog its name (even though it was just a huge photo, not the actual puppet), as can be seen in the new cover photo. 

What really struck me seeing all of Henson's life work collected before me is how key a role he played in my childhood - from Sesame Street as a very small child to the Muppet Show (and movies, especially the first one), Fraggle Rock, and The Dark Crystal, he was a constant presence for the first decade of my life. By the time Labyrinth came out (in 1986) I disdained it as kid-stuff but I came to appreciate it later, as an adult (in no small part as I discovered that girls around my age with nerdy proclivities all adore it - I don't think I ever dated a girl who wouldn't include it on her list of all-time favorite movies). Thinking about it now and looking back, I see how much of an influence his sensibility had on me - his imagination and proclivity towards the surreal and fantastic, his irreverent sense of humor, his lack of condescension or cynicism, his work-ethic and meticulous sense of craft and artistry, and his DIY free spirit. This was a guy who loved TV and puppetry, and had a boundless imagination and hippie idealism, and spent his entire life working to bring those strands together and create something that hadn't been seen before but has become so ubiquitously and indispensably ingrained in our culture in the decades since that we now take it completely for granted - of course there will always be weird wise-cracking felt puppets of impossible creatures who straddle the line between entertainment for children and for adults.

There's no historical survey or detailed analysis here because Jim Henson isn't somebody I've studied in any sort of consciously comprehensive manner - I haven't read books about him and don't know that much about his life or his puppetry techniques or any of that stuff. I just know him through his work, and even that I know mostly on a sort of pre-conscious emotional level, remembered from the mists of my early childhood. But it has a strong pull on me, a deep inner resonance, that experiencing the exhibit yesterday really brought home to me. Encountering those felt puppets of Kermit and Grover and Beaker and the Fraggles and the gelflings and skeksis, I understood and realized how much of a presence and influence Jim Henson and his creations were for me, even without me ever consciously being aware of it, and that feels like a profound discovery - a key to a new, unexplored room of my inner self.

All of which is to say that if you were a kid in the 70s or 80s, and will be in Los Angeles during the next couple weeks (or this exhibition travels near to where you live), I really recommend going to see it, but prepare yourself to be overwhelmed by a wave of nostalgia and emotion.

Gygax Day

Today would have been Gary Gygax's 80th birthday. That has led some folks to unofficially declare today "Gygax Day." In honor of that, and inspired by a recent post I saw on the Dragonsfoot forum musing about what people saw as the defining characteristics of AD&D, I got to thinking about what makes an adventure feel to me like it's "in the spirit of Gary Gygax" and came up with this little list. It's not exhaustive and neither is it exclusive - not everything Gary wrote has all of these elements, and many of them are also present in material written by others, but taken in combination, the more of these elements are present in an adventure, the more quintessentially "Gygaxian" it feels to me:

• The adventure doesn't exist in a self-contained vacuum, but is connected to a larger milieu. Opposed factions and organizations are important, both on the largest cosmic scale (the alignments are not just personality descriptors but cosmic "teams" - the gods (and demons and devils) are not abstract but real and actively, directly concerned in the affairs of mortals) but also on the more mundane scale via guilds (including those of thieves and assassins) and other organizations (the intertwined brotherhood of druids, rangers, and bards, knightly and monastic orders, etc.). The actions of the player characters need to consider and interact with all of these larger-scale factors, and will be influenced by them both positively (pledging loyalty and service in exchange for aid and support) and negatively (making long-term, recurring enemies). 
• The overall situation of the world is, effectively, a loose strategic stalemate but the forces of cosmic evil have a small but growing advantage and if everything continues on its current trajectory will eventually win and the mortal world will be destroyed. Thus the actions of the player characters are consequential - they are the ones who are tasked with ultimately turning that tide and making a difference, and no one else (no organization of non-player characters) is going to do it in their place. Tied in to this is the fact that as-written the adventures are always hard for the PCs. In terms of pure statistical analysis they are doomed and can't rely on the dice alone to see them through to success, so it becomes incumbent upon the players to do clever things and figure out ways to change the situation in order to overcome or circumvent the inexorable math. This is the key to "good play" in Gary's conception of the game - not just making the right moves, but figuring out new moves. 
• The characters (at least the significant ones) are cosmopolitan and sophisticated in their attitudes - not only are they comfortable among mixed races and cultures, they're also assumed to have at least some knowledge of how magic works and the nature of the multiverse. Travel to other worlds and planes is commonplace, and so is at least broad familiarity with modern-day earth (including references to "anachronistic" earth culture). The world is in "medieval drag" as far as technology and style of dress, but most attitudes (including patterns of speech) are much closer to contemporary society than to the actual historical medieval period.
• The adventure locations themselves exist in a "de facto" state that is not limited strictly to the context of the scenario in which it is presented. While most of Gary's adventures (especially those that were run as tournaments at conventions) start with a defined "mission" explaining why the player characters have come to this particular place and what they're trying to accomplish there, the description of the location itself doesn't depend on that and could be used in a totally different context, encountered by a group on a different mission or even no mission at all - it could be stumbled upon completely at random. This makes the adventures less linear and limited, more expandable, more rational (because the contents of the locations generally make sense within their context and don't exist solely for the purpose of being "an encounter" for a group of PCs), and imparts a sense of belonging as parts of a greater whole - these aren't just challenges being placed in front of the players but are "real" locations that exist within the fantasy world and would exist whether or not the players visited them.

I could go on and on, but I think the above is a pretty good encapsulation of what I have in mind when I think of "Gygaxian spirit," apart from the obvious surface-level details (his detailed descriptions of locations and treasures, his particular Thesaurus-driven vocabulary, his focus on present-tense action rather than irrelevant history and backstory, etc.).

[D&D] Flanaess Cuisine

Gary Gygax loved to talk about food and drink. As anyone who participated in the online Q&A sessions with him at places like ENWorld and Dragonsfoot can attest, he would frequently veer off on tangents about those topics, which were clearly more interesting to him than the sorts of D&D rules minutia that the fans wanted to discuss. Therefore, its no surprise that he tended to include detailed descriptions of such matters in both the D&D gamebooks and his later novels - most famously in the description of the Inn of the Welcome Wench in The Village of Hommlet and in chapter 14 of his novel Saga of Old City, in which he devotes several pages to an exacting course-by-course itemization of every item shared by Gord and Gellor at the Horn and Haunch tavern in the city of Stoink. However, those are far from the only mentions of food and drink - Gene Weigel uncovered dozens more, large and small. There are so many references to food and drink in Gary's Greyhawk works that it's possible by combining them all to get a pretty detailed picture of what he imagined the typical diet of that imaginary world's inhabitants to be.

One thing that stands out immediately is that it is strictly medieval, with all "New World" foods such as potatoes, corn, tomatoes, pumpkins, chocolate, vanilla, and tobacco conspicuous by their total absence (at least in all of the references I checked). This is a bit surprising, both because Gary generally wasn't hung up on "anachronism" (and in his later years advocated moving the default technological base of D&D forward to approx. 1650 for everything except gunpowder) and furthermore because he posited a class of cosmopolitan inter-planar travelers with knowledge of other worlds, including modern-day earth, and surely could have brought back such items (similarly to how Gord purchases several bottles of 1947 Chateau Margaux Margaux from a wine merchant in Weird Way), but the consistent absence of such items can only have been deliberate. With that in mind, and aided by several Google searches, I've filled in a few blank spots in the culinary landscape based on typical European medieval cuisine.

Does any of this matter or make a difference when playing D&D? Not really - as long as you know that a "merchant's meal" costs 1 s.p. and a week's supply of rations costs 3 g.p. for "standard" or 5 g.p. for "iron" per the Players Handbook it probably doesn't affect the game to know what exactly they consist of. And yet, added detail can also make the game more immersive, and help the players to picture the imaginary world. Going into exhaustive detail on every meal the characters consume is undoubtedly overkill, and yet the bill of fare at the Inn of the Welcome Wench with its list of exotic wines and brandies is still fondly remembered almost 40 years later as the kind of detail and flavor that made Gary Gygax's version of D&D so evocative.

Breakfast: bread (loaves, rolls, muffins), gruel/porridge (semolina, groat clusters), oat cakes, herbs, berries (whortleberries ("European blueberries"), lingonberries, blackberries, black currants), jellies, honey, cream & butter; herbal tea* or small beer (There's no mention of bacon, eggs, breakfast sausages, or ham - presumably in the Flanaess such hearty breakfast fare is consumed solely by hard-laboring farmers and not by city-dwellers or travelers)

Poor fare: gruel, soups, stews ("slumgullion"), hard black bread; small beer or sour wine

Dinner/supper - common inn and tavern fare: loaves of bread, puddings, soups, stews (ragout), steak and kidney pies (hot at dinner, cold at supper), smoked meat and fish, roasted meat (pork, mutton), roasted fowl (capon), sausages, fresh fruit and nuts**, boiled eggs, cheeses, butter, honey; beer (small beer, ale, stout, milk stout), herbal tea, honey mead, wine, mulled wine

Dinner/supper - rich or elaborate fare: fresh fish (poached salmon, stuffed trout), exotic seafood (smoked eel, boiled crayfish in drawn butter, crayfish soup), roasted venison, roasted or stuffed fowl (squab, pheasant, goose), fresh greens and vegetables (mushrooms and truffles, radishes, pickles, scallions, salads), spices (pepper, saffron, ginger), rare and imported cheeses***, butter and cream, fresh fruits and berries, tarts (berry, nut, mincemeat), iced cakes; rare and imported wines and brandies****, whiskey

Travelers' fare (i.e. "standard rations"): hard sausages, dried fruit, dried fish, wheat loaves, cheese, pickled vegetables and eggs (iron rations = jerky, hard tack, hard cheese, dried nuts)

Regional variances: In Gary's works the menus are mostly the same whether the meals are being served in Stoink, Urnst, Hommlet, Veluna, or Greyhawk City. Some of that is presumably due to the characters typically dining in inns and taverns, which are likely to be more similar to each other than if they were dining in local homes (noble or peasant). Also, those locations are all centrally located along the tributaries of the Nyr Dyv, and had Gary gone into more detail on the cuisine of far-flung locales we might have seen more variety. To step outside of this "canonical" baseline, the notion of Cultural Approximations in Greyhawk suggests some fairly obvious regional specialties - waffles from the Duchy of Urnst, raclette from Perrenland, breaded veal cutlets from Veluna, haggis from Geoff and Sterich, etc.

*Tea is mildly anachronistic in comparison to the other mentioned foods (since it wasn't commonly introduced to Europe until the 17th century) but nevertheless Gary mentions it frequently, and even includes a couple of dedicated tea-houses. Characters consume a variety of different herbal teas including alder-root tea, bark tea, blackberry tea, lingonberry tea, and an unspecified "smokey-flavored tea," but never common black or green tea

**based on the list of common trees in the World of Greyhawk Guide pp. 6-7: apple, apricot, cherry, chestnut, fig, galda (Oerth-native), grapefruit, kara (Oerth-native), lemon, lime, mulberry, olive, orange, peach, pear, pine, plum, usk (Oerth-native), walnut, yarpick (Oerth-native)

***Gary describes and named several such cheeses, including smoked Okelard cheese (presumably equivalent to gouda), Kettite goat cheese, Perrenlander cheese (equivalent to Swiss), Wickler from the Yeomanry (a blue cheese), and Djekul - a creamy, smelly cheese from the land of Fruztii (presumably equivalent to something like Pont l'Eveque). Surely there are many more such cheeses in the Flanaess, making this a ripe (ha!) area for further individual development

****A wide variety of wines are named and described, giving us a pretty solid sense of the wine economy of the Flanaess. The Rhennee typically drink a harsh red wine but favor fine wine from Caporna (wherever that may be [EDIT: a town in County Urnst, on the Artonsamay River]). Likewise, the Paynim tribes drink pungent date wine, but value the wine of the Chepnoi people of the Sulhaut mountains. A strange, mildly addictive black wine comes from the Pomarj, but production of it has declined since that land was conquered by humanoids. The major wine-producing areas are Urnst (white wine and special aged brandy) and Keoland (golden wine, amber wine (served chilled), and brandy). Furyondy and Veluna produce comparatively fewer wines, but theirs are among the most celebrated - Furyondian dry white and emerald pale, and Velunan fireamber. However, the rarest and most celebrated wines of the Flanaess are produced by elves - Sunndish elves produce lilac wine, the elves of Celene a ruby wine, emerald wine (served chilled), and nectawine (made from moonberries harvested only when both moons are blue), while the elves of Ulek produce both a heady, sparkling violet wine and their unique "elixir" liqueur. Even the drow produce wine - a black wine with an earthy smell and taste like nothing else that is so strong that consuming a single gill (4 oz.) will make a human tipsy. 

AD&D Languages

Another big info-dump post. Here's a list I compiled of all the languages mentioned in the World of Greyhawk set and the various AD&D monster books (where creatures are mentioned as "having their own language"). The initial idea behind this was to come up with a more comprehensive version of the Random Language Determination table on DMG p. 102 but there ended up being so many languages to render that impractical (at least for the moment). So instead of a table I'm just presenting it as a raw list.

Human Languages:
Common
Baklunish (spoken in Ekbir, Ket (alongside Common), Tiger Nomads, Tusmit, Ull, Wolf Nomads, and Zeif)
Flan (spoken in Geoff (alongside Common), Rovers of the Barrens, and Tenh)
Old Oeridian (spoken in Great Kingdom (including Medegia, North Province, Rel Astra, and South Province) and Ratik, generally alongside Common)
Rhennee (spoken by the Rhennee people, alongside Common)

Human Regional Dialects:
Fruz (Suloise/Flan dialect spoken by the Frost, Ice, and Snow Barbarians and in Stonefist - 40% compatible with Suloise and Flan)
Keolandish (Oeridian dialect spoken in Bissel, Gran March, Keoland, Sea Princes, the Ulek States, and the Yeomanry, often alongside Common - 60% compatible with Oeridian and Common)
Lendorian (Suloise dialect spoken alongside Common in the Spindrift Isles - 60% compatible with Suloise and Common)
Nyrondese (Oeridian dialect spoken by peasants and shopkeepers in Almor and Nyrond (alongside Common for learned people) - 60% compatible with Oeridian and Common)
Velondi (Oeridian dialect spoken by rural folk in Furyondy, Veluna, and Verbobonc - 60% compatible with Oeridian)

Archaic Human Languages:
Ancient Baklunish (ancient version of Baklunish still spoken in Plains of the Paynims (alongside Common for traders and educated folk) - 60% compatible with modern Baklunish)
Suloise (dead language now read only by scholars)

Human Foreign Languages:
Changoli
Gondurian
Hepmoni
Jahindi
Mulwari
Olman
High Suhfangese
Low Suhfangese

Common Non-human Languages:
Bugbear*
Dwarvish*
Elvish*
Hill Giant*
Gnome*
Goblin*
Halfling*
Hobgoblin*
Kobold*
Lizardman*
Ogrish*
Orcish*

Uncommon Non-human Languages:
(Booka)
Diakk
Black Dragon*
Brass Dragon*
Copper Dragon*
White Dragon*
Gargoyle*
Fire Giant*
Stone Giant*
Gnoll*
(Grimlock)
Jermlaine
Wererat
Werewolf
Manticore*
(Meazel)
Merman
Water Naga*
Merrow (dialect of Ogrish)
(Ophidian)
Otyugh
Sahuagin
Satyr*
(Troglodyte)
Troll*
Xvart

Rare Non-human Languages:
Carnivorous Ape (rudimentary language)
Aspis
Atomie (dialect of Sprite)
Blink Dog
Brownie*
Bullywug
Centaur*
(Crabman)
Dao
Dark Creeper
(Dire Corby)
Blue Dragon*
Bronze Dragon*
Green Dragon*
Red Dragon*
Pan Lung/Shen Lung
Mist Dragon
Giant Eagle
(Firenewt)
Cloud Giant*
Frost Giant*
Storm Giant*
(Grell)
(Grippli)
Harpy
Hippocampus
Hybsil
Lammasu*
Locathah
Werebear
Wereboar
Giant Lynx
Medusian*
Mimic
Mind Flayer
Minotaur*
Moon Dog
Muckdweller
Spirit Naga*
Nixie*
Giant Owl
(Pech)
Peryton
(Qullan)
Salamander*
Shedu*
Sirine
Andro-/Gynosphinx
Criosphinx
Heiracosphinx
Sprite*
Tabaxi
Tasloi
(Thri-kreen)
(Tiger Fly)
Ice Toad
Treant
Triton
Umber Hulk
Unicorn
Worg

Very Rare Non-human Languages:
Aarakocra
Annis
Banderlog
Beholder
Derro
Djinni
Gold Dragon*
Silver Dragon*
Lung Wang
T’ien Lung
Cloud Dragon
Faerie Dragon
Dragon Turtle
Dryad*
Duergar
(Dune Stalker)
(Eblis)
Drow
Ettin*
Firefriend
Foo Creature
Fog Giant
Mountain Giant
(Githyanki)
(Githzerai)
Greenhag (dialect of Annis)
Grig
Invisible Stalker
Ixitxachitl
Ki-rin
Kuo-Toan
Lava Child
Weretiger
Foxwoman
Seawolf
Wereshark
(Meenlock)
(Morkoth)
Guardian Naga*
Nymph*
Ogre Magian*
Phoenix
Pixie*
Quickling
Svirfneblin (dialect of Gnome - 60% compatible)
Sylph*
Titan*
Wemic
Winter Wolf
Xorn*
(Yeti)
Yuan-ti

Other-Planar Languages:
Demonic
Common Tongue of Hades
Modron
Slaad

Secret/Special Languages:
Alignment Languages (nine in total)
Druidic
Ferral (Oeridian dialect now used as a secret code language among officials of the Iron League - 60% compatible with Oeridian)
Subterranean Trade Language (“Undercommon”)
Thieves Cant

Notes:
I drew a distinction between Ancient Baklunish (as described in the WOG Guide p. 16) and modern Baklunish (per the table on the WOG Glossography p. 31).

The "Human Foreign Languages" were all made up by me, based on various off-map lands mentioned in Gary Gygax's Gord novels.

The "common" non-human languages are the nine listed on p. 34 of the Players Handbook plus the three additional languages (bugbear, gnome, hill giant) that have a 2% or higher occurrence on the DMG p. 102 table, which seemed like a reasonable standard. The "uncommon," "rare," and "very rare" lists are based on the monsters' Frequency (with common monsters that don't fit the above criteria included on the uncommon list).

Non-human languages with asterisks are those included in the table on DMG p. 102.

Non-human languages in parentheses are not mentioned in the books but I'm assuming based on the nature of the creatures that they probably have their own language (and note that the DMG p. 102 table includes several monster-languages that aren't mentioned in the Monster Manual: ettin, gargoyle, manticore, naga, salamander, and xorn).

The other-planar languages are mentioned in the books and are not specific to one monster; based on these it can probably be extrapolated that each Outer Plane has its own Common language (that presumably, like the modron language as described on MM2 p. 86, is related to that plane's corresponding Alignment Language(s)).

Various monster descriptions mention the ability to speak with types of animals - burrowing mammals, woodland animals, snakes, birds, fish, etc. I chose not include any of these as languages per se.

[D&D] Alternate Monster Names

An often-overlooked section of the AD&D Monster Manual II is its index, which includes not only its own contents but also those of the original Monster Manual and the Fiend Folio, and also lists various alternative names for monsters from all three volumes in addition to the standard names. This is interesting to me, because while some of those names are included in the monster names or descriptions, many of them are not - particularly for the Fiend Folio creatures, which it almost seems as if Gary Gygax or someone else at TSR systemically renamed, perhaps as a memory aid.

Because I think some of these alternate names are fun and in a few cases like them better than the standard ones (and especially like the world-building flavor of different people having different names for the same thing) and because while the index references the standard name for each alternative name but doesn't do the reverse, I decided it was a worthwhile exercise to go through the index to compile all of the alternate names and arrange them by the order of the books for easy reference. So now I can see at a glance that stirges are also called bat birds, ettercaps are sometimes known as spider-beasts, khargra are earth fish, osquips are rock rats, and so on. And, having done that work, I figured other people might also be able to get some use out of it, so I might as well share it.

MONSTER MANUAL:
Ape - Gorilla
Demon, Type I - Vrock
Demon, Type II - Hezrou
Demon, Type III - Glabrezu
Demon, Type IV – Bilwhr, Johud, Nalfeshnee
Demon, Type V – Aishapra, Kevokulli, Marilith, Rehnaremme
Demon, Type VI – Alzoll, Balor, Errtu, Ndulu, Ter-soth, Wendonai
Demon, Demogorgon – Prince of Demons
Demon, Orcus – Prince of the Undead
Demon, Yeenoghu – Demon Lord of Gnolls, Lord of Gnolls
Devil, Horned - Malebranche
Devil, Pit Fiend – Alastor, Baalberith, Baalzephon, Zaebos
Devil, Asmodeus - Overlord
Devil, Baalzebul – Lord of Flies
Devil, Geryon – Wild Beast
Dinosaur, Anatosaurus - Trachodon
Dinosaur, Antrodemus - Allosaurus
Dinosaur, Apatosaurus - Brontosaurus
Dinosaur, Dinichtys – Terrible Fish
Dinosaur, Lambeosaurus – Corythosaurus, Parasaurolophus, Prosaurolophus, Saurolophus
Dinosaur, Stegosaurus – Plated Lizard
Dinosaur, Triceratops - Ceratopsian
Dragon, Black – Acid Dragon
Dragon, Blue – Lightning Dragon
Dragon, Chromatic - Tiamat
Dragon, Green – Gas Dragon
Dragon, Platinum - Bahamut
Dragon, Red – Fire Dragon
Dragon, White – Frost Dragon, Ice Dragon
Dryad – Tree Sprite
Elephant, African - Loxodont
Elf, Aquatic – Sea Elf, Water Elf
Elf, Gray – Faerie Elf
Elf, Wood – Sylvan Elf
Ettin – Two-headed Giant
Eye of the Deep – Water Beholder, Marine Beholder
Flightless Bird – Emu, Ostrich, Rhea
Gargoyle, Kopoacinth – Marine Gargoyle, Water Gargoyle
Gas Spore - Rhizome
Ghoul, Lacedon – Marine Ghoul, Water Ghoul
Gnoll – Hyena Men
Golem, Clay – Clay Man
Golem, Flesh – Frankenstein Monster
Groaning Spirit - Banshee
Herd Animal – Antelope, Giraffe, Musk Ox, Reindeer
Hobgoblin, Koalinth – Marine Hobgoblin, Water Hobgoblin
Ixitxachitl – Vampire Fish
Lamprey – Leech-eel
Lion, Spotted – Cave Lion
Lizard, Fire – False Dragon
Masher – Coral Eater
Mind Flayer - Illithid
Morkoth – Wraith of the Deep
Mule – Burro
Nightmare – Demon Horse, Hell Horse
Nixie – Lake Sprite
Ogre, Aquatic - Merrow
Ogre Mage – Japanese Ogre, Oriental Ogre
Pegasus – Flying Horse
Purple Worm, Mottled – Marine Worm, Water Worm
Ram, Giant – Giant Sheep
Rat, Giant – Sumatran Rat
Remorhaz – Ice Worm, Polar Worm
Tiger, Sabre-tooth - Smilodon
Sahuagin – Devil Men of the Sea, Sea Devil, Water Devil
Satyr - Faun
Sea Horse, Giant – Water Horse
Sea Lion – Water Lion
Shambling Mound - Shambler
Shrieker – Wandering Fungus, Walking Toadstool
Snake, Amphisboena - Two-headed Snake
Sphinx, Crio- - Ram-headed Sphinx
Stirge – Bat Bird
Sylph – Air Nymph
Thought Eater – Eater of Thoughts
Treant – Moss Trunk, Shrubling, Tree Man
Troglodyte – Reptile Man
Weasel – Ferret, Mink, Stoat
Whale – Beluga, Humpback Whale, Killer Whale, Right Whale, Sperm Whale, White Whale
Wight – Barrow-undead
Will-o-wisp – Swamp Lantern
Wyvern – Poison Dragon
Yeti – Abominable Snowman

FIEND FOLIO:
Aarakocra – Bird Man
Adherer – Sticking Mummy
Aleax – Avenger
Al-mi-raj – Unicorn Rabbit, Unicorn Hare
Algoid – Algae-man
Babbler – Mutant Lizard Man
Blindheim – Light-frog
Booka – Attic Sprite
Bullywug – Frog-man
Carbuncle – Ruby Armadillo
Caryatid Column – Pillar Golem
Caterwaul – Screech Cat
Clubnek – Mutant Ostrich
Crypt Thing – Teleporting Skeleton
Dark Stalker - Dark Creeper Leader
Death Dog – Two-headed Dog
Demon, Lolth – Demon Queen of Spiders, Queen of Spiders
Devil Dog – Ice Dog
Dire Corby – Black Bird-man
Disenchanter – Eater of Magic, Magic-eater
Dragon, Li Lung – Earth Dragon
Dragon, Lung Wang – Sea Dragon
Dragon, Pan Lung – Coiled Dragon
Dragon, Shen Lung – Spirit Dragon
Dragon, T’ien Lung – Celestial Dragon
Dragon, Yu Lung – Carp Dragon
Elf, Drow – Dark Elf
Enveloper – Dough-man
Ettercap – Spider-beast
Eye Killer – Bat Snake, Snake Bat
Firedrake – Miniature Red Dragon
Firenewt – Newt Man
Fire Snake – Larval Salamander
Forlarren – Evil Nymph
Frost Man – Ice Demon
Galltrit - Gremlin
Gambado – Spring Monster
Garbug – Flying Lobster
Giant, Mountain – Summoning Giant
Giant Strider – Firenewt Steed
Goldbug – Coin Creature
Gorbel – Red Beholder
Grell – Flying Brain
Hellcat – Devil’s Familiar
Hoar Fox – Ice Fox
Hound of Ill Omen – Omen Hound
Ice Lizard – Miniature White Dragon
Imorph - Imitator
Iron Cobra – Metal Snake
Jaculi – Javelin Snake
Jermlaine – Bane-midge, Jinxkin
Kamadan – Snake Leopard
Kelpie – Seaweed Woman
Kenku – Hawk Man
Khargra – Earth Fish
Killmoulis – Grain Pest
Kuo-toa – Fish Man, Goggler
Lava Children – Volcano Men
Mantari – Air Ray
Meazel - Strangler
Necrophidius – Dance of Death, Death Worm
Ogrillon – Ogre-orc, Orc-ogre
Osquip – Rock Rat
Pernicon – Grasshopper Beast
Quipper – Cold-water Piranha
Retriever – Spider Construct
Revenant – Undead Avenger
Rothe – Subterranean Ox
Screaming Devilkin – Mephit Devil
Sheet Phantom – Sheet Wraith
Shocker – Electric Man
Skeleton Warrior – Undead Lord
Skulk – Blending Man
Slaad, Death – Lesser Master
Slaad, Gray – Executioner
Slaad, Ssendam – Lord of the Insane
Slaad, Ygorl – Lord of Entropy
Snyad - Pestie
Son of Kyuss – Worm Zombie
Stunjelly – Paralyzing Wall
Sussurus – Headless Droning Ape, Singing Ape
Svirfneblin – Burrow Warden, Deep Gnome
Tabaxi – Cat Man
Thork – Copper Stork
Thoqqua – Fire Worm, Rockworm
Tiger Fly – Man-fly
Troll, Spirit – Invisible Stalker-troll
Tween – Luck Changer
Umpleby – Electric Beast
Vodyanoi – Green Hulk, Aquatic Umber Hulk, Water Umber Hulk
Witherstench – Mutant Skunk, Skunk Beast
Xvart – Blue Goblin, Blue Kobold

MONSTER MANUAL II:
Aurumvorax – Golden Gorger
Barghest – Devil Dog
Bloodthorn – Vampire Thorn Vine
Bookworm – Paper Eater
Choke Creeper – Strangle Vine
Cooshee – Elven Dog
Crane, Giant – Giant Heron
Daemon, Oinodaemon – Anthraxus, Bubonis, Choleria, Diptherius, Typhous
Demilich – Ghostlich
Demon, Babau – Ebony Death, One-horned Horror
Demon, Bar-lgura – Leaping Demon
Demon, Chasme – Fly Demon
Demon, Nabassu – Stealer of Death
Demon, Baphomet – Lord of Minotaurs
Demon, Fraz-urb’Iuu – Prince of Deception
Demon, Pazuzu – Prince of the Air
Devil, Abishai – Reptile Devil, Scaly Devil
Dinosaur, Tennodontosaurs - Ichtyosaurus
Drelb – Haunting Custodian
Duergar – Gray Dwarf, Gray One
Eblis - Storkman
Falcon - Hawk
Firefly, Giant - Firefriend
Forester’s Bane – Snapper-saw
Formian – Ant Man, Centaur-ant, Myrmarch
Froghemoth - Tadhemoth
Greenhag - Shellycoat
Grue, Chaggrin – Soil Beast
Grue, Harginn – Flame Horror
Grue, Ildriss – Wind Terror
Grue, Varrdig - Snowman
Hordling – Hordes of Hades
Luck Eater – Eater of Luck
Lycanthrope, Foxwoman – Silver Fox, Vixen
Mantrap – Man-eating Plant
Miner – Woodland Trapper
Moon Dog – Black Hound, Night Prowler
Myconid – Fungus Man
Narwhale – Ocean Unicorn, Unicorn of the Ocean, Water Unicorn
Ophidian – Snake-man
Pyrolisk – Fire Cockatrice
Quickwood – Spy Tree
Raven – Crow, Rook
Retch Plant – Globe Palm
Selkie - Sealwere
Storoper – Stone Roper, Tar Roper
Twilight Bloom – Purple Death
Vapor Rat – Cloud Rat
Vilstrak – Marl Mugger, Tunnel Thug
Willow, Black – Evil Treant

[D&D] [Review] The Red Prophet Rises

I don't really do reviews. Mostly that's because I don't really buy new gaming stuff - both because I already have a lifetime supply, and because most of the new stuff I do run across tends to not be very good (or, more charitably, doesn't line up particularly well with my tastes). Nonetheless, occasionally people will give me stuff for free, and that's what happened here: one of the authors of this module (Malrex) reached out and asked if I'd be willing to read it and share my feedback if he gave me a free copy and I said yes. I gave it a quick skim-read, and found it surprisingly not-bad, and shared my thoughts with the author. And since I've already written them down, I figured I might as well post them here as well, as a review of sorts. The first part is background and summary for the benefit of people who aren't the module's author, followed by my reactions and opinions, pretty much directly copied and pasted from what I already sent to Malrex a few days ago.

The Red Prophet Rises, co-written by Malrex and Prince of Nothing, is a 40-ish page AD&D-ish adventure for characters level 3-5, published by The Merciless Merchants and available for $5 in pdf format (or $10 in print) from Drive-Thru RPG. It's a location-based adventure centering around a canyon occupied by a particularly nasty and brutish gang of cultists and a set of caves beneath their lair, of which they're at least mostly unaware, in which assorted ancient horrors dwell. There's a special horse being held captive that can become the mount of a paladin character, which is a possible hook to draw the players into the adventure; otherwise the DM is left to his or her own devices how to use this adventure (making it truly modular). The cultists in the canyon are bad guys to the core, keeping slaves and making regular bloody sacrifices to their Bull God. This is described in a fair amount of gory detail, but it doesn't go totally over the top. The level of gore is probably about on the level of Games Workshop's Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay adventures from the 80s. Which brings up possibly the oddest aspect of this adventure, that it's rather-inexplicably labeled as being for use with the "For Gold & Glory" ruleset which, from what I gather, is an OGL "retro-clone" equivalent to 2nd edition AD&D. This is an odd choice by the authors, because not only did I not notice any particularly 2E-ish elements in the adventure (the NPCs don't have "kits" or "wild magic" or flintlock pistols or any of that stuff, the only specialist wizards are illusionists, etc.) but the tone and style of the adventure is very far from what I think of as "2nd edition AD&D" style: it's dark and bloody, and it's also location-based and open-ended, with minimal backstory and no real "story" except what happens in play. I'm sure the authors had reasons of their own for labeling the book this way, but it seems to me like an odd choice that will probably limit their audience, because people who like the 2E flavor won't like this adventure, and the people who would be more likely to like it probably won't even bother looking at something labeled as crypto-2E. With some very minor changes in the statblocks, this module could just have easily have been released for OSRIC (the 1st edition retro-clone), for which I think it would be a much more natural fit.

And with those preliminaries out of the way, here's what I did (and didn't) like about this adventure based on my skim-reading (I can't claim to have read every word of every encounter, but I feel like I read enough to get a pretty good feel for it):

In general, I like it. I like the set-up with the obvious bad guy cultists on the surface and the more mysterious and weird stuff hidden underneath. That's a pretty standard D&D adventure trope (e.g. Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun) but it's one of my favorites, and the way they've handled it here doesn't just feel like a rehash of earlier work. I like that the villains seems really villainous but without dwelling so much on the gore and cruelty that it feels like they're reveling in or getting off on it. It feels like a situation that could be straight out of a Conan story, which for me is a good thing. I like that the canyon is described in an open-ended manner so there are several different ways the players can approach and deal with it, that there are several flavorful NPCs and potential rival factions, and that there's a suggested timeline of events to make the location seem "alive" (and not just have everybody sitting in their rooms waiting for somebody to come kill them) but that it's not fixed on rails: there are some implicit or potential "scenes" but none of them are fixed or mandatory. I like the way the room descriptions are written and organized, with an introductory paragraph followed by bullet-points enumerating special features and/or possible actions and conditions in a very user-friendly manner that seems like it would work very well at the table - better than when reading. The way the room descriptions include the possibility of different conditions depending on when and how the adventurers encounter them (e.g. that various NPCs and monsters may or may not be present) reminds me a bit of some of my favorite adventures like Dark Tower and Snakepipe Hollow (the latter a RuneQuest adventure).

On the minus side, though, it feels really overwritten to me - like they've taken a situation worth about 20 pages and filled 40 pages with it. The setup feels to me like something that should be a pretty minor adventure - that should fill one or two sessions of play - but the authors have gotten carried away and added too much to it. The adventure details 43 locations, every one of which is described sufficient detail to make it at least potentially a significant and unique encounter. This seems overdone to me: since there are so many rooms and every one of them is something new and different and active there's no real "downtime" - no rising and falling action, but rather it seems like it's "all climax." It feels to me like the authors have crammed too much into the package - that they had so many good ideas and wanted to include all of them - and I think the adventure would've worked just as well (and would probably also be easier to run) if it had about half as many encounters, or at least if there had been more "mundane" stuff mixed in as palate-cleansers to help pace the big moments.

The treasure in the adventure is the same way: all (or almost all) of the treasure is unique magic items with individual names and paragraph-long descriptions of their various functions, most including both benefits and drawbacks for their users. To me this felt like too much, not necessarily the quantity of items as the number of moving parts per item, especially in combination, and especially if the adventure is played as part of a campaign where the players will keep these items and accumulate more on top of them. I know it's conventional wisdom nowadays that generic and from-the-book magic items - +x weapons, etc. - are boring and should be avoided, but in play these things work, because the players get the benefit of them without having to actively think about them, to remember and track all of the moving pieces. Standard magic items are the background against which the unique and colorful items stand out, but when everything is unique and colorful it becomes a burden and frustration, too much to deal with.

Now I get that the authors are in kind of an odd and difficult spot because this is something that they're asking people to pay money for, so they feel the need to give the audience their money's worth in terms of density of fresh and unique stuff that feels like something most readers couldn't have just come up with on their own, and I accept that that's a legitimate concern and that they've maybe handled it in the way they felt was best (make everything special!), but I don't think that necessarily makes for the best adventure to actually sit down and play at the table with a group of friends. If I were to run this in an actual game (and the fact that I'm even thinking in that way means that they've mostly succeeded) I feel like I'd probably end up cutting about half of it out.

Of course I might use something that I cut out of this somewhere else (it's not that I think the encounters are bad, just that there are too many of them; e.g. there are two full pages devoted to a hidden alchemy lab that feel completely excessive to me in this context, but I could totally see this room being inserted into another dungeon where it would fit just fine), and other DMs who feel the same way as I do might choose to cut other encounters than I would (kind of like how everybody agrees that the Beatles' White Album would've been better as a single album but no two fans will ever agree on exactly which songs should have been included on that hypothetical album). Plus we know  that most people who buy this (or any other module) aren't going to actually run it - they're going to dream about it and hopefully draw some inspiration from it and maybe strip-mine some material out of it. So, in that regard, this grousing should be taken with a grain of salt and the authors probably know what they were doing better than my armchair second-guessing gives them credit for. Being in a position that an adventure has too much interesting stuff that you need to trim some of it out to make it manageable to is certainly preferable to the all-too-common alternative of boring adventures that offer nothing that hasn't already been seen a thousand times before or incomplete adventures that the reader/would-be DM has to effectively co-write to turn into something decent and usable.

[D&D] "Lost" Gygax Monsters (Part 6)

Finishing this series up with a variety of demons. All of them were introduced in Gary's Gord novels - the cataboligne in Saga Of Old City (TSR, 1985) and Necropolis (as "blue demon"), Vuron in Sea of Death, the others in Dance of Demons - and were given AD&D stats by the illustrious GT.

Note that in addition to all of these creatures from Gary's novels, the massive document that GT sent me also included a large number of creatures of his own design, or adapted from other sources, that fill in both even more of AD&D's planar cosmology and also the other continents and realms on the planet of Oerth (Gonduria, Jahind, Suhfang, etc.) that were mentioned but never detailed by Gary. This stuff is also great, and fully captures and conveys the same flavor as Gary's creations (and, given that he did some work with Gary in the post-TSR era, it's likely that Gary would have given at least some of these creations his "official" blessing had he been in position to do so) and is very much worth sharing, but I don't really consider it my place to do so here. Hopefully he will some day see fit to share them more widely himself :)

DEMON

Cataboligne

FREQUENCY: Very rare

NO. APPEARING: 1

ARMOR CLASS: -3

MOVE: 9"

HIT DICE: 9

% IN LAIR: 20%

TREASURE TYPE: G

NO. OF ATTACKS: 3

DAMAGE/ATTACK: 1 – 6/1 – 6/ 2 - 8

SPECIAL ATTACKS: See below

SPECIAL DEFENSES: +3 or better weapon to hit

MAGIC RESISTANCE: 60%

INTELLIGENCE: Very

ALIGNMENT: Chaotic evil

SIZE: L (8'+ tall)

PSIONIC ABILITY: 150

LEVEL/X.P. VALUE: VII/ 2900 + 12/HP

Cataboligne demons are quite nasty, and often summoned to be used as guardians.  They may, at will and once per melee round, use the following abilities: animate dead (as 9^th level magic-user), cause fear (as wand), cause paralysis (as wand), change self, darkness (10' radius), detect invisible, dispel magic, levitate (as a 9^th level magic-user), magic missile (four missiles), telekinese (4000 g.p.), and teleport (no error).  Catabolignes regenerate as do trolls until they are totally slain. 

This demon has a wrinkled visage with wide, fanged mouth, yellow eyes with horizontally-slitted pupils, and horns.  Its body is gray-blue and covered by plated scales, and twin rows of triangular spines run down its back.  Its hands and feet are wickedly-clawed and its somewhat short tail ends in a spike.

Dusin

FREQUENCY: Rare

NO. APPEARING: 1 - 6

ARMOR CLASS: -2

MOVE: 9"//12"

HIT DICE: 9

% IN LAIR: 10%

TREASURE TYPE: D

NO. OF ATTACKS: 3 or 1

DAMAGE/ATTACK: 1-6/1-6/2-12 or by weapon type

SPECIAL ATTACKS: Tail

SPECIAL DEFENSES: See below

MAGIC RESISTANCE: 55%

INTELLIGENCE: Average

ALIGNMENT: Chaotic evil

SIZE: M (7')

PSIONIC ABILITY: 100

LEVEL/X.P. VALUE: VII/ 2600 + 12/HP

These demons are servants to Demogorgon (q.v.), and often serve as his personal guards.  They attack with their claws and vicious bite, and may sweep their tail at opponents behind them for 2 – 8 points.  They may, at will and once per melee round, use the following abilities: darkness (10' radius), detect invisible, cause fear (as wand), levitate (as 9^th level magic-user), polymorph self, telekinese (4000 g.p.), and teleport (no error).  They have a 30% chance to gate in 1 – 2 more dusins.  Dusins commonly wield +1 iron-bladed halberds.

Dusins appear as large, scaled humanoids with crocodile heads and scaly tails.  Their arms are somewhat stubby and end in clawed hands.  Their normal habitat is within the swamps of Demogorgon’s realm.  Demogorgon can field nearly 50,000 of these demons if needed.*

*See “Dance of Demons”, page 85, by Gary Gygax.

Nergel (Lord of Unlife)

FREQUENCY: Unique

NO. APPEARING: 1

ARMOR CLASS: -5

MOVE: 12"

HIT DICE: 96 hp

% IN LAIR: 50%

TREASURE TYPE: H, V

NO. OF ATTACKS: 2

DAMAGE/ATTACK: 2-7/2-7

SPECIAL ATTACKS: See below

SPECIAL DEFENSES: +1 or better weapon to hit

MAGIC RESISTANCE: 65%

INTELLIGENCE: Supra-genius (19)

ALIGNMENT: Chaotic evil

SIZE: L (7' tall)

PSIONIC ABILITY: 230

LEVEL/X.P. VALUE: X/ 43,680*

Nergel is a dark and dour demon lord having dominion over the unliving.  He has the fealty of legions of shadows (q.v.) and shadow demons (q.v.) in the Abyss, and occasionally is known to be at odds with Graz’zt.

Nergel appears as a hunch-backed man with misshapen shoulders and an uneven gait.  He has slab-like cheeks around a fanged mouth; dark eyes that flash orange when he is angry, and a wattled neck.  He wears black robes and carries an ebon staff.  This staff is +3 to hit and possesses two major powers: first, its touch will slay any creature not of like or higher status to Nergel if they fail a save versus Death magic (d6+3 damage if save is made), and secondly it can instantly summon seven babau demons (once per day).  If he opts not to use his staff to attack, he may make two attacks with his clawed hands.  Nergel may also use any of the following powers at will, once per melee round: animate dead, cause fear (as wand), charm monster, charm person, clairvoy, clairaudience, continual darkness, create illusion (as wand), detect invisible, detect magic, dispel magic, ESP, polymorph self, read languages, read magic, suggest, telekinese (9,000gp), and teleport (no error).  Once each day he may summon either 3 – 18 shadows or 2 – 8 shadow demons within one round.

His realm is called Meslamtaius (level 353), and is a benighted realm with dust-covered plains and deep caverns.  It is largely inhabited by Type I demons, shadow demons, shadows, manes, skeletons, and zombies.  He is consort to Ereshkigal (q.v.).

Ojukalazogadit

FREQUENCY: Unique

NO. APPEARING: 1

ARMOR CLASS: 8 overall, but variable to -4

MOVE: Special

HIT DICE: Infinite

% IN LAIR: 100%

TREASURE TYPE: Nil

NO. OF ATTACKS: See below

DAMAGE/ATTACK: See below

SPECIAL ATTACKS: See below

SPECIAL DEFENSES: See below

MAGIC RESISTANCE: Nil

INTELLIGENCE: Low

ALIGNMENT: Chaotic evil

SIZE: L (a plane of the Abyss)

PSIONIC ABILITY: Nil

LEVEL/X.P. VALUE: N/A

Ojukalazogadit is a sexless, sprawling, imbecilic mass of chaotic matter that covers an entire layer (the 366^th) of the Abyss under a featureless orange sky.  Its surface is mostly a disgusting dun color, resembling ulcerous, infected flesh.  It constantly seethes, pulses, exudes vile fluids, and extrudes extremities or forms gaping maws; and the entirety reeks of decay.  Its consistency ranges from sinking morass to steel-hard chitin.  Shrieks, moans, gurgling, rending sounds, and other disturbing noises are constantly emitted by the being in a maddening cacophony.

Because of its very nature, its attacks are entirely variable—it is fully capable of attacking and devouring anything from insect size up to a behemoth.  Methods of attack range from mandibles, claws, tentacles, pseudopods, fanged mouths, adhesive mucus, acidic or alkaline secretions, poisonous vapors, and any number of other forms; all made from its mass and then reabsorbed!  Damage is, of course, variable depending on the attack.

Only the entital force of a Greater God can possibly have any lasting effect upon Ojukalazogadit, due to its sheer size and power.

Palvlag (Demon Lord of Flame)

FREQUENCY: Unique

NO. APPEARING: 1

ARMOR CLASS: -5

MOVE: 9"/18"

HIT DICE: 144 hp

% IN LAIR: 50%

TREASURE TYPE: S, T, U, V, W, X, Z

NO. OF ATTACKS: 2

DAMAGE/ATTACK: 2 – 8 (x2) or by weapon +8

SPECIAL ATTACKS: See below

SPECIAL DEFENSES: +2 or better weapon to hit

MAGIC RESISTANCE: 75%

INTELLIGENCE: Supra-genius (19)

ALIGNMENT: Chaotic evil

SIZE: L (12' tall)

PSIONIC ABILITY: 244

LEVEL/X.P. VALUE: X /52,050*

Palvlag, like Pazuzu and Shabriri, is a surviving proto-demon.  He appears as a type VI demon with four eyes of flaming orange.  His very blood is molten phlogiston.  There is a marked resemblance between Palvlag and Marduk, Lord of the Type VI demons, and they may be related.

Palvlag will usually attack with his claws rather than a weapon, but at times he will wield a gigantic two-handed +3 flaming sword (2 – 12 +3, +8 for STR).  He may immolate at will to inflict 6 – 24 points of damage on any creature not immune to fire attacks within a 10' radius.  He also has the following abilities, usable at will once per melee round: astral travel, darkness (50' radius), detect invisible, detect magic, flesh to stone, know alignment, pyrotechnics, shape change, tongues, teleport (no error), wall of fire, and unholy word.  Palvlag may also use wish once per day and symbol (1 each of pain, hopelessness and death).  His gaze causes insanity to anyone he wills (save vs. Spell), and thrice each day he may breathe fire from his mouth (as a red dragon) doing 66 points of damage.  He may gate in 6 Type VI demons (75% chance).  He has double normal range infravision and ultravision, and he regenerates 1 hit point every round.

Palvlag lacks the odd sense of humor common to Pazuzu and Shabriri, and he is a serious opponent in combat.

Shabriri (Demon Lord of Water & Blindness)

FREQUENCY: Unique

NO. APPEARING: 1

ARMOR CLASS: -8

MOVE: 12"//20"

HIT DICE: 155 hp

% IN LAIR: 20%

TREASURE TYPE: S, T, U, V, W, X, Z

NO. OF ATTACKS: 5

DAMAGE/ATTACK: 2 – 8 (x4)/2 – 12

SPECIAL ATTACKS: See below

SPECIAL DEFENSES: +2 or better weapon to hit

MAGIC RESISTANCE: 80%

INTELLIGENCE: Supra-genius (19)

ALIGNMENT: Chaotic evil

SIZE: L (10' tall)

PSIONIC ABILITY: 255

LEVEL/X.P. VALUE: X/ 56,700*

Shabriri has the form of a hulking demon with horn-plated flesh and four arms ending in clawed hands.  His head has four red-glowing eyes and a fang-filled maw.  Like Pazuzu, Shabriri is a proto-demon of ancient origin and is on fairly decent terms with some daemon lords.  Also like Pazuzu, he possesses an odd sense of humor and enjoys toying with victims and following odd whims.  He may actually prolong combat with foes if he finds it amusing!

He prefers to attack and rend with his four clawed hands and bite, but this demon lord also has the following abilities, usable at will once per melee round: astral travel, cause blindness, create water, darkness (50' radius), detect invisible, detect magic, flesh to stone, know alignment, raise/lower water, shape change, tongues, teleport (no error), unholy word, and wall of fog.  In addition, Shabriri may use wish once per day and symbol (1 each of pain, hopelessness and death).  His gaze causes insanity to anyone he wills (save vs. Spell), and thrice each day he may expel a gout of negative energy stuff from his mouth that does 66 points of damage to one victim up to 1" range (save vs. Spell for ½ damage).  He may gate in 6 Type IV demons (75% chance) if pressed.  He has double normal range infravision and ultravision, and he regenerates 1 hit point every round.

 

Skurda

FREQUENCY: Rare

NO. APPEARING: 1 – 4

ARMOR CLASS: -3

MOVE: 15"

HIT DICE: 10

% IN LAIR: 15%

TREASURE TYPE: B

NO. OF ATTACKS: 3

DAMAGE/ATTACK: 1-10/1-10/1-6

SPECIAL ATTACKS: Poison sting

SPECIAL DEFENSES: See below

MAGIC RESISTANCE: 50%

INTELLIGENCE: Low

ALIGNMENT: Chaotic evil

SIZE: L (10' long)

PSIONIC ABILITY: Nil

LEVEL/X.P. VALUE: VII/ 4050 + 15/HP

Skurda are fearsome demons that are used as guards by several Abyssal rulers, notably Graz'zt and Lolth.  Skurda have the appearance of hulking, scorpion-bodied demons with a human-like torso and arms, both covered in armoring chitin.  Their heads have compound eyes, and mandibles around their mouth.  Their arms end in fearsome pincers.

Skurda attack with their mighty pincers (Strength = 18) and tail sting.  In addition to wounding, the stinger is poison and requires a saving throw at -1, failure of which indicates death!  They may use the following powers, at will, once per melee round: Darkness (15' radius), detect invisible, telekinese (3000 g.p.), and teleport (no error).  They may also gate in another skurda (30% chance).

Verin (Vuron) (Demon Lord)

FREQUENCY: Unique

NO. APPEARING: 1

ARMOR CLASS: 0 (-4)

MOVE: 12"

HIT DICE: 96 hp

% IN LAIR: 20%

TREASURE TYPE: U, Z

NO. OF ATTACKS: 2

DAMAGE/ATTACK: See below

SPECIAL ATTACKS: See below

SPECIAL DEFENSES: +1 or better weapon to hit

MAGIC RESISTANCE: 70%

INTELLIGENCE: Godlike (22)

ALIGNMENT: Chaotic evil (neutral)

SIZE: L (8' tall)

PSIONIC ABILITY: 230

LEVEL/X.P. VALUE: X/ 45,023*

Verin appears as a tall, thin, sexless albino humanoid with reddish-pink eyes.  His face is handsome, though stamped with evil, and his voice is bell-like.  He is lord general and viceroy to Graz’zt, and is utterly loyal to that demon prince.  While Graz’zt was imprisoned by Iggwilv, Verin continued to administer his realm until the demon prince returned.  Although he certainly has the demonic capacity for rage and cruelty, Verin tends to be more measured and thoughtful in his actions than most of his ilk.  He is well-versed in arcane knowledge and in battle strategy.

He wields a +4 lance in battle that is composed of milky crystal, with which he strikes twice in a round.  Any creature struck by it must save vs. death at -4 or die.  Even such as a demon lord or daemon ruler must save (but without penalty) or perish!  Those who save will still take 5 – 50 points of damage from the fell energies contained within this weapon.  He will wear armor of silvery metal into battle that gives him an AC of -4.

Verin has the following powers usable at will, once per melee round: charm person, clairaudience, clairvoyance, darkness (15' radius), detect good, detect invisible, detect magic, ESP, etherealness (self), fear (as wand), heal (3/day), suggestion, , telekinese (9,000 gp), and teleport (no error).  Once per day, he has an 85% chance of gating in 1 – 2 Type VI demons (90%) or Graz’zt himself (10%).