AD&D Poison Notes

In Dragon magazine #81 (January 1984) the article "Taking the Sting Out of Poison" by author Chris Landsea offered truly exhaustive coverage of the topic of poison in AD&D, filling in many gaps and holes in the official rules. The rules in that article make poison much more interesting, both by providing more details for its use in the game and also some ways to mitigate its effects and make it feel less like a "screw you" when used in the game - especially with low-level characters who don't have access to magical means of neutralizing it. 

However, like many Dragon articles of that era, Mr. Landsea went overboard in presenting 10 full pages of text and 10 tables - too much of a good thing that adds so much extra complication to make things hard to remember and make use of in-game. Therefore, in order to strike a happy balance and achieve the best of both worlds, I've extracted and summarized (and revised) the essence of those 10 pages and 10 tables into a simpler and more user-friendly set of guidelines that allow the additional flavor and options introduced in that article to be incorporated into AD&D games without becoming overwhelming. 

This material is being incorporated into The Heroic Legendarium (which I promise is still going to be released - just as soon as I master the challenges of art and layout in order to transform a roughly-140,000 word Google Doc into a reasonably-professional-looking pdf and print book), but since this blog has been sitting idle for far too long, I figured there's no harm in sharing it here as well, as another preview-of-sorts of what that book will eventually contain:

AD&D Poison Notes

Blade venom: One dose of blade venom is sufficient to coat one melee weapon or up to four arrows, darts, or crossbow bolts. A character using an envenomed weapon has a 5% chance per round (check every round the weapon is in use) of nicking and poisoning him or herself, + or - the character’s reaction bonus for high or low dexterity (i.e. 2% for a character with 18 dexterity). This chance is halved for assassins (i.e. 2% for an average-dexterity assassin or 1% for an assassin with a 17 or 18 dexterity).

Poison Gas: Types are equal to ingestive poison Types A-D, but sufficient gas to fill a 10’ x 10’ x 10’ area costs 10 times more (i.e. 300 g.p. for a vial of Type B poison). Once the vial is opened or broken the gas will expand to fill the area in 1-2 rounds and remain effective for one turn before dissipating. Characters who make their saving throw against poison gas are holding their breath and do not suffer partial damage. Type E poison gas costs 1,000 g.p. per dose and has an onset time of 1-3 rounds but a failed saving throw causes sleep for 1-6 turns instead of damage or death.

Contact Poison: Types and effects are equal to insinuative poison, but only require contact with skin, not injection into the bloodstream. Contact poison retains full effect for one month, drops to 50% effectiveness for up to six months, 25% effectiveness for up to a year, 10% effectiveness for up to 18 months, and after that has no effect. For contact poison Types A-C this lessening of effect equates to reduced damage, while for Type D it equates to a +2, +3, or +4 bonus on the saving throw. One dose is sufficient to coat one regular-sized object (such as a weapon hilt, doorknob, chest handle, or bejeweled item) or up to a dozen coins or gems.

Monster Venom: Onset time for most monster venom is 1-6 rounds, however for venomous monsters with 5 or more hit dice the onset time is one round. An assassin trained in poison use has a 50% chance of being able to recover usable venom from slain monsters: one dose from a size S monster, 1-3 doses from a size M monster, and 1-6 doses from a size L monster. This recovered venom can be used by the assassin as ingestive or insinuative poison, or may be processed in a lab into gas or contact poison. Unprocessed venom retains potency for one week, but once processed it retains potency as per normal poison of its mode. The Assassin’s Guild uses recovered monster venom to manufacture other types of poison and does not sell unprocessed monster venom, so it always must be recovered directly.

Poison Antidotes: Antidotes to ingestive, insinuative, gas, and contact poison may all be purchased at the same price per dose as poison of the appropriate type. While poisons can typically only be purchased from the local Assassin’s Guild, antidotes may also be purchased from regular alchemists. Each letter-type antidote is effective against the corresponding type of poison and all lesser types of the same mode (i.e. Type D ingestive antidote works against Type A-D ingestive poison but not Type E or any non-ingestive poison). Antidote can be taken before the poison is administered and remains effective in the character’s system for up to three hours, or can be taken after the poison has been administered but before it has taken effect in order to neutralize the effect. An antidote taken after the poison has already taken effect will not remove or reverse any damage or effect that has already been inflicted. One dose of antidote will counteract one dose of poison. Antidotes to monster venom are specific to the monster type (i.e. giant scorpion antidote is not effective against giant spider venom or vice versa) and very expensive - the cost is 1,000 g.p. per hit die of the corresponding monster type (e.g. 5,000 g.p. for a dose of anti-giant scorpion venom), halved if the purchaser is able to supply a sample of the appropriate type of venom to the alchemist who is preparing the antidote. 

Use of holy water: In addition to its other uses (as a spell component and against the undead) drinking a vial of holy water will delay the onset of any poison by 3-9 (2d4+1) turns, and will even temporarily revive a character who has already succumbed to poison if fed to them within one turn of the poisoning (cf. slow poison spell). This effect only works once per poisoning (i.e. drinking a second vial doesn’t increase the delay) and unholy water does not have this effect.

A Taxonomy of Old-School D&D

As a hobby for nerds, there's a strong appetite among D&D fans to make lists and categorize things, and this extends not just to elements within the game but to meta-level discussion about the game itself. The most obvious breaking point is TSR-D&D (1974-97) and Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro D&D (1998-present), with the 1998-99 period (after Wizards took over but before D&D 3.0 was released) as a transition period.  The next most obvious is the various editions: Original (1974-77*), 1st Edition Advanced (1978-88), 2nd Edition Advanced (1989-99), 3rd (2000-2007), 4th (2008-2013), and 5th (2014-present) editions. Neither of those really work for me, because my interests D&D-wise are sufficiently narrow that finer distinctions are warranted in order to pinpoint what I consider to be "the good stuff" vs the other junk.

One common taxonomy, as proposed by James Maliszewski at Grognardia (the influential, long-dormant but possibly newly revived "OSR" blog), divides the TSR/1st Edition era into a Golden Age (1974-83) and a Silver Age (1984-89), a distinction largely based on trade dress (but also perceived attitude changes that occurred in conjunction with the slicker and more professional upgrade in production values). The other common one differentiates between the Gary Gygax era (1974-85) and the post-Gygax or Lorraine Williams era (1986-97). I definitely buy into the latter, but even that is not a granular enough distinction for me, because it glosses over the difference between what Gary was doing himself and what the design department at TSR, the group originally led by Lawrence Schick and Tom Moldvay (who had been friends and collaborators before coming to work for TSR) that starting in 1980 reported to Brian Blume instead of to Gary, were doing at the same time. And that's not even to mention TSR-UK, which was a mostly-independent subdivision with their own writers, artists, and a subtly distinctive voice and style that's now commonly referred to as B-OSR and seems to have more kinship with what other UK game publishers were doing than what TSR in the US was.   

And it gets even more complicated because Gary himself did a "soft reboot" on his approach to D&D c. 1975 when he handed the core of Greyhawk Castle over to Rob Kuntz and effectively started over with the Hommlet/Temple of Elemental Evil campaign.  So even "Gygaxian" means different things at different times. I've seen a an explanation attributed to Gary that because Greyhawk Castle had been used for so much intensive play testing with a deliberately "anything goes" approach that it had become too sprawling and inconsistent and Gary wanted to separate that element (and the veteran players who were accustomed to that style) and keep the sub-campaign more grounded and structured and "pure" - developing what we eventually saw in AD&D, the modules, and the World of Greyhawk not just as an outgrowth from but in some sense also a repudiation of the earlier, more freewheeling and gonzo, Greyhawk Castle paradigm. 

Take all of this together and by 1983-84 (the time that's most interesting to me because it's when I first discovered and got into the game) you've got a half dozen different takes on D&D with some degree of official support (not even counting all the other ways third party publishers and players out in the wild were drifting and modifying the game to their own ends):

1. Original Greyhawk Castle "we made up some shit we thought would be fun" style (also includes Blackmoor, Tunnels & Trolls, Arduin, Grimtooth's Traps, and most early Judges Guild)

2. Post-reboot "structured campaign" Gygax style (AD&D, World of Greyhawk, B1-2, D1-3, EX1-2, G1-3, L1-2, S1, S3-4, T1-4, WG4-6; IMO the Jennel Jaquays Judges Guild stuff (Dark Tower, Caverns of Thracia, etc.) also fits pretty solidly within this category)

3. Moldvay-Schick "customer-facing" style (less sandboxy and wargamery than #2; more focus on set-pieces and less on behind the scenes depth; more consumer-oriented as stuff to pull off the shelf and play through rather than stuff to add to your world - the B/X sets, Deities & Demigods, B3-4, X1-2, A1-4, C1-2, I1, O1, Q1, R1-4, S2)

4. TSR-UK "almost satirical" style (broadly similar to #3 but with its own distinct voice and aesthetic feel - White Dwarf magazine, Fiend Folio, U and UK series, O2, X8, Fighting Fantasy books, Citadel minis)

5. Tracy Hickman/Douglas Niles "I'm working on my novel" style (B5-7, X3-5, I2-6, N1, DL series, Ed Greenwood's articles in Dragon magazine)

6. Shovelware "going through the motions/paint-by-numbers crap" style (AC1-5, B8-9, X6-7 & 9, BSOLO, XSOLO, XL1, M1-2, CB1-2, MV1, N2) 

#1 was pretty much forgotten by the time the 70s rolled into the 80s (and as an accident of fate is better represented and was preserved longer by third-party publishers, because TSR had already mostly repudiated this style by the time they ramped up production in the late 70s) so it felt like a genuine rediscovery when people found and embraced this stuff ~15 years ago, but I feel like that has since morphed into fetishization and groupthink, and refusal to acknowledge that this approach eventually grows stale.

#2 is my favorite and IMO the one worth preserving and emulating. It's what I've been talking about here for the last 3 years and in other places online for the 15 years prior.

#3 and 4 are what seems to be the most popular, both at the time and among the "grognards" at Dragonsfoot.org, in "1E" oriented Facebook groups, etc. This is probably because this style a little more accessible (and also a little bit easier - as in more carefully balanced and less deadly) than the #2 stuff. However, these fans either don't recognize (or do, but don't care) that it's also shallower and more limited than the #2 stuff - it's not as expandable, doesn't exist in a larger context, doesn't feel like something that might exist in the game-world whether or not the PCs are interacting with it, and so on. 

#5 and 6 are, of course, what TSR fully embraced from 1986 until Wizards of the Coast took over and brought back a little bit of flavor from #2, a little more flavor and structure from #3 (i.e. a "story" built of strung-together but individually free-standing set-piece encounters), and a whole lot of deckbuilding and "rules mastery" mind-poison.

"Era-based" taxonomies (like Grognardia's) never really distinguish between #2-4 because they were all roughly synchronous with each other in the so-called "Electrum Age" of transition between the Golden and Silver Ages. Most fans even within this "old-school" niche-within-a-niche seem to engage only with the surface and are blind to anything but trade dress, cover artist, and logo. Module S4 obviously (at least to me) has much more stylistically and game-design-wise in common with G1, EX2, and WG6 (fellow "category 2" products with different trade dress) than it does with A4, B3, or X2 even though the latter all have the same yellow corner-flag trade dress, "face" logo, and Erol Otus covers. But if you try to bring this up to most fans, you're almost invariably going to get back something along the lines of "all I know is we had a great time playing through A4 - [insert favorite set-piece: the myconids/the cave fisher/the final battle on the docks] was awesome!"

Like everybody else who started playing D&D in the 80s I owned and played stuff from all of these groups (except #1, which I only discovered later) side-by-side and although I instinctively turned up my nose at the group 5 and 6 stuff even then, it was only long after the fact, looking back on all of it from a different perspective, that I also perceived the difference between #2 and #3/4, and realized that my interest and sympathies were really only with the former, and that that position puts me outside of the "mainstream" of even old-school/retro/OSR/grognard/whatever D&D fandom pretty much everyplace except The Knights & Knaves Alehouse, the seemingly one-and-only active online refuge of the hardcore Group #2 Gygaxians. But hey, at least I've got my tribe, small as it may be.

*of course some version of original or "classic" D&D remained in print through 1996, the D&D Basic Sets of 1977, 1981, and 1983 were, by all accounts, TSR's all-time best-selling products, and the 1991 D&D Rules Cyclopedia is Wizards of the Coast's current pdf/print-on-demand bestseller at DriveThruRPG, so defining the "Original D&D era" as ending in 1977 is unfair and not technically accurate. Nevertheless, from the time of its release AD&D always received the lion's share of attention both from TSR and the public and the non-Advanced version was mostly an afterthought, something mostly targeted at kids and beginners who were expected to "graduate up" to AD&D in fairly short order. There's a reason why 5th Edition is numbered that way - it's effectively the 5th version of AD&D. The widespread embrace of the "classic" version of the game and the way it's come to eclipse the popularity of AD&D even among "old-schoolers" is entirely a phenomenon of the 21st century - people who played AD&D (1E or 2E) as kids looking back and realizing that they now prefer the version they dismissed as "kid stuff" the first time around.

Facts about Odd Alley and Weird Way

Odd Alley and Weird Way were created by Gary Gygax as an inter dimensional nexus-point and goblin market. “The Strange Occurrence on Odd Alley” was announced by Gary in Dragon #102 as a story scheduled for publication in the May 1986 issue of Amazing Stories magazine, but it did not appear there, and instead was first published in the 1987 collection Night Arrant, under a slightly different title - “A Weird Occurrence in Odd Alley.” Odd Alley and Weird Way also existed in the Greyhawk Campaign:  Rob Kuntz (as Robilar) adventured and found a ring of spell turning there in late 1973. The potential for use of these locations in D&D games is huge, so I felt it was worth collecting all of the facts about them from the story for myself and others to use as a baseline towards creating our own versions:

Odd Alley is located in the Old City of Greyhawk. It is so difficult to locate that most citizens of the metropolis are unaware of its existence. Its head is blocked by an old, rusted locked iron gate that is shunned by all living creatures. Knocking, banging, and pounding will not open the gate and magic also doesn’t affect it. 

There are several business establishments and dwellings in the alley, none of which have back doors or even back windows onto the area behind the gate:

• A junk shop (run by a miserly old half-elf named Scriggin)
• A used clothing store
• Freedle’s Librarium
• A potter’s booth
• The Sunken Grotto Tavern (near the gate)
• A money changer’s stall
• Green Wulfurt’s apothecary
• The crazy limner’s place
• Zreed’s Antiquary (nearest the mouth)
• An old warehouse and stable (at the mouth of the alley across from Zreed’s)

A barely-noticeable passageway near the Sunken Grotto Tavern leads to the other side of the gate, which is also locked. 

A special coin-shaped token of unrecognizable metal with a hand on one face and a rectangle on the other, when placed against the gate with the hand-side up causes it to glow phosphorescent, shimmer, and then disappear, opening a mist-filled passage that leads to Weird Way. Once passed through, the gate closed behind the travelers and cannot be opened by the same token. [There is a method of passing back through the gate, but it is never explained in the story - likely because Gary intended to continue using this location in his games and didn’t want to make things too easy for potential future players.]

Weird Way is wide, curving cobblestone street about 1,000 feet long, well lit by torches, lanthorns, and glowing globes at night. 

The following locations are found in Weird Way (none have rear exits; most have apartments on upper floors with dovecotes and small gardens - from the rooftops can be seen a wall of impenetrable, colorless nothingness surrounding Weird Way through which only sunlight penetrates):

Left side of the street:

1. Dome of Delights: A beehive-shaped structure with a sign depicting a buxom young lady (brothel)
2. Achmut's Cut-rate Carpets: Across from the Tower Tavern and Count Joseph's Emporium of the Unusual.
3. Pagoda of Pools: The department for extraplanar travel to the upper, lower, and other outer planes. 
4. Juxort's Charts and Maps: A shop to the left of the gate.
5. Wonders of the World: A shop to the left of the gate, next to Juxort's.
6. The Helix: An exclusive club. Entered through a plain doorway off the Way separated from the street by a two-story wall. The building is throne shaped with low wings and a tower in the middle; the central garden patio has a fountain. Guarded antechamber leads to a wide spiral stair to a grand salon on the second floor. A transporter in one of the turrets leads to Rel Mord - a block of gneiss activated by a disc of reddish metal.
7. The Explorer's Inn: Has two dining areas - a members’ salon and a general parlor - plus a common room with a well-stocked bar. Lies at the end of Weird Way just before the plaza. Provides a service to allow its customers to chronogate through time and unusual probability lines. Filled with potted flowers and shrubs, and trophies (curios and hunting souvenirs) line the walls, are displayed in cases and are atop every surface. The floor is of worn narrow-sawn oak, with wainscotted walls and smoke-blackened ceiling beams.

Right side of the street:

1. Tower Tavern: Across from the Dome of Delights and Achmut's Cut-rate Carpets.
2. Count Joseph's Emporium of the Unusual: Across from the Dome of Delights and Achmut's Cut-rate Carpets. Count Joseph is a tall, pear-shaped man of indeterminate age wearing powdered wig. He loves to haggle and buys and sells treasures of the multiverse - Yeogorian door-knockers, Staffordshire Toby mugs, etc. He pays in domars (from Gamma World - “small, lightweight coin, inlaid with colors and symbols denoting various denominations; nearly indestructible and impossible to counterfeit”), sequins (from Planet of Adventure), scrip, credits, iridium, jotellium in addition to metal coins of strange and unidentifiable minting. He is possibly in league with Plincourt (q.v.).
3. Pavilion of Portals: Has broad double doors, a wide portico running the entire length of the long plastered building, strange columns, a tent-like roof and tower tops, and draped windows and entrance. It is cool and dim inside, where broad endless marble-walled and tile-floored corridors are tended by a gnome wearing red and saffron tailored  livery with puffs and slashes revealing flashes of contrasting colors. The corridors lead to gates identified by sigils which will send those who traverse them to parallel prime planes such as Yarth and Aerth - but not to Oerth, which is considered too dangerous and uncivilized, or other inhospitable planes or dead-end dimensions. Fees for passage are charged in credits, domars, and standard precious metals. 
4. Abner Grontny the Outfitter: A shop to the right of the gate, across from Juxort's
5. The Arms Exchange: A shop to the right of the gate, across from Wonders of the World.
6. Elixirs from Everywhere: A shop to the right of the gate, near Abner Grotny’s and the Arms Exchange.
7. Multiversal Armorer: Lies at the end of Weird Way, just before the plaza, across from the Explorer's Inn.

Faire Market: The walled plaza at the end of the alley is 300 feet deep by 600 feet broad. It is lined by booths and stalls that are bustling by day but deserted at night. There are no other exits from the plaza except to Weird Way.

• "Rare Wine at Bargain Prices": A maroon and citrine-draped booth in the Faire Market that sells wines including Yugharian Purple and vintage wines from Earth.
• Sogil the Gemner: A gem/jewelry store located at the end of Faire Market. Sogil is old, bald, skinny, doddering, and fearful and wears an enchanted protective brooch.
• Hostel of Ineffable Comfort: Located at the end of Faire Market. Run by Huskons and the night manager Plincourt, a vampire. The first floor is a narrow lobby, richly furnished with displayed artwork, thick carpet, and a counter of rosewood to the right of the entrance. Offers drinks, meals, clothes-mending and tailoring, and the Gedrusian exotic dancers. Rooms are on the second floor: an expensive suite -   the Burke and Hare Suite with padded canopy beds, and a cramped one, the Bates Complex, plus ordinary rooms. There is a 3’ wide secret passage behind the rooms with spiral stairs to a secret room in the cellar behind the hinged back of an old cupboard in a storeroom with a cistern in the floor. A kitchen, refectory, and office - with a small table and box of coins, notes, and bills - are on the top floor. The Hostel employs Yagbo, a porter who carts luggage to the Hostel in his spiked wheelbarrow. He is a raggedy, stooped and bent creature with greasy hair but is very big and strong. He blows a whistle to warn pedestrians out of the way of his cart. Yagbo and an accomplice (Lou) use the secret passage and sleep poison (breathing the fumes knocks the victim out for 1-2 hours) to capture patrons for Plincourt to feed upon and then dispose of the bodies in the cistern. 
• The Fragrant Blossom: A tea house in Faire Market near the Hostel.
• At least six other places are at the far end of the Faire Market.

Weird Way is crowded with people from across the Flanaess (Dyvers, Ket and the West, Nyrond) as well as from many other worlds including Aerth and Yarth, civilized ogre magi, blue-skinned people with green hair and eyes, dwarfs, furry-faced humanoids with purple eyes, etc. A few pass through the portal from Odd Alley, but most enter and exit via the other portals.

Heroic Legendarium By The Numbers

As I inch closer to completion of The Heroic Legendarium and have gotten to the point where the contents are pretty much finalized (I just need to finish writing up the details on a few of them) I thought it would be fun to take a look at what the final book is actually going to contain. I know I'm biased but I really do feel like this is going to be a significant enhancement to the Original Advanced Edition game, both by resolving a lot of problem areas that were left open when design priorities abruptly shifted gears in 1986, and by continuing to expand and develop the original creative vision of the game, adopting new content and ideas in a manner consistent with the conceptual and aesthetic framework of what came before. Now I just need to finish writing (and procure some art...)

New PC races: 4 (cat-blooded, dhampir, dragon-blooded, half-ogre)

New PC classes: 4 (mystic, savant, mountebank, jester)

Substantially revised PC classes: 5 (cavalier, barbarian, acrobat, monk, bard)

Expanded PC characteristics: 4 (social class, birth order, appearance, secondary skills)

New PC characteristics: 3 (joss, knacks & quirks, focused energy activation techniques)

New weapons: 19

New equipment items: 41

New spells: 171 (20 for mystics, 55 for savants, 96 for bards)

Essays and procedural expansions: 7 (hiring men-at-arms, wilderness adventures, adventures in other planes, combat procedure, common locations in towns, deities & clerics, territory development and domain management)

New magic items: 32

New monsters: 40

Topics of miscellaneous expansions, clarifications, and revisions: 22 (demi-human movement rates, halfling characteristics, wild elves, druids, weapon specialization, cantrips, thief skill specialization, high and low value currency types, container capacities, weapon characteristics, mounted combat, casting spells in armor, use of spell books and holy symbols, spell corrections, psionics, falling damage, missile fire, reach advantage, space requirements, racial preferences, random treasure in dungeons, monster characteristics)

Pages: 144 (est.)

Reminder: Plagiarizing other people's stuff = still not cool

A few months ago Gabor Lux wrote a blog post about how some other publishers had "borrowed" some of his creations. "Wow, that sucks," I thought. Alas, yesterday, another example showed up way closer to home.

Anthony Huso is a blogger and publisher at https://www.thebluebard.com whose material has always been of interest to me because he's one of the few "OSR" folks whose interests line up closely with mine, which is to say Gygax-style AD&D with a particular focus on the more complex and heavily-flavored material he produced in the 80s: the rules additions from Unearthed Arcana and the World of Greyhawk boxed set, the details on the planes buried within those books and the Monster Manual II, and so forth. He's one of the only other people I know of in the online D&D fandom scene who leans into the "Advanced" moniker to embrace and explore the complexity and distinctive flavor of that version of the game rather than trying to water down or pave over it.

So, it was with some interest that I saw a new post from him about the bard class, famously an oddball outlier that was consigned to an optional appendix in the rules and was intended to be replaced in its entirety in the second edition of AD&D that Gygax announced but never completed (just as it was in the second edition of AD&D that TSR did release in his absence). That blog post links to a separate page on his site with his detailed set of house rules for bards that includes, intriguingly, an entire new repertoire of 47 new spells for bards based on songs, replacing the AD&D bard's less flavorful use of druid spells. After all, my own set of AD&D house rules that I released in 2016 - the AD&D Companion (which I've temporarily pulled from distribution while I'm revising and expanding it into the OSRIC/OGL-compliant Heroic Legendarium - coming soon, I swear!) - does the same thing, inspired by the treatment of "Spellsongs" in Gary Gygax and Dave Newton's post-TSR rpg Dangerous Journeys: Mythus.

Looking at the list of bard songs on that page, I was immediately struck by several familiar spell names - Darting Dags Adagio, Arrow-storm Aire, Fogveil Barcarolle, Safe-sleep Aria, etc. These are all spellsongs from Gygax and Newton's Mythus Magick that I adapted into AD&D spells (i.e. completely rewrote from a substantially different game-system) in my Companion (and have modified further, including name-changes, for the Legendarium). Cool, I thought. He's doing the same thing I did. I wonder how his versions compare to mine. Or maybe it wasn't a case of parallel inspiration and he's just using my versions. That would be kind of uncool to do without notifying me or giving me some kind of acknowledgment or shout-out beyond a very non-specific and squishy "Many of the songs are my own creation, some might be edited versions of songs made by people on the internet.  I honestly don't remember." But hey, even if a dozen or so out of his 47 new spells are "borrowed" without acknowledgment, that's still okay. It shows he must have liked them enough to want to re-use them, right?

Well, when I took a closer look at the page today, I discovered that in fact it went just a bit further than that: as it turns out, all but 6 of there 47 "new" spells are lifted straight out of my book. A lot of them are renamed, some of them have some modifications or additions (e.g. his "Wild Chanson," renamed from my "Forestfriend Couplet," includes a d10 table of typical animals that can be summoned by the song), but for 41 of the 47 spells the bulk of the details and specific wording of the descriptions are a direct and exact copy and paste from my work. For example, here's my "Revitalize Paen" spell:

Revitalize Paen (Necromantic)

Level: 2 Components: V, S, M  

Range: 1" Casting Time: 1 round 

Duration: Special Saving Throw: None

Area of Effect: One subject per level of the caster 

Explanation/Description: This song restores physical vitality, enery, and alertness to as many subjects as the caster is able to affect. It negates magically-induced sleepiness, drowsiness, fatigue, and/or weakness and otherwise refreshes its listeners to an extent equal to a full night’s sleep after eight rounds of singing (though no damage is healed by this song, nor is the rest sufficient to allow spell casters to refresh their spells).

Compare to his "First Call Refrain":

First Call Refrain  (Necromantic) 

Level: 2                             Components: V, S, M
Range: 1"                          Casting Time: 1 round
Duration: Special                Saving Throw: None
Area of Effect: One subject per level of the caster

Explanation/Description: This song restores physical vitality, energy, and alertness to as many subjects as the caster can affect. It negates magically-induced sleepiness, drowsiness, fatigue, and/or weakness and otherwise refreshes its listeners to an extent equal to a full nightʼs sleep after eight rounds of singing—though no actual damage is healed by this song, nor is the rest sufficient to allow spell casters to refresh their spells).

And for completeness' sake here also is the original version from Gygax and Newton's Mythus Magick that I adapted:

Revitalize Paen Spell (Casting Grade III): 

Time: Special                          Other Heka Costs: 

Area: 1 subject/10 STEEP           R&D: Nil 

Distance: 1 rod                            Other: Nil 

E/F/M: Immediately upon completion of this activation singing, the Effect of the Spell's dweomer restores Physical vitality, energy, and alertness to as many subjects as the spell singer is able to affect thus. It negates magickally or otherwise Heka-induced sleepiness, drowsiness, fatigue and/or weakness. If the subject or subjects are not so affected, the vocalization of this Paen refreshes them to an extent equal to a full nights sleep, for singing equal to merely eight Battle Turns Time, although damage is not healed through this dweomer, nor is Heka regained thus.

Yes, I adapted my spell directly from this one, and tried to match its effects as closely as possible given the differences in rules and terminology between the two systems, even down to retaining the embarrassing misspelling of "Paean" as "Paen" (now corrected in the Legendarium draft!), but there is no chance that Huso independently adapted his spell from the same source and came up with exact same wording I did. And even if by some chance he did it once, he certainly did not do it over and over again, 41 out of 47 times (and I did my comparison quickly - the total might actually be 42 or 43 out of 47). There's really no other possible explanation than that this guy took material that was about 85% mine, made a few very minor edits and modifications to it, and posted it on his site claiming it as his own. Which is plagiarism, and a shitty thing to do, especially in a community as small as this one. Admittedly, I wasn't selling this material for money (though the revised version will be) and neither is he, but if anything I feel that makes proper crediting even more important, since peer-recognition and esteem is the only thing in this for either of us, and that's what he's illegitimately claiming by plagiarizing my work.

If he had reached out to me and said he wanted to revise my stuff and post it on his site with acknowledgment, I'd not only have happily agreed to it, I'd have been flattered - that one of the people whose work I admire and feel like is on the same stylistic and aesthetic page as me liked something of mine enough to want to use it. Something like “these spells are mostly adapted from work by Trent Foster (https://mystical-trash-heap.blogspot.com) whose site is well worth a visit for fans of the same flavor of AD&D discussed here” would have been totally fine with me, and made me really happy because it would've shown that the Gygax-flavored wing of the OSR was growing into a self-reinforcing community building on each other's work to not only preserve but expand that version of the game, which is what I've been hoping for ever since I started talking about the game with my fellow enthusiasts at Dragonsfoot back around the turn of the century.

But not only did he not do that, he didn't even have the decency to remain silent on the subject of stealing my stuff. Instead, he wrote "Many of the songs are my own creation, some might be edited versions of songs made by people on the internet.  I honestly don't remember." The first sentence is a flat-out lie: at most 6 out of 47 spells are his creation - everything else came from me (adapted from Gygax and Newton: with a key difference being that my book is very transparent and explicit about where and from whom I did my adapting) - and if the second sentence is true it makes the whole thing worse by adding such a flagrantly disrespectful insult on top of the injury. He obviously liked my stuff well enough to keep it, edit it, and post it as his own work, so he could at the very least have had the common decency to remember who he stole it from.

So, just as a reminder in case anyone else needs it: plagiarizing someone else's material and claiming it as your own is not cool. And plagiarizing someone else's material and claiming its as your own while also saying "I may have plagiarized a little bit of this from someone, but if so it's so unimportant I can't even remember" is really not cool. If you think something you're about to post and claim as your own work may have actually been stolen from someone else, either have the decency to check and make sure or don't post it. It's really not a difficult proposition.

EDIT: In the comments below Anthony responded with an apology, and has also appended one to his blog post and removed the link to the house-rule document with all the spells. That's a happy ending, and it's refreshing to see someone step up and admit a mistake like that rather than aggressively double-down on it the way people on the internet usually do. I'm glad he and his players are enjoying the spells and will take it as a de facto endorsement for The Heroic Legendarium :)