Zock Bock Radio return engagement

 German AD&D superfan and podcast host Settembrini (who already had me on his show a couple-three years back) recently completed a two-year-long run through the famous/infamous Temple of Elemental Evil module and in celebration of that invited me back onto the show for a long (too long?) discursive conversation about all things TOEE - its history, its merits and flaws, and both of of experienced playing through it. I had fun recording it but cant vouch for how entertaining listening to it will be for anyone not as deeply into the weeds of this stuff as the two of us. But hey, all you have to lose by listening is a few hours of your life! Check it out here: https://pesa-nexus.de/2025/09/02/episode-63-english-the-temple-of-elemental-evil-w-trent-smith/

Brink of Calamity live for sale!

As of about 15 minutes ago Brink of Calamity is finally live for sale at DriveThruRPG in both (softcover) print and pdf versions. Note that DriveThruRPG is increasingly their print costs substantially on April 1st and the price of the print version of this book will go up by $3 to compensate (from $22 to $25), so if you're planning to buy the print version and want to save $3 you should place your order today, tomorrow, or Monday at the latest.

Since the adventure assumes you're using the rules and content from The Heroic Legendarium anyone who doesn't already have that should consider buying the pdf bundle that includes both titles at a substantial discount over buying them separately.

This book has been long in gestation and I had doubts at several points whether I would ever get it across the finish line (and I suspect some of you readers did as well) but I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out and hope people who read about the Perlammo Salt Mines on Prince of Nothing's blog way back in September 2022 will consider it to have been worth the wait. 

Also, while I'm here, I wanted to note for posterity that at some point last fall The Heroic Legendarium became a Gold bestseller at DriveThruRPG (meaning over 500 paid sales on their platform), which is pretty nice. I'm surprised by how it continues to sell, and actually sells as many or more copies per month now as it was 2 years ago, which I can only assume is coming 100% from positive word of mouth because I'm certainly not doing anything to promote it.

Brink of Calamity proofs ordered

Hello, blog family. It’s been a minute. I’m happy to inform you all that I’ve just ordered a proof copy of Brink of Calamity from DriveThruRPG. When I receive it, assuming it doesn’t look like total ass, it will go live for sale. About 18 months later than originally intended but, hey, we all do our best. 

It’s 180 pages (about 30 of which are a revised/expanded version of Melonath Falls, the rest new) and will be $14.99 in pdf or $21.99 for softcover print (+ pdf for nothing extra - if you get the print version you’ll also want the pdf to print out table copies of the maps because they’re in the back of the book so using them in play would be a hassle). It includes all of the art Gabor Lux commissioned for the Hungarian-language version of Melonath Falls plus a bunch of PD stuff and some material from my late father’s sketchbooks but nothing AI-generated. About half of the maps (including a really beautiful wilderness map) were drawn by Sean Stone, the rest are by me (alas) - the dungeon maps were rendered with DungeonScrawl but the town and building maps and dungeon cross-sections are scans of my hand-drawn originals, which will hopefully be at least legible (we’ll see when the proof arrives). 

The playtest campaign is still going (session #29 coming up next week; the PCs are mostly 5th & 6th level now) so there’s a LOT to play through here, but hopefully there’s enough modular stuff that people who don’t want to commit to running the entire campaign will be able to strip-mine out for their own games. 

I put a lot of love and effort into writing and producing this thing and am pretty proud of how it turned out and excited that it’s so close to the finish line. I hope you’ll buy it when it goes live and enjoy reading and playing it. 

Update 2/6/25: the proof copy arrived. The good news is that 99% of it looks great - all of the art rendered really well, the inner margin is tight but not fatally so, the formatting looks decent. The bad news is that, as I feared, the hand-drawn maps aren’t legible so they will need to be redone - at least re-scanned, possibly re-drawn - and then the whole thing needs to go back through the upload and approval process so unfortunately it’s probably not going to go live for sake for another month or so. Ugh. Sorry if I got people’s hopes up. I was really hoping it would come out okay but it didn’t. 

Session #12 & Adventure Sites Compilation

Firstly, I wanted to let everybody know that Adventure Sites I by Coldlight Press is now available as a free download on DriveThruRPG. It includes my own "St. Durham's Home for Wayward Youths" which is set in the same area as Melonath Falls and Brink of Calamity (but will not be included in the latter work, only by reference to this compilation) along with seven other old-school D&D-compatible adventure sites each designed to be inserted with minimal effort into an ongoing campaign and to provide one or two sessions' worth of entertainment (there was a strict size-limit of no more than 2 pages of text plus one page of maps per site). I'm honored to be included among the other authors as one of the top 8 entries in a recent contest, and the price is right so there's no reason not to grab a copy of this and see what you might be able to use in your own games.

On to other business, session #12 of my ongoing Brink of Calamity playtest was held last weekend. Because two players canceled at the last minute and the remaining players were hesitant to engage in any heavy exploration short-handed I shifted gears a bit and decided to lean heavily into Grain the thief's wedding (which had been set up by a random "character catch-up" roll a few sessions back) and use it as an opportunity to introduce a bunch of the NPCs and plot-hooks that I had tied to the Casino chapter of the book, which the players had heretofore been utterly uninterested in engaging with. We had already determined that Grain's spouse-to-be works in the casino as an "elvish impersonator" (whatever exactly that means), so since the casino is also/technically a Temple of Boreon (god of luck and chance), it made sense that the wedding would be held there and some of the casino regulars (i.e. my detailed NPCs) would attend.

PCs in attendance:
Grain - gnome thief 4
Thron - half-orc fighter 4
Thorn - half-elf ranger 3

Tares - elf cleric of Boreon 4

Eldin - human magic-user 4

Glyptus - human fighter 1 (henchman of Eldin)

Among the attendees were the following:

The casino proprietor and Boreon priest Bix Grimaldi, his assistant Carlos, and second assistant Elayne. Elayne is the cleric who who already serves as mentor/trainer to the two cleric PCs so she was already familiar. Through observation of Bix, they noticed that he doesn't actually seem to do much priestly stuff, leaving all of it to his two assistants, which came to a head when he was performing the wedding ceremony but fumbled the vows and had Carlos step in to complete the ceremony. Since prior to the session starting, while waiting for the other players to arrive, I had rolled up stats for Vylma the bride-to-be and determined that she is a mountebank (as per The Heroic Legendarium) and the players learned about the class and that one of their abilities is "impersonation," the players have begun to suspect Bix may also be less than he appears...

Boss Taggart, his half-ogre bodyguard, and a friend Franciscus, a visiting merchant. Taggart is the extremely wealthy proprietor of the lumber mill in the village of Veirona and is considered a VIP around the casino. Rumor says he is at least partial owner of the casino, which is why he was able to just show up at the wedding uninvited. Franciscus the merchant has recently arrived in town from the nearby town of Haven ostensibly to arrange a large purchase of lumber, but Thorn the ranger thought he looked familiar, and eventually recognized him as one of the men seen leaving the Perlammo Salt Mines in the last session. These three mostly stuck to themselves, whispering to each other.

Geromini, the curio-shop owner and mentor/trainer to the PC magic-user. He was revealed to be a sloppy drunk and compulsive gambler.

Sheilah, a warrior-princess from the town of Amazona, accompanied by several servile bondsmen. She was there mostly to cause trouble for any PCs who attempted to flirt with her but nobody took the bait so she ended up getting into an altercation with Geromini instead.

Loras Flaxentop, halfling professional gambler, with his pet spider-monkey. The monkey caused assorted mischief including at one point almost making off the with the wedding rings.

Mr. Stearns, distinguished older gentleman traveler from "the west" accompanied by his two adult daughters, Giuliana and Rafaella - the former of whom is plainer but friendly, the latter beautiful but cold. Mr. Stearns took immediate interest in Tares the cleric'c glowing blue crystal staff and wanted to know where he had acquired it, which they did not tell. He warned them that he was sensing an aura of evil from it. At one point a waiter spilled a drink which Mr. Stearns immediately caught, displaying amazingly (superhumanly?) fast reflexes. He also inquired whether the party had been doing any exploring in the elf-woods and when they shared the rumor they had picked up last session about the village of man-eating elves he became very intrigued and was seen flashing a sign to his daughter in Rafaella in thieves' cant telling her to watch this group.

Despite the party having left an invitation in his erstwhile lair within the Salt Mines, they were disappointed that their ogre pall Lumph did not show up. Glyptus the henchman also declined his invitation, stating that he prefers to steer clear of the casino and has had some run-ins with the people there. The party has heard rumors about an underground fight-club at the casino and are pretty convinced both that Glyptus was once a fighter there and that Lumph is there currently (but don't seem all that interested on doing any sort of follow-up investigation).

Midway through the ceremony there was a brief interruption by Boss Taggart's factotum MacDougal (who the party had previously met) who hurried in and whispered something quickly to his boss, who showed some alarm at the news. He quickly shared word with his bodyguard and guest and all four of them quickly departed. Later in the evening rumors began spreading through the crowd that a party including Lord Mayor Bowlton's daughter Liesl was en route to Taggart's manor in the village of Veirona but has failed to arrive, causing considerable distress to the Lord Mayor and his confidantes.

Grain the thief was disappointed to learn that the ring of invisibility she found last week has the unfortunate side-effect of draining away her strength and constitution, and was forced to pay almost the entirety of her savings to date (including her bridal dowry) to purchase a remove curse and dispel magic combo from Carlos the priest, even at "friends and family" rate. However, she decided to keep the ring anyway, figuring that once the PC clerics (both currently 4th level) hit 5th level and are able to cast those spells that it will still be worthwhile to have the invisibility option, especially if she only wears the ring for an hour or two. 

Thorn the ranger, who has a Quirk allowing him to speak with birds, also took delivery of a trained hawk that he had ordered several weeks back.

Asking around the next morning if there was any news of the mayor's missing daughter and learning that a search was underway but no news had been heard yet, they decided to go back to the familiar Salt Mines to continue exploring around the blank areas on their map. [Some of the players were surprised that they weren't being asked to help with the search, but other players reminded them that they have gone to great lengths to keep their adventuring career on the down-low and that only a handful of people in town - mostly their mentor/trainers - have any knowledge that they are adventurers at all.] During the trip there (the mines are about 3 hours' walk from town) the hawk informed Thorn that they were being followed by someone, who they suspected and then confirmed was Mr. Stearns' daughter Rafaella. Great pains were taken to shake her off their tail, during which they learned that she also has preternaturally fast reflexes like her father. One of the players wondered aloud if perhaps they're some kind of cat-people.

Making a very roundabout way to the mines, they first checked Lumph's old quarters and found no sign that he had returned but that the wedding invitation they'd left for him was gone. ["Do you think maybe the smuggler guys found it and that's why the smuggler boss showed up at the wedding?"] Shortly thereafter, still on level one, they ran into a wandering band of janussarians who immediately attacked. Between their removable and interchangeable heads (which they also use as missiles), their unshakable morale, and damage resistance to blunt and piercing weapons, they were reminded why they had such a hard time with these guys the first time they met them down on level two. They eventually wiped the whole group out but used up so many resources doing so that they decided to make a quick retreat out of the dungeon. Instead of returning to town they decided to find the farmstead south of the mine that had been rumored to be under attack by werefoxes. Showing off the tails of the gopines they had slain in the dungeons they confirmed that the werefox attacks had stopped and were treated to food and hospitality by the grateful farmers and the session ended there. In about 5 hours of play the total net treasure haul was 0 and the total XP haul was 66 apiece, but they met a lot of new people and picked up a lot of new hooks and rumors that they will (hopefully) begin to follow up on in the next session on April 28th.

With the smaller player group and gathered around a smaller, round table which allowed us to be closer and more easily communicate it was a nice change-of-pace session with a lot of talking both in and out of character. Grain's player was especially thrilled by all the attention and extra detail she got (which included, among other things, detailing her entire family including 9 older siblings of gnome turnip farmers) and after several combat-heavy sessions I think it was a nice reminder than there's more to the game (and, specifically, to this adventure) than just fighting and looting.

Playtest Sessions 8-11

I stopped posting session summaries for my games a few months ago because it seemed like nobody was reading them, but I recently heard from a couple of people who mentioned that they had been following them, and although scheduling conflicts since the holidays have caused the frequency of play to slow down, we are still playing, so here's a quick catch-up of everything since my last update.

Session 8 (December 2023): Continuing to explore the Perlammo Salt Mines, the group ventured into the Experimental Mine where they encountered the janussarians (living automata with detachable heads) and beat a hasty retreat. The established party was joined by two new members in this expedition: Kane, a halfling bard, and Glyptus, the fighter henchman of Eldin the magic-user, who's a total arrogant jerk and a lot of fun for the DM to roleplay. I believe it was during this session that they also learned that their ogre buddy Lumph had gone missing.

Session 9 (January 2024): Rolling on the character catch-up table in Midkemia Press' Cities to see what happened to Grain the thief when she was absent in session #8, we learned that she had received a proposal of marriage, which she accepted. Her spouse-to-be was determined to be Vylma who works at the casino as an Elvish impersonator (though what exactly that means beyond the pun is not entirely clear), with the wedding to occur in two weeks game-time. Wary of another encounter with the janussarians, the group instead ventured down a different stairway which led them to a flooded chapel area populated by various slime-creatures who their weapons weren't able to affect. Eventually they encountered a strange hermit priest with a blue crystal staff that was seemingly able to command the slime creatures, so naturally they killed him and took the staff. Although they didn't bother to learn the command phrase (didn't pay attention when the priest said it...) they found that just wielding the staff was enough to keep the slime creatures at bay, so they looted the priest's treasure (including a nice cache of valuable gems that helped a couple of them level up) and left that area behind. 

Session 10 (February 2024): With everybody (except Glyptus the henchman) now at 3rd-4th level the group finally felt up to challenging the lotus smuggling gang who they've known were in the dungeon pretty much since the beginning but had been studiously avoiding. Thorn the ranger wasn't available, which was okay because he was off training with the druids atop Mt. Hexengippel anyway. On the way out of town they learned that their ally in the outlying shanties, Madame Sanspirella the fortune-teller, had been murdered by a halfling whi gave the name Mr. Underhill and they noticed unfriendly looks being directed by the shanty-dwellers towards their own halfling companion. Upon arriving at the mines, the group ventured down the mechanical lift to level 3 where they found a group of human and half-orc guards waiting for them (the lift makes a lot of noise). Negotiations pretty quickly broke down and a large melee ensued. Sleep spells were deployed, reinforcements were summoned, four half-orc flunkies were convinced to change sides and gave their new boss (Kane the halfling) a brief overview of the level, including where "the giant" lives. Alas, while all this was going on in-game, in real-life the store where we play was literally flooding (this was while Los Angeles was having torrential rainstorms) so we had to end the session early and pause with the party still deep in the dungeon (which I hate to do, but was pretty unavoidable in this circumstance).

Session 11 (March 2024 - yesterday): Eldin's player wasn't available so both he and Glyptus "mysteriously vanished in a way the rest of the group didn't find to be alarming," leaving the group as follows:

Thron: half-orc fighter 4
Grain: gnome thief 4
Kronk: gnome cleric 4
Tares: elf cleric 4
Kane: halfling bard 3 (using the Heroic Legendarium version of the class)

4 half-orc men-at-arms (NPC followers of Kane) - I think he may have named them but I didn't write it down

To start with they counted up and looted the bodies from last session's battle - there were 25 of them in total, from whom they recovered a substantial amount of electrum, gold, and platinum coins, a few gems, and two potions. Grain identified and kept the potion of polymorph (self), Kane was unable to identify the other potion but kept it anyway. Once again nobody bothered to check whether any of the deceased enemies had magical weapons or armor. Instead of heading home they decided to explore some more, and quickly triggered a trap that sent Thron and Grain down a long slide. Kane tied a rope (two ropes) around himself, anchored it to the trap mechanism (a set of gears causing the floor to tilt) and lowered himself down after them. 

At the bottom of the slide Grain and Thorn found themselves in a natural cave where the shadows seemed unusually thick and oppressive, so even their infravision was impaired. They soon realized they weren't alone and some of the shadows were moving. Remembering their previous encounter with such a creature in a previous session (and that now there were 6 of them) they fled down the nearest passage deeper into the unknown. Kane arrived on the scene after they had left, and fled in the same direction, but lost a couple points of strength on the way. On the way out he sent a voice throwing yodel back up the slide telling the rest of the group to follow and help. Both clerics (whose players are kids) decided to slide down the chute head-first ("whee!"), and were immediately ambushed by the shadows, losing multiple strength points. Tares waved his magic staff at them no avail. Kronk remained prone and turtled up but also waved his holy symbol at them, which caused 4 of the 6 to cower away. After some confusion and a couple more lost strength points Tares was convinced to also try using his holy symbol, which successfully turned the other two. About that time the severed rope came tumbling down the chute. Kane's sense of betrayal and anger was palpable. 

The group eventually managed to reunite and set to exploring looking for a way out. The gnomes attempted to estimate their depth underground - Kronk was convinced they were 500' below the surface, Grain thought it was more like 200'. Based on previously having been about 150' down and being able to traverse the chute with 2 50' ropes they suspected Grain's estimate was more likely to be correct. They found another stairway leading further down and decided not to take it. They then found a set of stairs leading up, but only 10' leading to another large shadowy cave occupied by a large number of black-furred dogs. Tares used a speak with animals and was able to convince them not to attack and, in exchange for some rations and assorted monster-bits (which Kronk carries a large a large collection of), get directions towards another up-staircase. After a LOT of climbing, which was invigorating and helped them restore their lost strength points, they arrived at a familiar-seeming location and were able to connect the last big gap on their map, the one unexplored staircase on level one. 

Heading back to the elevator room they didn't seem surprised to find the elevator platform on this level. As they were about to head back down they met up with their companion Thorn the ranger (late-arriving player) bearing news - while training atop Mt. Hexengippel a half-elf named Greenthistle arrived with an alarming take about having been hired to guide a group of adventurers into the Whither Woods, encountering a group of evil man-eating elves who tried to drug and capture them, and following them back to a massive diseased oak-tree with a tunnel opening at its base which the others descended into and never returned [attentive readers may note a non-coincidental resemblance between this account and session 7.5]. Also, upon arriving at the mines, he witnessed a group of around a dozen men - most of them armed soldiers but a pair of civilian-types in robes - leaving the mines, piling into a boat hidden under one of the jetties, and departing. One of the two civilian-types looked like he was being dragged along and didn't want to go.

Back down on level 3 they continued exploring around the south part of the level, avoiding the area where the half-orcs had told them the giant lived, had a nasty encounter with a tentamort ("beach ball with tentacles") that due to some lucky die-rolling ended happily before anyone's viscera got liquified, recovered a ring which Grain the thief was thrilled to learn made her invisible at will, and found the barracks of all the guys they killed last session, but were frustrated not to find any more people (and, strangely, didn't seem to connect the dots about the lift being on level one and the group of guys leaving the dungeon with the fact that these rooms were empty, but whatever). They found a 4' high secret passage but instead of exploring it decided to block it up by barricading junk in front of it. 

Feeling frustrated at not finding anything more to kill, they returned to a chamber they had scouted out earlier and Grain invisibly scouted and found a family of giant lizards dwelling there and a lot of silver coins scattered about. Using a bunch of oil they'd looted from the guard barracks they started a big fire, slew the lizards as they fled from it, and Thron the fighter was happy to discover both that his magic sword has extra potency against reptiles and that the ring he'd looted from one of the smugglers was giving him extra protection, lowering his AC to 0. Kronk dissected the lizard corpses (as per his usual practice) and was happy to find that one of the adults had swallowed several gems. Alas, as they were gathering up the silver coins into a wheelbarrow they heard the sound of heavy footsteps approaching, and quickly fled in the opposite direction back towards the lift. 

As they made their way down the wide central hallway they glanced back and saw a 9' tall hideously deformed being wielding a huge club in one hand and an enormous conch shell in the other giving chase (despite his uneven legs and shuffling gait) crying out "what have you done to my pets?!" Definitely wanting nothing to do with that, Kane used the brambled refrain to block his path, giving the party enough time to pile onto the lift platform.

All in all a pretty enjoyable time was had by all, and after 6 weeks off it felt good to get back into the flow. Kane the bard pocketed enough unshared treasure to allow him to hit 4th level, and due to his magic ring Thron is getting close to hitting 5th. Next session should include Grain's wedding at the casino, and we'll see what else they decide to do now that they've pretty well cleaned out the mine dungeons and have a ton of other active hooks to explore.

Still no ETA on the eventual release of the book, but I'm very happy with how the playtest has gone so far and have picked up assorted minor editing and cleanup notes but nothing that requires major retooling. The guy who's re-rendering my hand-drawn maps has sent me some WIP drafts and they're looking great! Artwork is still TBD but the recent Hungarian-language release of Melonath Falls includes a ton of great original commissioned art that the publisher (Gabor Lux of E.M.D.T.) has been kind enough to give me the rights to re-use in my own English-language version, which will definitely help. 

Adventure Site Review

Hi everybody. I wrote two page mini-adventure for the Coldlight Press Adventure Site Contest and it got a nice positive review: https://coldlightrpgpress.weebly.com/home/adventure-site-contest-st-durhams-home-for-wayward-youths

Once all the contest entries have been reviewed (there were 18 of them) the top ones will be compiled into a free pdf, as was done with the NoArtpunk contest. If mine makes the cut for that I’ll let everybody know. If it doesn’t, I’ll probably post it here. It’s set in the same area as Brink of Calamity so could be added to that book instead, but since that manuscript is effectively done (pending future playtesting-derived editing) I think I’d rather make this a stand-alone add-on, like an old fashioned “web enhancement” from the early 00s. 

Bonus session (#7.5)

Although the players from the main group were all busy with Thanksgiving festivities, I had visitors from out of town who wanted to play, so we had a game on Saturday.

Cast of Characters:

Thorgrim (Dwarf Cleric 4)

Rebecca (Elf Fighter 4)

Baron (war dog, who Thorgrim can speak with due to a Knack)

These two had done some exploration in the Perlammo Salt Mines (at Thanksgiving last year), but having heard rumors that another group of adventurers had pretty thoroughly cleaned that area out decided to look for other adventuring opportunities. At the Grand Casino of Boreon they met Greenthistle, a renegade half-elf from the Whither Woods, who offered to serve as a guide in that area and lead them to the elves' best treasures. They also picked up a rumor of an enchanter in town named Nestor who had disappeared into the woods some months back, after possibly having gone insane. So, defying the prohibition on non-elves entering that forest they took off in that direction, planning to tell any elves they ran across that they were looking for their missing friend Nestor (and figuring that, with Rebecca herself being an elf, albeit a meadow-dwelling high elf from the north, that should be sufficient to avoid them being summarily slain). 

After a few days crawling through the woods they had various minor encounters, including an unfriendly hermetic pig farmer who they suspect was likely Nestor the insane ex-enchanter, and picked up vague rumors that the elves in the western part of the forest had gone wild and strange. However, when they encountered the elf village of Willowtarn, the inhabitants were surprisingly non-hostile, and in exchange for Thorgrim healing an injured elf-maid with a broken leg offered them food and hospitality, including a strange herbal tea that they call the soma. The party became increasingly suspicious as they noticed a distinct lack of the otherwise-ubiquitous mundane wildlife (squirrels, birds, etc) around the village, as well as a lack of any elf-children or spellcasters, and that many of the village's dwellings and trees showed signs of old but unrepaired scorching and battle damage. Greenthistle the guide was particularly unnerved and insisted these elves were not acting normally at all, and discreetly refused to sample any of their food or soma (the other two did sample both, but were unaffected, perhaps due to Thorgrim's naturally strong dwarfish constitution and the magical periapt Rebecca had acquired on a previous adventure). They were shown to a hut to spend to the night, that upon examination appeared to have been the home of a druid but was dusty and neglected and hadn't been inhabited for some time. Realizing that some elves were standing giard outside their hut Thorgrim cast a discreet Know Alignment and upon scanning the guards confirmed his suspicion that they were, in fact, chaotic evil, so they decided to sneak out of the village rather than waiting for morning, and managed to do so successfully.

When morning came they spotted a group of elves on a path headed west out of the village and followed them to a blighted area where all of the trees and other plants were infected with various molds and fungi, and eventually to a massive (200' tall) oak tree in the center of the blighted patch, with a 10' diameter shaft at its base which the elves descended into. Greenthistle declined to follow the party into the hole, so they made arrangements for him to travel back to a meeting place a couple miles away and wait for their return.  

Inside the hole they found a series of narrow winding tunnels dug into the muddy earth but, unable to determine which way the elves had gone, went wandering and encountered various unpleasant fungal monsters, most notably a patch of black moss that drained 24 hours of Thorgrim's memory, leaving him very confused about where he was and why. Rebecca informed him the moss had done it and that he needed to destroy it before she too was affected in the same way. Thorgrim's only current memory was that Rebecca had told him to destroy the moss patch, so they did so, but were then at a loss for where they were or what to do, until Thorgrim found a map drawn in his own hand showing a path from the elf village and a set of tunnels. A quick consultation with Baron the dog confirmed that they were missing a day of memory but had followed the elves here from the village and that the elves were enemies. Alas, nobody knew or remembered what had become of Greenthistle the guide (because Baron the dog doesn't understand people language to know what Thorgrim and Rebecca had discussed with him). 

Some further exploration brought them into contact with a group of elf guards who they captured and interrogated, learning that they are followers of Ianthe the dryad who dwells beneath this great oak and supplies them with the soma. Asking how long she had been doing so, the elves were unable to answer, and their best guess was "umm, forever?" Venturing into the next chamber they encountered a group of fungus-men who were too strong and numerous to fight so they fled back to the surface with their elf-prisoners in tow. Taking those prisoners back to the oak of the dryad Eulalia (whom they had previously encountered in their earlier wanderings) she was vexed to hear that her sister was causing trouble (but also unsurprised, since she hadn't heard from her in a long time) but, unable to do anything about it herself, directed them instead to the nearby elf-village of Glenbrook.

After Rebecca explained to the inhabitants of that village what they had encountered and handed over their prisoners, the chief druid Moonmist examined them, as well as the supply of food and soma the party had recovered from their camp, and confirmed that the food was tainted and the elves were under a malign influence of unknown origin, and that something strange is definitely afoot since dryads aren't normally familiar with herbalism and certainly not anything based around mold or fungi. A contingent of elves from Glenbrook village joined with the party as they returned to the caves beneath Ianthe's oak where the group did battle with and defeated the first batch of 16 fungus men, but used up so many of their resources in that battle and, hearing another group approaching from deeper within the tunnels, expeditiously retreated back to their village, bringing the session to an end.

Although these two explored a lot of ground and did a lot of fighting (and had a lot of fun and wanted to keep going but it had gotten too late), they recovered negligible treasure and almost everything they fought in the dryad-cave is capable of respawning, so it's likely their activity will have negligible visible impact on the area if and when the other party makes their way here. The one definite consequence is that Greenthistle the guide, after waiting most of the day at the appointed meeting spot, fled back to civilization with a new rumor to spread to anyone who will listen at the Casino - about the village of evil elves deep in the Whither Woods, the fungal-blighted giant oak tree with a cave-entrance at its base, and the group of adventurers who descended into that cave and never returned! Will that story be sufficiently intriguing to draw the attention of our other adventuring party away from the Perlammo Salt Mines? Unlikely, since they seem very single-minded and meticulous in their focus on that location, but we'll find out one way or the other this coming Sunday...

Lucky session #7

Another action-heavy session as the party continued the Gopine Holocaust. 

Regular cast:

Kronk - Gnome Cleric 3 (Boreon)

Grain Tobblefoot - Gnome Thief 3

Thron Hammersmash - Half-orc Fighter 3

Tares - Elf Cleric 3 (Boreon)

Eldin - Human Magic-user 2

Thorn - Half-elf Ranger 2

While most of the group was training they acquired some more rumors about various outdoor locations and feel like they’re getting a pretty full picture of all the plot threads active in the area but chose once again to return to the Perlammo Salt Mines where they had unfinished business with the gopines dwelling on level 2. On their way in they discovered that the rope ladder they’ve been using to enter and exit the dungeon had been sabotaged, but used their own ropes to repair the damage before anyone fell. 

Venturing down into gopine territory things got violent quickly, with a running battle across several rooms and the group briefly cornered between two squads. A sleep spell evened the odds a bit, but the robust gopine boss, armored in elfin mail and dual-wielding a dagger and a magic rapier, did a lot of damage before he fell, causing the party to use up all their healing magic. 

Having fought their way to an open escape route with a door spiked shut behind them they retreated back to level one to regroup, but the last of the gopines - the lieutenants - gave chase and caught our heroes by surprise. Another sleep spell failed to decimate them and things were getting ugly - Kronk the cleric unconscious and everyone else reduced to single digit hit points. Eldin the magic-user was forced to use his potion of fire breath, but even so it was dicey until Lumph the ogre, friend of the party and hated foe of the gopines, heard the sounds of battle and joined the fray. 

Grain Tobblefoot received enough XP to hit 4th level. Thron kept the gopine boss’ magic rapier and Thorn the ranger claimed his armor (which fit him but was too big for the gnomes). With some time remaining at the end of the session Eldin the magic-user decided to exploit his 16 charisma by hiring some henchmen. He got responses from two prospects: a fighter and another magic-user. As we left off he was debating whether to offer employment to one or both. 

We’ll see what happens in the next session on December 3rd. 

Playtest Session #5

Action-packed session today, which was nice after two kind of flat ones in a row. Back at full strength, the group ventured back into the Perlammo Salt Mines first to get done well-deserved revenge upon the best of stink bugs who had almost wiped them out the week before, and then to take on the encampment of goblins who were the only significant encounter area remaining on the first level. 

Cast of characters:

Kronk - Gnome Cleric 2 (Boreon)

Grain Tobblefoot -Gnome Thief 2

Thron Hammersmash - Half-orc Fighter 1

Tares - Elf Cleric 1 (Boreon)

Elden - Human Magic-user 1

Thorn - Half-elf Ranger 1

The two players who’d missed last session were forced to roll on the Character Catch-up table in Midkemia Press’s Cities to determine what befell them during their downtime, and it was nothing good: both were mugged and lost their cash on hand, Thorn was also scammed and lost 1/3 of his banked money and Elden learned that his father had died but was too broke to travel to attend his funeral. So, facing desperate financial straits, they decided to rejoin their adventuring companions. 

Scouting around the goblin hideout they managed to keep the goblins’ wolves quiet, used a sleep spell to eliminate the first set of guards, made quick work of another set, barricaded the door through which reinforcements were approaching, got into a bloody but ultimately successful brawl against the goblin bosses, and ended up finishing off the last of them in a two-front battle. 28 goblins in all were sent screaming to the Nine Hells. 

Looting the boss’s chamber they recovered some minor treasures and a mysterious and very heavy wizard-locked iron chest. They also found four cowering non-combatant goblin cooks who they interrogated and then dispatched, which inspired two of the party to change their alignment to Chaotic Neutral.  

Thorn the ranger convinced his companions to fire the captive wolves and led them out of the dungeon and then, heavily laden with treasure, they made their way back to town. 

Alas, the combat XP and bulky but not-especially-valuable treasure wasn’t enough to bring them up to 2nd level (with Elden the magic-user painfully coming up 18 XP short). However, they had recovered a letter from the goblin boss that they were unable to decipher (though they did determine in was in the Chaotic Evil alignment language) and decided it was worth paying Geromini, their NPC magic-user friend in town, to cast Comprehend Languages on it. Once translated, the letter gave them the password to open the chest, which was filled with 50 gold ingots, intended as a bribe from the Goblin King of the Palm March to the chieftain of the Blue Goblins of Melonath Falls, and the value of this haul turned a break-even expedition into a major victory, worth enough XP to level up not just Elden but also Thron, Tares, and Kronk (to 3rd). Only Thorn the ranger still fell a bit shy.

Next session is on November 5th. Having effectively cleaned out the first level of the mines we’ll see where they decide to go next - whether to the lower levels of the mine or one of the several other areas nearby they’ve gathered rumors about. 

Edit: Fun addendum - while we were playing one of the players got a text from her sister who was attending GsmeHoleCon (in Madison, WI) that she was at that same moment playing in a game run by Luke Gygax (5E, I assume, but still pretty neat). Alas, their story didn’t have the same happy ending ours did: their party got TPKd. 

Another session report

The group was down two players this session compared to last one so they decided to proceed cautiously. To start with they paid a visit to the Grand Casino of Boreon hoping to gather some intel about the mysterious fox-people who they’ve heard about but not yet actually encountered. Coming up mostly empty and failing to win big at the slots (and realizing they’re not nearly well enough equipped to knock the place over) they returned to Salt Mine dungeon and once again bribed their way past the ogre guarding the back entrance. 

They’ve now got a nearly-complete map of the top level and were feeling pretty confident after dispatching some ghouls and giant rats but disaster almost struck when they decided to attack a nest of giant stink bugs: half the party (the thief and of the clerics) was rendered unconscious and the gnome cleric had to leave his pack and maul behind in order to drag his comatose companion to safety. Venturing back to retrieve the lost pack only a well-placed Sanctuary spell saved the remaining two from disaster and probable TPK. When you're low level and outnumbered AC4 and a 1d6 bite adds up quickly.

A few sacks of silver pieces was a visibly disappointing haul but was just enough to allow the thief to hit 2nd level. She also pocketed a nice-looking coral necklace that a jeweler in town offered her a cool thousand GP for but she decided not to sell, suspecting it might be magical. 

Next session (set for 10/22) they’re hoping to be back to full strength, which is good because their options are narrowing - taking on the goblins or armed men they avoided this time around, venturing back down to one of the lower levels (which they’re still very afraid of), or leaving this dungeon altogether to follow up on one of the rumors they picked up at the casino - such as the mysterious goings on in the village of Veirona a day’s travel upriver, near the famous Melonath Falls. 

[Fun OOC note: when they were in the casino hearing about Veirona with its lumber mill and seedy reputation and the nearby Melonath Falls, one of the players said "I'm starting to get a kind of Twin Peaks-y vibe about this area" which I appreciated because it's 100% intentional but she's the first person who's ever noticed (or at least who mentioned it out loud to me)]

Playtest session #3

Playtest session #3 was held today, very eventful and fun but not too rewarding. All four of the players from the previous session returned (including the guy who thought he wasn’t going to be able to make it) and they were joined by two new players - another cleric and a half-elf ranger. 

Venturing back to the Perlammo Salt Mines after a week in town they found the main entrance barricaded and guarded, and surmised that somebody must not have liked what they did to the watchers they encountered in their last expedition. At first they wanted to fight their way through but upon seeing that the guards were in mail and armed with crossbows had second thoughts and decided instead to seek out the back entrance they had heard rumors of. Locating that shaft they climbed down the rope ladder they found there and encountered the ogre dwelling at the bottom who demanded a toll to pass but after some negotiation agreed to collect on their way out. They explored about 10 more rooms and even ventured down a set of stairs to a lower level but quickly lost heart and fled back up after encountering some giant sun spiders and then catching sight of the even bigger mother-spider. 

Although they did a lot of exploring and filled in many of the gaps on their map, they found little by way of treasure and realized they were in a bind since to get back home they had to face either the ogre (who they didn’t feel they had enough to pay as toll) or the guards. Settling on the former they decided to offer him some platinum pieces they had found with a contingency plan to drop a sleep spell on him and hope for the best if that didn’t work. Luckily for them it did and he allowed them to pass back out, but for all their efforts (including going an hour past the scheduled quitting time) they didn’t have much to show for it treasure-wise. 

Once again, nobody died but there were a couple of close calls with the 15 hp ranger at one point reduced to a single point. A paltry 400 XP apiece (50% from combat vs an assortment of unpleasant bugs) was enough to bring the gnome cleric to 2nd level but left the thief 100 XP short (don’t say the +10% bonus for high stats doesn’t make a difference because it would’ve here!).

Next game is scheduled for October 8th. I get the impression they want to stay on the first level longer (those 3d4 damage rolls from the sun-spider bites were quite traumatizing) but may not have much choice since they’re running out of areas to explore there, unless they change their mind about trying to murder and rob the ogre…

Playtest Session Recaps

Keeping it short and sweet:

Session #1 (8/13/23): Two brave novice adventurers - a half-elf magic-user/cleric of the Far Wanderer and a gnome fighter/cleric of Boreon - came to the town of Warnell seeking fame and fortune. Following up on some rumors they headed for the abandoned Perlammo Salt Mines and explored about a dozen rooms in which they encountered some goblin squatters, located a central lift-shaft and evidence that somebody is both maintaining and using the lift, discovered a couple of secret doors and a lost treasure room, and found a map showing the entire mine in cross-section. Both survived, but the half-elf got very lucky and only barely avoided the effects of a cursed scroll.

The half-elf's player isn't able to make the next session, so it will be up to the gnome and his new group of companions (i.e. the players who weren't at this session) to pick up where they left off: will they attempt to roust out (or befriend) the goblins? Will they venture down to one of the deeper levels shown on their map - the dormitory, the chapel, the deep mine, the experimental mine, or the caves? Or will they just spend a few hours wandering around and not accomplish much of anything at all?

Session #2 (8/27/23): Since his half-elf companion was called away on important business, the gnome rounded up some new adventuring companions - a human magic-user, a gnome thief, and a half-orc fighter - and the party of four set off back to the mines to continue exploring. They managed to explore 10 rooms on the main level in which they fought some creepy monsters including a rope-like kampfult and some winged vipers, found a set of stairs and an open shaft leading down, learned about a lotus blossom processing operation in the lower mine (and killed their lookouts), and recovered some good treasure, including a few non-cursed magic items (a magic dagger, a potion of gaseous form, and a scroll of 3 MU spells). Once again nobody died, but there were some close calls - the magic-user spent most of the session with one hp, and the cleric burned a couple joss factors to ensure he didn’t die from snake-venom (though he actually rolled well enough that he didn’t need them). Nobody has hit 2nd level yet, but the two gnomes are both getting pretty close and another expedition as successful as this one would likely put one or both of them over the top.

Session #3 is set for 9/24, with 3 of the above 4 returning and possibly some new players joining them (a couple of yesterday's players said they are planning to invite some of their friends, and a couple other people who weren't able to make either of these dates are still interested). While they're likely to continue exploring the "abandoned" mines, maybe they will also be tempted - now that they're all flush with cash - to pay a visit to the Grand Casino of Boreon north of town in an attempt to parlay their winnings (or blow them completely). And now that word of their discoveries is getting out, they may soon find that they're not the only party of adventurers interested in the site. Only time will tell...

If anyone reading this is in the Los Angeles area [edit to clarify: these games are being run in-person at a local game store, not online - sorry for not making that more clear and getting a couple folks' hopes up to join] and wants in on session #3 let me know - there's still at least theoretically room for a couple more players (since it's TBD whether or how many of the potential new players will actually materialize), and the entire party is still 1st level so there are no issues with adding more members. There is still a LOT of adventure left to explore, so as long as people remain interested and available this could go on for a while, but we'll see. [FWIW 4 of the 5 players so far had some prior experience with AD&D but none of them are hardcore fans like me and none of them had played it anytime recently; the other player is an AD&D n00b whose only previous D&D experience has been with 5E. All of them have had a lot of fun so far - or at least that's what they're saying to my face.] 

Greyhawk Deities

A couple years ago when I converted my bootleg "AD&D Companion" compilation into the legitimate/OGL-licensed Heroic Legendarium, one section I was sorry to have to remove was the summary of the World of Greyhawk deities and the characteristics of their clerics, collecting the information that was previously spread across the World of Greyhawk boxed set and various issues of Dragon magazine into one convenient reference. 

Now, in preparation for next weekend's public playtest session, I decided to revisit that document. But instead of just copying the old text I decided it would be fun to expand it to include both those deities listed but not detailed in the boxed set as well as assorted god-like monsters. 

In creating the list I edited out a few deities* who seemed redundant or uninteresting (to me), and in a few cases repurposed some of their cleric characteristics into other deities with similar portfolios. Likewise, some deities were given cleric characteristics suggested by Roger Moore in Dragon #85 for use with clerics of the pantheons from Deities & Demigods. The rest I created myself, attempting to remain as consistent as possible with both the style and power-level of the published examples. It's likely someone else has already done and shared this same work at some point over the last 40 years, but I couldn't find anything online (at least not within my preferred 1st edition AD&D paradigm).

Symbols for the deities not detailed by Gygax or Lakofka mostly come from this wiki page (which I presume is based on content from post-Gygax TSR and WotC products with which I am not otherwise familiar), but I have unapologetically changed them wherever I didn't like what was provided there (and careful readers will also note other minor editorial emendations - deities with modified alignments or portfolios). Similarly, portfolios for the arch-devils and demon princes were mostly gleaned from a variety of online encyclopedias of folklore and witchcraft, in researching which I was surprised and amused to discover that almost all of the demon and devil names provided by Gygax in the Monster Manual II are authentic from medieval texts. In order to fit my list onto a single page I wasn't able to include all of the demon lords here, but I did keep a list of the portfolios of most of the remaining ones.

Anyway, as usual, once I've done the work I figured there's no reason not to share it more widely here. All of the deity names and previously-published descriptions are, of course, copyright Wizards of the Coast, LLC but are being used in a non-commercial manner, just like the wiki site linked above.

Download the pdf here 

*Beltar, Bralm, Delleb, Fortubo, Jascar, Lendor, Lydia, Phyton, Rudd, Velnius, and Xerbo. 8 of these 11 were detailed by Len Lakofka in Dragon magazine (issues #86-92, June-December 1984), for those who are interested

Milestone achieved

Yesterday, a bit over two years after work-in-earnest began (though the original outline was actually done back in 2017), I finally finished writing up the last encounter area for my D&D adventure/campaign book (working title Brink of Calamity), officially completing the first draft. 

It ended up being even more massive that I had originally intended, with the current draft clocking in at about 133K words and 167 pages (including 20 pages of maps). The original plan was to cover levels 1-6 but a few of the tougher areas may actually go beyond that (playtesting will tell). Here's how the contents break down:

• Roughly 8,000 square mile wilderness area with 30+ detailed locations
• 1 detailed town & 2 detailed villages
• 5 dungeons (including Melonath Falls and the Perlammo Salt Mines) with 16 combined levels (+ several mini-dungeon lairs)
• 3 dragons
• 7 new monsters
• 4 new magic items
• Over 130 named & detailed NPCs
• Extensive rumor and random encounter tables
• Dozens of potential plots and character interactions
• Enough material to fill at least 20 sessions of play

Playtesting is still ongoing (including a couple public sessions in August if anyone reading this is in the L.A. area and interested/available), as is editing/revision/layout work, so it will be still be a while before it's actually available for sale, but for as long as this thing has been gestating and as many fits and starts as I've had writing it just having a complete draft already feels like an accomplishment, so I wanted to take this opportunity to crow about it a bit.

And, while we're here, here are a couple other small things I created recently while procrastinating over finishing up the book draft:

1) An AD&D character sheet incorporating all of my additions and house rules from The Heroic Legendarium and Foster's Miscellany. I will always love TSR's old goldenrod AD&D character sheets, but it was becoming an increasingly large hassle, especially with new (or new to 1E) players, having to tell them to ignore this and add that and to put in X where it says Y. This sheet is purely functional and doesn't have the fun graphical elements and flourishes that I love in the goldenrod sheets, but (at least IMO) their increased ease of use makes up for that. For my own games I've printed them on light blue paper.

2) Even more randomly, a sheet of Character Background Detail Tables for Twilight:2000 1st edition characters. I never owned this game in its day and just recently acquired it (and being a dyed-in-the-wool grognard I of course chose to pick up the vintage 1984 edition rather than the current one published by Free League) and mostly loved it but also found it odd and frustrating that the characters' non-military background and lives and personalities were essentially completely undefined, so I decided to fill that stuff in myself with some Mekton/Cyberpunk-style lifepath tables. I suspect later editions (which I haven't seen) also cover this stuff, rendering this exercise kind of pointless and redundant, but I had fun coming up with it so I've got no regrets.  

[Review] Lost Dungeons of Tonsiborg

Received this thing in the mail a couple days ago, purchased as part of the recent Kickstarter. It was originally only offered as a deluxe hardcover "collector's item" edition at $100 per copy, but late in the campaign the organizers bowed to public demand and added an option for a "mass-market" softcover version at $30, which is what I bought. It's POD quality, black & white interior (I believe the hardcover version has interior color), 164 pages long including an index and OGL boilerplate. 

First, some quick history: Greg Svenson was one of the most active players in Dave Arneson's original Blackmoor campaign and, among other things, a participant in the first expedition into the dungeons beneath Castle Blackmoor over the 1970-71 Christmas holiday, as recounted here. In 1973, so after about 2 years of play, Greg decided to create his own dungeon, Tonisborg, using the pre-publication draft of the D&D rules that was floating around the Twin Cities at that time (the first rules these players had ever seen, since prior to Gygax drafting and sending these rules to the Twin Cities for comment, Arneson had kept everything in his head as, effectively, a black box). He then lent the 10-level dungeon to his friend and fellow Blackmoor player (and creator of the Dungeon! boardgame) Dave Megarry, who was spending the summer in Boston, where he promptly lost it. But then, 40 or so years later, Megarry found the manuscript (which it turned out wasn’t actually lost, just misplaced) and shared it with Greg and the guys behind the Secrets of Blackmoor documentary, and they decided to publish it as a book, initially in a super-limited-edition deluxe hardcover collector's edition in 2020, and just now in an affordable paperback version (with promises of an eventual pdf version to come as well).

So this is a pretty neat historical artifact - an actual complete 10-level dungeon (maps and accompanying keys) that dates all the way back to before the publication of D&D, written by one of the players in Arneson's Blackmoor campaign. This makes it very analogous to Rob Kuntz's El Raja Key dungeons, created around the same time by a similarly-situated player (as Rob was one of the most active players in Gary Gygax's Greyhawk campaign) and published a few years back on the El Raja Key DVD Archive, but in an incomplete form (IIRC only 2 or 3 of the 12 levels included keys). This book includes both photographic reproductions of the original hand-drawn maps and hand-written keys (one line per room) as well as re-drawn maps and expanded (but still pretty minimalist) keys in something like the manner of the treatment given to Rob Kuntz's Bottle City.  

Looking at the maps, the resemblance to Arneson's style (as seen in the Temple of the Frog dungeons and the Blackmoor Castle dungeons in First Fantasy Campaign) is immediately obvious, and striking because it doesn't really look like much of anything else that's come out in the 50 years since. The dungeon levels are almost all hallways, many of them at 45-degree angles from each other, with tons of stairways and shafts connecting the levels. Sometimes the hallways meet in larger chambers that are almost always odd-shaped. There are only about a dozen rooms per level (only the bottom level has more than 20 rooms) and they're generally very small (10x10 or 20x20) and hidden behind secret doors in the middle of hallways (sometimes a room will lie at the end of a hallway, but more often the hallways end in stairwells or just dead-end). Almost all of them are occupied by monsters, with seemingly little if any consideration given to the inhabitants' size: a 10x10 room might well contain a dragon or purple worm or 18 ghouls or a dozen giant hogs. My guess as to how this would tend to work in play is that the players would wander down a hallway, a monster would burst out from a secret door to attack, and the party would flee to either a wider hallway or chamber to make a stand, only returning to the monster's lair post-combat to collect whatever treasure it might have had. 

It seems worth noting that all but one of the monsters and three of the treasures (with the "specials" all located on level 10) could be - and presumably were - rolled straight off the tables that would later appear in D&D vol. 2 & 3: a spectre with 10,000 silver, 2 gems, 4 jewelry, and a potion of growth; 2 gargoyles with 6,000 copper and 3 jewelry; 4 giant ants with no treasure; 2 wererats* with 3 gems and a ring of human control, etc. This is primitive stuff. But that's okay. In fact it's the point - it's a window into how the game was played in its earliest days, when it was all novel and everyone hadn't become jaded. Your mind is not going to be blown by this - you're not going to get any mystic revelations into the True Spirit of D&D or whatever. But you might get a stirring memory of the first dungeon you designed when you initially discovered D&D as a kid and how thrilling that was. There's probably no point in actually playing it - anyone with a copy of the rules and a set of dice can come up with something just as good on their own. It might be fun to run at a convention, though - let multiple groups delve in and see which one returns to the surface with the most treasure, and let them know the dungeon they're exploring was created in 1973, before the rules were actually published. Pretty neat for a few hours.

I'm a sucker for D&D history and love looking at these old artifacts - First Fantasy Campaign and Rob Kuntz's archive and those over-the-shoulder photos of Gary Gygax's Greyhawk Castle dungeons, and so on. To me, there's something refreshing ands inspiring about seeing what the game looked like to its creators before it become professionalized - when they were creating stuff to play, not to sell. So, for me, this content, which between the 2 versions of the dungeon and a couple pages of history (the history of the manuscript, not in-game backstory) fills about 50 pages, is worth the $30 I spent on it. Which is good, because the other ~110 pages are weird and dubious.

To start with, before the dungeons, there's a ~35 page introduction made up of essays about how to play and run games in the "old-school" style filled with anecdotes and interview quotes from Arneson and various members of his circle (a lot of it seemingly drawn from Secrets of Blackmoor) a lot of which is good advice (though some of it is questionable) focusing on all of the usual-suspect topics: players should focus on strategy and tactics and think outside the box and focus on the situation rather than the game rules; GMs should focus on keeping things moving and building atmosphere and tension and shouldn't be afraid to improvise (rulings over rules) and shouldn't focus on stuff like balancing encounters - challenges should be tough but potential rewards for good play rich (and resource-management concerns should always be considered: light, encumbrance, etc). Generally pretty solid advice (and, I would note, little if anything that Gary Gygax would've disagreed with) but all very basic and old hat to anyone likely to be reading this book (i.e. hard-core collectors and game-historians). 

Early in this section they make this statement: "We do not assume that you or your players have ever played an RPG before. This entire book is a lesson on how to play these games and how to combine new and old play concepts in order to create an enriching play session." Really? Someone who's never played or read an rpg before is going to pay $100 for this book of all things? This ostensibly high-end collectible (when the publishers were arguing against the notion of doing the mass-market edition one of their justifications was that they wanted it to be an archival-quality collectible that people would treasure and pass on to their grandkids) that isn't even available for sale via traditional retail channels is also supposed to be an entry-level product? Bizarre, to say the least. 

These essays could have made a nice pamphlet aimed at new (or at least new-to-old-school) players, and would sit fairly comfortably alongside the many other such pamphlets that already exist, but in the context of this product it all feels pointless and even vaguely insulting, as if to say that anyone with sufficient knowledge and interest in the history of the hobby to be interested in this book would actually need to learn any of the "lessons" offered here - that we're apparently all idiots who need explained to us (over half a page and at least 500 words) stuff like the idea that the referee shouldn't place the map on the table but should instead describe it to the players verbally and have them draw their own copy of the map as they explore. Wow, really? I had no idea! I mean, I've been doing this for 39 years, but  because I've only experienced the debased Gygaxian version for idiots and not TRV ARNESONIAN DND I've never been exposed to this revolutionary concept. Thanks, guys!

This bizarre confusion about who the audience of this book is supposed to be is compounded by the final third of the book, which is an entire "retroclone" version of the original D&D rules. These "Champions of ZED: Zero Edition Dungeoneering" rules were apparently previously published in a standalone version before being included here and purport to be a true-to-Arneson representation of the game. In practice, it appears to be about 90-95% identical to the contents of the 1974 boxed set, including all of the same ability scores, classes, races, spells, monsters, treasure tables, and magic items, all of which are dutifully reprinted. 

As with any retroclone game, there are a few minor differences: saving throws are handled differently (saving throw values are rolled as a parallel set of stats); XP is only earned for GP that are spent (as per FFC); there's a critical hit system when an attack rolls a natural 20 (with a 1-in-10 chance of instant death); etc. I'm pretty sure all of these differences could have been summarized in about 4 pages of house rulings (and, I should probably note here, none of these additions or changes actually appear to be, you know, any good - to the extent any of them actually do represent material that was used by Arneson and present in the pre-publication drafts but was left out of the published game that's, if anything, a testament to Gygax's editing and playtesting to identify them as bad rules). But instead we get almost 60 pages copy-pasting every spell, monster, and magic item description, and every table from D&D vol. 1 & 2. Curiously, except for a couple pages about dungeon-stocking, nothing else from vol. 3 is included - nothing on outdoor adventuring, castle building, barony management, expert hirelings, aerial combat, or waterborne adventures. Maybe this material was included in the standalone version of Champions of ZED but was excluded here as not being relevant to play within the Tonisborg dungeons? 

We even get half a page explaining how to read dice: what "3d8" means, how to use a six-sided die to get a number from 1-3, and how to use 20-sided dice both to generate a number from 1-20 (use a control die to determine if you use the number rolled or add 10) and to generate a number from 1-100 (roll two dice at once where one represents the tens and the other the ones, with a result of 00 counting as 100, not 0). Because, again, in the publishers’ minds there are apparently people out there who were willing to pay $100 for this book (and, for that matter, to read all the way to page 96 in it) who don't already know that. 

So, it's weird. On the one hand it's a reproduction of an artifact from the earliest days of the hobby of interest to the hardest-core game historians. But on the other, it's trying to be a complete stand-alone game and instruction manual for n00bs (who have $100+ to spare and are following rpg Kickstarters). I'm not sorry I bought it, but am very glad I only spent $30 on the softcover and not $100 on the "collector's item" hardcover. When the pdf version is released, I'd recommend it to anyone who's interested in the early days of the hobby. If you like original D&D and First Fantasy Campaign you'll probably find the middle-third of this book (the actual dungeons) interesting. 

*This one is a mild curiosity because wererats weren't actually included in the original D&D set and were added to the game with Supplement I (Greyhawk) in 1975. I wonder if maybe they were included in the draft Svenson was using but got dropped from the final product, or maybe he'd heard about them from someone who played in Greyhawk, or maybe it was a case of parallel evolution (wererats, after all, feature prominently in Fritz Leiber's The Swords of Lankhmar, published in 1968, and seem like a pretty obvious candidate to become a D&D monster), but the last doesn't actually seem all that likely since it would be the only such case in the dungeon - everything else except for the one "special" monster on level 10 comes straight out of the D&D Vol. 2 monster list  (or, for the various giant animals - spiders, beetles, ants, hogs, etc. - the dungeon encounter tables in Vol. 3)

On "The Dungeon As A Mythic Underworld"

[This was originally posted as a comment on a Reddit post but, knowing that will disappear down the memory within a few hours, figured it was worth preserving here as well]

In Original D&D (1974) the advice and procedures for creating dungeons were very strange: dungeons were supposed to be infinitely large and ever-changing, filled with a mostly-random assortment of monsters, treasures, tricks and traps with no particular reason or justification, and there were even weirder rules like that doors are always stuck for adventurers but never for dungeon inhabitants, and that all dungeon inhabitants can see in the dark unless they’re in the service of a PC in which case they lose that ability. 

By the time of AD&D and TSR's first published modules (in 1978) Gary Gygax had mostly moved away from that mode of design and towards a more logical and rational style that James Maliszewski later dubbed “Gygaxian naturalism” (though that is something of a misnomer since other folks/games like RuneQuest and Chivalry & Sorcery both went there first and leaned it to it more heavily - Gary always kept one foot in each camp) and the earlier mode was derided as “funhouse” style and looked down upon, and was largely abandoned by the early-mid 80s (The Abduction of Good King Despot, published in 1987, was probably the last gasp of this style of adventure in the Classic Era). Which was a shame, because that kind of game can be a lot of fun, especially compared to overly-ecologized stuff which can be dry and boring (especially when it jumps through so many hoops to explain and justify its “fantastic” elements that it drains the thrill and wonder from them).

Fast forward about 20 years to the early 21st century, and a few of us were trying on forums to revive the legacy of that old style, to bring back more of the sense of freewheeling fun and adventure that we felt had gotten lost and buried in 2E and 3E D&D. So we went back to the earliest material (books, fanzines, and testimonies of first-generation players) and advocated for the way they did it then and that the game could still be played that way and would be as much or more fun than the other approach. But that effort was hampered because people kept harping on the lack of logic and realism - declaring that everything was arbitrary and dumb and simplistic and they couldn’t suspend their disbelief enough to enjoy playing in such an environment.

Frustrated at being put on the defensive and having the same arguments over and over again, a couple of us decided it was worthwhile to come up with a rhetorical justification that went beyond the reductive “it’s just a game lol” excuses. I was reading both Lovecraft’s Dreamlands cycle and Joseph Campbell's Hero With a Thousand Faces at the time and realized that all of the weird elements of funhouse-style D&D made sense in a world of dream-logic and in the context of the mythological hero's journey; combined with the notion already present in D&D lore that almost all of the classic “funhouse dungeons” were built and overseen by a hostile or insane demiurge of divine or near-divine stature (Zagyg, Halaster, Zenopus, Keraptis, Acererack, Ignax the 27th, etc.) and it all kind of came together. I was (I think, but don’t have any receipts to back it up) the first person to articulate the idea of the dungeon as a mythical otherworld that is specifically counter to the normal logic and natural laws that govern not just our world but even the mundane parts of the fantasy world (the towns, wilderness, and “lair-dungeons” that operate on (what would later be called) Gygaxian Naturalist principles); that entering the dungeon is literally crossing the Campbellian Threshold to Adventure into a mythic otherworld. Either way, a friend of mine named Jason Cone (who goes by the forum-handle Philotomy Jurament) took this idea and ran with it, expanding and formalizing it into an essay that he posted on his blog c. 2005ish.

A few years later, following Gygax’s death, the controversial sacred-cow-slaughtering shift to D&D 4E, and the release of OGL “retroclone” games like Labyrinth Lord, there was a sudden upswell of interest in the oldest forms of D&D with tons of blogs (Maliszewski's Grognardia chief among them) popping up on the subject and bringing those old forum discussions to a new and wider audience. These guys were all really taken with Philotomy’s essay on the Dungeon As A Mythic Underworld and it became something of a foundational text to the budding OSR movement, alongside Matt Finch’s Quick Primer for Old School Gaming (which popularized the "rulings, not rules" concept that also grew out of those same forum discussions). Between those two essays, all of the things about 70s-era D&D that had been so roundly dismissed as dumb and primitive and broken in the 80s and 90s now had a sufficient rhetorical and game-philosophical justification that people felt freed up to play that in that "old-school" way and have fun with it without having to feel guilty or defensive about it.

But now, another dozen-plus years later, that’s all ancient history. The maxims of Rulings Not Rules and Dungeon As Mythic Underworld have become OSR dogma, stripped of their original context and purpose - i.e. to oppose the then-dominant contrary trends and justify a style of play that had been denigrated and dismissed for decades. What got lost is that these concepts weren’t posited as the only or best way to play, but as an alternative. We never intended to claim that rules are always bad, or that all dungeons should be mythic underworlds and normal logic and ecology should never be employed. On the contrary, one of the original points of the dungeon as mythic underworld is that it’s an exception to the fantastic-naturalistic logic and ecology that govern the rest of the game-world. To me there’s an ideal balance between rules and rulings, between logic and symbolism, between reality and dreams, that Gygax, Jaquays, Stafford, Perrin and a few others instinctively hit c. 1978-82, that really thrills and inspires me even to this day. The pendulum swung too far in one direction in the 80s-90s and diminished that magic, then our attempted correction in the 00s caused it to swing too far in the other direction with the OSR in the 2010s.

So if you feel [like the Reddit poster this was written in response to] that the Mythic Underworld concept is overused and is too often used as an excuse for lazy or sloppy design, I say that you’re right, and do so as one of the first people to articulate the concept and inspire the guy who popularized it. There’s a place for dream-logic non-naturalistic dungeons, but they should be (at least in my opinion) a fairly minor ingredient in an otherwise Gygaxian Naturalist stew rather than the only ingredient in the pantry.

"Foster's Miscellany, Volume 1" now available for sale

As mentioned in my last post, I decided to compile the various little house rule and addition tidbits that have accumulated over the last two years since The Heroic Legendarium manuscript was completed into a 20 page pdf which is now officially available at DriveThruRPG as PWYW, under the title Foster's Miscellany, Volume I. No print option because it's only 20 pages (and only 16 of them are actual content), and probably nothing new to anybody who's been reading and downloading content from this blog, but hopefully still worth a look for anyone who liked the Heroic Legendarium (or hasn't bought it yet but would like a cheap preview - about half of the new book is Play Aids that combine HL data alongside the original canon data (class and race info, equipment lists, weapon stats) for convenience at the table.

Since it's PWYW I went ahead and made the preview the entire thing, so you can see what you'll be getting if you purchase it. 

The big adventure-campaign book is still coming eventually (progress has been slow the last month or so but I haven't given up, I swear!) but I figured this was a nice little interim thing which will hopefully be of at least a bit of interest to some folks and will also (hopefully) suffice to get me off of DriveThruRPG's "second class citizen" list where they consign publishers who've only released one title. It also allowed me an opportunity to make a little tribute on to dedication page my dad, who passed away last week, following my mom by just over 13 months (and was an easier way to keep my mind occupied than trying to be creative).

Anyway, I hope y'all will take a look and maybe find at least one or two things that you'll find worth using in your 1E/OSRIC games.

Some new house rules & additions

As a way of procrastinating from doing more work on the adventure-campaign book I've been working on seemingly forever I decided to collect my miscellaneous "OSRIC" house rules and additions that weren't included in The Heroic Legendarium, either because I only came up with them after the contents of that book had been finalized or because for whatever reason I forgot to include them there. A lot of this stuff is pretty simple and minor, to the point that it didn't necessarily need to be formalized in writing, but a couple of them are more substantial and impactful. 

While I'm not so naive as to believe anyone besides me would want to actually use all of these rules and rulings in their games (surely anyone running a 1st edition game at this point has already resolved all of these issues to their satisfaction many years ago), maybe some folks will find something they like here, and - as always - I've already done the work of writing it all up so why not share it, right? So, that said:

Google Drive download link

Enjoy!

Update: In a fit of inspiration, I decided to combine this document with the other house rules and play aids I've published here over the last couple years (since the HL text was finalized) into a smallish (20 page) pdf and put it up on DriveThruRPG as PWYW. I'm still a second-class citizen there so it hasn't gone live yet, but should within the next couple days (and when it does I'll probably make another post about it with a link). The Necropolis conversion notes aren't included (both because they're incomplete and because I'm not sure it would actually be legal to upload them for sale there - I know people sell 5E conversion guides for old 1E modules but am not sure what the rules are for that and don't want to take any chances and risk a repeat of last year's Lulu fiasco) but everything else is. Most of you reading this have probably already downloaded anything that you're interested in, but it might still be convenient to have it all in a single file, plus it will at least theoretically reach the people who (shockingly!) don't read this blog.

D&D Historical Sales Data

Recently game historians Paul Stormberg (at Dragonsfoot) and Ben Riggs (on Facebook) have been sharing a trove of historical sales data from TSR for various D&D and AD&D products. As a nerd, I'm a sucker for this sort of stuff, but was frustrated by the fragmentary and piecemeal nature of it so I decided to copy & paste their numbers into a combined spreadsheet of my own. Once I had collected all of their data and organized it as I wanted it (chronologically by release date, more or less) I also felt the urge to insert placeholders for all of the major items (hardback books and boxed sets) that they did not provide numbers for, which became a massive rabbit-hole because I'd forgotten how many boxed sets TSR released for 2E AD&D (and I have no confidence that I didn't miss some, especially since I had stopped buying any of them by about the end of 1990 - the last two items on the list I ever actually owned were the first Ruins of Undermountain set and the Monstrous Manual - the latter came out a couple years after I'd stopped playing 2E, but I bought it anyway as a reference to replace the terrible looseleaf binders that had preceded it). 

With these numbers conveniently combined, I noticed a couple interesting (to me) bits of trivia. While everybody knows that the D&D Basic Set was TSR's all-time best-selling product, with total sales of over 3 million units, if you separate out the different versions of that set (1977 Holmes, 1981 Moldvay, and 1983 Mentzer), the best-selling single product is actually the 1st edition AD&D Players Handbook (with total sales of more than 1.5 million).

In all, TSR had five items that sold over a million units each:

1. AD&D Players Handbook, 1st edition (1.57 million)
2. AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide, 1st edition (1.33 million)
3. D&D Basic Set - Moldvay edit (1.26 million)
4. AD&D Monster Manual, 1st edition (1.16 million)
5. D&D Basic Set - Mentzer edit (1.1 million)

Additionally, another 6 products sold over 500,000 units apiece:

1. AD&D Player's Handbook, 2nd edition (776K)
2. D&D Basic Set - Holmes edit (639K)
3. D&D Expert Set - Cook/Marsh edit (619K)
4. AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide, 2nd edition (543K)
5. AD&D Monster Manual II (541K)
6. D&D Companion Set (537K)

The D&D Companion Set is a weird anomaly on this list, with a sales trajectory in its first 3 years (1984-86) pretty similar to other products, followed by an inexplicably huge jump in its 4th year (1987) to above what it sold in year one (and more than any other product sold that year, except for the brand-new Dragonlance Adventures AD&D hardback), with sales remaining similarly high for the last 3 years of its product life. I have no way to explain that strange late-in-cycle popularity for this set. I almost wonder if the numbers for those years might be off by a factor of 10 (that TSR's records show 132,000 sales when it was actually 13,200, and the same for the following years), which would be more in line with the trends seen for other products released around the same time (and would put its total sales around 250K - still very respectable). If anybody has an explanation for why these numbers are correct and this several-year-old boxed set was somehow outselling both the core AD&D books and the D&D Basic Set by a wide margin for several years, I'd love to hear it. Possibly AD&D fans were buying it because it included rules for topics (domain management, mass combat, top-end monsters) that weren't really covered in AD&D, but if so, why did they wait until 1987 to start doing so? I was active in the scene in those years (reading Dragon magazine, attending GenCon) and I certainly don't remember the D&D Companion Set being particularly popular or talked-about, and although I had a copy (purchased in 1984) I don't remember anyone else from my gaming circle buying it, and certainly not in 1987-90.

Anyway, this is deep in-the-weeds nerd trivia for sure, but since I spent a couple hours yesterday pulling it all together, I figured I'd make it available for anyone else who might also be interested. Enjoy! 

Google Sheets link

Plugging Away

As of a month ago I'm now working again on a part-time basis (three days a week). In January I walked away from a position I'd held for over 20 years because I was feeling extremely burned out and over-worked, and took about two months off before starting this new position (which happily pays about the same for 3 days a week as I was earning at the other place working full-time. I had worried that going back to work even part-time would take me away from writing, but I'm happy to report that it has actually done the opposite - the discipline of knowing that I have to cram all of my creative work into the four non-work days (but that I also have those four days available for creative work) has energized me and cleared away a lot of the ennui and procrastination that had kept me from doing much substantive writing (as opposed to low-effort social media posts) during my ostensible break time.

Within those last few weeks I've written about 16,000 words of new adventure material (a bit more than the total word count of "Melonath Falls," which was just under 15K words) detailing 76 rooms across 3 levels of a planned 6 level ~140 room dungeon and am not feeling burned out or blocked - I've got a pretty solid outline of what will be on the remaining 3 levels (and have drawn preliminary maps - one thing I did get accomplished before I went back to work) and feel like I can keep my momentum going and actually get this thing wrapped up. 

It's part of the same setting as Melonath Falls and is a prequel of sorts (since it's intended for 1st-4th level characters instead of 3rd-6th), both based on an ambitious outline I wrote several years ago. It's written in the same style so those who didn't like the first one aren't likely to like this one much either, but I'm pretty happy with what I've got so far and hope that those who did like Melonath Falls will feel this is of-a-piece with it (and hopefully superior, given its larger scope and at least theoretical additional lessons learned based on how the last one was received). I'm very eager to get it in front of some players to see how they'll be able to deal with it, and whether or not I've totally overestimated the capability of  1st-2nd level characters (or possibly underestimated it, but that seems less likely). Writing all this stuff and being excited about it but not being able to share with anyone yet is frustrating! 

The ultimate plan is that once this dungeon is done it, Melonath Falls, some town and outdoor material I wrote a few years ago, and a couple more sections still to be written, will all be combined and published together as a single volume, likely somewhere around 120 pages in length, which can be run as a low-level "campaign in a box" taking characters from 1st to 6th (+) level over a couple dozen sessions, or can be pulled apart and used in bits and pieces as each individual purchaser sees fit. I don't have an ETA on when this will happen yet because I've still got an estimated one-third or so of the thing still to write (and the not-inconsiderable challenge of procuring professional quality maps, art, and ideally a second set of editorial eyes) but with the progress I've made in the last few weeks it definitely feels like things are moving and the end is a lot more realistically in sight than it was before. Stay tuned!