S7S Session 1 – Treasure Ship

The crew of the Monkeysquid’s Musket worked their ship through a particularly dense part of the Jungle Sky, clumps of trees making for a narrow passage. But their contact Otter was right – there was a Barathi treasure ship in the jungle – they could make out its stern from, the rest of the ship embedded in the trees. Not one of the giant treasure galleons, but a worthy prize nonetheless. Foppe navigated the junk as close as he could – a little too close as it turned out, as the Musket skimmed against a dense patch of trees.

The crew boarded the treasure ship but, sure enough, it turned out to be a trap – a group of savage blue men were waiting for them. However Guy of the Ska Ku, who had descended from the Blue Men, was able to convince them to depart with only a small insult to his honor.

Securing the modest treasure, the Musket made its way to Barathi. Foppe cloaked himself in a cunning disguise, fearful he might be recognized. Penth and her shield maiden Briea had to endure the attention of being the only women on the ship, though the fact that Penth could probably cripple any other cewmember deflected most of the attention to the more approachable Briea. After docking, they made their way to Otter’s warehouse. He made the mistake of trying to stiff our heroes, but a sword from Foppe and spear from Penth, both at his throat, convinced him that would be a bad idea.

Rich in coin, our heroes spent some of it at a tavern, the Sign of the Red Hourglass. It was there that Ser Knight made contact with a woman looking for passage – Rebbecca Ilvis and her guardian, the elderly though fit retainer Oraraes. She was fleeing from a royal wedding with the heir apparent to the Barathi throne, being quite out of the ordinary in not wanting to enter a marriage in which she did not love any of the participants. She was looking for passage to the small island of Kirrathi, a colony of Barathi fighting for independence. How could any respecting band of heroes, especially one with a former Royal Musketeer, turn down a maiden looking for aid?

En route to the island the saw they were being followed – and they learned that there was a little more to the story. It was not much of a surprise that Lady Ilvis was involved with the rebellion on Kirrathi. Shortly after docking, in the shadow of a dark tower looming over the Kirrathi harbor, the port was officially closed, the tower having a clear shot at any ship trying to depart. Meeting with her resistance contacts, it so happened they knew of a hidden underground entrance to the tower, and where the powder room might be found…

 

S7S Characters: Penthesilea

Name: Penthesilea

Foible: Can’t allow herself to be shown up by men.

Motivation: To find and recruit female Koldun for the Oripata [+2]

Nationality: Pontus Native [+2]

Past: Aristocrat [+2]
Swashbuckling Forte: Myrine [+2]

Fortes:

Sidekick [+2]
Fencing [+2]

Techniques:

Gungnir (Fencing)
Idium: Fierce (1)
Weapon: Spear (1)
Weapon: Shield (1)
Weapon Dual Weapons (1)
Versus: Men (1)

Maneuver: Intimidation (1- Myrine)
Situation: At Court (1- Rogue)

Sidekick- Briea Shieldmaiden (Good [+2] Sidekick)
Foible:
Always falling for/getting captured by the bad guys

Fortes:
Page [+2]
Rogue [+2]
Acrobatics [+0]
2 chained Techniques:
Prepare her lady for battle (1- Page)
Find whatever her lady desires (1- Page)

The Cloud Island of Pontus:

The cloud Islands of Pontus, have steep, rocky coasts with rivers that cascade through the gorges of the coastal ranges. A few larger rivers, those cutting back through the Pontic Mountains, have tributaries that flow in broad, elevated basins. Access inland from the coast is limited to a few narrow valleys because mountain ridges, with elevations of 1,525 to 1,800 m in the west and 3,000 to 4,000 m in the east. The Kackar Mountains form an almost unbroken wall separating the coast from the interior. The higher slopes facing southwest tend to be densely wet.

Pontus is a mountainous country—wild and barren in the east, where the great chains approach the Euxine; but in the west watered by the great rivers Halys and Iris, and their tributaries, the valleys of which, as well as the land along the coast, are extremely fertile. The eastern part was rich in minerals, and contained the celebrated iron mines and the women smiths of Chalybes are renowned for their quality work, both military and civilian.

Cherries were supposed to have been brought from Pontus to the rest of the cloud islands shortly after it was settled.

The Oripata live and rule Pontus. They were originally a group of women prisoners, the worst offenders, exiled from Barati about a thousand years ago. There they formed an independent kingdom under the government of a queen named Hippolyta. The Oripata were have founded several towns on the island. The largest being Smyrna, Ephesus, the inland capital Sinope and the only coastal city of Paphos.

No men are permitted to have sexual encounters or reside in Oripata country, or go beyond the walled city of Paphos. In order to prevent their race from dying out, the Oripata are obligated to visit the village of Gargareans, a small, remote, heavily guarded village of men, located in the mountains, to produce at least one female child (some females opt to stay and have more children, acting as guards as well). The male children who were the result of these visits are either kept with their fathers or placed on a small bluewood raft and sent into the seven skies.

The female children are kept and brought up by their mothers, and trained in agricultural pursuits, hunting, and the art of war. Oripata pirates that raid other ships are usually not lookinig for loot, but rather male booty. When they take a ship, they would not kill all the men. Some they would take as slaves, (usually the young and strong) to bring back to the village of Gargareans. They are fearful of magic and will not allow any with gifts live. They also will not hesitate to kill anyone who steps out of line, as they can always find more men on the 7 skies.

The Oripata are typically good at hunting, acrobatics, the bow, spear, axe, and a distinctive half shield, nearly in the shape of a crescent.

The Myrine are a group of elite warrior women who are tasked by the Hippolyta to venture forth from the sky island to find and return with various things to help increase the Oripata’s position in the 7 skies. The excel in a special shield and spear fencing style called Gungnir.

Gungnir: Only taught to women, and favored by the elite warrior women of Pontus. Idiom: Fierce; Weapon: Spear; Weapon: Shield; Weapon: Dual Weapons; Versus: Men (5 points)

 

S7S Characters: Ser Knight (Corwin Duskblade)

Ser Knight (Corwin Duskblade)

Foible: Proud (stupidly so, in all things)

Motivation: Good [+2] Power

Nationality: Good [+2] Colronan Kingdom

Past: Good [+2] Different Nationality (Ilwuz)

Swashbuckling Forte: Good [+2] Koldun

Additional Fortes: Good [+2] Gift: Griffin, Good [+2] Colronan Musketeer, Good [+2] Aristocracy (Knight)

Techniques: Idiom: Precise (unchained), Koldun: Qilin, Koldun: Merhorse

Style Dice: 1

Training Points: 0

Miscellany: Born on Ilwuz, Corwin was raised in the standard traditions of the Ilwuz – meaning he learned to use a blade, sail skyships, and start drinking early on. On one of his first cruises as a cabin boy aboard a pirate ship while only 8 years old, the ship was captured by Colronan Kingdom forces. Taken prisoner, he was dumped into the household of the captain, who was a baron in the Colronan Kingdom. Educated as an experiement to determine if he could be “cured” of his Ilwuz barbarism, he excelled at lessons, being accepted into the Colronan Musketeers and earning his knighthood (and some extremely modest – in that nobody lives there – estates). While going through Musketeer training, Corwin realized that his gift and talents were emerging – in an environment that had little tolerance for either. Knowing full well that he would need to be fettered (or worse!) if he stayed, Corwin instead set out into the world “to win his fortune”. His adoptive parents were quite proud – a failing that he learned at their knees. If only they had known his first stop would be Ilwuz… and from there a quest to master his Koldun talents. Calling himself only “Ser Knight”, he is setting out to learn all he can of the Koldun arts and has a vague plan to return to the Colronan Kingdom to “show them”.

 

S7S Characters: Foppe

Foppe

Foible: Wrong place at wrong time.

Motivation: Good [+2] Restore reputation.

Nationality: Good [+2] Barathi.

Past: Good [+2] Disgraced noble.

Swashbuckling Forte: Good [+2] Fencing.

Additional Fortes: Good [+2] Gift (Thunderbird); Good [+2] Reputation; Good [+2] Skysailor

Techniques:

• At a disadvantage (unchained)
• vs. Nobility (fencing)
• Weapon: Rapier (fencing)

Style Dice: 1

Training Points: 0

Miscellany: A noble hailing from Barathi, Foppe has become the master at being in the wrong place at the wrong time. When he is near, people have reason to be nervous – in his presence odd accidents have a tendency to happen. Nobles fall from balconies, bridges collapse, etc. After the firstborn son and heir apparent of the Empress Vanadi died in a bizarre accident Foppe decided it was time to ramble on. He has taken on a series of odd jobs since and is currently the sailing master of the Monkeysquid’s Musket, a pirate and smuggling skyjunk.

Foppe’s strange luck is a combination of his Thunderbird Gift (which he is unaware of and functions unconsciously) and his foible. As a result, odd coincidences tend to happen to him and around him. Sometimes this is to his advantage, sometimes it causes him trouble – but his life has never been boring.

 

S7S Characters: Guy

That Guy Who Did That Thing
Foible: Obnoxiously arrogant.

Motivation: Good [+2] Show How Awesome I Am.

Nationality: Good [+2] Sha-Ku.

Past: Good [+2] Sha-Ku rider.

Swashbuckling Forte: Good [+2] Pirate.

Additional Fortes: Good [+2] Acrobatic; Good [+2] Sidekick (Ruq); Good [+2] Repartee

Techniques:

• Master Swordsman (Pirate)
• Sarcastic (Repartee)
• Mounted Archery (Ruq Rider)

Style Dice: 1

Training Points: 0

Miscellany: Guy’s real name is unknown – non-natives of Sha Ku have never been able to pronounce it. He began answering to Guy after constantly being referred to as “That Guy Who Did That Thing”. Guy left Sha Ku in an effort to gain enough esteem all over the world to increase his prestige in his homeland. He quickly became a pirate – a very showy pirate – and is captain of the Monkeysquid’s Musket. He probably isn’t the most talented sailor or pirate aboard that small vessel, but he does boast the most.

 

Switching Gears to Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies

Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies

Blog posting for me has been beyond lethargic of late. What with the normal life of being a parent of two young kids added to some scary moments with my eldest daughter (corneal abrasion – nothing major as it turned out, but scary as hell with several days of her eye hurting too much to open) and my father-in-law having a stroke. Work has picked up a bit.

Beyond blog posting going way down, I began having trouble with my Wild Talents game. I like Wild Talents a lot and had been having fun. But it is a fairly crunchy game and the prep work was causing me problems – while not requiring as much work as D&D 3.x, it still has a decent level of crunch. And one thing I learned is it requires a decent amount of prep work to consider the right NPCs to challenge your heroes. With some regret I had to put the game on hiatus.

What was clear was I needed something with a lot less crunch. Something I could prep super-quickly – or even, heavens forbid, run on the fly. After some investigation, I narrowed it down to two options – Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies (a game of swashbuckling adventure in a world of floating cloud islands and flying skyships) and Spirit of the Century (a pulp game). After some discussion with my group – and the discovery that one player was totally on board with the idea of sky pirates – we went with Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies.

Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies uses a game engine called PDQ# – Prose Descriptive Qualities Sharp. The idea is your character is centered around fortes. A forte is basically anything you can use to solve problems. They can be careers, possessions, allies, desires, etc. It is a fairly rules-lite game, but unlike others I have experienced, it seems to have just enough structure so you are not making everything up. The game is also designed for characters, to frankly, kick ass. Your characters are supposed to be good at things. And they are heroes! Even if they are pirates… After all, the Dread Pirate Roberts of The Princess Bride turned out to be a pretty ok guy…

We had one session of making characters. To set the mood properly, we needed snacks with a pirate theme…

Arrr... Pirate Cupcakes

Daughter who Frosted Cupcakes for Daddy's Playgroup

So fortified, character generation went pretty well, with the crew of the Monkey Squid’s Musket ready for action. Last night was our first game. I had a rough idea for the game in the days leading up to it, but it wasn’t until the night before that I statted things. Or at least I intended to – I fell sound asleep after a busy day with the kiddies. So stats were made during lunch at work…

The game went well – it was a lot of fun – at least for me it was – and it seemed like the players enjoyed themselves…  Certainly some tweaking to work on and I was far from worried about every rule. One nice thing about the rules was it allows social activities to be rolled just like combat ones. I first encountered that in the Dying Earth RPG. As a result, the opening encounter, which I had assumed was going to be a slugfest with the savage Blue Men of the Jungle Sky, wound up involving a PC who played a character descended from these savages, a player who excels at making things go boom in most games, successfully convinced them to go away.

I’ve seen the setting slightly criticized – I seem to recall rpg.net conversations mentioning that while the setting is quite neat, more detail would be nice. As it turned out, the level of detail worked perfectly, especially in a game where players are encouraged to help shape it. One player ran a character who was extremely lucky – but as a side effect important people have a habit of dying in his presence – from incredibly odd accidents. The player has control over this, but the character does not! This character hailed from one of the major islands, Barathi, but was exiled/ran away (little unclear as to which…) when an important noble met an unfortunate accident. The adventure took them to Barathi, where they encountered a noble woman breaking from tradition and trying to escape an arranged marriage to the heir to the throne of Barathi (it also later turned out she was a sympathizer to rebels on a minor island ruled by the Barathi). When she mentioned the heir, Markiz Donaldo Vanadi, that player chimed in “well he’s actually the second heir – I was at a party with his older brother and he unfortunately fell from the balcony to his death…. But it wasn’t my fault!” The broad brushes of the setting fit perfectly for our group – prior to this game I never knew Donaldo had had an older brother (nor did I know the Blue Men would negotiate with their more civilized cousins…)

There’s a few things I’d work on in future sessions – certain players had a bit more to do than others – and I’ll want to study everyone’s character sheets a bit more to help facilitate this. But it is something I’ll definitely want to play some more.

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Kerberos Club Session 3: Encounter on the Middle Passage

Brief Overview

February 25, 1865, R.M.S. Caliban, under the command of Captain Gerald Macduff, three days from reaching Brazilian port of Belém

Our heroes had taken passage on the Caliban in search of the temple near the Amazon river that Confederate explorers had found – one that seemed to have a mystical altar missing a single gemstone – one our heroes had retrieved.

However, some three days away from Belém in some foggy weather, our heroes heard a loud bump. Something had struck the ship. Looking down they saw it was the emaciated body of an African, recently dead. Several more could be seen in the water. Fairly close was a transport ship. Mbizi immediately realized immediately what was transpiring – a slave ship. He shouted for the captain to immediately overtake her. Luthor, with his Royal Navy background backed up the order. MacDuff was hesitant but there was some profit in apprehending slavers and he agreed.

Realizing they were about to be overtaken, the slavers began dumping Africans overboard, healthy or not. Mbizi summoned his ancestor spirits to man the Caliban’s boats to rescue the slaves while Larry went to fetch the recuperating John Henry below decks. Grappling the slave ship our heroes boarded her. After a tough battle – no quarter was asked or given, our heroes were victorious, though John Henry had a nasty headshot wound which had nearly finished him. The slaver captain had been trying to complete some sort of ritual and had been dumping a nasty mix of human entrails overboard. What that portended was unknown.

Session Notes

There was really only one main encounter this evening – still a little goofy I guess. That said prior to the combat encounter, there was some decent roleplaying and giving out of willpower points like candy with some debate over whether or not to get involved in chasing the slavers.

That said, with real life intruding we’ll be making some changes to the structure of the game, trying to go for more self-contained adventures as opposed to the current run of one adventure leading directly to the next – that sort of structure makes it difficult to absorb player absences and we’re all married folks with careers and many of us with kids, making getting a full house very difficult. I won’t be dropping all continuity, rather I’ll be attempting to make the adventures self-contained though also fitting together, much like early seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or the linkages found in recent seasons of Doctor Who.

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Keberos Club Session 2: Byakyee on a Train

Brief Overview

Ben Bell was not quite dead. He had been burned to a crisp a few minutes earlier but before out heroes’ eyes his skin regenerated – much as they had seen Luthor’s when he nearly had an arm torn off by one of those strange demon beasts. And they learned that Bell had concealed a spherical gem in a convenient… body cavity.

A little bit of intimidating interrogation on Dr. Greenfield in a rented tavern room revealed that he had expected to find a crypt here. His research had indicated that centuries ago a Viking, Hjort Dragon’s Bane, had been marooned to the south of “Vinland”. He eventully returned to Scandinavia. He told tales of encountering dragons in what Greenfield believed to be modern day Brazil. Hjort had also returned with a strange gem he had looted from a temple near a mammoth river.

Greenfield had come across a manuscript telling how in the 14th century Sir Hugh Neville had acquired the gem in question. He had been attempting to get funds fr the digging of a gasline in that area to look for a cache Greenfield had found evidence of beneath what was now Leadenhall Market. It was then agents of Alexander Stephens of the Confederacy contacted him. He was interested in occult artifacts and had found a temple in Brazil – one missing a gem… It was then that Stephens provided the funding for this digging. However as a loyal, though perhaps unscrupulous, servant of her majesty, Greenfield was hesitant to turn over such an item to Stephens.

Our heroes kept Greenfield and Bell at the Kerberos Club for the evening. The next morning they took a train to Exeter College at Oxford to gather Greenfield’s precise notes. However on the trip their train was attacked by Byakyee – giant bat-like creatures, apparently attracted to – or perhaps summoned to find – the gem. The creatures landed on the roof of the train and cut their way in. There was quite a scuffle but our heroes managed to overcome them.

Notes

We were a little silly during this game – even by our standards. This was our first game in a while with Christmas holidays. Of course scheduling problems hit us after this game session as well with scheduling issues followed by a medical scare with my daughter (she’s fine now, though while it was going on gaming obviously took a back seat).

We continued finding or Wild Talents feat – still a bit heavy on action, though it was neat seeing some characters I’d anticipated being more foes deciding to work with our heroes (Bell and Greenfield). I had some spreadsheets prepped in advance that allowed action to flow much smoother and I’ve further tuned them for the next session.

While I’ve done a decent amount of research on Victorian London, the next few sessions will probably take place away from London – a journey to Brazil, dealing what is found there, etc. The beastie Hound of Tindalos that was mentioned in the previous session is still at large, something that will be resolved in the coming sessions.

I’m clearly allowing some influence from H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos to appear in this game. Back when I had a regular Star Trek game it was something I used often as well. Some day I’m going to have to get a Call of Cthulhu game going – one of those games I’ve owned for ages, played a few sessions here and there, but never had an outright campaign.
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One-Roll Engine Overview

My current campaign, about to awaken from its Christmas hiatus, uses the Wild Talents role-playing game, published by Arc Dream Publishing. Wild Talents is built using ArcDream’s “One-Roll Engine” (ORE), much like how the d20 System is at the core of the newer versions of Dungeons & Dragons. ORE is used for a variety of games including Reign (fantasy role-playing with an emphasis on the characters becoming in charge of organizations), Godlike (gritty World War II super-humans), Wild Talents (more generic superhero gaming), A Dirty World (Noir role-playing), and Monsters and Other Childish Things (school kids with real monster buddies – Call of Cthulhu meets Calvin and Hobbes).

The various ORE games are customized to best suit the needs of the genre they are modeling. For example, Monsters and Other Childish Things uses a fairly simple version of the rules, without much detail when it comes to hit location in combat but a lot of emphasis on what motivates our little tykes. A Dirty World has pairs of opposing ability scores (like Purity vs. Corruption) such that as your character improves in one area he may diminish in others, much like how characters in Film Noir change throughout the course of a film, hitting rock bottom, pulling themselves back up, give into their vices, etc. These abilities don’t improve like in traditional RPGs but rather move throughout the course of a game. Godlike and Wild Talents default towards a gritty and deadly game, with hit locations and bullets that can down most heroes in a single shot to the head, though Wild Talents has genre emulation rules to handle less gritty settings such as a Silver Age inspired game.

ORE uses what in gaming terms is usually called “buckets of dice” – your abilities and/or skills are rated by how many dice you get to roll when your character wants to do something. However, unlike most games, this one roll is used for things like initiative, accuracy, damage, etc. – all at once. What you do when attempting some action is roll the indicated number of dice and looked for sets of two or more. From this you find the height and width of these sets. For example, if you roll 7 dice (always ten-sided) and get 4, 4, 4, 6, 7, 10, 10 you have two sets, one of 3×4 (i.e. three rolls of four, a height of three and width of four) and one of 2×10.

Any matched set is normally a success. As height determines the quality of your roll, tasks of greater difficulty might have a minimum height requirement. In games that use hit locations, lower heights represent limbs while a height of 10 represents a head shot. The width of your roll represents your speed. For example, in combat all characters first declare then everyone rolls simultaneously. Widest roll goes first. Also, wider rolls typically do more damage.

So which is better, height or width? The answer is it depends on the situation. If you are trying to shoot first, width is more important. If you are going for a head shot, height is more important.

Obviously if someone is taking some action against you, you might want to stop them. This is represented in actions like dodging or blocking (or in various social combat actions like those which are often found in A Dirty World). Matches you get in these rolls count as “gobble dice” which allow you to remove dice from an opponent’s die pool after they have made their roll. So a set of two with one gobble due becomes an unmatched roll, turning into a miss.

The various ORE games all use this engine at the core of their system. The different games have different permutations, depending on what they are trying to accomplish. This includes things like vehicle combat, superpowers, multiple actions, doing your homework while your pet monster is distracting you, etc.

Finally, though I indicated all dice are ten-sided, there are in many ORE games special dice. In this post I’ll be referring to the dice as used in Godlike and Wild Talents, but other games have similar concepts using different names. The first kind of special die is called a Hard Die. This is a die in your dice pool which is always a ten. If you have two hard dice you always get a success. This is handy to represent powers which always work. It is also useful to represent deadly accuracy, but uncontrolled deadly accuracy – you can’t shoot to stun for example, or you can never do anything but teleport maximum distance or fly at maximum speed. You will succeed, but without any finesse. This is usually a good thing, but in the two Wild Talents campaigns I’ve GM-ed we quickly learned it was important to use Hard Dice carefully. In character generation, Hard Dice are typically twice as expensive as regular dice.

There is also the concept of the Wiggle Die. The term does sound a little silly. A Wiggle Die is a die which you can set to any value you want, decided after you roll any regular dice in your pool. This is extremely valuable, as a single Wiggle Die, paired with any other die, guarantees at least one success. This is fantastic for representing a very skilled character, such as Batman from DC Comics. Wiggle Dice are typically four times as expensive as regular dice.

ORE is a system that is hard to classify as rules-light or rules-heavy. The basic rules of all the games are pretty simple. Some games, such as A Dirty World or Monsters and Other Childish Things are kept deliberately simple as far as rules go. On the other hand, Godlike and Wild Talents, while keeping their simple core, have a lot of different possibilities, given all the permutations when it comes to possible abilities. Even at its most complex, no ORE game approaches the complexity of a Hero System or GURPS-style engine. I’d say that Wild Talents falls a few notches below games like Dungeons & Dragons when it comes to complexity. I’ve rather enjoyed the system – it makes GM-ing pretty easy when it comes to prep-work and it allows for a ton of player flexibility. I’d suggest checking out Arc Dream’s web page for more info, free downloads, etc. if you’re looking for more info. In the future I’ll take a look at individual ORE games, but first I wanted to discuss the system as a whole.
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D&D Basic Rules Retrospective Part 2

I’d originally thought about doing a Wild Talents review (or continue) going through the Doctor Who game today, but got in an old-school kind of mood.

So continuing from our introductory post, let us take a look at the introduction to the D&D Basic Rules (Mentzer edition).

We get a basic introduction to “What the D&D Game Is All About”.  There is a “mission statement” of sorts embedded within:

In the D&D rules, individuals play the role of characters in a fantasy world where magic is real and heroes venture out on dangerous quests in search of fame and fortune. Characters gain experience by overcoming perils and recovering treasures. As characters gain in experience, they grow in power and ability.

While I certainly games in various styles, that really was the style that always seemed to work best. Not necessarily mercenary type characters, but characters in search of fame and fortune. And forced to choose between the two, fortune would almost always be the preference. That’s not to say our heroes did not do good deeds — it was always fortunate that the treasure-laden dungeons were inhabited by baddies intent on nefarious deeds.

We then get a basic breakdown of how the book is divided. It then tells us how this deals mostly with dungeon adventures and covers characters of 1st through 3rd level and tells us of the other two sets in the game -

• D&D Expert Set covering 4-14th levels and wilderness adventures
• Companion Set, covering 15-36th levels

Technically, the Companion rules as described here never came out. There was another revision of the game, resulting in new Basic and Expert sets followed by 3 more sets -

• Companion Set, covering 15-25th levels as well as rules for dominions, mass combat, tournaments, wrestling, and an introduction to the planes of existence.
• Masters Set, covering 16-36th levels as well as rules for becoming immortal, weapons mastery, and greater details on the planes of existence.
• Immortals Set, covering Immortal PCs.

D&D Basic Rules by Frank Mentzer

I got this new series of sets and enjoyed them, especially since this is the series that I believe introduced the most people to D&D and therefore most people I gamed with were introduced through this series. However, I always liked the Tom Moldvay version of the D&D Rules more. It’s probably more a stylistic/personal preference. In any case, we’ll continue our trip down memory lane focusing on the Mentzer incarnation of the D&D Basic Set.

We get a discussion about the rule booklet being drilled with holes so you could cut the pages apart and arrange them in a three-ring binder, with the suggestion you could rearrange the pages and mix them with corresponding sections from the Expert and Companion Sets.

There is also a discussion that while the booklet is referred to as rules, everything within is changeable, with the purpose of the rules being “to provide guidelines [emphasis theirs] that enable you to play and have fun, so don’t feel absolutely bound to them.” While I think the 3rd and later editions of D&D did a lot of good things, one unfortunate thing was having a rule for everything. One thing I discovered when trying to houserule D&D 3.0 is everything is pretty tightly linked together – making one change quickly causes a ripple effect.

We then have “Definitions of Standard D&D Terms. It introduces some terms which are still very familiar such as DM, PC, NPC, and party. There are also some terms whose definitions I found interesting. The rulebook refers to the setting as a dungeon, reasonable enough. It then refers to a purchased dungeon, called a “dungeon module”. This is a term which has fallen somewhat into disuse in gaming circles though it still appears. I’m fond of it for some reason.

The definition for adventure struck me as interesting -

Each game session is called an adventure. An adventure lasts for as long as the players and DM agree to play. An adventure begins when the party enters a dungeon and ends when the party has left the dungeon and divided up treasure.

We never used that definition – I have fond memories, both as a player and a DM, of setting up camp in the Caves of Chaos, especially in cleared out lairs.

We also have definitions for certain special players. We have the mapper, the player who is responsible for drawing the maps based on the DM’s descriptions. This is something of a lost art in gaming I think – I know for my 4e game I used the Maptools application and gradually revealed the dungeon as the players explored it. We also have the caller who is responsible for being the primary interface between the DM and the players – kind of the spokesman for the players. To be honest, even back in the 80s we never made use of a caller and rarely used a mapper. It might be interesting to try out some time.

We then move to a definition of monsters.

As details of the dungeon are revealed, the player characters will meet “monsters” which they have to avoid, talk to, or fight. A monster is any animal, person, or supernatural creature that is not a player character. A monster may be a ferocious dragon or a humble merchant.

Here lies another thing which I think has been lost in newer RPGs – the idea of avoiding monsters. In the 3rd and 4th editions of D&D encounters are designed to be carefully balanced against the party of adventurers. Some of my fondest gaming memories are of encounters with foes that did not involve a fight. The wandering monster you run into when you are trying to get out of the dungeon, are low on hit points and out of spells. I recall my brother, his 2nd or 3rd level magic-user encountering goblins he was not prepared to fight, bluffing his way out of the encounter. “I am… the Wizard.” He then pulled out a jar with a spell component – probably a live spider for spider climb (this was AD&D) – and claimed it was a goblin he had polymorphed for failing to obey him. Excellent times. I think those older rules, with less balance, encouraged that behavior far more.  If you are a 1st level party going through the dungeon and you encounter a minotaur, you would be well-advised not to fight it head-on. The odds of your victory are low and if you do win, you will certainly suffer massive casualties.

We then reach a discussion of encounters, used to describe a meeting between PCs and monsters. Encounters may lead to a fight, often called a melee. I’d like to thank D&D for adding the word melee to my vocabulary at such a young age.

Next up is a section entitled “Use of the Word ‘Level’”. They did a pretty good job defining this, as I never had difficulty distinguishing between levels of experience, monsters, spells. and dungeon. As characters rose in level I was uncertain if that meant that all dungeons were supposed to begin with 1st level dungeons (i.e. with mainly 1 Hit Die monsters) even as characters advanced – that seemed silly early on, though the rules seemed to at least suggest that. I think that system would work best when playing in a “megadungeon” — some gargantuan, deep dungeon, like the famous Greyhawk Castle Dungeon.

How To Use the Dice

Following this is a section on “How To Use the Dice”. This section was so vital for us new gamers faced with these oddly shaped dice in our basic set – made of cheap plastic with a wax crayon to fill in the etchings on the dice. I remember it being hard to get ahold of these funky dice so it was important to take good care of the dice the Basic (and later Expert) sets gave you. Imagine my surprise when I found a hobby shop in my hometown with loads and loads of dice – and games beyond D&D – and even beyond A&D…

The final section is “How To ‘Win’”. This section states that the DM and players do not play against each other, despite the DM running the opposition. It also says that the game is not even “lost” if a PC dies, as it is a simple matter to roll up a new PC. The goal is for everyone to have a good time. And as a DM I learned that’s a tough balance to maintain. You didn’t want to make things too easy for the players but being the killer DM wasn’t the best option either. But fumbling about the same time the other players were learning their roles was so much fun.