Only 10 RPG books and a few other things

I have been meaning to jump on the OSR bandwagon meme of picking out which 10 RPG books I would take with me to a desert isle, presumably with a group of fellow gamers, and I realized that if I am limited to hard copies of books I actually own, while I have an extensive collection, it's going to be mostly, if not all, TSR (A)D&D books; and thus, a pretty boring list. Essentially it's the books on my desk- 1st edition AD&D DMG, PH, MM, OA and module OA1 Swords of the Daimyo, Holmes Basic, Moldvay Basic, Cook/Marsh Expert and modules B2 Keep on the Borderlands and X1 Isle of Dread. Now, if I get to assume that the last 2 modules are part of the boxed sets they come with, I'll pick James Pacek's "The Wilderness Alphabet" and the D&D Cyclopedia. I'll also have an extra copy of B2, unless I am allowed to switch out and put my copy of B1 in the Holmes box. There's only one non-TSR product on the list, and it's an alternate; it is an excellent book and I picked it over every other OSR product because of my preference for DMing wilderness adventures. More people should buy it.

Next, I have been doing a lot of reading. Legend of the Five Rings 1st edition RPG stuff, because I am GMing a campaign of that now apparently. I didn't think this one would take off as more than a one-shot, but everyone seems pretty into it. Roman & Celtic history and historical fiction because I am GMing a 43 AD campaign too, and I like to be both well informed and able to steal ideas from real history and from good authors. This game is off to a good start, even if some of the rules range from a bit to extremely unclear. Anyway, I have got more long days and nights of reading ahead of me, I just got these books over the last couple of days-

The First Man in Rome is actually a replacement of a replacement copy, it's one of those books I keep lending out and not getting back.

I liked Pompeii, so I am giving this one a chance too.

Miranda Green is just a great scholar when it comes to the Celts. 

Obviously the Yurt book and the book on Khubilai Khan are not for the 2 currently running RPG campaigns, they are for my Yurt building project and my long standing love of Mongol history respectively; I just felt that I should add them for completeness' sake.

I have also been working on my Garnia campaign world, I have two different areas that I am detailing right now. One area, I am waiting on art for from my wife, I forget from time to time that I usually fall to the bottom of her priority list for art projects. I want to strike while the iron is hot for me, while I am inspired to write about a particular topic, she needs to wait for the inspiration to strike her to illustrate that same topic. When we are in sync, things are great, when we aren't it is an agonizing wait for me; because it's always me waiting on art, I can't ever remember a time when she was waiting for my writing. The other area I want her art for too, because I want to move away from using public domain art or just pictures I found on the net; I figure if I ever get around to publishing any of this stuff it should have it's own illustrations and she's a great illustrator. She just doesn't appear to prioritize my projects over her own, which annoys me.

So while I have been cooling my heels and NOT working on those projects and NOT reading for 24 hours a day, I have fallen off the wagon and indulged in a few games of Civilization. I say a few games because I haven't played in a couple of years now and I apparently am not the Civilization powerhouse I used to be, that's a humbling experience. I had to drop down two levels of difficulty while I get my Civilization bearings back again and I am still not doing great, just not getting trounced. I used to play the game all the time heavily modded, I tried that and couldn't remember what all the mods did, other than make the game harder. I had to switch back to vanilla Civilization IV + Warlords + Beyond the Sword. I used to create mods for this game, I made an awesome Scotland Civilization, now if I make it to the modern age I am likely to be a 3rd rate power.  

Bonus Post- B/X Alignment Musings

I know I have been rushing trying to get all Norse stuff in during April here for the A-Z Posting Blitz, but I have been thinking about Alignment in B/X D&D since I rolled up all those pregens for my new Norse campaign and wanted to get some of those thoughts out before I forgot about them. I know that OD&D had the Lawful-Neutral-Chaotic Axis, and so does B/X, but I never really gave it much thought because I started playing D&D with Holmes Basic which had a proto-AD&D Alignment axis, and I never saw or heard about the older, original three alignment axis until much later, so when I saw the B/X version of Alignment I assumed it was dumbed down from Holmes or AD&D for the younger audience it was aimed at and never really gave it much more thought.

Now it occurs to me that I was just wrong. I was wrong first because I was misinformed, original D&D used the same Alignment system as B/X, which was later adopted by BECMI and Cyclopedia D&D. Secondly, I was wrong because I think the Alignment system in D&D, as opposed to AD&D, is not a simplified system at all, it just doesn't encompass all of the moral choices that a Character can make in a game, rather it is about where their ultimate loyalties lie. AD&D muddied the waters there, it was AD&D that made Alignment not so much a statement of allegiance, but a moral code. In OD&D, B/X, BECMI & Cyclopedia D&D, Law represents a commitment to civilization, Chaos to those forces that oppose it. To be fair, they don't do the best job of explaining this clearly.

I am not sure how I feel about this to be honest. I have lived most of my life with the nine-fold Alignment system. I have defended it, often, against it's various detractors. I have found it to be a useful role-playing tool for helping to get players to consistently play their Characters with the same moral and ethical standards from game to game, and I think we all know players that need the help out there. Mostly, I think in AD&D Alignment terms most of the time. So this conclusion that Law and Chaos aren't really moral/ethical/behavioral outlooks on life, but rather an allegiance to the concept of being pro or anti civilization, while groundbreaking for me, leaves me at another one of those places where I have to wonder whether AD&D was a good idea or not, and I grew up with AD&D, it's like asking me if I love my mother or America.

I consider almost every day switching from B/X to AD&D. AD&D is like home to me, I know it like the back of my hand. B/X is the experiment for me, so I can get some experience playing the "other" D&D game that was out back then. I have to say that there is a whole lot of stuff I like in B/X D&D, stuff I remember using back in the day in AD&D that I probably took from the Expert book and other stuff like the way that all the spells are better, Morale is easier to use, and probably a dozen other things; but I keep defaulting back to AD&D at weird times too, like when I rolled D6s for all the Thief's Hit Points or the way I keep thinking of all the ACs as starting at 10.

All that said, the more that I think about it, the more I realize the way I have always played AD&D was closer in spirit to OD&D or B/X, probably because I started with Holmes; but I whittled away the rules from AD&D that I didn't like or didn't understand. I won't go through the usual litany of AD&D rules that get listed as superfluous, everyone knows them by now, and each one of them has their supporters and detractors; I support some myself and dislike others.

It does make me think though, that the D&D Next team should maybe be looking at Labyrinth Lord as a model for the 5th edition of D&D. Labyrinth Lord already has "modules" for what you want to add to your game, from "Original Edition Characters" to the "Advanced Edition Companion" you cover the D&D games from the time period of 1974-1985. If they added an "AEC II" that covered all the crazy late first edition AD&D stuff and an "Oriental AEC", we'd be covered up to the advent of 2nd edition. Some sort of "2nd edition companion" would get us through the 1990s, although I know most OSR types hate post Gygax era TSR D&D, it would at least give us completeness and show the robustness of the system.

Moldvay Basic Observations Part 2-

OK, yesterday I got us all the way through character creation and only wrote a little bit about the different classes and how they differed from the edition of D&D I was more familiar with. I was a little hard on the Thief maybe, because he does get to advance his abilities pretty quickly from worse than everyone else to pretty good and Thieves do have the fastest rate of advancement. I didn't go at all into how much better it was to be a Cleric or a Magic-User in B/X D&D than it is in AD&D and that was an oversight brought on mostly by the fact that I figured it would get covered when I did spells, but the spells alone aren't the reasons why B/X Clerics and Magic-Users are better off than the AD&D versions.

First, I have to backtrack us to Ability scores, and this really applies to every character class in Moldvay, but AD&D really favors Fighters and Fighter Sub-Classes when it comes to Ability score modifiers in regard to Strength and Constitution. In AD&D only Fighters, Paladins and Rangers get percentile Strength scores, so only they have the ability to really lay down the hurt. Likewise, only they have access to the +3 and +4 Constitution modifier for Hit Points, so only they can really stand up in a fight; at best a Cleric in AD&D is a second rate Fighter, limited to weapons that deal less damage, unable to be physically strong enough to do as much extra damage per hit as a Fighter and having both a smaller Hit Die type and less likely to have a Constitution bonus that gives them as many Hit Points, they are unable to stick with a fight as long as a Fighter. Granted, this assumes that the AD&D Fighter has a standard Fighter build, high Strength, Constitution and Dexterity; in AD&D it's pretty common to roll your Ability scores and place them as desired. My point here is that in Moldvay Basic a Cleric* has access to the same Strength and Constitution** bonuses as a Fighter does, he also has the same access to armor, and variable weapon damage is an optional rule***; so the Cleric can stand on the front line, with the same AC as the Fighter, dealing out the same damage as the Fighter and has, on average 1 HP less/level.

Second, and this is Cleric specific, they own the undead. They don't appear to have any restrictions on turning undead, with regards to multiple attempts or trying again after failed attempts; and they turn them generally easier than they do in AD&D at 1st-3rd level. For example, the Skeleton, the easiest undead to turn is turned on a 7 by a 1st level Moldvay D&D Cleric and on a 10 by a 1st level AD&D Cleric, automatically turned by a 2nd level Moldvay D&D Cleric which doesn't happen for an AD&D Cleric until he's 4th level. Additionally, an AD&D Cleric can not attempt to turn again after a failed turn attempt. That said, a 1st level AD&D Cleric at least has a shot at turning a Wight, that doesn't happen in Moldvay.

To end the Cleric specific portion of today's post I'd like to once again point out that the Moldvay Basic Cleric doesn't get a spell at 1st level and I thought that would be a problem, but it really wasn't, and I don't really see it becoming a problem. Cleric's level pretty quick anyway, so that first Clerical spell is right around the corner, but the Cleric should not be used as a healing potion with legs anyway. Honestly, he's never going to have enough healing magic to keep the party going forward, especially considering there are no bonus spells for high Wisdom in Moldvay Basic, so if he casts Cure Light Wounds it's probably because someone got unlucky in one combat. There are only eight first level Cleric spells listed in the Moldvay Basic book and they all have some utility.

Which brings us to spells in general and the biggest surprise I found in the Moldvay Basic rules, EGG really nerfed spell-casters, and Magic-Users in particular, in AD&D. I really considered giving spells a blog post or two of their own and just going through and comparing the spells from Holmes Basic to Moldvay Basic to AD&D, I decided against that, but it's pretty clear now how everyone from the old days considered Magic-Users to be the most seriously bad-ass class. Elves can come in second here, they get hosed by their super slow advancement**** and their low level limit. All of the spells in Moldvay Basic are better than in AD&D somehow, usually in duration. In AD&D spells got pretty much knocked back to a per encounter use, by which I mean nothing lasts until the next encounter; in Moldvay pretty much every spell has a good chance of lasting that long. Detect Magic lasts 20 minutes in Moldvay, it's 2 rounds (minutes)/level of the caster in AD&D, you can take a walk looking for magical stuff in Moldvay, in AD&D you better have all the stuff ready to check when you cast the spell. Mirror Image, 2nd level Magic-User spell, lasts for 6 turns, an hour, in Moldvay; in AD&D it lasts 2 rounds/level of the caster; and in Moldvay an image is always hit first, in AD&D there is a percent chance based on how many images are left. These are just two examples of the many.

So AD&D kind of toned down the Magic-User pretty hard, in Moldvay Basic they share a Hit Die type with the Thief, have awesome spells and can fight pretty well. They can't wear armor, so they probably ought to stay off the line, and they still have a pretty slow advancement, but they have access to the Strength and Constitution bonuses that everyone else has and on average, they are only going to have 2 HP less than the party Fighter at 1st level, the same as the party Thief, who is expected to go into combat with his crappy leather armor and no shield.


*or any PC for that matter, but I am using the Cleric in the example.

**and Constitution can't be modified, so you get what you get. The Fighter probably modified his Strength upwards if he could to get bonuses, so he is more likely to hit and do more damage than the Cleric in the example, but maybe he couldn't.

***although I recommend it's use, just to give the Fighter something to feel special about.

****it's a good thing the Expert Book came out so quick, by the time the Elf hit's 2nd level the Thief and the Cleric have needed to move on to it's expanded experience points chart.

Next D&D bargain week on EBay continues-






These pictures are of the beat up box and the contents sold with the set, it's the complete boxed set with some odd extras thrown in too. The first Dragonlance module and "Quest for the Heartstone", which has a picture of Strongheart the Paladin and Warduke, the D&D action figures, on the cover. I got this because I wanted a better copy of the Basic book.



This is the AD&D 2nd edition Mystara Monsterous Compendium Appendix, I didn't even know it existed until I saw it, but I figured it probably gave AD&D stats for all the monsters that appeared in D&D modules over the years, maybe even AD&D stats for all the monsters that appeared in B/X, BECMI or Cyclopedia D&D but never made it into AD&D.