The Rise and Fall of Hakken Aksa-Dak

I died on Monday in my friend Carter's Labyrinth Lord campaign.  Not the usual haul-the-body-out-and-get-raised kind either.  I got the wrong end of the old school Teleport spell and materialized some undisclosed number of feet straight down into solid rock.  I have been thinking about it a little and I don't think there would be any body to speak of or recoverable remains even if an attempt was made to excavate for it.  Just little specks of blood and flesh and bone embedded in solid stone.

In many ways this was a very fitting way for Hakken Aksa-Dak (a.k.a. Dak), the Steve Buscemi of dwarves, to meet his end.  I tried to roleplay Dak's low wisdom (6) and decent intelligence by constantly coming up with risky harebrained schemes and throwing myself into any possible trap head first.

 Way back in Stonehell in our earlier adventures this resulted in Dak being blinded by poison gas from a trap.  Not deterred, I removed the container of poison gas from the trap and used it and the fact that I was already blind as a weapon.  Dak spent several sessions blind in Stonehell; when the party encountered monsters they would point me toward them and I would charge ahead, screaming bloody murder and releasing blinding gas.  It turned out to be a remarkably effective tactic.

More recently the party has been exploring a vampire's lair in the deepest dungeons underneath the free city of Kaladar.  Confronted with a glowing red magical archway, I had my dwarven compatriot Yor (Yor for a better tomorrow!) tie a rope around me and I went through.  I was expecting deadly poison gas at the minimum because I had tried this tactic in an earlier section of this lair when confronted with an archway of glowing green mist and it turned out to be a save vs. death gas (luckily I saved).  Instead what happened is all my gear right down to my beard ring of protection was sucked from my body and I had some hazy sense of a misty cavern that I was being tugged to, and then Yor pulled me back out of the archway (naked).

I did fight an encounter completely naked and wielding a borrowed hand ax that session.

Losing all my gear rankled a bit, but we could not figure out a couple puzzle rooms in the dungeon and were stuck... unless we wanted to go through that damned archway and end up naked on the other side with no gear.

Last session I had the bright idea of bringing a high enough level wizard to have the Teleport spell memorized down to the arch to send him through (naked).  The idea was he would quickly examine the area that the arch led to, trying to mark it for a future Teleport destination, then Teleport out to safety.  We persuaded/conned NPC Tim the Enchanter into this duty; he was eager to make up for the fact that his master in the wizard's council had recently been revealed by the party to be a balrog!  Poor Tim walked through the gate, ended up in a misty cavern, and was attacked by something he didn't see which drained a level before he could Teleport out!

Once back at the wizard's tower Tim and four other high level wizards scried the misty cavern with a crystal ball for an hour until they had a reasonably good lock on it to Teleport the party down there.  There was a 10% chance of a missed destination "Low" result, which basically meant instant death in this situation, and we knew that.  The "High" result wasn't as big of a risk as the misty cavern was quite large; in fact, two party members did arrive 10' in the air and dropped to the ground.  While 10% chance of unraisable death is pretty iffy odds to be putting the whole party through, for once everyone else seemed ready to join in Dak's foolish plan.

 Remarkably, three out of the eight total party members that the wizards Teleported down arrived too low and instantly died.  Dak, Arthurius (follower of Innominus the cleric), and Muckley (dwarf henchman of Dak) all met their ends in this unceremonious manner.  A vampire attacked the remaining party members and was promptly destroyed in one round by Yor (thanks to his nightly d30 roll, his girdle of giant strength and his ancient Noffellian blade Mellion).  The vampire turned out to be a lacky, not the vampire master we had been seeking.

Dak is Dead.  Long live Flipwayter, Dak's trusty follower, who shall pick up the mantle.  Hopefully the party finds the real frickin' vampire and all Dak's old gear so Flipwayter can really keep the name of Dak alive.  In particular, Dak's family heirloom refilling flask of dwarven whiskey will not go unused... as Dak would have wanted.

I am looking forward to next session, a quick turnaround (for us) as we are meeting up again next Monday.  Dak may have died, but his hairbrained scheme did get the party down to the lowest section of the dungeon which we had not been able to access before. As long as we kill the vampire, get the loot and find a way out it will not have been for vain!  If we happen to save Ara from demonic invasion (another story) in the process, so much the better.

Two Men Down

Roderick and Claude the Ranger dropped yesterday at the hands of slime hounds in the catacomb levels below the sewers of Kaladar in my friend Carter's Labyrinth Lord Lands of Ara campaign.  While these were two NPCs, followers of Vivuli the assassin and Uncle Junkle the bard, the loss still hit hard.  The party was a bit stunned, actually, because we completely underestimated the pack of seven dogs that attacked us in the tunnels.

Seven dogs covered in filth and disease didn't exactly strike fear into our hearts after disposing of three green dragons and a half dozen winged Balrogs over the last two sessions.  We did have a string of terrible rolls, including several critical fumbles resulting in dropped weapons, as well as Innominus rolling a 6 for damage on his nightly d30 roll in an area attack that hit all the dogs in the surprise round before combat proper started.

Still, we figured we were going to dispatch these critters handily and I even advised Innominus against blowing a Bless or Prayer spell on the second round because I was sure these things couldn't have many hit points left after they all took 6 damage on the first round.

That all changed in a heartbeat when they started spewing acidic bile at us, scoring a hit on Roderick that did 35 damage!  We were all sitting around silently digesting that tidbit when Carter asked us, so did that kill him?  35 damage?  Did it kill the 5th level thief with 5d6 HP?   Yes, yes it did.

The vicious Arandish Slime Hound

Nothing like a 35 damage breath attack to put the fear of the lord in a bunch of 5th through 7th level Labyrinth Lord characters!  Plus the dogs turned out to have HP in the 30's.

While Roderick and Claude are going to be raised, they are out of commission for two weeks game time - which could well be a year of real life time at the rate we are going - the last 4 of our game sessions have only covered three days in game time I believe and we meet every other week at the soonest.

Playing with the expectations of veteran players is a great way to introduce a little fear into a game.  I don't know if Carter made these slime dogs up or if somebody else did (their breath weapon had a recharge mechanic which makes me think these are someone else's creation - that is just too 4e for Carter) but either way they were an awesome foe because they seemed like something in the 2 to 3 HD range (they were described as normal dogs but covered in slime and disease as they had been living in the sewers) but turned out to be quite a handful indeed!

I am actually thinking about house-ruling the Labyrinth Lord / Old School style "you are out of commission for 2 weeks following a raise - 1 HP - cannot fight or undertake any strenuous activity" Raise Dead into my 4e game.  I have managed to kill a PC quite a few times in that game but then they get raised with no real consequence at all.  2 weeks of game time is simultaneously not that outlandish of a penalty for coming back from the dead, and a real nuisance for a game like mine in which all kinds of stuff is happening outside of the PCs control and will continue to happen during the 2 weeks that a player is out of commission.

Of course the PCs in my 4e game are all experienced time travelers at this point so that might throw a little wrinkle into this :)

Devils Bathe in Holy Water in the Labyrinth. Lord.

In the Labyrinth Lord game that I play in (I am Dak, the Steve Buscemi of dwarfs) we had a great encounter with a demigod / powerful devil last session.  Exploring a temple hidden deep beneath the manor house of the recently deceased lord of the region, Dak was nearly compelled to worship the altar of an evil god when he touched a magically warded door into the temple fane.  Luckily, I rolled a 19 on my save and laughed in the face of evil.  And then I got really ticked off, because I have been playing my character as afraid of magic in the first place, and this really struck to the core of my character's fears.  I spent a goodly portion of last session destroying the evil altar with my dwarf steel hand ax, even though our good cleric's Detect Evil spell revealed that the evil presence in the altar grew stronger with every blow.

Sure enough, when Dak and Yor (the other party dwarf) succeeded in striking the last blow to the altar in spectacular fashion (collapsing a load bearing pillar onto it), an explosion of green flame occurred and a terrifying four-armed humanoid fish-demon-thing with a long eel-like tail burst into existence over the rubble.

Despite being dwarfs, with our inherently KICK ASS savings throws, we both failed a save vs. paralyzation when the evil fish thing sprayed us with a green liquid which subsequently encased us in a rock-hard goop.  The rest of the party looked on in horror from the doorway, with the exception of Innominus the lawful cleric of Indra who warded himself with a spell and dived in to combat.  (Thank Indra!)

Dak, terrified as he is of both magic and water, had tied a rope around his waist before entering the partially submerged chamber and tied the other end off on the spikes he had driven in to hold the door open.  This enabled my hireling Rodney to pull my paralyzed body out of the fray, but it was obvious that it was going to take several rounds of work by Rodney to chip the coating off and free Dak.

As I was paralyzed and unable to take actions myself, I couldn't help but get involved in the meta-game and I began asking Kom, the player of a character with the ability to make two ranged attacks in a combat round, if he had anything likely to damage the monstrosity.  We went through his list of equipment and it turned out that he had little if any magical or dwarf steel missile weaponry (besides his +2 crossbow, which he had already fired and would take a round to reload).

AHA, I thought, when I noticed that he had several vials of holy water written down.  Holy water, blessed by a lawfully aligned temple, had to be effective against a chaotic and/or evil being such as this, right?

Kom rolled a solid to hit roll and the vial of holy water splashed across the hideous visage of the slimy bastard... to no avail.

According to Labyrinth Lord, holy water works against undead, period.  If this is a faithful emulation of the early game, it seems to me like one of those lacunae in the old rules that occurred through oversight and not intention; after all, the very idea of holy water and its efficacy comes squarely from the catholic church, where it is used precisely to drive away evil spirits and devils.  Its not like a lousy 1d8 damage is going to be overpowering any devil anytime soon, but it seems to me like it should do something.

 It does make me curious, however, if ANY of the older editions (OD&D, B/X, AD&D 1e) make any provisions for holy water damaging a devil or avatar/agent of an evil god.  Being a lazy fuck myself, can anyone find a reference?

Initiative by the Book (Labyrinth Lord)

I always used to think that group initiative, especially d6 group initiative, was both incredibly boring and unrealistic.  I have used d20 individual initiative, plus Dexterity modifier, in my Mutant Future campaign, and I have been generally happy with that.

Recently, in my friend Carter's Labyrinth Lord campaign, we switched back to by the book group initiative.  The key thing that I had always failed to grasp when I read the initiative rules was that initiative was rerolled every round.  This is a ton of rolling if you are doing individual initiative, but really not hard at all if you are doing group initiative.

Short story:  I really like d6 group initiative, rolled each round of combat, ties meaning simultaneous action.  It allows the tide of battle to change rapidly, it allows dramatic things like knowing you are already dead but getting one last attack in (and the chance for the ultimate cinematic moment, the simultaneous death shot), and it actually takes less time than the mess of going around the table and recording initiative rolls and constantly having to remind everyone when it is their turn in the initiative order.

I think I am going to switch my Mutant Future game over to this system, and I am seriously thinking about switching my 4e game over as well.  I have to think about that latter proposal a little more, as there are feats that you can take in 4e that improve initiative (I am not sure if any of my players have taken these feats, but if they have, it would be cheesy to completely castrate their usefulness).  I still think I am going to do it, and may just allow players to pick new feats and or powers if they want to given this new information.

I really like the way that this simple change in initiative has made the combats in our Labyrinth Lord game WAY more exciting, and I see no reason why it wouldn't work in other systems as well.

Theory vs. Play Experience - I am an edition relativist

What Is "Old School Play"?

A lot of time has been spent on old school blogs over the last few years talking about what exactly the OSR is, what makes the earlier editions of the game different from modern iterations, etc.  This discussion tends to break into two main sub-topics; a discussion of the mechanics of old school, usually including fast and simple character generation, rules-lite systems, and relatively low-powered, high mortality games; and old school as an ethos, a system-less "style of play" or way of doing things.  As James over at Grognardia reposted recently, 

"We don't explore characters, we explore dungeons."  

There are definitely a lot of default assumptions as to style of play to that seem to go into most old school games, if I may broadly generalize from reading hundreds of actual play reports over the last few years here on the blogs.

I have noticed many times that my actual play experiences do not always match with the theoretical arguments advanced by proponents of mechanical old school definitions.  What I find is people looking at their actual game experiences, and attempting to explain how the mechanics of the game they are playing led to that experience.  For the purposes of a theoretical exercise, it is convenient to assume that there is a direct cause and effect going on there - the mechanics of the game = the play experience.  Of course, anyone who has ever played a role playing game knows that there is a missing variable in this equation; the face to face interaction between the players and the DM, and ultimately, how the DM as final arbiter of the rules parses the system as well.  

When you are talking about actual play experience, you are venturing firmly into the realm of the subjective; you may not even find consensus among a group as to what the play experience was to each member after a session.    So many things go into the experience for each person; how they interact with the other players, how they interact with the DM, the personal assumptions that they bring in to the game...

I Confuse Myself (and you?)

Switching gears here, I was once a philosophy major at Tulane University.  But the more I studied philosophy the less I became convinced that theoretical exercise was the path towards any kind of truth.  Ultimately I am an agnostic in the broadest sense of the word; I try to maintain a conscious awareness that I do not know anything for certain.  

That does not mean that I cannot have a discussion with somebody about the reality that we both assume each other lives in - it just means that I don't like to frame that discussion in any kind of universal terms.

Back to my point - while I would certainly agree that it would be ludicrous to suggest that game mechanics have NO impact on actual play experience, I would argue that they have such a minimal impact compared to the giant elephant of group/DM interaction in the room that it is either impossible or very difficult to make meaningful observations linking mechanics and the actual flow of play.

The reason this is true is because PEOPLE are just too damn complicated of a variable.  You would think this would be a simple matter:  IF Labyrinth Lord has fewer rules, AND 4e has more rules, THAN Labyrinth Lord will run quicker at the table.

But that does not take into account the wide variation among players and DMs.  There are groups of 4e players that have the rules internalized to the point that no one would ever have to open a book to refer to them, and there are groups playing Labyrinth Lord that have to constantly stop to refer to the rule books, or to explain how combat works, and what dice to roll again, etc.

Okay, now I am sure I have pissed off/lost a ton of people.  What do you mean there is no point in talking about mechanical differences!  How do you explain the fact that I like Labyrinth Lord and my group explores a sandbox and slays critters with alacrity, and yet I hate 4e and when I tried it it sucked; surely mechanical differences must have something to do with that!

Well yeah, sure, but...

The mechanical differences don't explain the differences in your play experience once the game is actually going.  I think there is a far more useful way to look at mechanical differences between editions.

Wherein I try to Wrap it All Up:

What the different mechanics do across the editions is they require more or less buy in from the player to be able to play the game.  Once the player has bought in (successfully navigated character creation and understands the rules), the game can be played and the mechanics may even cease to matter to the game play experience in any meaningful way (again, in my own experiences as a player and DM of old and new school systems).  If the entire group has "bought in" to the system, the group dynamic can easily cause the play experience to match the desires of the group.    Group/DM interaction is incredibly powerful and can make the lamest game rock and the coolest game suck, as long as everyone is invested in making it happen!

That does not mean mechanics or editions are not important.  On the contrary, mechanical and edition differences are very important!  They are so important that they can make or break the game for somebody before they ever get to the "actual play" part of the experience.  Most people can sit in on a pre-3e version of D&D and pick up the general rules within minutes of play starting.  Once the first combat starts, a few more details might need to be ironed out, but in general, there are very few barriers erected mechanically in the rules to prevent somebody from getting it.  So why would any game add rules and complications that might prevent a player from enjoying the game?  Ah, now the discussion might go somewhere besides a repetition of the same tired old song of "simple game mechanics = old school play and complicated game mechanics = new school play".  Some people shy away from a game that provides many tactical combat rules - just as many people may chafe at the lack of character options and abilities available in old school games.  There is a reason there are a ton of people playing 3e, and 4e.  The editions changed the way the have over the years because players DEMANDED more options, more rules, more mechanics!  The problem, in my opinion, is that rules lite and rules heavy are always framed as opposites.  Old School and New School are presented as a duality.  Why not have both in the same game?

  I firmly consider my 4e game "old school" - not in any mechanical way, but because the actual play experience is old school.  Unfortunately, I could never share this game experience with my good friend Carter (to pick on him for the umpteenth time today, because I know he is a good sport and is genuinely interested in this subject as well), because he simply does not like the default mechanical assumptions of 4e to the point that his mere presence at the table would grind the free-flowing game that I know and love to a halt.  I would love to get Carter to be able to experience how the game runs, but I don't think that would be possible short of somehow swapping his brain out with one of the players in my 4e game; if Carter could somehow magically ENJOY comparing the relative benefits of one feat choice vs. another, or the tactical implications of his movement in combat, he could play a session of the game and he would never have to stop to have the rules explained to him, and the game would run as it has run and he would think to himself, "Wow, 4e really is a great game, and it sure is old school!".   Well this is not the land of make believe and that ain't gonna happen, because 4e was designed with such a giant mound of potential barriers to players that many gamers will never get to enjoy what a 4e game could be like in actual play, and many others are so turned off by what was expected of them in char gen and rules mastery that they hate the actual play experience.

Why can't a game support a play style, "old school", for instance, through multiple mechanics?  Once we have accepted that different people enjoy different things, and that some people want the mechanics to be dirt simple as a player so they can just get straight to the actual play experience, and other people actually enjoy spending hours outside of the play sessions tinkering with mechanical options and choices and generally getting to interact with the rules outside of play - why can't we provide a game that gives both options to players?  Couldn't we then put the mechanical issues to bed and just focus on some good old "Old School" game experience?  

This is similar, in point of fact, to the original game - fighters were your basic dirt simple char gen, and magic users were for your "system mastery" guys.

I would love to see an old school game that includes a much more complicated char gen and combat rules set as an optional system to go alongside the basic char gen and combat that is so often assumed to be a requisite of old school games.  If you turn that default assumption on its head, I don't see why you couldn't do this.  Characters created through the complicated char gen would satisfy the players who love having multiple options to be able to fully create that character they envision; as long as this does not lead to the complicated char gen characters being more powerful in play than the simple char gen characters (and that is just a matter of doing the math right and playtesting).  I see no reason that a single game cannot both satisfy the guy who just wants to hit it with his axe and the dude who wants to make the perfect tactical choice of powers for the moment; and as long as both end up having about the same statistical chance of doing roughly the same damage, why couldn't it work?

This is actually how I suspect many old school games work anyways; players in the group that want to engage mechanically with their characters to a degree not supported by the rules usually figure out a way to do it with DM support, and this normally can go on side by side with players who put absolutely zero in outside of sessions without conflict.  This is one of the reasons long running campaigns tend to become such teetering constructs of houserules!

Anyway, I hope this long and rambling post has at least some kernel of interest that might be taken away by a reader.  I sincerely do not intend this post to be yet one more salvo fired in the Edition Wars - I am an agnostic edition relativist, and I game in peace.

Edition Differences

This is a continuation of my last post, but it originated as a comment on my friend Carter's excellent blog, responding to this post.  It is therefor written in the second person, addressed at Carter, and references some past experiences we shared (namely Carter's brief foray as a player into the jungles of 4e).

So...   @Carter:


I really feel like your frustration as a player in the one or two 4e games you played in was due to two factors:

One: The DM had no previous experience in any edition and literally started combats before giving us any options;

Two: The other players in the group liked spending time mastering the system outside of the actual session time (and had done so).

You totally failed to notice the true point of  what I was saying:  the commonalities between editions occur DURING play, and the extra work requested of players in 3e and 4e occurs OUTSIDE of play.

You did not, as a 4e player, invest the required amount of time outside of the session to understand how the game and combat worked.  When it came time to play the game and especially to fight, you did not know what you were doing, people kept telling you you were doing it wrong, kept overriding what you said you wanted to do to tell you what you SHOULD be doing, and generally made you feel like the game sucked big donkey balls.

Had you played with group of like-minded players who also spent no time outside of the session understanding the game, you would have had a much better experience - you guys could have all quite happily ignored your powers and the (actually quite simple) intricacies of what you can do on the battle field, and you could have charged in with your dwarf and hit things with your battle axe in EXACTLY the same manner that a Labyrinth Lord combat proceeds.

4e supports that; it just also supports much more.


When I say that the commonalities occur during play, that presumes that any requirements made on a player outside of play have been met.

This is a big point, and a big if, but IF you spend the time required to actually understand all of your character's abilities and how they work in combat, 4e combat feels very similar to any other edition.  I really feel that the modern editions are just geared towards a player who wants to engage outside of the session, and previous editions provided more or less no rules for this.  To me, that is the single biggest difference, and the root of all the moaning and bitching about how different 4e is. It requires a different commitment of time and energy from the player before play begins, old school players are not used to that, they do not spend the required time and energy, and therefor, they NEVER ACTUALLY PLAY 4e OR PATHFINDER (or whatever modern iteration we are talking about).

If you don't know the rules of the game, and you don't care, then you aren't playing the game.

I would respectfully venture that you have about as much basis to make an intelligent critique of 4e combat as a monolingual English speaker has of critiquing the Upanashads in their Sanskrit incarnation.

You have no idea what was happening, and you didn't like it.  That has nothing to do with how the combat engine worked, and everything to do with your willingness as a player to engage in complicated rules.

Again, I am certainly not trying to minimize differences between the edition; outside of play, there are HUGE differences!  LL character creation takes all of five minutes and I could easily spend HOURS building a 4e character!

I am just saying that in play, assuming the players and DM are all aboard with the system (which the system assumes as well), I have observed little to no differences in how the games run.  Combat takes place the exact same way in your Labyrinth Lord game as it does in my Mutant Future game as it does in my 4e game as it has done in every D&D game since the first campaign;
Initiative is rolled; players and enemy combatants go in order and say what they are doing, and roll a single d20 to determine its success.

That is it.  Period.  Just because a 4e player has many more options to choose from before picking one and rolling the d20, does not mean that the basic mechanic is different, nor does it impact the flow of combat AT ALL.  As long as the players are familiar with the abilities of the characters in 4e, combat is just as quick flowing as Labyrinth Lord.

You would just have no idea, because you never got to see a 4e game in action where the DM and players were all on board together.  Nor would you want to, because as a player, you don't want to think about rules at all, and you actively rebel against a system that asks you to.

Now... on to the second main point of my little mini-rant, which was that the final product of Labyrinth Lord (or any other old school edition of choice) + houserules is much closer to the modern iterations of D&D than most would care to admit.  That is because most houserules are aimed at exactly the same kind of player that all the extra rules in 3e and 4e are aimed at.  Many players chafe under the perceived restrictions placed on them by a simple game like LL.  At this point, you and some of your players have put considerable time and energy in your Labyrinth Lord game into making more complicated character classes, more options for players in character creation, and more options in the game in general outside of combat.  Most long running old school campaigns that I am familiar with grow and morph over time, adding in rules and interpretations, player options, etc., precisely to satisfy the same natural desires of certain kinds of players that led to 3e and 4e taking the shape they do today.

[EDIT - I first posted the following as a comment on my own post.  I think it is important enough in the terms of the larger debate that it should be included in the actual post - Carl]

Oh, and the healing surge point is utter horseshite, pure and simple. A classic straw man. All the 4e healing surge has done is acknowledge the de facto way the game has always worked. What, exactly, is the difference between a character using healing surges to heal themselves outside of combat in 4e vs. a Labyrinth Lord character drinking a healing potion? In fact, the healing surge mechanic actually serves to LIMIT the kind of totally absurd combat that can occur in earlier editions when characters are loaded to the gills with potions. Each character has a limited number of surges, and when they are gone, the character cannot be healed in combat. Each character can use one surge themselves in combat, by forfeiting their attack that round: this cures 1/4 of their total HP. Other than that, healing surges are activated by other characters with healing magic: an individual character's number of surges, then, is a cap on the total number of times they can be healed in combat. A cap that earlier editions did not have; it is ironic, then, that the healing surge is always held out as the ultimate example of what is wrong with 4e, the ultimate gamist rule.

It is less gamist and absurd than totally unlimited clerical and potion healing!

Blind Dwarf Attack!

I love my character in the Labyrinth Lord game I am playing with my friend Carter of Carter's Cartopia as DM.  I am a dwarf, Hakken Aksa-Dak, and I was blinded three sessions ago whilst exploring Stonehell Dungeon.  I was twisting a serpent statue which (of course, in retrospect) shot poison gas out at me.  Everyone else made their saves, but poor Dak has not seen the light of torch since.

Always one to turn life's lemons into healing potions, I got the rest of the party to clear out of the room while I went about trying to remove what I presumed and hoped was a container of poison gas concealed in the middle of the statue.  Carter rolled with what I was trying to do and eventually let me get out the gas container and stopper it with a rag while we carved a cork for it.  

Ever since, I have been the maniacal and probably more than slightly crazed (and of course, always drunk) first line of assault.  Did I mention that I have had 2 HP for the last three sessions as well?  We use the "Shields Will Splinter" houserule, so I can survive at least one hit, but really I expected to die many times as I charged, blind, screaming and holding a container of poisonous gas, straight into the middle of a band of lizardmen or hobgoblins.  This tactic has worked with varying success, but so far I have not died and I have been able to contribute something meaningful to combat.

I have also been tickled pink by all this.  Even though we just found a major pile of loot and high-tailed it out of the dungeon to re-supply and get my blindness removed, I almost don't want to give up the ride just yet.  Playing a blind, suicidal dwarf has been a lot of fun!

Thoughts on OD&D and EPT

I have been doing a little bit of prep work for my upcoming Empire of the Petal Throne campaign.  This has mostly consisted of re-familiarizing myself with the rules and setting (as presented in the boxed set, not the mountains of material that have come out since...) and assembling a vast collage of dungeon maps to use as my Jakalla underworld.  I have also been re-reading the three Little Brown Books of OD&D, and I have been waffling back and forth between using mostly OD&D rules and classes or using the rules as presented in EPT.

Those of you familiar with EPT know that it is pretty close to OD&D anyway, with an interesting skill and magic system bolted on.  My players will not be part of Tsolyani society, so I have no problem with them (as barbarians) playing the traditional OD&D classes instead of the EPT variants.  Really, I have been wrestling with the desire to write my own magic system (or just use my TruE magic system, a sort of free-form casting system that I have been working on for a while now).  This is especially true when it comes to Clerics, as I have always disliked divine magic as presented in D&D.

I have a newfound respect for the mechanical balance of OD&D after my readings of the last few days.  I really like the way that the magic user is balanced against the fighter, especially compared with B/X D&D/Labyrinth Lord/AD&D.  I particularly like that a first level magic user can have 6 (or more, with a high CON) HP, and that a fighting man is still a more effective combatant due to the easy availability of plate mail.  In Labyrinth Lord, platemail costs a LOT of money.  The average fighter probably couldn't afford platemail until at least 2d level in Labyrinth Lord (I will be comparing OD&D with Labyrinth Lord because I am playing in a Labyrinth Lord campaign).  While this may be more historically accurate, I think the assumption in OD&D is that a fighting man is a professional fighter, and should have access to the tools of his trade.  At 50 GP, platemail is within the reach of all but the poorest of fighters (3d6 x 10 starting GP in OD&D).  This makes the 1st level OD&D fighter, with his d6+1 HP and AC of 2, quite a bit more durable than all but the most dexterous of his Labyrinth Lord equivalents.  Likewise, the OD&D magic user is less likely to die from an errant scratch delivered by a mangy alley cat!

I will post more about my thoughts on the EPT ruleset and what I will do for a magic system soon.