F is for Forestry

I missed the April A-Z Blog Challenge this year, so I'm doing my own...in June. This year, I will be posting one post per day discussing my AD&D campaign, for the curious. Since 2020, this is the ONLY campaign I run. Enjoy!

F is for Forestry and Forests, something the Pac Northwest has in abundance. All apologies to Davy Crockett, the Evergreen State is "the greenest State in the land of the free;" fight me!

Ha! Actually, when one compares forest cover to square mileage, Washington ranks only 25th at 52..74%, behind Tennessee (52.83% and 23rd) and well behind Maine's #1 position (89.46%!). Blame Eastern Washington with its vast stretches of farmland (or "vast stretches of nothing" as I used to call it). But we do have thick, dense forests from the Pacific coast to the eastern foothills of the Cascades, all (or mostly) evergreen. You can see why a native Seattleite like myself would operate under the illusion that we're all lumber jacks 'round these here parts. 

Just my side of the mountains (at least till you get out to Okanogan and the northeast part of the State). 

Still, it's a D&D campaign and forested wilderness is a necessity...after all, I need some place to stash all the rangers and druids. And for me, these guys are squarely over on my side of the state's political border (i.e. the Cascades), though you'll find them poking around the Inland Empire on occasion.

I've described my rangers before, and I haven't stopped loving them since I made the mental transition from floofy Aragorn to Jeremiah Johnson. These guys are rough, and it doesn't bother me in the slightest that PC rangers use charisma as a "dump stat:" it doesn't affect their ability to gain (animal) followers at high level and it's reflective of long periods of time spent living in the woods and not talking to folks. Or only talking to them with an axe. 

If you know what I mean.

; )

Taciturn. Yep, that's the word of the day for rangers. These guys prowl the forested slopes of the Cascades and Olympics making the land safer for the settlements of human woodsmen living on the edge of the wilds. Any half-elf ranger grew up on the peninsula, more likely than not, and their human parent was probably a ranger, too. They are the avenging protectors of humankind (whether they get along with and are appreciated by their fellow humans or not). Gosh, they're a great archetype.

Then we have the druids.

We do have druids on the east side of the Cascades, but they're still in the shadow of the mountains where there's still plenty of forest. I set N2: The Forest Oracle in Thorp, and the Village of Hommlet (with its "Old Religion" druid cult) is set in Twisp. But that latter town is about the farthest east you'll find druids...the wood elves of Colville hold no great love for druid types and do not encourage their sect in the northeastern forests. As with rangers, if your half-elf is a druid, you probably grew up on the Olympic Peninsula (almost certainly the west side of the Cascades) and your human parent was probably a druid, too.

Druids are an interesting bunch. I've mentioned the inspiration my campaign has taken from Bob Pepper's artwork, specifically his DragonMasters card game. Well, one of the "suits" of those cards are the Druids, and one might well wonder if my druids bear any resemblance to Pepper's. The short answer is: no, but there is a little more to it than that. See, Pepper's druids DO make an appearance in my setting...as the (human) Atlantean refugee types that were part of the campaign when originally conceived as South American. Those guys? The shipwrecked Numenoreans that every fantasy campaign needs? They're the folks populating the greater Seattle area.

Yeah, Atlanteans as the Denny Party. Welcome to Hollywood, people.

So the druid religion is tied to the forests of western Washington (i.e. west of the Cascades) and thus tied to the Sea Kings (as I call them...though I'm pretty sure I swiped that term from an MZB novel) who have settled the City of Seven Hills, thus uniting form with function to close the circle. We'll talk about the Sea Kings later, but suffice is to say they're a pretty godless bunch (unlike the actual Denny party, who were devout...if pretty conservative...Christians) with a lot of their own magical woo-woo stuff going on. 

We'll leave Tacoma for a later post, too. There's a reason why there's no "Emerald Empire." Not yet.

Anyhoo...foresters. The sea and the woods have long been the lifeblood of the western Washington economy, but my setting doesn't have the maritime economy of the real world (because there isn't anything beyond the west coast...just endless ocean). As such, it is the forests that are of prime importance, and much of the shipping that does occur (along the coast, down to the mouth of the Columbia) includes a substantial amount of timber.  In a D&D world full of monsters, deep dark forests would be especially perilous to "puny humans," if it wasn't for the work of the rangers and druids. Not that they aren't dangerous individuals themselves, but they act as a balancing 'check' against hostile forces that would quickly overwhelm small communities of ship-building woodsmen. The unicorns of my world aren't very nice.

Dealing With Despair

Dragons of Despair, that is. 

; )

Just a quick update or two before getting back to my crickets-inducing posts on retooling languages (only two more to go!). The after school "D&D Club" has been moved from Tuesday/Thursday to Monday/Friday, due to scheduling issues. How it expanded to twice weekly so fast is a bit of a mystery (I'm not sure I ever actually agreed to that...). Meanwhile, my son's schoolyard Star Wars game continues. Maybe I should show him White Star...

That means that my home game is back on Thursdays (it was on temporary hiatus). Which means I've got some prep work to do. The Forest Oracle, fortunately, doesn't really need "prep;" unfortunately, that's because it needs a real overhaul. I've set it up so that most of the strange and awful things the party has come across can be traced back to the desperate "gypsy clan" (re-skinned as a matriarchal clan of migrant farmers, led by a powerful bruja) but the basic resolution idea is so dumb (I see no way for "benevolent druids" - *gag* - to manufacture a "potion" that will lift the curse...certainly not in the time frame allowed) there's a strong temptation to simply turn this into a seek-and-destroy exercise. That would certainly fly with the party's mercenaries, but doesn't make much sense when you consider that the party could probably buy-off the bruja with just the treasure in the yeti's den. And I really don't want to take the time to stat up the whole clan (being a "party immune plot point" in the original adventure, there are no demographics given for the gypsies...possibly to hide the fact that they're packing enough firepower to take down their single ogre issue without breaking a sweat, and have no real need of the party's help).

*sigh*

No, what I think I'll do instead is start my mini-Dragon War campaign, i.e. I'm going to have Verminaard swoop in with a couple dragons and burn the whole Druid Grove to the ground. This will prove so immensely satisfying on so many levels, as well as opening up a whole new arena of adventure for the party. Besides, I want to get these guys pointed at an actual dungeon, not this lackadaisical railroad.

Enter DL1: Dragons of Despair. I've been working on this the last couple days, and I'm kind of in love with it. Well, obsessed anyway. Not the adventure, mind you...that's still mostly shit (if imaginative shit). But the dungeon of Xak Tsaroth...it's kind of fantastic.

The map is amazing...I mean, it's really, really good. Non-linear design. Lots of verticality. Multiple entrances and exits. Neat stuff going on here. And legibility/usability is pretty high considering the isomorphic map (I'm not usually a fan). David LaForce ("Diesel") really hit it out of the park with this one. I am suddenly interested in reviewing all his cartography work.

Not that the adventure itself does the map justice. Here's my best Bryce impression:

This 32 page "classic" adventure uses nine pages to present an 84 encounter dungeon in the form of a sunken, ruined city. Excessive box text abounds; some encounter areas consist of nothing but box text, while others bury important room information within the "read aloud" portion, cutting down on usability. Also not terribly helpful is the numbering sequence, which matches letters as well as numbers, although the map is generally clear and legible.

[okay, I don't do a very good Bryce impression. That's why he's who he is and I'm not]

Treasure is generally poor/minimal for a 1E adventure of this scale: only nine areas have treasure of any type (under 11%), with the bulk of it being impossibly heavy doors of gold or "precious steel" weighing thousands of pounds each. However, the overall challenge of the adventure is equally low: while only 25 of the 84 encounters include monsters (31%, which is almost the B/X recommended level of 33%), most of these are harmless, comical, or non-combative encounters:

• nine encounters consist entirely of "gully dwarves" (the comic relief, possible allies, and general incompetents).
• five encounters consist of spectral minions (non-aggressive ghosts)
• two "monsters" are NPC prisoners who will join the party (there is a 3rd such NPC in the dungeon but he is held by actual monster antagonists)
• at least five encounters with hostile draconians find the creatures drunk, sleeping, or distracted by their own arguments, allowing easy surprise situations.
• one encounter with poison snakes that is more of a "trap" and fairly navigable
• one encounter (the black dragon) is repeated...so if the monster is defeated, there is one less creature encounter

SO, if you do the math, that really only leaves...um...two combat encounters? Out of 84? Is that right? I might have done some weird math there; hold on.

[skims text]

Okay, I missed something there because it looks like there are FIVE combat encounters (not counting the second appearance by the dragon...which is actually the THIRD appearance of the monster in the module). Five out of 84 is pretty paltry: that's about 6%. Which, of course, really ups the survival rate of Plot Immune Heroic PCs (hmm...was that on purpose?). Even the black dragon, a natural born PC killer, can be one-shot-slain with a magic artifact already in the PCs possession. Considering there are only seven "traps" (some fairly beefy, but most telegraphed and easily avoidable), there's little danger in exploring this otherwise titanic adventure site. Five levels! Waterfalls and flooded sections! Sideways buildings! Ancient treasures and dragons! Come on, let's go D&D!

These guys are soooo dead.

I'm sure I've mentioned it in the past but...just in case I haven't...please let me say again: I absolutely LOVE black dragons. Oh, I like the others well enough (except, maybe for the blues), but the blacks are my favorite. There's something so wonderfully scary about there space-black scales, their swampy abodes, their ability to dissolve player characters in a gob of acid spit. And because of their (relatively) low hit dice, they can still half-cook high level PCs, yet leave them alive with terrible, disfiguring injuries and horrific scars. And have you seen the item saving throws for acid in the DMG? I once ran I2: Tomb of the Lizard King as a one-off and I'm pretty sure it ended in a TPK with the first "road encounter," an ambush by black dragon. I'm pretty sure that was both the first and last time I've had a chance to use this magnificent monster, and I want to see another in action!

Interesting that DL1 includes the following random encounter in the swamp: 1-10 hatchling black dragons. While they're not much of a threat (6 hit points each) there's an interesting implication here that Khisanth (the black dragon of Xak Tsaroth and the module's major antagonist) is a breeding mother. Even if these aren't her hatchlings (she is, after all, an ancient dragon) they might be the offspring of her own offspring. How long has she resided in these ancient ruins? How many other dragons may be in the vicinity? 

Some decent questions, unanswered by module...because, of course, that's not the objective of DL1. The objective was to start players down an epic story arc published by The Company (thus filling the company coffers) rather than creating a truly modular adventure that could be inserted into one's home campaign. Which is a darn shame, because these maps are some of the best I've come across, and the Hickmans weren't slouches in the adventure-writing department (I rather like most of the Desert of Desolation series). 

Here's my grand plan for today: first I need to tidy the kitchen, clean the floor, and figure out dinner. THEN I'm going to restock the dungeon of Xak Tsaroth to fit a more classical (B/X) delving style:

• Monster encounters should be around 28-30
• Traps/hazards should be at least a dozen (easy enough to add cave-ins, floodings, and unstable buildings), not seven.
• Rewrite about half the "special" encounters; I count 15 which is about right for an adventure this size
• Increase interactivity...about one note for every two "empty" rooms (that would be 14 total as B/X calls for one-third of all encounter areas to be empty)
• Up the treasure amount. I'd say about 200,000 - 300,000 x.p. worth of treasure should be about right. The value as it stands (including x.p. for magic items) is 38,370 [EDIT: actually under 30K] later changed to 60,170 with the 2E conversion (more gems were added to the dragon's hoard and the value of the thousands pound doors increased). That's ridiculous for a death trap this size, especially as I'm removing the Disks of Mishakal...although I'll probably replace them with some other holy relics.
• Except for the black dragon (natch) almost all the other monsters need to be replaced/reskinned. Gully dwarves become kobolds of the "wizened goblin" variety...possibly enslaved "swamp gnomes" (why not?). Draconians will be replaced with hobgoblins and goblins, based on intelligence level (all these monsters are pretty dumb), with the bigger dracos being chief-type gobbos, Maybe an ogre mage can replace a spell-using "boss" draco. The vermin here are okay, but the adventure needs a lot more (it's a swamp...let's fire up the lizards and snakes, maybe throw in a giant slug). No spectral minions but a wraith or three (maybe some shadows, too) sound like good ideas. Black dragon hatchlings, duh. Also, probably some sort of ancient guardian golem, damaged by the city's fallen into its subterranean cavern...still functionally dangerous, but slow and limping.

Aaaand, I think that should just about do it. Coming soon, to a swamp near you: The Sunken City of Doom!

So Long to N2

Ten minutes. Not much time.

Finally got back to our AD&D game yesterday after about a month's layoff. Still under the Dragon Teeth "mountains," my son's PC (a dwarven thief) was one-shot killed by a blind eel in an underwater lake (HD5, 3d6 damage...the thing won initiative and it was all over). This was the second PC of Diego's to be killed under the mountain (a wounded druid fell into a chasm...).

Being lost in the dark isn't really all that fun. But then, neither (really) is this adventure module. The kids asked if they could simply be "fast forwarded" to the druids...that's always a bad sign. It may be time to retire from this particular scenario and allow the Downs to struggle as they will. 

I've got other fish I'm anxious to fry.

Okay, that's really all I've time for at the moment. Hopefully, I'll have something more interesting to post in the next day or two.

Lost in the Dark

Ugh.

So it would seem that The Forest Oracle adventure still has few things to teach me...mainly that the thing needs even more work than I previously assumed. Last night the party entered the tunnel pass known as the Horns of the Dragon, an old dwarf mine that also doubled as a quick road through the rocky hills. Shenanigans ensued as the party figured out the best way to lead/drive their horses and mules into the subterranean caverns, but it all was worked out (it helped that Sonia the Magic-User had a secondary skill of animal husbandry).

Because the box text in this section of the adventure is small, I read/paraphrased it in order to provide the players with some description of the environment. As we came upon the first branch off the main tunnel, I read:

About 5,500 feet into the tunnel another tunnel leads sharply off to the south...

Wait. What?

5,500 feet converts (in D&D terms) to 550" in the underground. The slowest party member has a movement of 9" per ten minute turn, meaning it would have taken roughly 61 turns to cover that distance, a bit more than 10 hours. The party had only brought ten torches with them: enough for ten hours.

But at the time I was running the game I wasn't thinking hard about this...or doing these calculations...because I was already juggling a party feud (one player wanted to leave the party to explore the side passage while the other was adamant they stick with the main trail). In the end, the party ended up splitting, with both groups plunging their separate ways into darkness. I 'hand-waved' the issue, figuring I'd do the math later. Besides, it was always possible that Kitiara and Raistlin had stolen the halflings' lantern back at the Wildwood Inn (plus their four flasks of oil...).

More shenanigans ensued, mainly with players continuing to bicker at every crossroads reached, until the more "adventurous" PC was finally killed by fire beetles while exploring a side avenue. As it was time to check on my soup (and he had to make a new PC) we called the evening's session.

The problem is...and to be clear, I am totally blaming the author and editorial staff at the old TSR...the problem is the map of the tunnels has no recorded scale AND is drawn on hex map in a winding fashion. Caverns are given dimensions in their description ("roughly 1500' x 1500' and 20' high," for example) but, being natural caverns (or dug-out mining operations), none are regularly shaped. Trying to calculate the scale by working backwards from the description is still an "eyeballing" procedure. 

What I ended up doing (this morning) was assigning a figure of 500' per hex, as this seems to match the dimensions of the most regular caverns (per their descriptions), even though it does NOT match the narrative text boxes for the tunnels themselves (if it did, that first side tunnel would have been 6,500' from the entrance, not 5,500). This makes the entire length of the main tunnel, from entrance to exit, roughly 32,000 feet...about 6 miles. Which makes sense when compared to the main wilderness map, because six miles is the distance given between the entry and exit of the pass (the wilderness map DOES have a scale...two miles per hex).

But while the party can make 20 miles per day in the outdoors (about one hex per hour), there's no way for them to navigate at that kind of speed though the old tunnels. Littered with debris from numerous cave-ins, fallen timbers, and old mining equipment, a journey of six miles (at their speed) will take about 59 hours. Assuming 10 hours of marching per day, that's still six days underground, even assuming zero detours into side passages.

Ten torches and four flasks of oil aren't going to cut it. 

Now, if they'd actually beaten the beetles and made off with their luminescent glands, that would be something (of course, if the half-elf cleric had lived through the encounter, they'd also have his daily allotment of light spells at about an hour a pop). As it stands, they're not quite hopelessly lost in the dark, but nearly so. The party did acquire a +1 broadsword from the bandits, and that will shed light in a 20' radius when drawn from its scabbard, but we'll have to see if they remember that (Kitiara is carrying the sword, but she has her hands full with spear and shield at the moment). 

Anyway, it's just as well that we stopped the adventure where we did last night. Turns out, the party was walking for about 25 hours straight.  *sigh*

This is my mistake...I was so busy worried about un-stupid-izing the encounters in the module that I didn't pay close enough attention to the actual logistics. I will endeavor to do better going forward.

Diego's new character, by the way, is a dwarven thief. Here's hoping he bought a lot of torches.

This is how I picture Thisvynn
the NPC dwarf of N2...kee-rayzy.

Constraint

Apologies (as usual) for the lack of posting. Had taxes to do last week, then had a kid come down with a cold which meant both kids were stuck at home until we could get COVID tested (good news: we're all fine). Then we had three soccer games over the weekend, one of which was in Tumwater (just south of Olympia), and so, yeah...I've been busy.

I've got a blog post in the hopper (er...on the draft board) that I'll hopefully get around to soon, but I wanted to "touch base" with folks quickly while I have a moment. Some readers might be wondering how the AD&D game is going. "Good" is the short answer. We are playing The Forest Oracle (modified) and so far things are going well. The party (two PCs and their henchman "Big Jim") have joined forces with three mercenaries named Kitiara, Caramon, and Raistlin who would be easily recognizable to long-time fans of the Dragonlance books. Their addition, for me, has been exceptionally amusing (though my players have no idea), because I simply play their personalities as they appear in the books...with a couple changes:

• Kitiara is 27 years old, and 3rd level. Not an officer in the Dragon Army (of course). Wears studded leather armor, carries normal (non-magical) weapons. Same ability scores as the adventure modules.
• Caramon is 19 years old, and 2nd level. All equipment as per DL5, save that he has only normal (non-magical) weapons.
• Raistlin is 19 year old, and a 2nd level fighter. No, not a mage. He has the same ability scores as in DL5, except with a +1 to STR and +3 to CON (so 11 and 13, respectively...body/spirit never usurped by Fistandantilus). Was wearing scale and wielding two hand axes and a scavenged light crossbow. Currently dressed in chain armor (taken from a dead bandit).

Young Kit (from DL5);
still Lawful Evil.

Anyway, no deaths yet (or permanent blindness...removed the nymph from the adventure). The party just finished dealing with the "wererat inn" encounter; belladonna was eaten, fun has been had by all, etc.

But that's not really what I want to write about. What I want to write about is the importance of rules in the game. Not just the AD&D game, but ANY edition of D&D. 

Which I'm sure I've already addressed a thousand times in a thousand posts (in various ways) over the years. But I want to try it again, perhaps from a different angle, and I don't mind repeating myself, because it's something that's worth reiterating and emphasizing.

D&D is a game. Games have rules that constrain play (in a number of ways). The DM is the arbiter of those rules. For the game to matter, those rules at the table must be iron clad. The game is engaged through its rules. We play the game because we want to engage with the game.

Here I will voice my strong disagreement with the "modern" sensibility that the game rules are only guidelines. This idea is stated quite plainly in the 5E Dungeon, from the first page (well, from page 4, the first page of text):

"The D&D rules help you and the other players have a good time, but the rules aren't in charge. You're the DM and you are in charge." (page 4)

"Rules enable you and your players to have fun at the table. The rules serve you, not vice versa." (page 235)

"Remember that dice don't run your game - you do. Dice are like rules. They're tools to help keep the action moving." (page 237)

That last nonsensical bit is both preceded and followed by paragraphs on fudging dice rolls; basically, running the game by fiat as a freeform narrative, rather than as a structured game with rules, and I can't disagree strongly enough with the sentiment. Rules are "tools to keep the action moving?" No. That is absurd. How is a rule on encumbrance (as an example) used to "keep the action moving?" Nonsense.

Much of 5E is "nonsense" in my opinion (one of the main reasons I choose not to play it), but this type of thinking pervades DMs across all editions. You read it (or watch it or hear it) in numerous blogs, videos, and podcasts: the idea that game rules should be discarded and/or disregarded if and when they begin to interfering with "having fun" a term that seems to equate to: disappointing a player's expectation of what should happen. 

Please note that the "player" being disappointed can include the DM. Here's an example: a DM desires (i.e. has an expectation of) a climactic set piece battle between the party and the Big Boss of an adventure, an epic showdown to provide a "satisfying conclusion." That attachment to a particular end can result in the DM doing all sorts of machinations, manipulations, and mental gymnastics to preclude the PCs from interfere with the expectation. Which is just as bad (or worse!) than players crying and whining how "unfair" an energy drain or save-or-die poison attack is. 

Rules constrain our actions in the game. In the D&D game, a player's choice of armor for her character has a number of in-game consequences, helping to determine encumbrance and movement in addition to protective value (which, in the case of metal armor versus certain spells, might be a negative value). That choice matters...or rather, it should matter...but if the DM fudges attack rolls or ignores those movement values then the "mattering" disappears. And so too does the validity of the player's choice. 

In the AD&D campaign I'm currently running, I use a modified version of the training rules found in the DMG. The rules have been explained to the players; the players understand the manner in which the rules operate and how it constrains them. In our current adventure, the cleric just achieved enough x.p. to advance to 3rd level, and even possesses the cash necessary to procure training. However, the party is in the middle of a "quest" and the nearest priest is days away from their current location. The player has a hard choice to make: he can continue adventuring (still gaining an extra hit die, increased attacks and saves, etc.) OR he can choose to seek out a temple that can initiate him into the "higher mysteries" (i.e. 2nd level spell use). The latter choice will also impact the party, as the PC is the only healer in the group...although the party did just acquire two potions of healing. Of course, if "Peter the Adept" decides to separate from the party, the player (Diego) could simply introduce a new 1st level character to the group (they are staying at a roadside inn, after all)...and who's to say he might not enjoy playing the new character more than the prior one?

All these choices matter because we have rules that we've laid down and that I (as the DM) am enforcing. I could waive them, make the game easier...but I don't think that's in the best interest of my players. I want my players to have meaningful choices, because that leads to deeper engagement with the game world. Just "getting on to" the next action encounter does not. Action IS necessary...it is the fundamental reason why we play the game...but without the deeper meaningful choices (created by rules which constrain action), it is a hollow exercise. 

Rules do not serve the DM; rules serve the game. The DM does not serve the rules; the DM serves the players by acting as an arbiter and enforcer of the rules. As the rules constrain action, so too does the DM constrain the players, providing choices that carry weight and impact ("meaning") in the imaginary environment, making for a richer campaign, a greater engagement, a deeper experience. The rules provide limits...those limits make the game challenging.

I understand that type of play is not everyone's cup of tea. Some people prefer "no constraint" D&D and see my constraints as old-fashioned and/or downright myopic, believing it is in the best interest of the table to allow dwarves to achieve any level of fighter, or half-orcs to be paladins, or wizards to cast an infinite number of attack "cantrips," or tiefling warlocks to exist at all. Folks will see me as needlessly limiting the "fun" to be had, disappointing players' expectations and curbing their imagination.

To which I say: 

I'm playing Advanced D&D, a challenging game with challenging rules for players who want to be challenged. 

Some people like a challenge. When I play a game of Hearts, I try to 'shoot the moon' with every hand. Every. Hand. Because that's the most challenging way to play: trying to make everyone lose at the same time. And because playing otherwise is too easy after the scores of times I've played the game. Even just sitting around a table, yukking it up with friends and family, and drinking cocktails...too easy without the extra constraint.

I've expended far more hours and effort at Dungeons & Dragons than at any card game.

The Worst Module Ever Written

Thursday's session saw a lot of "maintenance" type work and not a whole lot of "adventure." Which for me is fine because I'm trying to run this game as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, similar to how I ran the game back in the day, when things weren't always about going into a "dungeon." Far from it! Most of the game happened between dungeons ("adventure sites"), taking place on the road or in towns or at whatever campsite the PCs had set-up in the wilderness. AD&D is much more about living D&D (or, rather, experiencing it) than about strict accomplishment. If all you're concerned about is acquiring points and leveling up...well, then you might as well play a more streamlined, less nuanced/clunky edition. Like B/X. Which is what I did for years.

So the PCs said goodbye to Big Jim and went about spending their hard-earned loot from the Tomb of Bendan Fazier. They asked Jim if he wanted to join them as a permanent henchman but he refused to serve 1st level characters ("Look me up when you have some more experience under your belt."). Jumbo was given most of the monetary treasure as Sonia and Barod had managed to recover a magic staff and wand, but they still had enough left over to pay training costs (for the cleric), cover living expenses, and outfit themselves for their next destination. See, Yakima isn't quite as amicable to wizards as one might expect in a city its size...in fact it's downright inhospitable (plenty of temples and clerics, though). A college of sorcery was known to exist in (the barony of) Ellensburg to the north, however, and the PCs figured they could get their new items identified there.

[I haven't had the chance to blog about my campaign setting to this point, so I'll give you the brief: I'm using a post-apocalyptic fantasy version of Washington State as the basis for my world. No, it's not a terribly original idea, but being my own stomping grounds, I'm familiar with the territory, landscape, and history....plus I get to poke fun at things I like to poke fun at anyway (like renaming Bellevue as "Hellview" and making it a cesspool of evil). Also, I've got a great map of the place]

[oh, yeah...I'm calling the campaign Evergreen. More on all that in a later post]

But before they left town, they did take a last chance to locate Big Jim (as Barod was now a 2nd level Adept and feeling quite full of himself). They found him facedown in an alleyway where he'd been beaten and robbed. Once he'd sobered up and rested (and been healed) he agreed to sign on as a henchman, although the cleric was forced to acquire new weapons and equipment for the man. Fortunately, Jim was still wearing the plate armor he'd purchased from his share of the loot. 

Off they went. The journey was uneventful and the tower (just outside of town) was not hard to find. As a DM, I had fun running the old wizard with whom the party interacted ("Rupert") as it gave me a chance to show off some of the potentials for magic-use (with spells like wizard eye, unseen servant, ventriloquism, dimension door, ESP, and floating disk all making appearances...Rupert may be a glorified doorman for the college, but he doesn't mind showing off and impressing "the yokels"). Items were identified, and money changed hands, and the PCs learned quite a bit about the staff of striking and wand of conjuration they'd acquired...not everything, mind you, but enough to make the items useful. I'd assumed Barod would want the staff, but he gave it to Sonia seeing as how she was proficient with staves while he was only proficient with maces and flails. Ah, well.

[some words about identify...it is an awful spell. Much as I appreciate Gygax's work on AD&D as a whole, many of the spell "updates" and additions are poorly done. In the case of this particular spell, I am using Alexis Smolensk's version of the spell, although I still require the material component]

Unfortunately, they ran out of money in the process. Times being what they are, Rupert was willing to take an IOU in exchange for the party agreeing to deliver a scroll to an associate two days journey to the north....with the additional understanding that no more magical aid OR TRAINING (for magic-user characters) would be had until such time as the debt had been paid off. "But where are we going to get more money?" You'll figure out something.

Which leads me to the title of this post.  For the players' next "adventure" I am running the old TSR module N2: The Forest Oracle, an adventure about which I've written before. Make no mistake: it is a terrible adventure. Even without the excessive (and poorly written) box text and linear "plot structure," it is filled with errors and nonsense that show NOT ONLY a poor understanding of coherence and consistency in a fantasy adventure, but an extremely poor understanding of the game itself...how the game runs and how its mechanics function. For those who haven't read it, I'll list a few:

• In the MM, a bandit's hit die is listed as "1-6 hit points," (i.e. the creature has less than 1 HD). The bandit encounter lists the bandits HD as "1-6," and the bandits as having 10 hit points each.
• In the MM, giant frogs are given a range of hit dice (from 1 to 3, based on their size), and variable attack damage (via bite) of 1-3, 1-6, or 2-8 also (presumably) based on size. The module gives eight frogs with HD 1-3, 10 hit points each and 3 attacks of 1-3/1-6/2-8 via "blow/blow/bite."
• A nymph has taken a human lover. This would usually result in permanent blindness, if not death for the human (assuming he's ever seen his lover naked).
• Multiple encounters with groups of monsters requiring special weapons to hit (wererats, perytons), despite this being a low-level adventure and the absence of any magical weapons among the pre-generated characters. The perytons especially (four of them!) is an especially deadly encounter...I'd expect a good portion of a party to be wiped out without significant "fudging" from the DM.
• Nonsensical surprise rules, random death (victims carried off by a yeti must save versus death to escape or "die horribly"), strange magics cast by low level characters (the "gypsy curse").
• A 12th level druid backed by a "Golden Guard" consisting of druids "of Level 5 or higher" not being able to handle a score of goblins (and 5 worgs) living in known ruin a mere 6 miles from their stronghold.
• A 4th level magic-user leading a band of "traveling people" somehow having access to a cleric capable of casting multiple cure serious wounds spells.

There is, of course, more issues than just these (another encounter with osquips is also especially deadly for characters levels 2-4), even without the terrible, terrible box text staining the module's pages. So, I'm sure the question in most folks minds is "Why the heck would you want to run this thing?"

Well, despite the poor execution, I still rather like the adventure. And for my purposes, strange as it may seem, I believe the thing is salvageable. Here's how I'm doing it:

First off, the thing has maps. If I haven't said it for the hundredth time or so, maps are not my forte...I am pretty much the opposite of Dyson Logos. I have made maps, I can make maps, but I have next to no confidence in my mapmaking ability. The maps in N2 are actually pretty good, especially if you consider the thing as an open area for exploration (a "sandbox"). Even the tunnel under the Horns of the Dragon appears reasonable to me. Consider what it is: a pass through the mountains and/or a played-out gemstone mine (not sure which part of the equation came first). Why should it be convoluted and "interesting?" The side caverns were dug off the main line (delving for gemstones) so as to keep miners from getting lost. It offers a sure path from one side of the hills to the other. From a design perspective, it allows PCs the opportunity to choose whether to take dangerous side treks or not. 

SO...good maps. Used like maps (i.e. showing locations), not for plotting an "adventure path." 'Course this only works if I can shoehorn the thing into my campaign world...which I can by placing The Downs a short distance north of modern day Thorp, Washington. 

Next thing is, capture "the gist" of what's going on in the adventure while removing any attachment to the order or manner in which things play out. There's a blight on The Downs caused by curse magic. There's a halfling thief running an inn that steals travelers' possessions (though why not just murder them?). A lone, crazy dwarf fights a guerrilla war against a band of mutants (orcs) in the old underpass. There's an enchanted lake. A few monster lairs. Road bandits. A ruined castle (now inhabited by goblins). A large river (this is a length of the Columbia in my setting) with few viable crossings. An encampment of "gypsy" surrogates with an ogre problem. And, of course, a tree fort filled with largely aloof druids of enormous power.

That's not bad stuff. Several of the encounter (especially the peryton) are overpowered for the average party of 2nd and 3rd level characters, but they're easily adjusted...fire beetles instead of osquips, for example. The treasure take in the adventure as written is sufficient: enough to level up a party of seven 3rd level characters to 4th level, assuming sale of the truly random nonsense (why would the designer feel the need to include not just one, but TWO scrolls of protection vs. were-tigers? In two different locations? Did he simply not give a shit?). However, while the amounts are good, the type of treasure is not. 

Does a party really plan on hauling half a ton of copper coins around? Completed linearly (as the dungeon is written) the party will have 1400# of coins by the time they reach the first river crossing (over a tightrope), and that's less than half the coins available for discovery in the adventure total. Some 33-34,000 coins can be pulled as "treasure" by the end, which is fairly obnoxious. Considering the scenario has a bit of the "race against time" thing going, the adventure is forcing the PCs to choose between wealth and experience OR saving a village that was A) heretofore unknown, B) bears no familial/relationship connections to them, and C) has offered nothing so far as reward is concerned. 

So: treasure amounts? Fine. Treasure types? Need adjustment. 

Still, these are minor fixes. Really! Monsters and treasure are easy enough to adjust. My PCs are 2nd level or just about (at the end of our Thursday session a hill giant wandered into their camp site, and they managed to defeat it - after peaceable negotiations failed - which might have been enough to put Sonia and Big Jim over the top), so I can actually REDUCE the treasure amount and still give the party enough to make the adventure worth their while. But mostly, it's just a matter of changing encounters in the thing to be sensible...and appropriate (when necessary).

Let's take the Wildwood Inn as an example: you've got an honest halfling thief (ex-adventurer) running an inn that gets regular business (when the stolen goods are recovered, he knows who they belong to and intends to return it to the rightful owners) situated at a crossroads in a haunted/fairy tale woods. The wererats are guests that steal from the other guests and keep a big chest of gold and silver (as well as a bunch of silver bracelets) in their room. There's a lot that's terrible about this encounter that I'm not even mentioning but that's the basics: inn at a crossroads; halfling proprietor; thieving wererats. Here's how I change it:

• There's only ONE wererat. Even a party of low-level PCs should be able to take such a creature if they have a silver and/or magic weapon between them and an attack spell. If that fails, they can still attempt to grapple the creature and tie it up, or use fire or...I don't know, players tend to be clever, right? But four wererats (HD 3+1, special attacks & defenses, plus some sleep magic ability) is a screw job as written.
• The wererat IS the halfling innkeeper (he is a thief after all). Far from being ignorant of what's going on under his own roof, he uses his shapeshifting ability to aid in minor pilfering of guests. Maybe business isn't quite as good as he lets on, maybe he has debts. Maybe he's been shaken down by the gypsies...er, "traveling folk"...and doesn't want to be cursed any more than he already is. OR perhaps his lycanthropy is due to a curse from Madame Riva (the same gypsy matriarch that cursed the Downs) and he needs extra loot in order to pay-off her band so that they'll remove the curse. That certainly fits with the "fairy tale" themes of the module.
• Far from being a hose job on the PCs, the thief is MEANT to be caught and discovered. Why? Because it makes for more interesting possibilities: the coward can surrender and beg for his life. He can try bribing the PCs with the goods he's stolen. He can explain his plight and ask for aid. He can make a deal with them or give them ownership of a dilapidated inn in the middle of nowhere. 
• The treasure should be sensible...not heaps of coins (and certainly not silver! Why O why would lycanthropes want to keep silver around? There shouldn't be any silver in the inn!) but small valuables: bracelets, rings, necklaces, silk scarves or handkerchiefs, a fine pair of shoes...and, sure, maybe a silver dagger or two that the halfling has buried in the garden out back. Yes, there will be some coins - the innkeeper does business in hard currency, after all (and presumably buys his provisions the same way) - but you don't need 350# of coins. That's enough to fill eight backpacks!

[as an aside: I imagine it'd be pretty difficult to operate an inn by yourself, in the middle of a forest, with no supporting village or farmers to provide goods to the place. Such a roadside hostel MIGHT be possible if the halfling had a family: a wife and kids to help raise livestock, brew ale, work a garden, etc. but it would likely be pretty raw fare. Regular visitors could alleviate that (by providing coin the innkeeper could use to supplement the menu) but considering there're no delivery trucks and no refrigeration, food for the innkeeper needs to come from somewhere close by. Just saying...]

[me, I'd probably make the inn fairly run down AND give the halfling a family. Even so, the innkeeper would be the only wererat of the bunch (though a DM who runs a grimmer campaign could certainly add wererat children the PCs need to butcher...yikes, the fairy tale suddenly becomes a horror story of "rats in the walls!"...that's probably a shade too dark for my kids), giving yet another dimension of humanity to the innkeeper's situation]

But you see? It's not terribly hard to repurpose the concepts of these encounters to make them functional. For me, the hard part has already been done by the module writers: they made me a map with a bunch of numbered encounters. All the box text and "plot" stuff can go out the window; most of it is garbage anyway (why is the innkeeper in the downs this jovial fellow with this bustling/thriving establishment? Isn't his village suffering through a cursed blight with the populace on the verge of starvation?). But the structure of the environment...in this case, the small section of wilderness the map presents...is sound.

Well, sound enough (for my purposes).

All right, that's enough for folks to chew on for the weekend. If I get around to typing up my notes for N2 in a useable form, I will post them to the blog for interested folks. Later, gators!

Look - I'm not the only one to try
rehabbing N2! Though it does seem to
have killed the other guy's blog....

Failed Fables

Just continuing from where I left off...

It was only a few weeks ago (when was Free RPG Day? A couple days after that) that I was in Around the Table Games in Edmonds and found a veritable motherlode of used D&D game product for sale, including a stack of adventure modules in near mint condition. And they were a wide variety: everything from Castle Caldwell to Queen of the Demonweb Pits to a first printing of Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan to the deluxe World of Greyhawk (not in the box). It was a really astounding collection, a mountain of books showing little evidence of actual play...just years of careful storage until the day some gentleman decided to clean out his closet.

[I asked about the person who'd sold the items...some local lawyer, apparently, and one "definitely older" than Yours Truly]

Needless to say, despite an eye-gouging markup, I acquired a fair portion of the collection, though I restrained myself somewhat (tempting as it was to double-up on copies of books I already own, I felt guilty at the thought of depriving others of the chance to acquire such treasures). Still...a good haul and (for me) more useful items than what I might have picked up at Free RPG Day, had I remembered to show up on time this year.

Mostly more useful, I should say. I'll admit that some items were more about nostalgia than anything else, and it's one of these books that I want to talk about: Carl Smith's 1984 adventure module The Forest Oracle. Designated N2 (the second of the "novice" series, after Against the Cult of the Reptile God), The Forest Oracle was one of the last 1E adventure modules I purchased prior to a hiatus from D&D that lasted more than a decade (my hiatus from "Advanced" D&D specifically has continued up through the present day...about 30 years).

[Jesus Christ! I hadn't even realized that till now!]

I ran The Forest Oracle at least once or twice "back in the day," but somewhere in the mists of time it was misplaced or stolen or tossed (not by my...I'm an absolute packrat when it comes to most things), hence the reason I was willing to shell out $15+ for a good copy. It is infamous in gaming circles, being considered one of the worst adventure modules of the TSR era...if not one of the worst of all time. Google its title and you can find several blog posts and and assorted forum rants describing the reasons why. It IS rather bad, on a lot of fronts, and I can specifically remember some issues when it came to actually running the thing, including an outright mutiny by my players over the "wererat robbery" incident.

[for the curious: players stay the night at an inn, where they are subsequently robbed by wererats. Even PCs setting a guard for the night gets put to sleep by a sleep spell (despite wererats not having access to such magic). It's a really heavy handed method of setting up a really stupid encounter for very nonsensical reasons. My players...who were not what one would call particularly sophisticated...railed at both the stupidity and unfairness of the situation, to the point that I believe we simply scratched it out of existence. If they'd actually read the adventure module, they would have seen the encounter was even stupider than it appeared]

Be that as it may, I adore this module. Despite the poor writing, the linear (often railroad) plot, the nonsensical challenges and pointless encounters...even when I was a kid (and didn't care or notice these kinds of things) and the only thing that mattered was the recommended level of PC (and levels 2-4 was far, far too low for my usual players), I still wanted to own and play the thing. Because stylistically I really dig on the promise their selling.

Just look at that cover. Keith Parkinson's color plates have been some of my favorite over the years, and this one is no exception. These aren't mischievous gremlins, subterranean wretches, nor Tolkien orcs of a lesser variety. No, these goblins are the dark fey of a Grimm Brother's forest, girded for war and sporting hell-colored skin that leaves no question of their evil nature or infernal origins.

And the threat implied by the cover goes perfectly with the themes and plot set out in the adventure scenario (a village cursed, a magical quest, benevolent druids, nefarious gypsies). Even the nonsensical encounters (the grieving nymph with her enchanted lover, the attack in the night by shapeshifting rats) go well with the "fairy tale" theme being presented, as does Jeff Easley's rather charming interior artwork. It's not "high fantasy" (what one might call Tolkien or Dragonlance); it's what I call prosaic fantasy, though of course I'm using the term "prosaic" incorrectly (sorry, I wasn't a lit or writing major). Prosaic actually means "common," "unromantic," or "lacking poetic beauty" and sure The Forest Oracle fits that description. But what I really mean is something delightfully quaint or of an older style, whimsical nature. Give me the word that means that in English and I'll endeavor to improve on my poor vocabulary.

[EDIT (several years later): "bucolic" may have been a better word than "prosaic"]

See, there's been a lot of ink (and blood) spilled over the last few years on the nature of the style of "Old School" D&D, discussions I've contributed to myself in enthusiastic and half-cocked manner. And while there's no denying both the gonzo design priorities and S&S inspirations, there is a LOT of this "fairy tale" style fantasy on display in D&D. Hell, it was what I brought to D&D when I first started playing.

I didn't get around to reading Moorcock and Leiber and Zelazny until I was well into my high school years. But I read a LOT of fantasy fiction even before I began immersing myself in fantasy role-playing: C.S. Lewis (of course), Frank Baum, Lewis Carol, Susan Cooper, Lloyd Alexander, Robin McKinley, and Peter S. Beagle. Tolkien, too, though only The Hobbit (I wouldn't finish LOTR till college). The Brothers Grimm. Hawthorne's Tanglewood Tales. Bullfinch's Mythology. Etc.

[true, I was also reading MZB, Asprin's Thieves World anthologies, and McCaffery's Get Off the Unicorn...we'll get to those in the next installment of this series]

Point is, my fantasy inspirations...the stuff of my imagination that was driving me towards D&D...was cut neither from the Howardian/Lovecraftian pulp cloth, nor from its imitators. Likewise, I had yet to be exposed to "high concept fantasy" in the Tolkien LOTR, Sam Donaldson, Terry Brooks, etc. sense...where a band of heroes struggle against some supernatural, mega-evil threat with the fate of a completely fictitious fantasy world hanging in the balance (i.e. the most popular form of serial fantasy fiction for the last several decades...see Robert Jordan, George Martin, Dragonlance, even Rowling's Harry Potter series).

And I don't think Dungeons & Dragons did all that much to dissuade me from that style of fantasy. If illustration and artwork is present to conjure and fire the imagination, many of the most prominent images found in my early D&D books fit right along side my prosaic (commonplace), fairy tale fantasy sensibilities. Outside the original Moldvay Basic book itself, I find a surprising lack of dungeon illustrations. There are few images in the original Monster Manual that depict or even suggest a subterranean setting, save for the Gygaxian "underworld cleaning crew" monsters, and aside from the joke illos (and the serial comic in the appendix on random dungeon creation) the DMG is likewise devoid of such artwork.

[while it's hard to argue against the cover of the original Players Handbook, keep in mind this was the last piece of the AD&D "puzzle" we acquired, instead operating with a combo of B/X, the MM, and the DMG, for a couple years...and when we DID finally get ahold of the PHB it was with the 1983 Easley ("Ringlerun") cover. I didn't see the 1978 cover till I acquired a copy in a used bookstore, circa 1987]

Check out the DMG illustrations on pages 48, 59, 154, and 193. Heck, just look at the cover leaf illos from all the original core books (DMG, PHB, MM): all show outdoor scenes...scenes I'd say deserve to be called pastoral (yes, even the bulette fight) in the light of day. Nothing so mean as grubby explorers in a fantasy Underworld. No one hanging from ropes or prodding cave walls with 10' poles or fighting desperate battles with brutish orcs by the light of torches and lanterns.

And yet those things...those scurrilous rogues who go (largely) undepicted...those are the stuff of actual gameplay, as written. It's HARD to use the D&D system to run games in the style of old fairy tale fantasy...the genre simply isn't supported by the system (let me tell you, I've tried!). A fairy tale druid grove like that described in The Forest Oracle isn't likely to be held in respectful awe...it's simply another lair waiting to be scouted and plundered by an enterprising party of adventurers (as soon as they feel they're of a level sufficient to take it on)! Roadside encounters with sad nymphs and dryads-in-distress are as likely to end in disaster as not, depending on what angle to the players see in helping such creatures. It IS possible to inject the fear and wonder of the mysterious and supernatural into one's game, but it seldom lasts...in the end, what matters most is how readily an encountered creature can hit Armor Class 2 (that's AC 18 for you ascending types).

Anyway, some of us were trying to do this type of fantasy. You see it in other modules of the TSR era (the UK series especially), but none quite so clearly as The Forest Oracle. It may seem like banal, overused fantasy tropes (I mean, it is, right?) but that in itself feels unusual to me. Which is probably why I like it.
: )

R.I.P. Keith Parkinson