Paladins I’ve Known: Sir Alexander

Not be raised on OD&D has been in a boon in some ways and a bane in others (which, I suppose could be said for everyone regarding every edition). The main “bane” for me has been, that I have much less historical knowledge upon which to draw for my musings and rambling analysis of all things D&D…sure I have a copy of the LBBs, but have neither owned (nor perused) any of the original supplements, and the information I have on them has been scantily gleaned through on-line reviews and other folks’ blogs.

Which makes it tough when I’m trying to create something that wants to be at least semi-true to its roots.

Now having said all that, let’s get down to brass tacks and talk about the paladin class. Frankly, I’m surprised this guy keeps coming up in my posts seeing as how I have so little actual, visceral experience with the dude. But maybe that IS why I keep bringing him up…this blog is for the most part ephemeral and somewhat theoretical…why not analyze a character class with which I’ve had no direct experience.

Now, granted, much of my “D&D career” has been spent in the DM’s chair, but I went through a pretty long stretch (more than a couple years) as a player, and never once did I pick up the spurs and the Holy Avenger. Thing is, though, neither did the players in my game. In fact, it wasn’t until 1998 or so that I actually had an honest-to-goodness Paladin sitting at my table.

That was a one-off game, and one that ended prematurely I’m afraid, and the character was played by my good buddy, Alex. Let me wax on a bit about this guy:

Alex and I actually met at work and started hanging out…well, I don’t really remember why. We probably got introduced at some work party and hit it off; we’d sometimes go out for a beer and a game of pool after work. He was a good guy with a good heart and I was heavy into my New Agey stuff back then and would share my philosophy with him and provide romantic advice to him from an astrological perspective.

I don’t remember how I learned he was a gamer…I think he was over at my apartment one time and saw an old gaming book and told me he played a lot of D&D…and that’s why we decided to get together and try a game (which unfortunately terminated early due to another player’s abrupt departure).

Now Alex’s gaming experience was a little different from mine. For one thing, he was raised up on 2^nd edition AD&D and this was his game of choice (and I ran our game using 2^nd edition books). For another thing, Alex ALWAYS played paladins, as he readily admitted.

And if you’d ever met Alex, the paladin thing would come as no surprise. The guy DID have a big heart…not that he didn’t do selfish of dimwitted things sometimes AS WE ALL DO, but for the most part he always tried to do the right thing for the right reason. He didn’t drink much, and smoked even less (I was a chain smoker at the time, and he had maybe one puff off a cigarette the whole time I knew him). He worked out every day and was tall and VERY muscular/fit…handsome, too, with a chiseled jaw, blue eyes and close-cropped receding blond hair…kind of a younger, buffer Daniel Craig. In addition to looking good, he was also very charming and (as one might imagine) a hit with the ladies. Yet he was also a serial monogamist, generally in long-term relationships (or no relationship at all) the whole time I knew him.

In other words, the kind of looked and acted like the knight in shiny armor. It was hard not to say, ‘okay, yeah, you can play a paladin.’ I mean, that class was practically MADE for Alex!

Contrast him with my earliest 1^st edition AD&D group and we seem like downright miscreants. I mean, we weren’t above some “power-gaming” back in the day (see, for example the female drow cleric-assassin played by a male member of the group) and the paladin class has some nice bennies associated with it. But the main thing that kept our players away from it was the damn alignment restrictions.

Now folks like Alex, who started off with 2^nd edition AD&D telling him that he was playing a game of heroic adventure, probably don’t get this. For us that started with the earlier edition (and as kids) we had no illusions about our role in the D&D game world: there are dungeons with monsters and treasure. Your characters are “adventurers” (i.e. tomb robbers, mercenaries, n’er-do-wells) that go into said dungeons to kill monsters and take loot. Try not to get killed.

For us there were no great plots, no over-arching story-line (save what we created with the soap opera melodrama of our own character’s bickering, politicking, and in-fighting), no “dragon high lords” to bring down. And the paladin’s alignment restrictions were a real hindrance to anyone trying to live the life of a career adventurer.

And RESTRICTIONS IS the key word here. Maybe because we were kids when we started playing, we took the rules very seriously…as in, to the letter. Even though D&D extolled us to change rules as we saw fit to make the game “fun” the only thing we did was ADD rules when no rules were present to govern a particular system. Our “tweaking” of the system was additive only…we never dumped “broken” rules (if the rule was present in the system it was sacrosanct). For example, we were so downright GRATEFUL when the Unearthed Arcana came out with a much less complicated, more streamlined unarmed combat system, because FINALLY we could put it into our games. Prior to UA, we avoided unarmed combat like the plague, because whenever someone tried it we’d have to haul out the bulky-weird system in the DMG and try to work it out using the “official rules.”

Alignment was a RULE, and we adhered to it closely. There were no restrictions on which character classes or alignments a player could have for his or her character (often there would be at least one assassin accompanying the party), but most player characters gravitated towards a chaotic, neutral, or evil bent as it was far less restrictive for the (adventuring) work at hand. The point was to pick an alignment that BEST DESCRIBED the character’s personality…and then play that. And as I said, I suppose we had a bunch of thuggish players in our group based on the usual alignments.

Scott’s magic-users and illusionists were always Chaotic Neutral; other characters (elven and half-elven thieves) might be Chaotic Good. Of course, he DID play a (male) Drow cleric of Lolth (Chaotic Evil) and a half-elf magic-user/assassin (Evil of some sort). Matt usually played a Lawful Good cleric (because he was a cleric of Athena), but he often got subordinated to a lesser (support) role unless he was solo-adventuring; he also played the female Drow cleric/multi-something, a regular human assassin (evil), an insane Healer (Chaotic Evil; from a Dragon magazine), and a Chaotic Neutral Archer (also from Dragon, I believe). Jocelyn would have sweet little Neutral Goods or Chaotic Goods, but her badass fighter Bladehawk was Chaotic Evil (as a follower of Ares); however, earlier BH had been Neutral (in Basic D&D), and Chaotic Neutral (in her 1^st incarnation as an AD&D character). Jason played thieves of miscreant alignment, and my brother’s characters (barbarians and fighters) were generally Chaotic Good to Chaotic Neutral; Alejandro was the latter. Crystal’s fighter was Chaotic or Neutral, and Rob…well, he always played a “good” guy and generally paid the price for it; he should have played 2^nd edition.

As I’ve mention before, I generally played a bard, originally Neutral Good but eventually Neutral Evil. That’s just how we rolled…as I said, we were a bunch of miscreants.

Anyway, the rules were THE RULES. There is nothing in AD&D that says you cannot play a Chaotic Evil assassin, for example (so long as you roll the required ability scores), but there ARE pretty explicit descriptions of what a Chaotic Evil person is. And there is even more restrictive prose regarding the paladin class, not just the Lawful Good alignment…apparently too restrictive for my players’ tastes.

Hell, we didn’t even (that I recall) institute “level reduction” penalties for playing out of alignment. If a person wasn’t playing their alignment correctly we DMs simply said, “bam, your character’s alignment is changed.” If someone did something murderous they were evil; if they routinely broke the law they were NOT “lawful.” The only time alignment mattered was if you played a class with an alignment restriction (a ranger, a monk, a cleric of a particular deity). THEN sudden alignment changes might have an actual in-game penalty (losing one’s abilities). Otherwise, it still HURT…it was a blow to one’s ego when you had created a character of a particular alignment and your DM changed it on you. Basically, you were being called out for “not playing right.” I know, ‘cause it happened to at least one of MY characters…and damn straight I deserved the chastisement!

Anyway, as an older, more mature role-player I LIKE the idea of the paladin for the role-playing challenge it is (or maybe I just feel more heroic myself these days!). I like the Holy Avenger sword (though why they bothered to add a +6 version in the Unearthed Arcana, I can’t begin to justify), and think it could be used as an excellent “quest” treasure or basis for a plot arc of some sort.

Heck, I know I’ve written many times that I enjoy the whole “fall-from-grace-and-redemption” story line; to really make it work though, I think you’d have to make the paladin restrictions even more restrictive. Make them live a life of poverty and chastity and then cause them to fall through simple temptation (O foul wine, women, and song!). Man, if I was running an AD&D campaign again (something I do NOT plan on) I’d do it…hell, I’d let anyone play a paladin that wanted to (auto-raise that Charisma to 17 if too low) provided they live by the strictest of strictures (and should he/she fall, lose that bonus Charisma as well! Ha!). It would be fun to see just how long an “adventurer” could walk the straight and narrow. ; )

Two last notes: it seems weird that the “heroic divide” SEEMS to be between 1973 and 1974, as far as birth dates of players. Alex, Rob, my buddies Mike, Michael, and Ben (the infamous “god squad;” a bunch of atheists playing lawful good paladins, clerics, and rangers…weird). All these folks were born in ’74. Me and my miscreant 1^st edition friends were all ’72 or ’73.

Last note: my buddy Alex got a job with Wizards of the Coast eventually and then got out-sourced to some baseball card manufacturer (don’t ask) eventually moving to California for work. I haven’t seen him since (though I “friended” him on Facebook). I miss the guy, 2^nd edition or no. : (

Always Give 'Em An Out

Mmm…it’s so easy to talk about what not to do…whether in a D&D game or in real life. “Hindsight is 20x20,” they say. I also like the idea, “Wisdom is not ‘learning from experience.’ That’s experience. WISDOM is learning from others’ experience.”

Call it all a justification for analysis or “mulling over” or “re-living” these old game experiences. Hopefully I can impart some wisdom to other gamers, so that they won’t make the same mistakes I have.

As I’ve written, more than once, I was a self-taught DM. This sometimes led to crazy interpretations of rules. It also led to some less than great DM’ing at times.

I was never much of a ‘railroader’ seeing as how part of the fun of gaming to me was seeing where the players were going to take a game. Plus I didn’t get too involved in “plot arcs” anyway until the 1990s (with the advent of White Wolf games). If a top villain was killed (or not killed) made no nevermind to me…I didn’t create adventures upon which hinged “the fate of the world” or anything…not even in Marvel Superhero games!

However, at times I WAS “too clever for my own good.” This is a problem. As I’ve learned (only recently, and from hard-core analysis of RPG theory), PLAYERS CAN’T READ THE DM’S MIND. Nor should they be expected to do so. Game play expectations should be up front, and CHALLENGES to the players (one of the wonderful perks inherent in OS D&D play) should have more than one solution. In fact, for situations and challenges outside the normal rules and/or scope of the game, a DM should allow ANY REASONABLE SOLUTION PLAYERS SUGGEST TO HAVE A REASONABLE CHANCE OF SUCCESS.

This is important! Ugh! I can’t stress HOW important. Especially with regard to most all tricks and traps (which get invented from whole cloth by DMs or adventure module designers) this needs to be the case. If not, you are forcing the players (not their characters) to read your mind…which just going to lead to a lot of frustration. I’ve had plenty of very intuitive players, ones that had known me and known my tendencies and gaming style for years, and STILL they couldn’t read my mind. If I only present one “out” to them, how crazy am I?

Pretty crazy. Let me give you an example (of course):

One of my earliest D&D memories involved my DMing several friends at the home of my good friend, Jocelyn. Players included, J, Jason, maybe my brother (I don’t remember him being there, though), and a new guy named Brian; the latter was a school chum of Jocelyn. This was in the days of our “Original” Campaign (when we played B/X with a Monster Manual) and the characters involved were high level and much beloved: Bladehawk the fighter and Sneakshadow the thief. Brian had a different, regular gaming group, and he had brought along HIS best character from that campaign: a high level AD&D cleric. At the time I still didn’t know what “AD&D” was, and since he had failed to bring along a copy of the player’s handbook, there were some disputes on the subject.

[at one point, B wanted to use his blade barrier spell. When I told him I’d never heard of it, he searched in vain through my Moldvay and Cook rules looking for it…I’m not sure he knew there was a difference either. In the end, I believe we houseruled something…as I believe we also did with his hammer of thunderbolts!]

Not that it mattered. They never accomplished anything in several hours of play.

The night before, I had caught at least part of, perhaps all of, the Rankin/Bass animated film The Return of the King. This was many years before I ever got around to actually READING Tolkien (I had seen the Rankin/Bass version of The Hobbit, but that was the full extent of my Middle Earth knowledge). For those who haven’t seen the film, well…it’s good, but it picks up mid-story, so if you’re a 9 or 10 year old kid watching it for the first time with no context you might drop most of the content.

However, the imagery was most evocative and being the Great Imitator in those days, I directly stole parts of the plot/film to create my adventure for the next day’s game. Specifically, the Battle of Pelennor Fields.

Some of you see where this is going already, I’m sure…

So our RPG heroes start the game in media res at what might otherwise be known as Minas Tirith, but since that name hadn’t stuck with me, I’m sure I made something up. They’ve been hired (as great heroes) to help repel the invading forces of some ancient evil. What I thought that evil was is lost to me now, though I’m certain it was pretty demonic or diabolic at the time. The bad guys were of course led by the Witch-King of Angmar (again, at the time I never remembered who or what this guy was so he was certainly re-named something else), an invisible figure with flaming eyes and a crown suspended over a suit of spiky armor. Oh and a big sword of course.

And he’s big, and he’s boastful, and of course he has Grond (whose name I probably DID remember) smiting the gates of the fortress, and I myself was very descriptive and evocative as a DM (years later I ran into Brian who ended up going to the same high school as me, though he was two or three grades ahead…he remembered me as “The DM” from this one game session).

Oh, anyway, so the Dark Knight (or whatever he was) is of course shouting about how invulnerable he is, how NO MAN can slay him, how it has been foretold that NO WEAPON OF MAN can even harm him…

…and of course I’m hoping for a kind of Eowyn show-down with the Baddie, right?

Because: The most prominent player in our campaign was my (female) friend Jocelyn with her (female) fighter Bladehawk…a consummate badass of at least 14th level or so (she’d eventually end up around level 24, if I remember correctly) with her magic plate mail and her enchanted talking sword (more on that guy later). I was trying to goad her into a fight, you know?

And of course she wasn’t having any of it.

One of the reasons WHY she was 14th level and why she was so prominent was she always played smart and cagey. Jocelyn knew I was already a bit of a “killer DM” and had watched other PCs get trampled by cyclopses and such. So she wasn’t about to plunge headlong into a fight.

Not that she wasn’t brave, either…she was willing to fight, but was afraid the dude was invulnerable. At some point they used a flying potion or spell so that she could buzz the guy from above and try hitting him with holy water and such…to no effect. She and Brian reviewed the cleric’s spell list to see if there was anything that might defeat the guy…dispel evil, blade barrier, even bless at one point.

But I, the DM, was resolved that the guy could only be defeated in melee combat, and only by a woman. I was too attached to my set-piece combat.

And yet, I wasn’t a railroad-type DM…meaning, it wouldn’t be fair to give away the solution to the puzzle. The players would either figure it out, or they wouldn’t. My way or the highway, so to speak.

Turns out it was the highway…as in, time expired and we all got driven home by Jocelyn’s mom. RIGHT BEFORE we had to pack up our things, J had figured she might as well TRY attacking the thing and was strapping on her sword. But she was doing it fairly reluctantly, figuring I was just going to kill her character (Brian did point out he could raise her from the dead, which might have been the impetus she needed for this measure of last resort). But she still wasn’t very hopeful. Three (four if you count my brother) players had been sitting around a table for hours, with a break for lunch(!), trying to figure out ways to defeat this wraith lord, while the whole time I was going on and on about how “no MAN can defeat me.” Call it a sign of our patriarchal times, but they figured “NO MAN” referred to both male AND female humans. I now remember my brother WAS there, because he had a dwarf character that they tried against the guy…to which the creature proved invulnerable, of course.

On the way home I explained my dastardly plan to my friends who all thought it was fiendishly clever (they’d never seen the film or read LotR themselves, and my 8 year old brother for whatever reason never connected the movie with the adventure despite my hints) but also plainly stated they had ABSOLUTLEY NO IDEA what the hell they were supposed to do. While they had fun (planning and strategizing and repelling orcs) they were slightly disappointed not to have defeated the main bad guy.

And this is MY fault as a DM. My made up “wraith lord” is not a standard monster they may have read about or known. Its vulnerability was not obvious and not revealed. AND I disallowed reasonable attempts by the players to damage it or hinder it in any way, shape or form. Totally lame on my part.

Ugh…I realize this was more than a quarter-century ago, but it still bugs me to this day. Despite the good time had by all, it could have been better, if I had been a bit more flexible…hell, maybe if I’d had some training in how to be a DM. Ah, well.

Let it be a lesson to others!

Character Backgrounds

Well, it’s been more than twelve hours…time to post.

[note to self: need to get organized about actual reading and posting of blogs]

Over at Trollsmyth, ol’ TS is looking to start a discussion about character backgrounds in OS D&D land. At least that’s how it appears to me, so I’m using it as a jumping-off point for yet another fine reminisce about the “good ol’ days.”

Back in the “good ol’ days” (call it 1984-87) I was involved in a long running D&D campaign, that had such luminaries as Bladehawk and Lucky and Sneakshadow…characters that had begun in the primordial days of B/X before graduating to first edition AD&D. Like paleontologists we (the players) defined several layered strata of our game world, each conferring to a different “D&D Age.” The titles we conferred were (if memory serves):

THE ORIGINAL CAMPAIGN
THE SECOND CAMPAIGN
THE CURRENT CAMPAIGN
THE “NEW GENERATION”

There fourth was very short, and followed by one-last “doomsday” style campaign that led to the demise of our gaming group (already waning)…in fact, it consisted of only a single game session before disintegrating in shambles.

[a B/X campaign and my “Alejandro-Blackrazor” campaign were the only long-running D&D campaigns I ran as a DM after those…I played in two separate multi-adventure campaigns, but I haven’t DM’d an on-going D&D campaign for a loooong time]

ANYway…back to the Big Four (mainly the Big Three plus appendix): the way we defined the beginnings and endings of these campaigns were with destructions of the game world. The campaigns were like the Mayan of Navajoh ages of man…we’d get tired of how far out-of-spin the game world was and BOOM…decided to blow it all to hell. Famous PCs might or might not (at their player’s option) be reincarnated at 1st level. Sometimes they were reincarnated at a high level (or one consistent with their status in the last campaign), but generally only as an NPC. The start of a new campaign was a SPRING time, a time of renewal, when all the regular players of the game group would sit down and roll up new characters or put new faces on old characters with new rule sets.

Anyway, because of the carry-overs and consistencies from game to game things like character background became immensely important. Relationships (between characters, between PCs and NPCs) became important parts of the campaign world. Just because two characters hated each other or were rivals in a prior campaign didn’t mean there had to be karmic carry-over…but sometimes there was. Likewise, a character’s destiny in one campaign did not mean anything to his (or her) potential fate in the new campaign.

Think of it more as a comic book imprint. No matter how many times he’s “re-loaded,” Bruce Banner is always a skinny guy who accidentally gets dosed with some kind of radiation and becomes a rampaging Hulk. Batman is always the playboy millionaire Bruce Wayne, driven by the murder of his parents (whether they were killed in the 20s, 40s, 70s, or some other decade means nothing).

To continue: these backgrounds were important; they helped us keep some sense of continuity, some sense of game history. Our character sheets had stats on the first page and then a couple additional pages of lists attached with friends, enemies, loves, hates, fears, desires, family, etc. Some things (and people!) might fall into multiple categories. Characters with longer histories would have longer lists; new characters might have a couple hooks or tie-ins to other characters, but would generally have shorter lists. This didn’t mean they were unimportant, though!

My bard character was a wandering, lusty son-of-a-gun for instance…a real Don Juan-type (at least in the beginning). As a half-elf he’d been around for several decades…maybe he was somewhere between 50 and 70? It was not unreasonable to assume he had sired some (or many) bastard children in his wanderings.

So one of our group (my friend Matt) decided to create a new character that was the adult bastard son of my character. This was during what we called “the Current Campaign” and it led to so much interesting drama/conflict (the son had a bit of a bone to pick with the father in addition to having a kind of Oedipus thing going on with his father’s wife), that we decided to reload the whole campaign a 4th time, but only using “children of former PCs” as characters. This was in 1987, several years before the Dragon Lance folks released their “Second Generation” tales. A post for a later date.

Adding character backgrounds means more time and energy invested into the character creation process…period. The more time and energy, the more investment. Two thoughts immediately strike me about this:

1) This kind of background development and investment is only worthwhile in long-running, existing campaigns…campaigns where characters retire, settle down, become dominion lords or NPCs that can offer service, advice, etc. In that kind of campaign it may be helpful to have an Auntie Bladehawk that can foot the bill for her nephew’s resurrection, or a godfather what is a hierophant druid. In one-off games or short campaigns it’s unnecessary and the investment may not be worth the cost (D&D is not designed to be a premise-addressing “story-telling” game; emotional investment can lead to upset when one’s character gets killed on the dungeon’s first level).

2) This kind of background development is more useful with old school games (OD&D, B/X, AD&D) where characters have limited stats and where a little narrative goes a long way to filling in blanks. It’s one thing to describe the monastic warrior-cult your B/X fighter belongs to…in D20, you probably need to invent a whole goddamn prestige class! Plus later editions, with their extensive, “interesting” character generation process already requires a substantial investment of time and energy at creation…why add any more? If you want to do that much work in crafting a character, you should probably be writing a novel instead.

Prost!

Heroes Are MADE, Not Born

This post is in direct response to the inane set of comments over at Grognardia regarding D&D’s saving throw mechanic. Inane because Mr. Maliszewski is simply expressing his ideas, his interpretations of the game, and everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, no need to argue. And me, I’m doubly inane for commenting myself, as I have a blog of my own…and thus a ready forum for expressing my own opinion.

(*cue rant*)

Listen up, folks. Heroes are made, not born. What do I mean by that? Simply this: in Old School play, no one has a God given right to their character being a heroic protagonist, simply by dint of being a “player character.” No ifs, ands, or buts.

D&D provides rules that allow characters to take heroic actions (resist poison via saving throw, withstand damage via hit points), but it IN NO WAY GUARANTEES YOUR CHARACTER IS GOING TO BE A CAPITAL “H” HERO. So quit your whining already! If you think otherwise, you aren’t playing Old School…go play 4th edition, specifically made for whiners like you! If that’s not good enough, go play WoW where you can be cookie-cutter hero doing cookie-cutter quests and resurrecting at a “graveyard” every time you get stomped flat.

In Old School D&D, character death happens. Often mundane, more than sometimes humorous, character death is expected by the very nature of the game…your character is involved in a hazardous occupation. Your ACTIONS as a player will determine whether or not your character is remembered. The simple act of “rolling up” a new PC doesn’t mean anyone is going to give a shit about it.

This IS a generational issue. Gen Xers (like myself) don’t expect things to be handed to us unless we feel we’ve earned ‘em. Yes, we expect to be richly rewarded for paying our dues, but deep down we KNOW that something given (even the title of “Hero”) is a LOT less sweet than something fought for and hard won.

Generation Y types or “Millennials” are not like Gen X…they are looking for accolades and affirmation, they like competitions where “no one loses” (you know: the trend where every kid on the baseball team gets a trophy from “best baserunner” to “best sportsmanlike conduct” and there’s a graduation ceremony every other grade?). This is the goddamn coddled generation, which I realize is pejorative of me to write, but ignoring it doesn’t change it. Yeah…they ALL want to be heroes, right from the get-go.

People who equate playing older games with “playing old school” – probably a Millennial.

People who say “system doesn’t matter as long as you have a good GM” (meaning, “someone who doesn’t kill my character and lets me be a hero”) – probably a Millennial.

I find this frustrating. I am an anachronistic old bastard, and there are a ton more of the younger folks than me and my generation. And my style of play (i.e. Old School) doesn’t resonate the same or as often with those young folks. Some of ‘em like the idea of it, but they have a hard time embracing the idea that they are NOT a “very special snowflake.”

(yes, Fight Club is a Gen X movie)

Let me give you an example of a D&D hero from MY youth: Bladehawk. Played by my good friend Jocelyn, she played in many, many adventures with me (as DM) ACTIVELY TRYING TO KILL HER, and succeeded in thwarting me at pretty much every turn. I would create new adventures using devious traps and fighter-proof monsters (black pudding, anyone?) and she would find ways to avoid, out-smart or defeat them. She didn’t always “win” or solve the quest (see my posting regarding the Tomb of Horrors), but she ENDURED. That was why she became a legend in our campaign(s)…even after we scratched Bladehawk’s game world and started anew, every later campaign world always included her as a high level NPC floating around somewhere. Why? Because THROUGH PLAY she became a goddamn legendary hero. From a 1st level fighter with a Wisdom of 8 and a Strength between 13-15.

THAT is Old School play to me…I challenged the player…hell, I got mad that she kept surviving when other player characters would go down in flames. But she was smarter and tougher and luckier (save or die pal!) then the adventures she went on.

There are other PCs from my youth that became heroes, though I don’t think any will rival Bladehawk in my memory. But none of them were "born" (i.e. created from scratch)…they were MADE, tempered in the fire of a blistering campaign, with a mean little Napoleon of a DM.

I’m sorry that all you 2nd and 3rd and 4th edition players have to spend so much time creating characters. Sounds like a waste of valuable playing time to me.

Summertime Gaming

It's July 3rd, I am off work (since the 4th is on a Saturday) and I am enjoying a caffeinated beverage at the Neptune in Greenwood while my wife gets a pedicure with her buddy downtown and outside people are enjoying the beautiful summer weather. Nevermind the drought, a quarter of the people in Seattle are transplants these days, and they are grateful for the break from the gray.

For me, it reminds me of my youth (what doesn't, really?) when I'd be out of school with no responsibilities besides taking the occasional family road trip and mowing the lawn weekly. The rest of my time was spent lazing around, riding my bike, reading books, and playing D&D with my friends and family.

So right now I'm thinking of my old S1: Tomb of Horrors module. I've been reading other folks posts around the internet and to me it feels like part of the Rite of Passage of an RPG blogger to share one's experiences with this fabled module. Guess it's my turn.

Originally, I was going to title this post "I Was A Killer DM," which would have been accurate if not literally truthful. I was, in point of fact, a real asshole at times, but I didn't collect deceased PC's character sheets for a "trophy folder," nor did I force players to rip them up (truth be told, I was always unhappy when someone crumpled a character sheet...to me, D&D is a game and characters could always "come back" from the dead. Maybe I read too many Marvel comics).

Tomb of Horrors is one of those problematic modules that have so many love-hate issues for so many people. I'm one of 'em, I guess. I've owned this module pretty much since its issue with the Green cover, and I actually own TWO of them (one came in a four-pack back in the day...imagine my disappointment with only getting 3 "new" modules). There were a couple things that really attracted me to it.

#1 It had a cool cover (which leads to disappointment #1...where the hell is the big lich-like monster? Argh!).

#2 It was the highest level module available at the time (levels 10-14).

The reputation for this module as a "meat grinder" was completely unknown to me. If it has that reputation with me now, it is only because it did grind so many characters. As one of my oldest modules, I must have run it at least four times, and perhaps as many as six. I can clearly remember running it for some players on the living room floor of my parent's house one sunny, summer afternoon like today, and another time running it on a dark evening in Port Angeles for some cousins (around Christmas time). I know that at least two different groups made it to the end, but I don't remember any single group slaying Acerak...though, I may have mis-placed a memory or two (we'll get to that).

The thing is, as a self-taught DM, I used these modules as models for games. I had never played D&D with high level characters before; now I found my players HAD high level characters, and how was I going to challenge them appropriately. I, of course, figured that published modules should be the yardstick to use for these things...can you believe Tomb of Horrors as an example of a 10-14 level dungeon? But for me it seemed appropriate.

And my players, back in the day, were fairly saavy. I take umbrage with the idea that it is an "impossible" or "unbeatable" (mostly, see below). A party that sticks to the task and follows the clues in the demi-lich's poem is going to be able to find his tomb...perhaps with a little luck. As I said, at least two groups I know made it that far.

Ha! I remember the first pair to do it...

Generally, players did NOT use their own "spoon fed from level one" characters for the game. Although I was a "killer DM" after the first couple practice runs, I decided that informed consent was appropriate: it's pretty hard, and the treasure take is a bit paltry for the challenge level. The module has pre-gen characters in the back, and many players (especially for one-off runs like with my Port Angeles cousins) would use these characters...often without even bothering to pick names. Hey, they were some level 14 characters in there! Right on!

Anyway, one of the first groups DID include a regular player...Bladehawk (I've mentioned her before) a high level fighter that had been able to thwart (or at least survive) all the modules and dungeons I had thrown at her. My brother was riding shotgun with one of the level 14 NPCs (a cleric, I think?), and together they were able to make it to the end.

Not without some set-backs. Early on they got the "naked teleportation treatment;" pretty low-down considering the amount of gear that high level characters possess. However, BH and company (I believe my friend Jason was also playing, but he ended up leaving either shortly before or after his character perished) decided to head back into the tomb. No way the 'Hawk was leaving her dancing defender sword behind! They found the false tomb, exited, figured out their mistake and went back a third time, this time making it all the way to the true tomb.

Pretty bedraggled by this point, my brother's character turned the key the wrong way and blew himself 10' into the air. Nearly dead, they finally found Acerak...and had no way to kill the bastard.

This leads to Disappointment #2 with the adventure (and it is the most prominent disappointment). The methods for killing a demi-lich are simply too obscure. Unless you've owned the module, or read the description in the Monster Manual II, there's no way for a player to know any of the creature's vulnerabilities. It's not like a vampire, based on folklore. It's not simple enough to be slain with a magic weapon or fire like some undead. It is immune to turning. And there's nothing in Acerak's riddle that provides a clue as to how the thing can be destroyed.

Maybe an especially kind DM would allow a legend lore, commune, or contact other plane spell to provide the info. But the high level players in my games made it through most of their adventuring careers without resorting to these mechanical "give me a hint" spells, and they didn't think to use them now. When running the module, I usually encourage the players to take a paladin in the party (at least as an NPC) if only to give them a fighting chance at the end, but it's never worked out that I remember.

With Bladehawk and her companion...well, her companion ended up getting his soul sucked out (whadya' know), BH decided discretion was the better part of valor, she grabbed her sword and left the dungeon and the demi-lich behind. She was the only party member to survive.

I've seen party members crushed by the juggernaut, burned to death in the sliding corridor, and lose members to poison and annihilation. I had at least one guy (or pair of guys) squashed to jelly against the roof of the dungeon. I don't remember anyone getting incinerated in a fiery explosion, but I know at least one guy snuffed it with the crown and scepter (I think that was Jason's thief character).

So has anyone actually succeeded? I think Alejandro may have with the help of the magic-user Arioch. But this doesn't really count...after all Arioch was an NPC magic-user, so having him cast contact other plane and stocking the correct spells for the demi-lich is basically handing the players a giant crutch. I don't remember if I did this or not, but it sounds like something I would have. I certainly WAS a killer DM, but towards the end of my DMing career, I know I was getting tired of the Tomb of Horrors being un-defeated, grinning like an old skull from my shelf of gaming products. I'll have to ask my brother if he remembers.

Conquest of White Plume Mountain

I can’t remember the first group I ran through S2: White Plume Mountain, but one of ‘em got TPK’d, wiped out after failing to answer the sphinx’s riddle. That may have been the first group to every try.

I remember clearly that another expedition including Bombur and Bladehawk, two fighters of (respectively) dwarf and human cultures, made it as far as Whelm’s resting place before realizing that they had no chance in hell of defeating Ctenmiir the vampire without a cleric (their companion having perished slipping and falling into the lake of boiling mud. They did manage to make it out with their lives, but just barely.

A later sojourn, again including Bombur the dwarf, was the first fully successful venture into the Mountain (I know Bombur was there because I still have his character sheet and his weapon remained Whelm from that time thereafter). Whether or not (the later legendary) Bladehawk was present, I cannot recall; however, she never used Blackrazor herself, and was Chaotic Neutral in alignment, so I find it hard to believe she was there. The first successful completion of the module finished in spectacular fashion with the players first getting Whelm and Blackrazor, before being blown out of the volcano’s spout protected by Wave’s force shield.

I believe the party sold Blackrazor on the open market. Too dangerous to keep around, I suppose.

The first adventuring group to complete the adventure and attempt exiting through the front door consisted of three memorable (to me) characters: Alejandro the fighter, Isaiah of Hoquiam (a cleric), and Arioch (an evil magic-user), plus assorted henchmen and hirelings. The magic-user was an NPC created by myself…the irony of his name totally lost on me at the time.

Meeting Nix and Nox at the front door, they decided to accompany the efreet to the “Indocrination Center,” whereby I was forced to invent stats for the wizard Keraptis on the fly…I believe I made him a 16th level magic-user based on his description as a “mage” (the level title for a 16th level magic-user in the PHB). They slew him, took his spell book(!) and left the Mountain leaving the corpses of their fallen companions behind.

It was a precursor to what was to come. Alejandro would go on to wield Blackrazor in many future adventures. Isaiah would eventually die (and be replaced by “Moses of Sequim”). Arioch would continue to grow in power and evil. All would prove to be exceptionally villainous and destructive, in some ways echoing the tale of Kas and Vecna.

If you catch my drift.
: )