By Jonathan Becker No Artpunk #2 1e Levels 10-14
Vast beyond reason, the DUNKLE ZEE stretches beneath skies of perpetual twilight, its inky depths reflecting not a single star but only the occasional lantern of a passing ship. Yet few ships sail the black waters of this ocean between worlds, a measureless sea that connects every coastline from every time period and alternate dimension that ever was.
This 24 page adventure details a 36 room set of caverns housing a couple of wizzos and crew bent on destroying the multiverse. Good encounters, decent imagery in places and a straightforward formatting style that doesn’t have encounters overstaying with extra text. It’s a straight up dungeoncrawl for high levels with no gimmicks.
High level adventures can be rough. By the time your’s fourteens you should have domains and be involved in your own worlds goings on. Fitting a published adventure in to your own world is going to be a problem. A good one anyway; once with nuance and depth to it. Something more than the simple smash and grabs of your level fours. The nuance is depth is generally required to keep the party from just smashing and burning everything in their path to their goal. IE: you force them to gimp themselves because of the consequences instead of Ye Olde 863 wishes to keep the party from passwalling the whole adventure.
None of that here though. This is just a smash and grab. The only gimps are no spell recovery, which is fine. It’s a time pressure mechanic, replacing the standard wandering monster rolls. Two wizards want to destroy the multiverse and you’re off to the multiplaner nexus to do a little stabbin. You got a decent caverns map, and some high level characters and their henchmen. Don’t waste your spells and get in to fuck some dudes up!
And fucking em up you will to! One room has 24 ochre jellies. Another has 36 giant constrictor naked. Another has 96 stirge. All in the relatively confined space of a cavern complex. The scale is a little larger than normal, but, still, load up on those mass kill spells kids, loaded for bear! The smaller scale stuff is rough also. The usual mirror of opposition so you’re all fighting yourselves. Both types of Gith. Tentacle beasts, a good rot grub encounter (perfect for this level!) , a mind flay, and the wizzos with some great use of black puddings as a stand in for spheres of annihilation. This is all pretty much straight up fights. They generally have something a little extra to them to help bring them alive. Needlemen that are trees, the black pudding thing, as floating blobs, the ochres suck the walls and detach like some bad horror movie. Just enough there to help give the DM something to make shit a little more interesting than an “you enter the room and are attacked.”
I really can’t enough good things about the encounters here. They really hit that sweet spot I am looking for. Maybe just a little more would have been nice, for them, but they are what I think makes a good encounter for the DM. The black puddings. There’s a wizzo, mediating in a room, in front of two giant black blob in the air. Wammao! Two black puddings to add to the fray. The red ochres, throbbing, attached to the walls, kind of flying off or dropping on the players. One of the gith wears a ring of delusion, thinking, and acting, like he’s a lawful good paladin. Until he sees the flayer. It doesn’t require a lot to add just that little extra to your encounters, and the designer does this well.
Descriptions are hit and miss. A magic shield covered in ape filth and a magic axe with a gnawed wooden handle. Or “A dull red light illuminates this cavern, emanating from a huge serpentine mound of mottled crimson heaped against the far wall. The glow is visible as characters approach the cavern from any direction. The mound pulses gently, perhaps in slumber.” Again, nothing too much to these, but hitting at just about the right level of detail to turn something standard in to something that comes to life a little, just waiting for the DM to bring more to it, inspired. But, for every bit of interesting description there’s also an empty room with a simple bed in it. Or a “refuse pit for the trogs”, with nothing more added to it. And, glowing runes is a description fit for a large room. Both overdone and needing to be echoeing and pulsating. The bottom of The Bone Pit is “Many humanoid bones litter the floor. Few are human.” Not exactly the highlight of my year, month, or even week.
So,it’s pretty straight up thing. No real gimping, just a dungeon full of shit to stab, letting the party run wild with their magic. Divination, location, mass kills, and bypass spells, all put in to play. And, light on the tricks and traps, but, also, I’m not sure how you do that in something like this. Anyway, decent hack for those looking for a simple high level affair.
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As an added commentary, this one was clearly based on Moorcock's Sailors on the Sea of Fate. I can't quite say how much Mr. Beckers entries have contributed to the theme of NAP III (as did Settembrini last year) but in any case it is refreshing to see someone tackle high level DnD with confidence, vigor and applomb.
Thirty-six giant constrictor NAKED? I'm not sure I'd like my party to encounter those...
Bryce: "Hire an editor for fuck's sakes - there's no excuse not to have caught that kind of mistake in the review phase!"
Also Bryce: "By the time your’s fourteens you should have domains"
There's an awful lot to get through. It's hard and boring. Also, we're not holding this to the same standard as a module. At least I'm not. YMMV
ALSO Bryce: "I'm writing this on my phone sitting on my shitter."
Nah, if he was he wouldn’t be so full of shit.
How do you actually run 96 monsters at a bona fide, by-the-book AD&D game table? Asking for a friend.
Very slowly.
It's doable in OSR if you aren't using miniatures. Theater of the mind is fast when you need it to be.
For this style I would skip initiative. Let the party go first then alternate rounds. Maybe average damage to HD. So that attacks against monsters just subtract a HD based on average damage for that attack. If you remove damage rolls and tracking HP it goes much faster.
You could take a page from Warhammer, and have the snakes roll d6s to hit (hitting on a 6 to denote they're individually crap). Run them as squads and dump handfuls of dice at a time.
Treat their HP similarly. They don't have HP. They each have one "wound". If the PCs hit, they kill a snake. Easy.
(Alternatively, run the snakes as swarms, with multiple snake's worth of HP and a few attacks.)
Those proposed horde rules would make the snakes much less dangerous. Giant Constrictor Snakes are 6 HD. They hit AC 0 on a 13+. You need significant resources, say, a 12th level wizards fireball, to blow them away, or they can potentially be lethal.
For the Stirges this might work, but I would avoid situations where AC or hp stops mattering. In Warhammer you have an armor save and a toughness save to differentiate individual units. In DnD you only have AC before the attacks register.
Roll all the hp in advance and record it. Either number the snakes or number them as they get hit, go down the list. There's ways of doing combat with large numbers of combatants smoothly without much loss of precision. I'm doing it for Slyth Hive.
I could be wrong, but from my very limited experience, you'll have the magic firepower to kill them all in the opening salvo of damage dice. So, these types of "encounters" are there to soak up fireballs, basically. In some cases, I'm sure these encounters have been placed with the intensions of making the players not want to enter.
For a number of reasons, the chance of rolling d20's for hours on end is meant to be unlikely for these, I believe.
(Again, no experience in actual high-level play, but it gets that way in mid-level play, so I'm extrapolating.)
You already use group initiative. You don't use theatre of the mind. The creatures are small. Use a 1:10 scale with miniatures, or however many Stirges can occupy a 5 ft. square.
The PCs will either have some sort of defense that allows them to bypass the encounter (Cube of Force et. al.), area of effect spells that will clear great swathes of stirges (even, say, a Wand of Frost will do), or they will get whittled down. The question is, does an attached Stirge free up a slot so another Stirge can attack in its place? There is a maximum number of attackers to one creature in AD&D.
Consider that there is a maximum number of creatures that can fight an individual player at a time (based on space and the DMG guidelines) and then consider that, since they all have the same HD, they all have the same chance to hit...then you roll multiple dice and count successes. Keep a running tally of kills for each character.
AD&D ain't rocket science, folks.
Large piece of lined paper, write down all of their hit points. Theater of the mind, being aware how many size S, M or L monsters can attack a PC per round. Roll some damn dice, huzzah!
I feel that Prince and Settembrini may be missing the reason why OD&D + clones were perfect for the OSR as it were. House ruling is the name of the game, the prime motivator that allows for the met needs of each table. This is much, much harder with AD&D (which might be seen as being Gary's house rules, more or less). Obviously long, potentially dull fights are a ripe target for tinkering. YMMV
I do feel that this has resulted in an awful lot of 'reinventing the wheel' when it comes to the current market and the ways in which newcomers to the OSR come up with innovations which have been done to death --- and abandoned (hence the OSR in the first place).
I can see why AD&D would be an attractive bunker.
OD&D is theoretically perfect for house-ruling and customization: Modular, expansive enough to suit many tastes, yet with a core that is fairly easy to adapt. Perfect that is, if you know what you are doing and you know what you like. Great game. Try Swords & Wizardry sometime.
The key word here is 'were' and 'if.' OD&D is perfect on paper, but as the lingua franca of the OSR it has failed. It has been replaced largely by B/X (which I have played and I like well as an introductory game) and the various ruleslites, all of which are effectively worthless. You can see the results in the quality of the material that gets put out.
Is the appeal of a game that it must be house-ruled? Or is house-ruling something that is done to cover areas outside of the scope of the original game, out of necessity, and part of the responsibility of a GM? If you house-rule, are those house-rules improved by knowing how people before you tried to solve the problem.
I'm convinced something like 95% of the innovation in the OSR, particularly the later OSR, comes from misunderstanding, laziness, or the preference of individual creativity over the quality of the game. Everyone wants to pretend they are a game designer. A fight with 36 pythons need not be slow and boring. But it is assumed, in this case, without any experience, that this is the case. A houserule is proposed, without consideration or knowledge of the variables. This is also not new, read Beholder or Dragon magazine. The quality of such procedures varies immensely.
There is nothing wrong with theory-crafting or proposals for resolution but it should be recognized that a lot of the robustness of the original game came from practice. The right philosophy is to see whether or not a situation works within the parameters of the original game first, particularly if the author writing it is more experienced. Innovation should take place from a position of what is known, or as you say, the wheel is constantly reinvented.
The bunker currently consists of OD&D, AD&D, B/X and their various retroclones. Even ACKs is allowed in this Bunker. And what a splendid bunker indeed. Every year a work of merit or so shall be added, slowly, patiently, diligently. This is the only way to even attempt restoration of the label OSR, which means very little.
As for houseruling for AD&D...it has been done, extensively, massively. Read White Dwarf. Read Dragon magazine. Hell, check out Adventures Dark & Deep or Heroic Legendarium. Once AD&D is understood (this is the bottleneck), houseruling is no less difficult then it is for OD&D or B/X. The areas where 99% of houseruling takes place is only marginally more complex.
The Fantasy Adventure Gaming bunker if you will
I am continually bemused by OSR items that absolute reinventions of the wheel and, at times, re-re-reinventions. AD&D, shockingly, is 46 years old.
The OSR was birthed by long-time gamers not just familiar with the source material, but intimately familiar. As its grown, however, I am equally bemused to see a disconnect grow between OSR products, which are aping OD&D, AD&D and B/X and actual honest-to-goodness OD&D, AD&D and B/X material. For all the love of "old school gaming," there doesn't seem to be a desire to look back to the vast wealth of source material.
Lets see if we can reverse the trend ey?
"OD&D is theoretically perfect for house-ruling and customization: Modular, expansive enough to suit many tastes, yet with a core that is fairly easy to adapt. Perfect that is, if you know what you are doing and you know what you like. Great game. Try Swords & Wizardry sometime."
S&W is fine, sure. I went with Labyrinth Lord, but whatever. Onwards.
"The key word here is ‘were’ and ‘if.’ OD&D is perfect on paper, but as the lingua franca of the OSR it has failed. It has been replaced largely by B/X (which I have played and I like well as an introductory game) and the various ruleslites, all of which are effectively worthless. You can see the results in the quality of the material that gets put out.
Is the appeal of a game that it must be house-ruled? Or is house-ruling something that is done to cover areas outside of the scope of the original game, out of necessity, and part of the responsibility of a GM? If you house-rule, are those house-rules improved by knowing how people before you tried to solve the problem."
I know what I am doing relative to the nuances of my own context, that is, the nuances of my table. We're dealing in a game of make believe and that requires a certain appeal to the particular. I believe that the suspension of disbelief is important to investment. This isn't just about cool descriptions and funny voice, but also how one rides the waves of one's own gaming environment. That is often a rule thing also. For example, my players had endured an awfully vast amount of initiative systems over the years. Thus, AD&D segments were out, in favour of something more dynamic (if less realistic).
But how others did it is absolutely valuable and fascinating . I'll address the appeal of the game in a moment...
"I’m convinced something like 95% of the innovation in the OSR, particularly the later OSR, comes from misunderstanding, laziness, or the preference of individual creativity over the quality of the game. Everyone wants to pretend they are a game designer."
I guess I'm of the opinion that every DM worth their salt, is designing for their table. Some are designing for an audience and ought not to.
"A fight with 36 pythons need not be slow and boring. But it is assumed, in this case, without any experience, that this is the case. A houserule is proposed, without consideration or knowledge of the variables. This is also not new, read Beholder or Dragon magazine. The quality of such procedures varies immensely."
Well...tentatively, I too have experience. I've mentioned before to you that I've been doing this over 30 years. 36 pythons isn't an issue... effective parties will sort that . But multiple type whatever demons successfully gating multiple other type whatever demons (for example) CAN indeed be somewhat slow (again, that need not be bad).
But, as a vital aside, I don't think that D&D fights lend themselves to the suspension of disbelief, within the corpus of the rules (I'd definitely argue that there are games that do combat better). THAT is why speed might be valued in D&D and why one might fear the longer D&D battle.
I think that the early retroclones succeed, because there's enough D&D there to capture the imagination. . The spaces are the appeal. When I say one 'misunderstands the appeal of houseruling ' (which need not be a terrible thing or a slur), the issue is thus: It's not about necessarily finding 'the perfect rule' (though that's cool). It's about *trying,* to. That's a lot of fun in itself... the actual process is entertaining. 90% of D&D is a solo hobby after all.
"There is nothing wrong with theory-crafting or proposals for resolution but it should be recognized that a lot of the robustness of the original game came from practice."
Again, tentatively, I offer to you, that I also have a practice. Indeed, let's call it praxis. It emerges from the intersection of particular vectors of time, space, company and circumstance. AD&D has emerged from *that* guys table. God bless him. I love AD&D, but I also know how to run a game AND houserule without fucking anything up. Would it fuck your game? Maybe. But I'm also a good DM, with experience, like Gary, that knows what works. Because of the praxis I mentioned.
"The right philosophy is to see whether or not a situation works within the parameters of the original game first, particularly if the author writing it is more experienced. Innovation should take place from a position of what is known, or as you say, the wheel is constantly reinvented."
I totally agree. We're basically rediscovering trad games via the label OSR. Well... I'm not. But you catch my gist.
"The bunker currently consists of OD&D, AD&D, B/X and their various retroclones. Even ACKs is allowed in this Bunker. And what a splendid bunker indeed. Every year a work of merit or so shall be added, slowly, patiently, diligently. This is the only way to even attempt restoration of the label OSR, which means very little."
Agreed. Bunker was a word heavy with implied meaning. I regret that somewhat upon reflection. It seems to have resonated in ways I'm not entirely comfortable with. What I mean, is that the appeal of AD&D's codification is obvious, considering the abundance of ruleslite tat bchurned out. It's also a belting system.
"As for houseruling for AD&D…it has been done, extensively, massively. Read White Dwarf. Read Dragon magazine. Hell, check out Adventures Dark & Deep or Heroic Legendarium. Once AD&D is understood (this is the bottleneck), houseruling is no less difficult then it is for OD&D or B/X. The areas where 99% of houseruling takes place is only marginally more complex."
Of course Prince, I am well aware of this. That's not my point. One can indeed make a solid argument, that AD&D's (fun) wall of text is only "marginally more complex" to house rule. Again, it's not the technical challenge, but the lack of virgin turf that's a bit of a turn off for folk like me.
[LL]
I liked LL well enough for my B2 game, but it is a B/X clone, not an OD&D one.
[House-rules]
I think every campaign sooner or later will grow from the RAW game into something more personal, suited to the ideosyncracies of the particular gaming group. There is, however, a difference, as you point out, between designing for one's home table and designing for an audience.
[Speed]
Are these the only axes along which the measure of combat is done? Suspension of disbelief? Even so, the above example, and many others like it, do not make it more 'realistic.'
I would put forth that multiple type something demons (or indeed Slaad) are hard to run for a novice GM as they require a lot of knowledge, and that if this level of gameplay is considered tedious or difficult, it probably should not be attempted until sufficient familiarity is gained to make even that run smoothly. The solution of smoothing and simplifying tends to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
[The process of houseruling]
I think we do understand eachother. You are saying the appeal to you is individual creativity. And this IS fun, I agree. But! The predominance of such customization has visibly eroded the knowledge and praxis of the player base. The error is that people try to walk before they can crawl. From the perspective of the entire hobby, such innovation is desirable from a plateau of understanding, otherwise it merely rethreads old ground and makes the same old mistakes.
[Praxis]
I do believe you I think. I would have to gauge your DnDness by checking out the conversions you did for FotVH, although the 'generic' OSR label raised my hairs and makes me hiss suspiciously.
[Bunker]
Bunker. Island. It matters not overmuch. The point is that the label OSR has become irrecognizable and no longer refers to its original meaning. The ones who stand without the island are adrift. I would have it restored. Grand enterprises. The early OSR rediscovered and Megadungeons and developed a whole praxis. Hexcrawls galore. Fantastic adventures.
The late OSR offers hazard dice, torches that last 1 hour of reallife time, 3 ability scores and 'diegetic advancement.' So much has been forgotten, so that mediocrities and industry shills are not constantly covered in the shadows of their predecessors. I say enough of this disgraceful display. Lets fly again. Lets build on that legacy, instead of papering it over.
[Virgin Turf]
There was an article in an issue of the Beholder about building roads through mountain passes, complete with rules for bad weather, worker morale, building bridges over rivers etc. And I was amazed. It was almost a page but it was practical, it was fully integrated into the game, it solved a problem that had not been solved before. It was beautiful. But this is not the area where innovation usually takes place. This is all fundamental building blocks. The combat system.
There is joy to be found in experimentation but what use if the answer is already known? Are the known answers even considered before we set out?
I look at something that had immense potential but was flawed like Veins of the Earth. And what a missed opportunity. Imagine if the author had been able to actually run, through study and praxis, his proposed underdark campaign. What a magnificent thing this would have been. Instead only the fast calories and sugars of ideas, imperfectly integrated. What a waste.
(OD&D) Well, I settled on something else, namely, as I said LL. I didn't like the d6 damage for everything in OD&D, I think because I discovered AD&D first (with the rather odd Mayfair version of CSOTIO). LL was and is, very easy to mess with. There's an energy vs time graph in this somewhere: what one requires from the bones. OD&Ds bones are not quite where I ever wanted to start.
(SPEED) The big question is 'is this fun'? We can learn something back to front, but elegance is its own reward. Obviously we have varying opinions on what that constitutes. I don't think any amount of system mastery can turn mutton into lamb. Not that AD&D combat is mutton, only that it has limitations, even for masters. I used the Pendragon example purposefully.
(HOUSERULING) Yes, we agree. Indeed, I follow your blog and writings quite eagerly and I find myself agreeing with your essential beef. BUT , like conversations on the internet, this thing of ours was never supposed to be a spectator sport. The joy was in creating and having fun with your friends. Nobody worried about inserting a death virus into the system. It was just one of the things which made RPGs fun.
(PRAXIS) I got back into D&D and something that I readily identified as the OSR because of Zak if I'm honest. I've said this before when I queried your review of Vornheim: that book showed me that something fun was happening and I wanted to be a part of that. I'm here because of that book, I'm following your work because of that book.
However, in those circles, there was, I discovered slowly, a somewhat cultivated atmosphere of arrogance, mild nastiness and outright weirdness. Or at least a vibe that made *me* anxious. That perception of mine (and maybe I was just soft) stymied creativity and I lost faith in what I wrote.
(GENER8C OSR). During 3.5, i picked up WOHF Necromancer Games version and came across Gabor at the same time. I ran a Bledsaw'd 3.5, but the interminal slowwwwness and reliance upon minis finally served to drive me away. I actually came back with 5e (post RQ), tried to mod it a bit, got bored and went backwards.
I must say, I definitely thought of the OSR as a thing. And I definitely melded anything pre 3.5 into one thing to serve as inspiration. It's been fun rediscovering the differences.
(BUNKER) Your passion remains infectious. There's nothing I disagree with here. I think a lot of this comes down to hobby vs audience/wider culture stuff. I share your misgivings about the 'innovations' of latter day 'OSR', and yes, it's meaningless now.
(VIRGIN TURF) Everything can be improved. Even the so called basics. Imagine I found myself running a very 'realistic' version of D&D... where hordes were unknown... most fights were duels, etc. I reckon it's fair to say, that my combat system would become steadily more granular. Maybe ending up looking something like RQ, which IMHO, does man to man combat far better than the basic building blocks of D&D. So, I take your point and in order to maintain D&Dness, a balancing act must be maintained. That said, who cares? Only the colosseum baying for 'one true way'. In our micro-crapulence, such things are of little or no import.
BUT I GET YOU.
[OD&D/LL]
Understood. I feel OD&D is sort of a starter kit that you can upgrade by adding various brown books until it is very close to AD&D (and almost an entirely different game).
[Speed]
Speed, Depth, Comprehensiveness, pick two.
[Houseruling]
This is why NAP is not intended to be ultimately prescriptive, but a rite of passage which is to serve as re-alignment. That being said, if a house rule is proposed, its merits can certainly be weighed. Also thank you for your kind words.
[Praxis]
This is obviously a mark of great disgrace but since I started by playing 2e I should not cast stones. I'm glad it did some good and I'm glad you ended up in a better place.
[Generic OSR]
I played D20 for a long time and I would agree the pace is glacial and the statt blocks impenetrable. I guess I can see the passion for experimentation but my problems with generic OSR as a publication vehicle is that it is not quite real. On the one hand people used to joke about all the different OSR systems which are 95% identical, on the other hand, there are absolutely cases when that difference counts (I always use the adventure B7 Rahasia as an example) so designing for a single system with its pecularities in mind is more elegant.
[Island]
An Atlantis, a R'lyeh, a Mu of undiscovered wonders awaits Nick my boy. End of November. A high level adventure. Can you do it? Will you join the anointed?
[One True Way]
We cannot on the one hand bemoan the loss of OSR as an identity and on the other hand state that it has no essential identity. A balancing act must be maintained.
You seem like a civilized fellow with your head screwed on straight Nick, despite some artpunkness. Thank you for your insights, take and kind words.
I’m not sure what the appeal of house rules are on a grand scale, except as a means to create and sell your own branded RPG to the public (and actually make money in RPGs like Pathfinder or Shadowdark) - which it seems OSR is fostering. For most DMs, house rules are a minor part of all ongoing campaigns and DMs and most players don’t make a big fuss about them. I’ve never felt constrained in AD&D or really any other RPG game, and the use of house rules is limited. No one wants to play a game where no one knows what to expect in any given situation because the DM keeps inventing a new house rule. (The best house rules are set up at the beginning of the campaign and set the feel of game world). As mentioned in earlier posts, swarms of insects, rats, or monsters are not an unusual event in any combat RPG and are usually dealt with as a single monster or with a limit on how many creatures can attack each character per round. No reason to create a whole new RPG.
Man, I guess I better shelve Swarm Dark RPG. ;P
Bear in mind, that according to the old ways players a) don't know all the rules and b) must absolutely trust the DM. When I tinker with stuff, it happens at the beginning of the campaign. Furthermore, if it's something players will notice, say some kind of death & dismemberment take, etc, I'll let them know.
Consistency is per campaign in my opinion not per game.
Bear in mind, that according to the old ways players a) don't know all the rules and b) must absolutely trust the DM. When I tinker with stuff, it happens at the beginning of the campaign. Furthermore, if it's something players will notice, say some kind of death & dismemberment table, etc, I'll let them know.
Consistency is per campaign in my opinion not per game.
Apologies for double post!
Thanks for the kind review, Bryce. Much appreciate the critique.