Cheap Death

When I began my Dwimmermount campaign, I did so with the expressed intention of starting with the OD&D rules as presented in the LBBs and expanding from there, (generally) allowing house rules to evolve naturally through play. This is part of my "D&D is always right" philosophy, which is simply my belief that it's foolish to assume that, even in OD&D, the rules were not written as they were for a very good reason. Naturally, this philosophy doesn't preclude the possibility of changing rules, either by modification or outright removal. Rather, it's meant to apply a break to the commonplace notion that the LBBs are a haphazard concatenation of half-baked ideas without any guiding principles behind them. Having refereed an OD&D campaign for over a year now, I'm fairly confident in saying that's very much not the case and that most, if not all, of the seeming haphazardness of the game comes from context lost or obscure to us thirty-five years on.

That said, I wish I had established early on that the raise dead spell (never mind raise dead fully from Greyhawk) did not exist in my campaign. As I said, I am philosophically predisposed to let D&D be D&D and build my world around its assumptions rather than try to conform the game rules to my world. Down that path lies the madness of 2e. That's why I convinced myself that retaining raise dead as a clerical spell and a reasonably easy to obtain one at that was a good idea. And, on some level, I still do think I was right to hew closely to the LBBs. Otherwise, I doubt I'd have come to the realization that the presence of raise dead has a profound effect on the complexion of any campaign.

One of the "themes" -- and I hate to use that word but I can think of no better -- of the Dwimmermount campaign is uncertainty about the existence of the gods and, more personally, a hereafter. Though the cult of Turms Termax is supposedly predicated on self-willed deification, the characters have seen evidence that suggests it's not as straightforward as that, with at least two presumed former members of the cult denying the existence of anything beyond death but oblivion. Likewise, the Termaxians' obsession with the undead would seem to suggest at least seem doubts about a more spiritual understanding of life after death. And then of course, those avatars of Chaos, the demons, outright deny the existence of both gods and an afterlife, but then it serves their purposes to say so, doesn't it?

Brother Candor's goblin henchmen, Brakk, died in the first third of the campaign and circumstances prevented his being raised from the dead. That was not the case for either Vladimir the dwarf or Henga, Dordagdonar's henchman, both of whom were returned to life after meeting their demises. What's interesting is that Brakk's death is still keenly felt, months after the fact. The players -- and not just Brother Candor's player -- frequently remark on how they "miss Brakk" and express remorse about the way they left his acid-splashed body behind so as to cover their own escape.

No such feelings are attached to Vladimir or Henga's deaths, because they weren't permanent. They were just bumps in the road and, if they're mentioned at all, they're treated more as sources of comedy than drama. Now, let me be clear: I'm not looking to inject "drama" into the campaign. I remain more firmly committed than ever that all campaigns, even ones mired in purely venal dungeon delving will, given enough time, develop the depth from which good roleplaying is born. There's no need for the referee to insert his own prepackaged drama to achieve this and indeed doing so may well have the opposite effect. Yet, here I was, faced with the deaths of a PC and a longstanding NPC, and I punted. I passed up the opportunity to see some campaign development -- and in the case of Henga, development of Dordagdonar's feelings toward ephemerals -- because raise dead made it easy to do so. What a waste.

I don't believe in changing horses midstream, so I won't be eliminating a spell I've already clearly established exists and to which the PCs have access. However, I do regret my early decision to allow the existence of raise dead and wish I'd disallowed it. Brakk's accidental death remains one of the more tragic, even poignant, episodes of the entire Dwimmermount campaign, whereas the deaths of Vladimir and Henga mean nothing. That's a pity and I know that, in my next campaign, I won't make the same mistake I did this time.