There was an editor's note inserted into "Thrills and Chills: Ice Age Adventures" that I thought worthy of its own separate post. The article's author, Arthur Collins, describes the rules tweaks he recommends for each of the standard AD&D races in order to better reflect the Pleistocene Epoch. When he gets to elves, he says the following:
Elves would be +1 with spear and sling (instead of bow and sword, neither having been invented). While all races would have discovered ritual fermented or narcotic potations, to the elves would belong the specialty of making wine from wild grapes. Also, only wood elves would be around in Ice Age times.
Take special note of that last sentence: "Also, only wood elves would be around in Ice Age times." Appearing in italics immediately after it is the editor's note I mentioned above. It reads:
Since the Players Handbook says all player character elves are considered to be high elves, abiding by this stipulation would make it impossible for player-character elves to exist in this environment. If the issue must be resolved, DMs will have to either ignore the author’s recommendation or choose to allow a relaxation of the rule.
What a bizarre editor's note. Dragon was regularly filled with rules options and variants that ran counter to what was written in the Players Handbook and elsewhere and I can't recall seeing a note like this. Why here in particular? More to the point, it's a relatively minor detail in an article that is explicitly intended to alter the standard rules of AD&D to accommodate an unusual time period. I'm genuinely baffled that anyone would care that, yes, technically, by the book, wood elves are not allowed for use as player characters in 1982 (a rule that would be overturned in Unearthed Arcana just a few years later).
There's a reason TSR and AD&D were viewed negatively in a lot of gaming circles back then.
You couldn't play a Wood Elf as opposed to a High Elf in the D&Ds in 1982?
ReplyDeleteI don't know that I ever knew that. What would've been the difference mechanically? Did Wood Elves possess some sort of special Woodsy Powers back then? I'm not aware of any off the top of my head.
Wood elves had +1 to strength (18 max) and maximum intelligence of 17.
DeleteWow. I don't remember that at all. Thanks.
DeleteHonestly I'm glad you followed up on the earlier post, because I went and read the article and my issue was more with the idea that every race in a "pleistocene" world would be equally "primitive." In the article, Dwarves are said to be rare but capable of basic metallurgy, and Elves are basically sort of primitive.
ReplyDeleteBut in the lore as I understood it, both Elves and Dwarves pre-date humans and halflings and had established cultures long before humans were on the scene. I guess the article makes sense in a Gygaxian-realism sort of way, where all races would evolve from primitive states but if I were to run a campaign in an Ice-age setting and included dwarves and elves I'd make them mysterious, advanced cultures suspicious of humans and while perhaps not as advanced as they would be in "current" timelines, still far more evolved than using spears and slings. I might also only allow player characters to be human or halfling, with an exception here or there if the player could justify it.
I always followed Gygax's "these are rule suggestions" concept, and found liberation in having some leeway in the game that so ruled my life across most of the 1980s. ---Jim Hodges
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