Morrow Project Question

Can anyone confirm or deny that The Morrow Project was once available as a boxed set? Every fan of the game I know has always stated emphatically that the game was only ever available in a single volume without a box, but I have a strong memory of seeing someone with a boxed version. Am I misremembering this?

Thanks.

Two Birds with One Stone

Given some of the comments to last week's Open Friday post and my recent session recap, I thought it worth discussing the way I plan and run the Dwimmermount campaign. I have previously touched on my general refereeing style, but, given the interest in how I do things, I thought it might be worth talking about this some more. I also realized that, by doing so, I might also shed some light on what others are calling my "collaborative" approach to setting design, though, in truth, I'm honestly not sure how collaborative it really is, as I'll explain.

I am, frankly, a terrible planner. I procrastinate and get easily distracted; I cannot be trusted to keep to a schedule most of the time. I'm also not very good at predicting what my players are likely to do in an upcoming session, unless they tell me in advance and, even then, there's no guarantee they'll stick to their plan. So, even if I had the time, interest, or ability to produce reams of material in advance of play, experience has taught me that my players will always go somewhere or do something that I hadn't anticipated and I'm once again thrown back on my own quick-thinking and improvisational skills -- which are skills anyone who wants to referee needs to possess regardless of the RPG they play.

If I have any virtues as a referee, they're these:

• I Read (and Have Read) A Lot: I've always been a voracious reader and that's given me a very wide pool of ideas to use as inspiration.
• I Have a Good Memory: I remember details very easily, which is good, because it means I can call to mind both what I've read and what's happened before in the campaign, the latter of which is particularly helpful in forging connections.
• I Have Little Shame: As good as my memory is and as quick-witted as I can be, there are still plenty of times when I am at a loss for how to proceed in the game. Luckily, my players are an unending font of good ideas and I have almost no compunction about swiping those ideas and incorporating them into the campaign.

Perhaps some examples are in order. When I began the Dwimmermount campaign, I had no idea what any of the playable demihuman races were like, beyond what little could be found in the LBBs. This provided a large canvas for the players of Vladimir the Dwarf, Dordagdonar the Elf, and Brakk the Goblin on which to paint any details they wanted. And paint they did, particularly in the case of dwarves and elves (poor Brakk died within a few months of the campaign's start and no goblins have been played in the time since). I was very taken with the ideas Vladimir's player came up with regarding dwarven reproduction and the debt owed by son to father for their creation as a spur to their adventuring. Likewise, the portrayal of Dordagdonar as aloof and disdainful of "ephemerals" provided me with lots of fodder for thinking about elves. I should also note that the existence of Yethlyreom and its necromancers was inspired by the character of Pike, who worked as a gravedigger/robber prior to taking up adventuring. Similarly, the notion that the hierarchy of Tyche's faith was dominated by women was entirely the invention of Brother Candor's player.

The "collaborative" process in my campaign goes like this: 1) I am lazy and leave large areas of the game world undescribed, 2) My players seize on the lack of description and add some details as needed, and 3) I later embellish those details with further details of my own. Rinse and repeat. Now, if someone wants to praise me for having hit upon something uniquely wonderful in the annals of the hobby, I won't stop them, but, from my perspective, I'm just doing what I've done for many years now: turn lethargy into a virtue. When I was a younger man, I had both the time and interest to devote to churning out pages upon pages of maps and setting information -- one day I ought to share some of the stuff I created back in high school. Nowadays, I'm both too busy and, frankly, too disinterested in building a top-down setting to even attempt to do so. Plus, I've come increasingly around to the notion that top-down is not the way to create a fun and flexible setting for the kinds of adventures I like to run.

Much of the "collaboration" that occurs at my game table is small potatoes stuff. For example, if I don't immediately come up with a name for a random NPC, one of my players might make a suggestion of a name. The same goes even for personality traits and background details, but, in every case, I retain the final say. When the players where in Yethlyreom and sought out the leader of the cult of the Iron God, Phaedra, it was suggested that she might be a reformed necromancer and, cool though that idea was, it didn't fit with the vague idea I had in mind of who Phaedra was and why she led the cult, so I rejected it. Now, I like the notion of a reformed necromancer, so I've stored it away in my memory and will probably use it later on in a different context. That piece of player input isn't lost, but neither was it accepted uncritically. Instead, it'll stew a while and (maybe) resurface later, perhaps combined with other notions I shamelessly swipe from my players.

This is all I do. As I said, I don't see it as uniquely praiseworthy; I see it as the kind of stuff all referees learn to do if they're running an open-ended campaign in any RPG and aren't singleminded obsessives who know the names, stats, and personalities of every NPC within a 1000-mile radius of the PCs' current location. That said, I dearly love the way Judges Guild used to describe hexes within the Wilderlands setting -- a sentence or two at most to get the referee's creative juices flowing and make the setting his own. If I weren't so lazy, I'd probably do something similar with Dwimmermount, too, but I usually am, which is why I take the easy route of improvising and riffing off my own players' ideas.

Pulp Fantasy Library: A Princess of Mars

These rules are strictly fantasy. Those wargamers who lack imagination, those who don't care for Burroughs' Martian adventures where John Carter is groping through black pits, who feel no thrill upon reading Howard's Conan saga, who do not enjoy the de Camp & Pratt fantasies or Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser pitting their swords against evil sorceries will not be likely to find DUNGEONS and DRAGONS to their taste.

So states the concluding paragraph to Gary Gygax's forward [sic] to the 1974 edition of Dungeons & Dragons. As you can see, Gygax places Edgar Rice Burrough's stories of Barsoom on the same plane as those of Howard's Conan, Leiber's Lankhmar, and De Camp and Pratt's Harold Shea as the foundations on which OD&D was built. Anyone who's read the LBBs closely should have no doubt about his sincerity, as they probably include more references to Barsoom than to any other fictional world, including Middle-earth. It's worth noting as well that Gygax, collaborating with Brian Blume, published the miniatures game (with limited RPG elements) Warriors of Mars contemporaneously with the release of OD&D in 1974, which says a lot about how important Burroughs was to the early hobby.

Confederate soldier turned Martian warlord John Carter made his first appearance in the February 1912 issue of All-Story in a tale entitled "Under the Moons of Mars," part of a serial that would later be collected and expanded as a novel under the title A Princess of Mars in 1917. The novel begins with a letter "To the Reader of This Work" written by Burroughs in which he speaks of his "Uncle Jack," whom he remembers from his childhood as a "tall, dark, smooth-faced, athletic man" who "entered into the sports of the children with the same hearty good fellowship he displayed toward those pastimes in which the men and women of his own age indulged." According to the letter, Uncle Jack, that is, Captain John Carter, formerly of the Army of Northern Virginia, disappeared "some fifteen or sixteen years" before returning without warning, seeming not having aged at all. Carter then gave Burroughs the key to a safe in which he had written the story of what he had done during his mysterious absence and instructed his nephew to divulge its contents only 21 years after Carter's death. A Princess of Mars purports to be the story Carter had written of his adventures.

The novel is therefore a first-person account of Carter's life after he went westward to Arizona to seek gold but instead finds a great deal more.

I have never told this story, nor shall mortal man see this manuscript until after I have passed over for eternity. I know that the average human mind will not believe what it cannot grasp, and so I do not purpose being pilloried by the public, the pulpit, and the press, and held up as a colossal liar when I am but telling the simple truths which some day science will substantiate. Possibly the suggestions which I gained upon Mars, and the knowledge which I can set down in this chronicle, will aid in an earlier understanding of the mysteries of our sister planet; mysteries to you, but no longer mysteries to me.

On March 6, 1866, Carter and his companion, Captain James K. Powell, with whom he had gone to Arizona, find themselves pursued by Apaches, who eventually slay Powell and force Carter to seek refuge in a cave, where

A sense of delicious dreaminess overcame me, my muscles relaxed, and I was on the point of giving way to my desire to sleep when the sound of approaching horses reached my ears. I attempted to spring to my feet but was horrified to discover that my muscles refused to respond to my will. I was now thoroughly awake, but as unable to move a muscle as though turned to stone. It was then, for the first time, that I noticed a slight vapor filling the cave. It was extremely tenuous and only noticeable against the opening which led to daylight. There also came to my nostrils a faintly pungent odor, and I could only assume that I had been overcome by some poisonous gas, but why I should retain my mental faculties and yet be unable to move I could not fathom.

Carter eventually succumbs to sleep and when he awakens, he finds himself elsewhere. (Readers will no doubt recognize a certain similarity between what happens to John Carter and what happens to Anthony "Buck" Rogers in his 1928 debut.) Carter matter-of-factly explains his intuitive understanding of what had happened to him.

I opened my eyes upon a strange and weird landscape. I knew that I was on Mars; not once did I question either my sanity or my wakefulness. I was not asleep, no need for pinching here; my inner consciousness told me as plainly that I was upon Mars as your conscious mind tells you that you are upon Earth. You do not question the fact; neither did I.

Not long afterward, Carter finds himself a prisoner of the four-armed Tharks, a barbaric species native to Mars, the respect of one of whose chieftains he earns thanks to the prodigious strength and agility he possesses due to the lower gravity of Mars. This chieftain, Tars Tarkas, becomes Carter's boon companion and aids him in his adventures, most notably in helping Carter forge an alliance between the Tharks and the Red Martians of the city-state of Helium, whose princess, Dejah Thoris, is the character after whom the novel is named. Along the way, though, there are innumerable obstacles and challenges Carter and his comrades must overcome, which Burroughs narrates briskly, pausing often to describe Mars in a travelog-like fashion.

I don't think it's possible to overstate the influence A Princess of Mars and its many sequels had upon the development of both science fiction and fantasy literature, not to mention roleplaying games. There had been many other stories of interplanetary adventure before this tale came along in 1912, but it was Burroughs who managed to create a formula that deftly combined a likable protagonist, a believable setting, and just enough titillation -- no one on Barsoom wears any clothing, for example -- to seize the public's attention and hold on to it. There would assuredly have been other science fiction and fantasy stories without Burroughs, but I think they'd have been of a very different character, less adventuresome and more didactic. Burroughs's great gift, I think, was his willingness to treat escapism seriously rather than as an object of embarrassment. I find few insights into the human condition or the Big Questions in A Princess of Mars, but so what? Sometimes, being transported to another world, where an honorable fighting man from Virginia can win the love of a princess is more than enough reason to read a story.

More Space Opera Amusement

Before moving on to the point of this entry, let me clarify something about yesterday's "Strange Dream" entry. The skill system I recounted in that entry, the one I finally "understood" in my dream isn't the one from Space Opera nor is it a system I'm suggesting anyone use for playing Space Opera or any other game. I posted it only because it's so rare that I remember any mechanical details from game-related dreams that I wanted to preserve it for posterity. Now, if anyone found it helpful, great, but my intention was not to present a workable skill system, let alone an ideal one, for use with any RPG.

Anyway, one to the real point of this post.

In Space Opera, one your character's 14 randomly generated personal characteristics is Empathy, which is described thusly:

Empathy represents the unconscious and largely uncontrolled broadcast of a character's personality aura and its interaction on the auras of those around him. In this context, Empathy has little to do with one's intentions toward a particular being. Rather, it is a quantification of the character's 'openness' to contact and will be sensed by those he meets. Generally, the more a character is empathic, the more others will be prepared to reserve final judgment and 'hear him out.' The ability is especially valuable to Contacts personnel charged with opening new relations with new races, but virtually every type of character will find the ability useful, whatever their calling.

Note the part I italicized above, because it'll be important shortly.

There's a chart accompanying this description that divided Empathy scores into seven categories by its numerical value, with 1-6 being one category, 7-8 another, and 9-13, 14-16, 17, 18, and 19 rounding out the chart. Only the lowest and highest category say much of any value and, even then, what they say is mostly "fluff" with few game mechanics attached to it. The lowest category (1-6) is interesting, though, because it notes that such a character

is a 'loner' who keeps very much to himself. Players should regard such a character as ranging from 'anti-social' to outright psychopathic. The lower the score, the 'colder' and more 'withdrawn' the character should be in his impact upon others -- which influences the general role-play of such a personality by the player. An Empathy score of 01 to 02 means a character with psychopathic and anti-social tendencies, the man with the true 'killer instinct.' Such a character will never check morale and may prove to be a berserker in combat. He simply does not relate to anyone not 'useful' to him (comrades tend to be 'useful' and so come under his area of concern; his loyalties are based upon personal survival and a code of conduct uniquely his own.) In summation, he chooses his 'friends' very carefully, stands by them to the death because he takes threat to them as a personal affront, and could care less about everybody else. He is a man without a conscience in search of a personal, living 'god' to give his troubled life security and purpose, a sword looking for a strong hand to wield it.

That's actually a very evocative description, if one a bit rough around the edges. You'd think, given what it says here and in the previously quoted section, that it'd be a very bad thing to have a low Empathy score.

But you'd be wrong. As it turns out, a character who works for the Bureau of State Security (or BOSS), which is "a paramilitary organization which combines the duties of such services as MI5, the FBI, the KGB, and similar security institutions," doesn't need a low Empathy to join this service, but it sure helps with advancing within it. There are 15 ranks within BOSS, beginning with Agent/5 (Rank Grade 0) and going all the way up to Minister of Security (Rank Grade 14).

Ranks below grade/3 require a maximum Empathy of 13 to qualify. Ranks above grade/3 require -1 per Empathy per rank above grade/3, and also minimum Leadership/12. PCs with Empathy/1-6 obtain a +1 DM on promotion rolls.

Consider what this means. Each rank above grade/3 has a maximum Empathy associated with it, which is -1 per rank above grade/3. Therefore, to become Minister of Security, a character must have, at most, an Empathy of 2! This makes me wonder what the authors of Space Opera had against intelligence agencies.

I like quirkiness like this, even if there are lots of problems with it from both a game mechanical and meta-game standpoint. Still, there's something rather charming about a game where having a low score in a particular characteristic is actually a benefit rather than a drawback.

Strange Dream

I didn't sleep well last night, which is usually when I have weird dreams. I had a number of them in fact, but one in particular stayed with me this morning. In it, someone came to me and asked me to explain the Space Opera skill system. Oddly, I was able to explain the system quite easily and simply to the person who came to me and they thanked me for my help. I say "oddly," because I'm still not sure that I actually understand how the skill system works, as it's one of the more confusing aspects of the game (for me anyway).

As is so often the case with dreams, the "knowledge" I'd possessed in it lingered for a time after I woke up. Usually, I forget it once I become lucid; this time, though, I retained it. Indeed, what I remembered from my dream was so clear that I briefly thought that my unconscious mind really had unraveled the mystery of Space Opera's skill system for me. Alas, what my dream had taught me, while interesting, bears little connection to what's in Space Opera.

In my dream, all skills had levels. These levels were plugged in to a simple calculation to give a base percentile chance to succeed at a skill under "standard" stressful conditions (no rolls were required otherwise). The base chance could be modified (always downward -- remember, there are no skill rolls for non-stressful situations) by the complexity of the task at hand. Finally, each characteristic of a player character had a characteristic modifier associated with it, a bonus or penalty ranging from (I think) -15% to +15%. At the discretion of the Star Master (what Space Opera calls the referee), one modifier from an appropriate characteristic can be applied to the D% roll to determine success with a skill. Which characteristic is appropriate is up to the player, with the Star Master's concurrence. There is no standard one-to-one correspondence between skills and characteristics, thereby allowing leeway for player creativity, as he might argue that, in a particular case, Empathy is more pertinent than Intuition or whatever.

It all great sense to me at the time and I found myself cheered by this newfound understanding of the main part of Space Opera that continues to elude my comprehension. I have no idea whatsoever why I was thinking about Space Opera. It might well have been a spin-off from my immersion in the first edition of Chivalry & Sorcery, written by the same authors and published by the same company. Still, it was a very strange dream.

Open Friday: Dwimmermount Requests

I've lately noticed an increasing level of interest in the specifics of the Dwimmermount setting, which surprises me. Since the setting is being created through play, there's a large amount even I still don't know about it. On the other hand, we have been using it for our OD&D campaign for two years now and quite a lot of details have been established. Based on comments and emails over the last few months, people are keen for me to share those details.

So, what topics pertaining to Dwimmermount that I have not covered (or covered only briefly) would you like to see me treat in future posts?

House Rules

I've been refereeing the Dwimmermount campaign for a little over two years now, but planning for it began several months beforehand. Part of my planning included giving some thought about what house rules I wanted to make to the LBBs, the results of which can be seen here. Looking back on that post, I feel a small amount of embarrassment, because I can see that I fell into a trap that I've often cautioned against in other posts of mine, namely, treating OD&D's rules as something distinct from their actually being used in play. Of the rules modifications I listed in that entry, most of them have never been used or, if they were, they were quickly abandoned. I use the alignment system (though it has minimal mechanical effects), the hit dice re-rolling, liquid courage was used briefly at 1st and 2nd levels, and scrolls (also less used now than they once were). The others have all come up in play from time to time, but, more often than not, we simply forget them.

What this suggests to me is that, like so much else, house rules are usually better if they're a consequence of having to deal with a genuine problem that crops up in play. I've noticed that lots of gamers will claim that rules X or feature Y of OD&D "doesn't work" or is "broken" and sometimes they're right. But "brokenness" is situational and what one groups finds problematic, others will not. Likewise, many referees -- I know this, because I am one of them -- become obsessed with "fixing" this or that or introducing some mechanic that they think is neat, only to find that the fix is intrusive or that his players couldn't care less about the mechanic (such as my early attempt to introduce a weapon vs. AC modifier table à la Supplement I).

My point is that, unless one has extensively played a particular system with the same group of players over time, creating house rules in advance of actual play is jumping the gun. The most durable -- and useful -- house rules I've created for the Dwimmermount campaign are those that were created, often on the spot, to address a problem that arose at the game table. The most forgettable -- and useless -- "house rules" I've created are those I came up to scratch some intellectual itch of my own. Consequently, I've largely stopped tinkering with OD&D's rules in the abstract, which is why I so rarely make game mechanical posts to the blog anymore. The ones you do see are things I either used in actual play or that I created in response to an immediate (or at least imminent) need in the campaign. I won't say this is the only approach, but it's definitely my preferred one these days.

The Necromancers of Dwimmermount (Part II)

Two heads are better than one ...

Before presenting additional rules relating to necromancers in my Dwimmermount campaign, I want to make a couple of points. As I originally conceived the necromancers of Yethlyreom, they are a lot more focused on corporeal undead than on incorporeal types. Part of this is practicality: corporeal undead can be created more easily by means of magic and a good part of what the necromancers do is impress the dead into service as soldiers on behalf of civilization against Chaos (more below). This is why the necromancer's special abilities don't include things like summoning or communing with the dead (though they possess spells in their arsenal that do just that). Perhaps the name "necromancer" isn't the best one, but I couldn't think of another and, after decades of misuse, even a pedant like myself has to bow to the reality that the word now simply means "wizard who specializes in dead things."

My second point is that, despite how they go about it, the necromancers of Dwimmermount are not, by and large, Chaotic in alignment. As you may recall, "Lawful" in my campaign merely means "supporting civilization against Chaos." It does not necessarily mean you're a nice guy or that your methods of supporting civilization are pleasant ones. The church of Typhon, for example, is a rock-ribbed supporter of civilization and one of its most ardent defenders, but it is Lawful (Evil), because it sees nothing wrong with the strong lording it over the weak. So, necromancers can't be Lawful (Good), owing to their practices, but they can definitely be Lawful or Lawful (Evil). A few, no doubt, slip over into Chaos, but they'd be considered apostates even among their own kind, in addition to being enemies of civilization.

The text in the quote box below is hereby designated Open Game Content via the Open Game License.

Becoming a Necromancer: A magic-user who wishes to practice necromancy must either begin play as an apprentice (1st level) necromancer or seek out a necromancer of at least 10th level to teach him its secrets. After a month's basic training, such a magic-user is now considered a necromancer and may take full advantage of its benefits -- and likewise suffers from all its drawbacks.

A magic-user may choose to abandon the practice of necromancy, but cleansing himself of its taint takes time. A period of one month per level is required, during which time the magic-user may neither use any necromancer abilities or specialty spells. During this cleansing period, the magic-user still suffers all the penalties associated with necromancy and may, if he so wishes, call on the unique powers of the class he is abandoning. Doing so, of course, ends the cleansing period, which must be begun anew should the character again decide to renounce the Black Art.

Alignment: A necromancer may be of any alignment except Lawful (Good). A Lawful (Good) magic-user who chooses to become a necromancer must change his alignment, suffering whatever penalties (if any) the referee exacts on characters who do so.

Charisma Penalties: The study of necromancy suffuses the practitioner with unwholesome energies that repel and disgust other living creatures. A necromancer's Charisma score is thus treated as two steps lower than it actually is on the Charisma Table for the purposes of determining reaction adjustment, the number of retainers, and their morale. Effective Charisma cannot drop below 3, however.

Clerical Abjuration: Necromancy is proscribed by all the gods of Men. Consequently, a necromancer -- including a penitent one during his cleansing period -- cannot receive any benefit from clerical spells, whether they be healing spells, bonuses to attack rolls or saving throws, or even magically created food and water. Clerics may associate with necromancers on a limited, mission-specific basis, but they are otherwise shunned by them.

Spells: As noted previously, necromancers have full access to the magic-user spell list. In addition, they may also learn the 3rd-level clerical spell speak with dead as if it were a magic-user spell of the same level. There are also a number of unique necromancer spells that will be described in Part III.

Retrospective: Secret of the Ancients

I try very hard to be positive on this blog. There's enough negativity in the hobby as it is without my contributing to it and, although I know I don't always succeed in this goal, I do earnestly attempt to focus on what I like and why rather than dwelling on what I dislike. Still, negativity can be sometimes by useful, particularly when it serves to illustrate a large point, as I hope this, one of my more negative retrospectives in some time, will do.

Secret of the Ancients is, as its cover suggests, the twelfth adventure published by GDW for its science fiction RPG, Traveller. Written by the game's creator, Marc W. Miller, it was published in 1984, seven years after the release of the game itself and toward the end of the line of products supporting its original edition (a major revision, the infelicitously named MegaTraveller, was released in 1986). Secret of the Ancients is not only, in my opinion, an awful adventure in its own right; it's also a microcosm of everything that was wrong about Traveller in its latter days and provides an example of how not to support a RPG line.

Like all the adventures published for classic Traveller, Adventure 12 is short by modern standards, being only 48 pages in length. Notes early in the text remind the referee "to administer the adventure rather than just to tell it" and that he "definitely should not explain why events take place." This is, of course, good advice for any referee, but it is difficult to implement when running Secret of the Ancients because the adventure's primary purpose and appeal is its revelation of one of the main enigmas of the Traveller game setting -- the origin and history of the Ancients, a long-vanished race of ultra-powerful alien beings responsible for amazing technological feats, including the seeding of humanity (or humaniti, in Traveller's argot) across many worlds throughout the known galaxy.

Like many Traveller adventures, Secret of the Ancients begins with an archeological mystery. A man by the name of Trow Backette inherits a strange metal statuette from his favorite uncle, who'd been a merchant in the Spinward Marches before retiring. Not long after acquiring the statuette, Backett is accosted by thugs looking for it, but, fortunately, he does not have it on his person at the time of the attack. Later, Imperial agents attempt to seize the statuette as well, claiming that its an unregistered Ancient artifact and thus properly the possession of the government. Like most people in the Traveller universe, Backett's first instinct is to hire a collection of ex-military types to serve as his bodyguards and investigators as he attempts to determine the nature of this statuette and why so many parties are interested in acquiring it for themselves. What follows is a treasure hunt across the Regina subsector of the Marches, culminating in the discovery of an operational Ancient starship that transports the PCs to a pocket universe where dwells the first -- and last -- of the Ancients.

In and of itself, there's nothing necessarily problematic about an adventure of this sort, although I'll admit that I find adventures whose climax includes revelations that would shake the very foundations of the settings if known not to my taste. Even so, the implementation of the adventure -- and its revelations -- are problematic. There are simply too many coincidences, moments of serendipity, and dei ex machina that it strains credibility, especially since neither the characters nor their patron are professional archeologists or experts on the Ancients. By dumb luck, they manage to acquire technology and knowledge, not to mention a face-to-face interview with a super-intelligent 300,000 year-old being, in the process uncovering the answers to numerous long-standing mysteries of the Traveller setting. What's more is that the adventure is written in such a way as to remove most, if not all, the incontrovertible evidence of this having happened, so the PCs are left with knowledge and insights into the true nature of the universe that almost no one else will ever believe to be, thereby ensuring that there are no long-term consequences of their discoveries.

Don't get me wrong: I sometimes enjoy those moments when the PCs discover something that no one else knows. Regular readers of my Dwimmermount session reports should know that very well by now. But there ought to be consequences to such discoveries; the setting cannot remain the same afterward simply by authorial fiat. If the PCs really do uncover the "secret of the Ancients," then it damned well better mean something. Instead we're left with self-destructing super-tech starships and pinched-off pocket universes that conveniently ensure that there are few, if any, ripples in the wider world of the Traveller setting.

Which brings me to my other big complaint about Secret of the Ancients: it's much too deeply immersed in the official Traveller setting of the Third Imperium to be of use to those who aren't using that setting. Indeed, even those of us who were using the setting couldn't find much use for this, because it's such an esoteric scenario. The Ancients were a useful element of the setting, because they provided the means to have uplifted dog-men and interfertile human beings on many worlds, not to mention godlike technology, shattered worlds, and other oddities that even 57th century science could not explain. In short, they were a terrific way to inject some mystery into the setting. Left unexplained, each referee could do with the Ancients as he wished -- or do nothing at all with them. Once explained, though, that mystery was gone and the referee's option became either to accept the explanation offered or ignore it, thereby deviating from the official setting and making it harder to use subsequent materials that depended on his having accepted the answers provided in Secret of the Ancients.

As it turned out, this last concern was a minor one, as Traveller was soon detonated by GDW itself, further canonizing what was once an example setting into the very essence of the game. It's interesting to note, though, that, according to Marc Miller's own admission, Secret of the Ancients sold significantly less well than most of its predecessors (7,370 copies -- nothing to sneeze at by today's standards, to be sure -- compared to 36,703 for the first adventure released just five years earlier). It's possible that the decline in sales has as much to do with the decline in the mass marketability of tabletop roleplaying at the time, but I suspect there is more to it than that. Traveller's decline in popularity also maps on to its increasingly self-referential and insular nature, with adventures like Secret of the Ancients being a prime example. I can't say with any degree of certainty that, had the game remained as open-ended and sandbox-y as it had been for the first several years of its existence, it might have weathered the mid-80s better in terms of sales, but it's a theory I hold nonetheless. Regardless, Secret of the Ancients is not one of Traveller's finest moments and it's one I look back on now as a herald of what was to come.

The Necromancers of Dwimmermount (Part I)

First, some admissions.

As both a referee and a player, I have a thing for the undead. They're among my favorite monsters in D&D and I like to use them as often as I can without lessening their impact. I'm sure there are some deep-seated psychological defects on my part that explain my fascination with walking corpses.

I also love the idea of specialized magic-users. Unfortunately, I've never seen them done in a way that really appealed to me. They've all been deficient in some way or other, but the most consistent flaw in my opinion is the sacrificing of flavor for mechanical compatibility and vice versa. What I want is a specialist MU that feels noticeably different than a "standard" one but whose supporting game mechanics aren't too bizarre.

Combine these two facts with the growing prominence of the city-state of Yethlyreom in my Dwimmermount campaign and it was inevitable that I'd try my hand at coming up with a necromancer variant for use with OD&D/Labyrinth Lord. What follows is a something I've been intending to introduce into the campaign to represent NPC necromancers. I'd also allow it for PCs, too, with the caveat that necromancy is not a common magical specialty and, in the current campaign area, is known only in Yethlyreom, whose magic-users are none too keen to share their secrets with just anyone.

The text in the quote box below is hereby designated Open Game Content via the Open Game License.

Necromancers are magic-users who have plumbed the secrets of life and death in order to gain power over both. Necromancers use the same experience point charts as ordinary magic-users and must abide by the same weapon and armor restrictions. However, at various points in their progression (as noted in the chart below), necromancers gain the option to exchange a single spell slot for the use of a new ability unique to their class. These abilities are spontaneous, meaning that they do not need to be prepared ahead of time like spells (though they can be, if so desired) and can be used at any time so long as the necromancer has a single unspent spell slot of the appropriate level. Necromancers also have access to a number of unique spells, described in Part III.

Character Level (Spell Level)	Necromancer Ability
2 (1)	Pass through Undead
4 (2)	Sleep/Charm Immunity
6 (3)	Command Undead
8 (4)	Paralysis/Hold Immunity
10 (5)	Animate Dead
13 (6)	Energy Drain Immunity

Pass through Undead: Gained at 2nd level, this ability expends a 1st-level spell slot per use, granting the necromancer the ability to move among undead beings without being attacked for 6 turns. This ability affects only the necromancer not his companions. Likewise, intelligent undead get a saving throw versus spells to overcome this ability.

Sleep/Charm Immunity: Gained at 4th level, this ability expends a 2nd-level spell slot per use, granting the necromancer immunity to sleep and charm person spells, as well as abilities and magic items that mimic those spells, for 6 turns. If the necromancer is willing to forever sacrifice a 2nd-level spell slot, this ability becomes permanent.

Command Undead: Gained at 6th level, this ability expends a 3rd-level spell slot per use, granting the necromancer the ability to command 2D6 undead to do his bidding. The necromancer is treated as if he were a cleric three levels below his actual level, with a successful turning roll or "T" result indicating that the undead unquestioningly obeys the necromancer for 1D4 hours and a "D" result indicating obeisance for 1D4 days. This ability can be reapplied later, but each reapplication requires a new roll (if applicable) and the expenditure of an additional 3rd-level spell slot per re-application (i.e. the first re-application expends two 3rd-level spell slots, the second three, and so on).

Paralysis/Hold Immunity: Gained at 8th level, this ability expends a 4th-level spell slot per use, granting the necromancer immunity to all forms of paralysis and hold person, as well as abilities and magic items that mimic them for 6 turns. If the necromancer is willing to forever sacrifice a 4th-level spell slot, this ability becomes permanent.

Animate Dead: Gained at 10th level, this ability expends a 5th-level spell slot per use, granting the necromancer the ability to create any combination of corporeal undead whose total hit dice do not exceed his level. These undead obey the necromancer and remain animated until they are destroyed or until dispel magic is cast upon them.

Energy Drain Immunity: Gained at 13th level, this ability expends a 6th-level spell slot per use, granting the necromancer immunity to all forms of level drain, whether cause by undead or some other source. If the necromancer is willing to forever sacrifice a 6th-level spell slot, this ability becomes permanent.