Open Friday: Creating D&D Player Characters

I recently began playing in a D&D campaign for the first time in I don't know how long, so, naturally, I had to create a PC for myself. I had no preconceptions about what type of character I wanted to play, so I rolled 3D6 in order six times. That is, I rolled up six different potential player characters and then looked them over. From among these six, I choose the set that looked the most interesting to me -- "interesting" encompassing both utility in play and in terms of roleplaying potential. In this case, I wound up choosing the following set of ability scores: Str 12, Int 9, Wis 13, Dex 12, Con 14, Cha 10. Such a character could either have been a mediocre fighting man or a mildly above-average cleric; I opted for the latter. I decided that he was a well-meaning but not thoughtful cleric, strongly devoted to his faith and intent to seeing it spread through word and deed.

And that's most of what I knew about my new character before I started playing him. Since he might not survive to see 2nd level (never mind higher), I figured it most practical to let his personality and other details evolve through play. Plus, that gave me a lot more leeway to make things up as I went along, which is always fun.

So, my question for today is this: how do you go about creating a new, 1st-level D&D character?

Ouch!

I've commented on the snarky reviews in SPI's Ares before, but I've been re-reading my collection of them and came across some more amusingly harsh comments I wanted to share. Here's Eric Goldberg on the cover of RuneQuest from issue #3 (July 1980):

RQ costs about as much as the three parts of "The Fantasy Trip" combined, with slightly less component value. A little over 100 pages are contained inside a soft cover. The second edition is distinguished by a color cover and is worth the higher cost than that of the original edition. The first cover is absolutely priceless; it depicts a somnolent young girl dressed for a Marquis de Sade Costume Ball proferring [sic] an oversized tortilla to a ravenous, deformed gila monster -- all done in brown crayon.

Here's another one by Goldberg, from the same issue, about Tunnels & Trolls:

Stripped of annoying distractions, T&T is a pleasant puff-piece. The production values have increased from amateur status to a nearly professional standard. The rules have been ordered, and can be understood in no more than two readings. The package includes pregenerated characters and an adventure for beginners. The game will be passed over by all but the completist; there are better buys on the market now. Still, T&T was a nice try by those fun people at the airborne herbivore.

AD&D fares little better. Again, by Goldberg and in the same issue:

The design has many flaws, which have become apparent as it has aged and are magnified by TSR's intransigence when it comes to changing a system or rule in response to valid criticism from players. The presentation of the package is amazingly poor. The original rules rate as one of the worst of all time, including fractured English, garbled text, contradictory rules, a re-invention of mythology, and passing references to crucial rules. Advanced Dungeons and Dragons was meant to remedy this situation. Actually, in place of previous rules maladies, the gaming public received an overwritten, jumbled mass of discourse upon D&D which can only be assimilated by making a life-long study of the text. Given the choice between stringing together rules in AD&D and discovering the proverbial needle in the haystack, the adroit gamer would make for the farmhouse.

I post these comments not just because I find them funny, but also as a reminder that gamers have always been contentious and sarcastic, particularly about games they don't play. So, while a lot has changed in the hobby since 1980, other things are still very much the same.

The Ads of Dragon: Pendragon

One of the interesting phenomena I have observed is that, while the first edition of a game is often badly edited, unclear, and even incomplete, it's also often the most evocative edition, perhaps owing to the "rawness" that is the source of its flaws. This is certainly the case with the new RPG advertised in issue #96 (April 1985).

I played the heck out of the first edition of Pendragon and still consider it my favorite edition of the game. A big part of it, I think, is that it wasn't yet the bloated, unfocused game it would eventually become in later editions (though, in fairness, the 2005 edition goes some way toward recapturing the straightforwardness of the original). And one cannot understate the effect that Lisa Free's glorious artwork, which, in my opinion, suited the Arthurian world like few others. In any event, I have fond memories of this particular ad, since it reminds me of many excellent campaigns with my friends back in my high school days.

Retrospective: Big Rubble

Big Rubble is a companion piece to Pavis, a boxed set extensively detailing the ruins of old Pavis -- 25 square kilometers contained within the walls of a formerly great city. Like its predecessor, Big Rubble was written by Greg Stafford and Steve Perrin and published in 1983. Also like its predecessor, it includes three books and a map. Big Rubble differs from Pavis in that it's much more adventure-oriented. That is, the player and GM guides are much shorter in length, while the scenario book is much longer. This is to be expected, since Big Rubble details the closest thing that old school Glorantha had to a megadungeon. Even so, all three books contain a fair bit of background and cultural details, in keeping with the tendency of RuneQuest products from the era.

The "Common Knowledge for Players" book is the shortest of Big Rubble's integral volumes and provides players with basic details of Old Pavis and the surrounding area. One of its longer sections is devoted to the cult of Yelorna the Starbringer, which is influential in the region. Amusingly, there are several Lunar Empire-issued government forms included in this book, such as the "Freelance Adventurer Registration Form." I adore little props like this, both because they're simply fun, but also because they provide a practical primer in the Lunar mindset, which is vital when adventuring in Prax. The "Guide for the Gamemaster" is longer and devotes most of its pages to describing the Big Rubble itself. The book highlights the most important areas of the ruins and their likely inhabitants, as well as discussing how to get in and out of the ruins. Of equal utility are the encounter tables and pre-statted collections of NPCs, such as Lunar patrols and Chaos gangs. Special encounters with unique NPCs are likewise provided.

As I noted above, it's the scenario book that is the heart and soul of Big Rubble, offering nine different adventures for use by the GM. These adventures vary greatly in length and scope, with some being quite extensive (and a bit railroad-y), while others are barely more than short encounters in a specific locale. All include stats for NPCs and, where appropriate, maps. Reading through them again, I found myself struck by a couple of things, the first being just how much more space is required in a RuneQuest adventure for stat blocks than is the case in a D&D adventure. Indeed, there are often entire pages consisting of nothing but stat blocks. The second thing that struck me is the level of detail provided for many encounters, far more than I am comfortable with these days. It's not for nothing that RQ adventures have the reputation for demanding much from the referee.

In the end, Big Rubble is something I like more in theory than in reality. The idea of a boxed set describing a huge ruined city as an above-ground megadungeon is quite compelling and it's one that appeals to me on many levels. Unlike Pavis, though, this boxed set provides fewer tools for the referee, instead giving more attention to pre-designed scenarios. While that might make Big Rubble more usable immediately (though that's a relative thing when dealing with RQ material), I think it also limits its long-term utility, at least compared to Pavis, which I think does a much better job of presenting a locale that referees can make their own.

None of this is to say that Big Rubble is a bad product, because it's not. On the other hand, I find it a lot less satisfying than other RuneQuest products of similar vintage, such as Griffin Mountain or even Borderlands, which is a shame, as the idea behind it remains an excellent one that could really benefit from the kind of treatment only a boxed set can offer.

The Ads of Dragon: Strategy & Tactics

By now, regular readers of this blog are no doubt tired of my constantly reminding everyone that I have never been much of a wargamer. Despite that, I've long had a fascination with wargames, given the number of roleplayers I knew in my formative years who were wargamers. So, despite not playing many wargames myself, I was always aware of them and the companies that produced them, particularly Avalon Hill, which was located in my hometown of Baltimore.

I also knew of SPI, which, by the early 1980s, was producing the vast majority of all wargames published in the world. When SPI went bankrupt in 1982, its assets -- but not its debts and liabilities -- were acquired by TSR. Being a subscriber to Dragon at the time, I read about this acquisition from TSR's point of view, which, of course, did not mention that among the debts TSR didn't acquire was honoring existing subscriptions to SPI's magazine, Strategy & Tactics, an advertisement for which appeared in issue #95 (March 1985):

TSR published S&T for 21 issues before selling it off to the British company World Wide Games (3W). As I understand it, the magazine was poorly received by wargamers during TSR's ownership, as were most of TSR's wargames, which was likely a disappointment to staff designers who saw the acquisition of SPI as an opportunity to expand the company's repertoire beyond RPGs. Alas, it was not to be.

A Second MacGuffin?

Those of you who saw the latest version of Conan the Barbarian might find the following blog post amusing. I certainly did, especially this part:

STEPHEN LANG
Time to put on my mask and unleash my godlike power!

SCREENWRITERS T.D. DONNELLY/JOSHUA OPPENHEIMER/SEAN HOOD
Wait! New rule! The mask doesn’t work without the blood of last surviving descendent of the kings who first made the mask a thousand years ago.

STEPHEN LANG
A second MacGuffin? That’s bullshit!

SCREENWRITERS T.D. DONNELLY/JOSHUA OPPENHEIMER/SEAN HOOD
Did we mention this MacGuffin is a hot babe, and you get to see her boobs?

DIRECTOR MARCUS NISPEL
I’m going to allow it.

Like all such humor, of course it's more than a little unfair, but, equally like all such humor, there's also more than a grain of truth in it. As I said previously, the real shame about the 2011 movie is that it's just not very good. Much as I'd prefer a film that hews as closely to an actual REH story as possible, I'd be willing to accept a decent pastiche, but, alas, that's not what we got. It's even more of a shame because I think, overall, the movie, for all its manifest faults, was light years closer to Howard in its portrayal of Conan than we've seen in visual media before.

Pulp Fantasy Library: Something Wicked This Way Comes

Do they even have carnivals anymore? I mean, real carnivals: rickety, dirty, dodgy, and, above all, scary carnivals? Sure, there are things calling themselves "carnivals" that set up shop in the parking lots of shopping centers and have rides and concession stands and maybe even the occasional game of chance whose rewards include cheap stuffed toys vaguely reminiscent of cartoon characters, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about carnivals, where, in addition to the rides and concession stands, you also get mind readers, bearded ladies, and dog-faced boys. I'm pretty sure they don't exist anymore, outside of works of the imagination and maybe that's not such a bad thing. But there's no denying that the idea of carnivals like that is a powerful one, at least for me.

That, and the incomparable writing of Ray Bradbury, are probably the reasons why I have such a fondness for the 1962 novel, Something Wicked This Way Comes. It probably helps, too, that the novel begins in a way that has always rung particularly true to me:

First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys. Not that all months aren't rare. But there be bad and good, as the pirates say. Take September, a bad month: school begins. Consider August, a good month: school hasn't begun yet. July, well, July's really fine: there's no chance in the world for school. June, no doubting it, June's best of all, for the school doors spring wide and September's a billion years away.

But you take October, now. School's been on a month and you're riding easier in the reins, jogging along. You got time to think of the garbage you'll dump on old man Prickett's porch, or the hairy-ape costume you'll wear to the YMCA the last night of the month. And if it's around October twentieth and everything smoky-smelling and the sky orange and ash grey at twilight, it seems Hallowe'en will never come in a fall of broomsticks and a soft flap of bedsheets around corners.

But one strange wild dark long year, Hallowe'en came early.

As anyone who knows me well can tell you, I adore the month of October. Not only is it the month of my birth, but it's when Fall (my favorite season) is at its most attractive to me. There's still enough life left in the world that it doesn't feel as depressing as November and it manifests a kind of glory that is utterly absent in warmer and more conventional vibrant months. And, of course, there's Halloween, a holiday replete with both religious and secular meaning, which I enjoy probably more than almost any other, save Easter. So, I was probably predisposed to like Something Wicked This Way Comes before I'd even read it.

The novel tells the story of two friends, Will Halloway and Jim Nightshade. The boys are both thirteen years old and, as the story begins, they're returning home as a big storm is about to hit their home of Green Town. There's lightning and thunder and some say they can smell cotton candy in the air as well. The pair stop off at the library, where Will's father works, allowing Bradbury the opportunity to wax rhapsodic about libraries, books -- and growing old:

Out in the world, not much happened. But here in the special night, a land bricked with paper and leather, anything might happen, always did. Listen! and you heard ten thousand people screaming so high only dogs feathered their ears. A million folk ran toting cannons, sharpening guillotines; Chinese, four abreast, marched on forever. Invisible, silent, yes, but Jim and Will had the gift of ears and noses as well as the gift of tongues. This was a factory of spices from far countries. Here alien deserts slumbered. Up front was the desk where the nice old lady, Miss Watriss, purple-stamped your books, but down off away were Tibet and Antarctica, the Congo. There went Miss Wills, the other librarian, through Outer Mongolia, calmly toting fragments of Peiping and Yokohama and the Celebes. Way down the third book corridor, an oldish man whispered his broom along in the dark, mounding the fallen. . . .

Will stared.

It was always a surprise - that old man, his work, his name. That's Charles William Halloway, thought Will, not grand-father, not far-wandering, ancient uncle, as some might think, but. . .my father.

So, looking back down the corridor, was Dad shocked to see he owned a son who visited this separate 20,000-fathoms-deep world? Dad always seemed stunned when Will rose up before him, as if they had met a lifetime ago and one had grown old while the other stayed young, and this fact stood between. . . .

As I get older myself, I find this section of the book even more affecting than it was in the past, doubly so as the story unfolds and we learn that Will's father envies his son his youth and looks back longingly on "The boy [he] once was ... who runs like the leaves down sidewalks on autumn nights."

Into this situation arrives a traveling carnival called Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show and its arrival throws Green Town into tumult. Not only do the carnival's tents go up mysteriously but townsfolk begin behaving strangely, some of them even disappearing after a visit to the carnival. Its proprietors, especially the tattooed Mr Dark (evocatively called "the Illustrated Man"), have a decidedly sinister air about them, made all the more clear when they take a particular interest in Will and Jim. Needless to say, these oddities embolden the two boys to investigate the truth behind Cooger & Dark's and soon discover that there is more at work than they ever imagined.

Something Wicked This Way Comes is a delightfully terrifying fantasy. Its characters are well drawn, its imagery memorable, and, most of all, it has something to say. I consider it one of Bradbury's best novels, which is saying something, as I'm not sure that Bradbury ever wrote anything that wasn't excellent. Like Lovecraft, he is quite adept at using words to conjure up not only sights and sounds but also emotions. Unlike Lovecraft, Bradbury typically does this with fairly ordinary words and colloquial language. It's a remarkable gift and is used to great effect in Something Wicked This Way Comes. If you've never read it (or Bradbury), it's well worth the time and effort. Even if, for some reason, you don't find the story to your taste, you might enjoy it for its artistry alone, which is considerable.

Open Friday: Non-Humanoid Aliens

Much as I love Star Wars and Star Trek (which celebrated the 45th anniversary of its first airing yesterday). I have to admit that I've grown completely tired of humanoid aliens. I understand why, in the old days, they were a necessary evil, but, nowadays, there's usually little justification for them. And in literature? They were never needed. I'm much happier with alien beings that don't look as if they could just be a guy in a suit.

So, my question is: what are your favorite non-humanoid aliens? By "non-humanoid," I mean beings that don't look anything remotely like a human being. Adding another head or extra limbs or whatever does not count. I'm talking aliens like Star Trek's Horta, Traveller's Hivers, or Ringworld's Puppeteers. By my definition of "non-humanoid," something like the Hutts from Star Wars would not count, since they're basically just big humanoids with tails instead of legs.

The End

I've been racking my brain, trying to come up with examples of any effect in any version of old school D&D that results in permanent and irrevocable death. The only one that immediately leaps to mind is drawing the Skull card from a deck of many things, but I am sure there must be others. If you can cite some others, I'd be greatly appreciative.

The Ads of Dragon: The Enchanted World

Another good gauge of the vitality of the hobby back in the early and mid-1980s is the diversity of advertisements one might find in the pages of Dragon in those days. Though most were fantasy or science fiction-related, not every ad was for a gaming product. A good case in point is this one from issue #94 (February 1985):

The Enchanted World was a series of Time-Life books that presented stories collected from legend, mythology, and folklore together under a single theme, like Wizards & Witches or Dragons, to cite just two examples. Life all Time-Life books, the series was lavishly illustrated and fairly expensive to purchase. I think it was the artwork that won me over and so I subscribed to it for a time, getting maybe 10 or 12 books of the 21 that were eventually released.

Though not specifically written with gaming in mind, The Enchanted World books nevertheless provided great fodder for my hobby. Back in 1985, when I saw this ad, I was going through a period of dissatisfaction with D&D -- and indeed all fantasy games -- because I found them to be too far removed from their mythological inspirations. What I craved was fantasy more in keeping with the ancient tales I'd devoured as a kid, so The Enchanted World gave me lots of fodder for imagining such things. I won't claim my attempts to make D&D more "mythologically true" were particularly successful, but I didn't much care, because those attempts scratched an itch I'd had and I was grateful for that.