Page by Page: Gary Gygax's DMG Part 5

This is the fifth installment of my continuing series on the 1979 Dungeon Master’s Guide, written by Gary Gygax. This post begins with the section “Travel in the Known Planes of Existence” on page 57, and continues through “Listening At Doors” on page 60.

Travel In The Known Planes of Existence As I’ve mentioned in the recent past, I’ve always been fascinated by planar adventures. There’s something about the idea of traveling not only to other worlds, but to places where even basic physical realities are different. It gets my adventurous spirit going. But no matter how fundamentally different they are, I always picture the various planes of existence as still fitting within the game’s setting. And while Gygax makes allowances for that as well, much of this section is about using planar travel as an excuse to visit completely different game systems. As in sending D&D characters to his “Boot Hill” wild west game. I was aware that he, as a GM, did that sort of thing. But I find it a little odd to see it right here in the DMG. I honestly can’t imagine doing things that way. If my players and I wanted to play a different game, I think we’d just put our D&D characters aside and play a different game.

I once read a post from Trollsmyth which might explain that, though I can’t find it for the life of me. It was about a cultural shift in the tabletop gaming community. According to him, in the old days players tended to stick with a single game for the long term, while now-a-days players often switch between campaigns and game systems at a rapid pace. That might explain why Gary thought it was important for GMs to know they could send their players to other game systems, whereas I (as a whippersnapper) view the concept as silly.

Outdoor Movement I am both surprised and disappointed that nothing here is really news to me. I guess it might be because I’ve already devoted a lot of time to reading, thinking, and even writing about this subject. I’m still not satisfied with how it works in my games, though, so I was hoping this would be one of those passages filled with Gygaxian genius. Oh well.

Infravision & Ultravision It’s pretty cool to have a detailed explanation of how Infravision works, though it seems like basic 60′ Infravision wouldn’t be all that useful. I mean, it’s a nice trick to have up your sleeve, but it wouldn’t let you function normally in the dark the way I would normally imagine. You’d be tripping over things on the floor constantly. 90′ Infravision is much closer to what one would normally think of, and I like that it is used to explain creatures with glowing red eyes. (The eyes are emitting infared radiation, and seeing via the radiation’s reflection).

Ultravision’s explanation is a little less detailed and clear. I wonder if the Player’s Handbook gives more detail on when this would be useful.

Invisibility This section, I think, stands well in contrast to many modern discussions about game-changing spells. Spells such as Fly and Invisibility which produce a lot of argument because they allow players to completely bypass obstacles. My position on these problems has always been that a GM should understand the spell’s limitations, and design better obstacles. Some others prefer to see these spells reduced in power, or removed from the game.

Gygax’s solution is to write six paragraphs and a table into the DMG which outline all the ways in which invisibility can fail in its intended purpose. Maybe the monster can smell you, or hear you, or maybe two players will run into one another while attempting to maneuver invisibly. It’s really quite clever.

Mirrors …What?

“It is important for DMs to remember that in order to be reflective, a mirror must have a light source.” -Gygax, DMG, Page 60. Apropos of nothing.

Why does this section exist? That’s all it says. Right between “Invisibility” and “Detection of Evil And/Or Good,” Gygax decided to include a little section about how mirrors work. I suppose I can see how this would be useful to remember, but it seems really random.

Detection of Evil And/Or Good I love how many of the sections in this book are obviously written from Gygax personal experience with players who try to take advantage of the rules. This is an example of that, where he points out that “Detect Evil” can’t be use to find traps or poisons. I don’t think there’s any point in my GMing career when I would have allowed a player to do that, but obviously some players have tried.

Listening at Doors I’m kind of surprised to learn that Gary Gygax included a listen check in his game. The way the entire OSR community hates perception checks, it’s kinda surprising to see the equivalent of one in this, the holy grail of the OSR. Now I realize nobody views Gary Gygax as infallible; he just got a lot of things right. I just never expected to see something like a listen check in this book.

And to be fair, he only includes it for when active listening attempts are made, which makes good sense I think. Thought his percentages are preposterously low. If there’s a dozen orcs in the next room, and an elf presses his ear to a wooden door, then I’d say there’s a 100% chance that elf is going to hear something. Gygax gives the elf a measly 15% chance.

Hearing Noise This is absolutely brilliant, so I’m going to include it in its entirety:

“When a die roll indicates a noise has been heard, tell the player whose character was listening that he or she heard a clink, footstep, murmuring voices, slithering, laughter, or whatever is appropriate. (Of course, some of these noises will be magical, e.g., audible glamer spells, not anything which will be encountered at all!) Be imprecise and give only vague hints; never say, “You hear ogres,” but “You hear rumbling, voice-like sounds.” Failure to hear any noise can be due to the fact that nothing which will make noise is beyond the portal, or it might be due to a bad (for the listener) die roll. Always roll the die, even if you know nothing can be heard. Always appear disintersted regardless of the situation.” -Gygax, DMG, Pg 60

Remember a week ago when I posted a long whiny list of things I want in a tabletop RPG? The above passage is exactly what I meant when I wrote:

“I want a game which explains not just the rules of the system, but the spirit which those rules support. One which explains why rules exist, and how certain mechanics improve play. I want a game which helps Game Masters make the leap from learning rules, to running a campaign.”

Why is this kind of thing so hard for modern RPGs to do?

Favorite Quotes from this Section

“”Now I’ll sneak up on the monster invisibly!” How often has this cry rung forth from eager players in your campaign? How often have you cursed because of it? Never fear, there are many answers to the problem of invisibility…” -Gygax, DMG, Pg 59

What I Want

I like Pathfinder, which is why I’ve always been a vocal critic of it. It has a lot of problems; in many ways it falls short of my ideal game. I’ve often tried to improve upon the flaws with house rules, and I’ve been open in discussing the flaws which can’t be fixed. Over the past few months I’ve read through a number of other RPGs as well. Aside from my well documented perusal of the original Dungeon Master’s Guide, I’ve been looking at various retro clones created by the OSR community, some modern Pathfinder alternatives, and some games in completely different genres. More and more I think that I won’t be happy until I produce my own sourcebook.

It’s not something I think I’ll be doing anytime too soon. I don’t think I’m ready for that kind of massive and involved project yet. But thinking about how I would design a game has got me thinking about what I want in a game. So I’ve compiled a list. And, since this list undoubtedly says a lot about this blog’s perspective, it seems useful to share.

I want rules which can be memorized. This doesn’t mean they need to be short enough that I can learn them by rote, it just means that they need to be logical enough that I can quickly deduce any I forget. If I need to spend a few sessions looking things up after we play, that’s okay.

I want rules which don’t try to establish mechanics for every possible action players might take. Instead, I want rules which guide me in coming up with my own mechanics for those situations, and which help me make those rulings without unbalancing my game.

I want more rules directed towards the GM than the players. There should certainly be rules that players can learn, but none or very few which they feel forced to learn. Nothing dissolves a budding player’s enthusiasm faster than telling them they need to buy a $60 rulebook, and read 300 pages of it before they’ll know how to play.

I want more supplements geared towards GMs than players. I understand why this hasn’t been the case in recent years: for every GM, there are probably three or more players. And since GMs will buy books anyway, it’s obvious which type of book has more potential customers. But never forget that the GM is your best salesperson. I can think of eleven people off of the top of my head who would probably have never picked up a tabletop RPG if I hadn’t invited them to my games. None of them bought supplements, but a lot of them bought core books and dice.

I want characters that can be created quickly. I don’t want to feel as though I’m sentencing players to waste eons every time I kill their characters. And I don’t want to force new players to sit through a bunch of obtuse character creation nonsense before I have a chance to show them how fun the game can be.

I want characters that can be customized and specialized endlessly. Character class is a fine starting point, but if my players want to make choices then I want to be able to offer them. If a player sets a goal for something they would like their character to be capable of, I want that goal to be achievable.

I want deep, tactical combat which forces players to think beyond a mundane exchange of blows. Combat where making a plan and knowing how to work together can mean the difference between life and death. Combat which none the less encourages players to take risks. Combat where being clever about your environment can turn the tide of a losing fight. Combat which is fun every time.

I want combat that doesn’t need to take an hour.

I want mechanics that engage players beyond a die roll. Rolling dice is a great way to resolve some types of action–but not ALL types of action. If every problem is solved with a die roll, then we might as be playing around a craps table.

I want mechanics unburdened by vestigial adherence to tradition. Just because past games have always done things a certain way doesn’t mean modern games should. The past exists for us to learn from, not to mindlessly emulate.

I want a game which doesn’t ignore history. If Gary Gygax or Dave Arneson figured out how to handle a situation amazingly, there’s no reason modern games should simply handle the same situation passably.

I want a game that equally supports many modes of play. A game which is just as engaging in tasks such as exploration or political intrigue, as it is in combat.

I want a game which explains not just the rules of the system, but the spirit which those rules support. One which explains why rules exist, and how certain mechanics improve play. I want a game which helps Game Masters make the leap from learning rules, to running a campaign.

I want a game which is supported by online tools, but which recognizes that if a game relies on online tools, it is a weak game.

I want rules that don’t need to be bypassed because they pointlessly add unnecessary work.

I want a game where the rules are designed to support me, not a game where the rules waste my time and frustrate my players.

I want a game without ‘traps,’ intended to impede a character’s build. Honestly, I want a game which doesn’t support even the concept of a ‘build,’ but instead promotes mechanical customization.

Fantasy Languages

Language has an important role in fantasy. In the video game Skyrim, the language of dragons produces powerful magic effects when spoken. In the Lord of the Rings stories, Gandalf repeatedly mentions that the ‘dark speech of Mordor’ should not be spoken, and when it is, it appears painful to hear.* In Judeo-christian mythology, the entire universe is created when god speaks; “and god said, let there be light: and there was light.” So why is it that we ignore language in fantasy RPGs? The most it is ever used for is a minor obstacle when a message or an NPC requires fluency in a certain language to understand.

As I’ve already mentioned in my analysis of the linguistics skill, learning languages by spending a skill point is stupid. Not only can it quickly lead to a character knowing an absolutely ludicrous number of languages (See: The Owlbear) but it doesn’t represent the proper amount of time investment for language learning. I’ve been pondering how this could be improved, and I think I’ve come up with something workable. Characters start play knowing their “basic languages.” These would be The Common Tongue, and any languages which the character should know based on their race and class. For a human fighter, the only basic language would be The Common Tongue. For a dwarven druid, the basic languages would include The Common Tongue, Dwarven, and Druidic. From there, the character may select a number of bonus languages equal to their intelligence modifier. These languages must be of the commonplace variety, but can be selected during gameplay rather than at character creation, if the GM is willing.

After selecting these first languages, players may learn additional tongues by investing time. They must purchase a book (which varies in price from 10gp for commonplace languages, to 10,000 gp for the rarest tongues), or be traveling with a companion willing to teach them. They must spend 8 hours every day in light activity, studying this language. If they are being taught by a companion, their companion must also spend this time in teaching the language, rather than in other tasks. After 35 days (equal to 1 game month for me), the character has successfully learned the language.

A character can learn a maximum number of languages equal to twice their intelligence modifier. So a character with a +4 intelligence modifier can learn up to 8 languages. Note that a character’s basic languages do count against this maximum. So a human fighter with 18 Int starts out knowing The Common Tongue, and 4 other languages based on their intelligence. After that, they may learn 3 additional languages for a total of 8. On the other hand, a dwarven druid with 18 intelligence starts out knowing The Common Tongue, Dwarven, and Druidic, as well as 4 other languages based on their intelligence. That’s a total of 7 languages, so the dwarf will only be able to learn 1 more after the fact. If a player wishes to learn more than their maximum number of languages, they may do so by taking the Polyglot feat, which allows characters to learn as many languages as they like.

Below is a list of languages organized by how common they are. I’ve included the 21 languages in the Pathfinder Core Rulebook, as well as a number of additional languages from other sources, and some of my own creation.

*While I have read LotR, it was more than half my life ago. Forgive me if my memories are more influenced by the films than the novels.

Commonplace

Commonplace languages are spoken openly by many people throughout the material plane. A textbook for learning a commonplace language would be available in most book stores, and could be purchased for 10-50gp. Note that The Common Tongue is not listed, as it is a universal language, not simply a commonplace one.

Dwarven Dwarven is filled with hard sounds, much like real world German or Russian. ‘Dwarven’ is a common tongue spoken by most dwarves. However, in a campaign world with different species of dwarf (Such as The Forgotten Realm’s Shield, Gold, and Gray dwarfs) each dwarf subspecies may have its own language, separate from the shared language of Dwarven. In such a case, each of the languages would be considered a Commonplace language. That includes the language of Gray dwarfs, since the mine-dwelling dwarven species are likely to encounter their Underdark dwelling cousins with some frequency.

Elven In contrast with Dwarven, Elven has very few hard sounds. Most words are composed of soft sounds, which flow one word to the next. The few words which do contain hard sounds are among the rudest words in the elven tongue. Elven is also the most expansive language, with a massive alphabet, and a lexicon which could contain the languages of several other species at once. Elves do not have multiple languages in campaign settings with more than one elven species. Wood elves, sun elves, high elves, etc. all speak a single unified language, though certain ways of phrasing things may be more common among one group than they are among another. The only exception to this is the Drow, whose tongue is a bastardization of Elven and Abyssal.

Gnomish Gnomish is a fast language. This often makes it difficult for non-native speakers to follow conversations between gnomes, even if they do know the language. It is also an extremely descriptive language, and it is not uncommon for a noun to be followed by a lengthy list of adjectives which–in most languages–would be considered excessive. Like elves, the gnomish language is universal among gnomes. This includes the Svirfneblin, or deep gnomes, who–despite being culturally quite different from their surface cousins–are none the less on amicable terms with the rest of their species.

Halfling Halfling sounds very similar to elven, and in fact is thought to be descended from that tongue. Most of its words, however, are not found within the expansive elven language. Halfling, more than any other language, incorporates words from many other languages as well. Dwarves, gnomes, and even orcs might occasionally recognize a random word within a sentence spoken in Halfling.

Gnoll Gnoll is a particularly difficult language for non-gnolls to speak. It is filled with many high pitched sounds, and a lot of bleating and yelping. Fortunately, it is also a very limited tongue, with a vocabulary of only a few thousand words.

Goblin Like Gnomish, the Goblin tongue is extremely fast paced. The chattering of Goblin often sounds comical, which belies how many synonyms they have for acts of violence. Goblins learn to speak it at a remarkably young age, and some anthropologists surmise that the language is actually instinctual for these creatures.

Orcish Orcish is a brusk, primitive language without artistry or style. Any of its subtlety comes from gestures made with the hands, head, or face. Note that these two are not considered separate languages, but a single language which combines vocal and gestural elements.

Giant The language of Giants sounds very similar to the Dwarven tongue, and in fact uses the same alphabet as Dwarven. The various types of Giant (Hill Giant, Stone Giant, Ice Giant, and so forth) have not quite developed their own sub languages. However, they do have very distinct dialects, which can take some time to grow accustomed to.

Gestural Languages Most cultures have developed gestural languages which are similar in style to their spoken languages. These have a twofold purpose: first, they allow those who are deaf and/or dumb to communicate. Second, they allow for silent communication during military action–though those who learn the language for its stealth applications normally have an extremely limited vocabulary. These languages include: Gestural Common, Gestural Elven, Gestural Dwarven, Gestural Halfling, Gestural Gnomish, and Gestural Giant. The other common species have not developed any detailed gestural languages, though that does not mean they are not capable of extremely basic gestural communication.

Uncommon

Like common languages, uncommon languages are mostly spoken by creatures on the material plane. However, most human and demi-human cultures will have had little to no contact with the creatures who speak these languages. As such, they can be difficult to learn. Textbooks for learning these languages are likely to be found only in universities, or the bookstores of large cities. Purchasing one will likely cost between 200 and 1000 gold pieces.

Aklo & Sylvan To someone who speaks neither Sylvan nor Aklo, the two languages might sound identical. Even non-native speakers sometimes fail to understand why a word from one language can’t be used while speaking the other. But to the creatures who speak these languages natively–the fey–the two tongues could not be more different. Speaking a word of Aklo within a Sylvan sentence is profoundly offensive, and vice-versa. It is also said that a plant which grows hearing the Sylvan language daily will flourish and grow strong, whilst a plant which grows hearing Aklo will become twisted and thorny.

Aquan Primarily the tongue spoken by water based outsiders, Aquan is none the less ‘uncommon’ rather than ‘rare,’ because the many water dwelling peoples of the material plane (such as merfolk) speak it. Aquan is strange, in that it can be heard as easily through water as most languages can be heard through the air. Additionally, it has been found that speaking this language wets the mouth of the one speaking it, though one who does not understand the language cannot replicate this effect by speaking the same words. There are some tales of people surviving for weeks without water, sustaining their life by speaking Aquan aloud to themselves.

Auran Like Aquan, Auran is a tongue primarily spoken by air based outsiders. However, many flying creatures on the material plane also speak the language, and this allows it to be more commonly known than most outsider tongues. Most native speakers find it frustrating to converse with non-native speakers, since they often don’t have the lung capacity to speak Auran easily. As a result, they need to take a breath after almost every word, giving the impression that they’re constantly exhausted from physical stress. Despite that fact, those who speak the language actually find it much easier to breathe while speaking it–an ability which comes in handy when faced with poison gases, or low oxygen environments.

Draconic Though the language of dragons is spoken by Kobolds and might be thought to be common, the dialect which Kobolds speak is composed only of the simplest words, with no regards for grammar, and numerous mispronunciations. While this works fine for the Kobolds, true Draconic is a much rarer and much more complicated language. In order to speak it correctly, a creature as tiny as a human needs to almost constantly shout the words in order to create the proper volume and inflection.

Undercommon The common tongue of the underdark is most naturally spoken in low, quiet tones. In that deep place it serves the same purpose as The Common Tongue does on the surface world: it is a universal language, which is none the less distinct from the specific racial languages found there.

Ancient Common Many of the commonplace languages slowly evolve over time. While an individual’s life is too short for this gradual shift to matter, after countless generations it can be impossible to decipher a book written in a language you ostensibly speak. As such, many languages have an “ancient” counterpart which must be learned as a separate tongue. These include: Ancient Common, Ancient Dwarven, Ancient Gnomish, Ancient Halfling, and Ancient Giant. The Elven language is unique in that it does not evolve, save to occasionally add new words to its expansive lexicon.

Drow As mentioned above, the language of the drow is a bastardization of Elven and Abyssal. Unlike elven, the drow tongue does evolve over time, and ancient versions of it do exist. Though, the older an example of the drow language is, the more it resembles Abyssal words shoehorned into Elvish conjugation and grammar.

The Gravespeech Intelligent undead are imbued with knowledge of this tongue upon their reanimation. Many of its guttural sounds are difficult for a living creature to create, but learning the language is a coveted rite of passage for necromancers. Those who chant their necrotic spells in this tongue swear that their command of the undead is strengthened.

Rare

Most rare languages are not spoken by creatures native to the material plane. They are the languages of outsiders, and their words carry great power. A textbook for learning such a language will be difficult to obtain. Likely only a few exist in the world, and they will either be owned by wizards and kings, or guarded by fearsome monsters in a dungeon beneath the earth. Purchasing one would cost not less than 5,000 gold, and could be as expensive as 10,000 gold, or higher.

Abyssal Every word in the grammarless language of demons sounds horrible. Some are reminiscent of a retching cough, whilst others sound disturbingly like a wail of pain. Those who speak it often find themselves prone to acting irrationally for a time afterwords, and respond a little more spitefully to minor annoyances.

Celestial The language of the upper planes always feels good to speak for creatures of good alignment. There is no distinct sensation, but your breathing becomes a little deeper, and your mind a little clearer. By contrast, most evil creatures find it unpleasant to hear. Not quite as bad as nails on a chalkboard. It’s unlikely that the language could be used to detect evil folk by watching for people’s reactions

Ignan The language of fire based outsiders requires a rasping voice to pronounce correctly. Speaking it drys the mouth of the speaker, and prolonged speech can apparently begin to drain a body of its water reserves. It is not recommended to speak the language at length without a beverage nearby. Those who do speak it find themselves temporarily immune to natural fire damage for a few moments after speaking.

Infernal The grammar of Infernal is so strict and obtuse that it makes the language almost impossible to speak until you can speak it absolutely fluently. An incorrectly conjugated verb is enough to make an entire sentence completely indecipherable. And a small error in a lengthy conversation can completely change the meaning of something spoken twenty minutes earlier. The impenetrable nature of the language provides a new dimension to the old phrase “Devils always speak in contracts.”

Terran All of the words in Terran are extremely short. In fact, each of the letters in the Terran written language can also be used to spell a single-character word. The language does not lend itself to lengthy conversations, and is best used to facilitate brief exchanges of necessary information. Speaking the language makes the ground somewhat more welcoming of you. Those who speak it often mutter to themselves as they travel, and swear that their feet hurt much less at the end of the day because of it. Of course, this application is most useful when falling from a great distance, as it reduces the amount of fall damage taken by 1d6.

Treespeech & Seavoice When the trees rustle, and the waves crash, subtle words are being spoken by nature itself. No one, not even fey creatures, can actually learn to speak in either Treespeech or Seavoice. Both languages are created by forces far beyond the ability of a pair of lungs and a single larynx. However, after careful study and a great deal of listening, one can learn to understand what is being said. An astute listener can learn a great deal about who and what is nearby, and it is impossible to become lost when you understand the language of your environment. As a special requirement, both of these languages require a Wisdom score of 14 or higher to learn.

Secret

Secret languages are known only to a chosen few. Helping an outsider learn it, or writing a textbook on it, is a grave offense. Special conditions must be met in order to learn any of these languages.

Druidic Druidic is a known only to druids, and taught to them through communing with nature. Druidic spells with verbal components must be spoken in druidic, or they will not work.

Thieves’ Cant Spoken in the underbelly of society, Thieves’ Cant is a carefully guarded secret of those on the wrong side of the law. Teaching it to anyone on the ‘right’ side of the law is enough to get your throat slit.

Drow Sign Language Though many societies have gestural languages, as mentioned above, the gestural language of the drow is taught much more universally amongst their people. In the underdark, where many creatures hunt by sound rather than sight, the ability to pass messages silently is essential to survival. Given the violent nature of drow, even allowing an outsider to witness too much of the language might earn someone a violent execution from their superiors.

Language of the Church Historically, the official language of the catholic church is Latin, despite the fact that the language has been dead for the majority of the church’s history. Using a language known only to educated members of society allowed the church to create a veil of secrecy between the clergy and the lay people. No one can question how certain teachings were derived from sacred texts if only the clerics can read the sacred texts. Many, or even all churches in a fantasy world might have secret languages of their own. They need not be a method of deception either; a goodly church may simply wish to keep its secrets safe from those who would exploit them.

Unknowable

There are some languages which simply cannot be learned. Hearing them puts a mortal in danger of losing their sanity, and speaking them threatens a mortal’s very existence.

The Dark Speech The true name of The Dark Speech is not known, and if it was, it could not be shared. It is the language spoken when the evil gods gather to converse–not even their mightiest servants are fluent in it. Most mortals would immediately die if they attempted to utter even a word in this depraved tongue. In some cases, however, the most powerful individuals can learn to speak a one or two words of The Dark Speech. They none the less suffer terrible pain from doing so, but the destruction their utterance can cause is sometimes worth the pain.

The Words of Creation The Ineffable Language of the Logos has been mentioned before. Even the most powerful gods cannot speak this language fluently. Instead, they utter only a few key phrases at a time, like a wizard invoking a spell’s trigger. A single word can rearrange the multiverse, or un-make a man.

Dissection of Pathfinder's Monster Entries

One of the frequent criticisms of Dungeons and Dragons 3.0 is that it made monsters too complicated. It’s a criticism which D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder both inherited, and its one that I’ve offered some defense against in the past. However, having created several monsters of my own by now, I find that my resolve in this matter is weakening. When I’m preparing for a game, and I need unique monsters, I don’t employ an elaborate series of rules for constructing the statblock. I take my concept, write down any information which I think will be relevant to play, and that’s that. The whole process takes 5 minutes. Maybe 15 if the monster is particularly complicated, or I’m being fiddly with the mechanics.

The only time I’ve ever actually followed the rules for creating monsters is when I was preparing that monster to be posted on Papers & Pencils. That’s a total of four times in my entire GMing career: The Corpse Sewn Hekatonkheires, the Bloody Avenger, the Draugr, and the three spiders I ganked from Telecanter. Every time it was a pain in the ass which lasted at least an hour, more often two. And what, precisely do I have to show for it? Do those monsters I created according to the official rules function more elegantly? Are they balanced better? Would players even notice a difference between a creature created in 15 minutes, and one created in two hours using the official rules?

No.

If the answer to any of the above questions was ‘yes,’ would it justify the extra time investment?

No.

Functionally, there’s very little difference between a monster I quickly jot down, and a monster I laboriously construct using the rules. Aside from the “statistics” block of information, all the same stuff is there. What else could you even conceivably remove? In combat you need to know a creature’s defenses and offenses. Ecology might not be strictly necessary, but it has a lot of value to GMs, and takes no real time to create. The reason the official monster creation method wastes so much time is not because of the volume of information it creates, it’s because of the ridiculously precise methodology it calls for. Every monster needs to have a certain amount of HD, and based on that can have a certain number of feats and skills.The monster’s statistics, HP, AC, saving throws, attack and damage rolls, all of it needs to be cross referenced with the desired CR of the creature, and anything that is raised requires something else to be lowered in response.

Ostensibly, the hope is that all of this will help GMs predict the how challenging a monster will be. Once the process is complete, you should theoretically be able to calculate a monster’s Challenge Rating, and know what level of adventurer it is appropriate for. Following the rules will ensure you don’t create a monster so overpowered that your players get murdered, and you won’t create a monster so underpowered that your players get bored.

For the moment, I’m going to set aside the question of whether or not a GM should even try to create “appropriate” challenges. For myself, I prefer that my players learn to run away now and again. If they never face a battle which is beyond them, then they’ll never be forced to look beyond combat for solutions. However, I can understand and appreciate the desire to have some kind of measuring stick for the level of challenge an encounter will present.

The problem is that after all the work this system puts us through to ‘calculate’ a monster’s challenge rating, it doesn’t even work. It doesn’t work because there’s no meaningful way to take a monster’s Special Abilities and Qualities into account when you’re trying to calculate CR. There’s not even a quarter of a page in the “Monster Creation” section of the bestiary devoted to the topic, and it’s the most important one. Pick up your bestiary, flip to any monster in the book. If that monster has a CR higher than 1, a guarantee you that the most important part of the statblock is the special abilities. Of course it is! If not for special abilities, then a monster is nothing more than a pile of calculations about how hard the monster hits, and how hard it is to kill. If monsters didn’t have special abilities, then there would hardly be any point to having a Bestiary at all.

I am not making the argument that Pathfinder needs a better system for determining how special abilities influence a monster’s CR. Special abilities often bend the rules, or create entirely new mechanics. They are far too varied for any system to properly take them into account, and any system which tried would be even more complicated than the one Pathfinder already uses. The argument I am making is that the official monster creation rules don’t even succeed at the one task they’re supposedly good for: accurately estimating a monster’s CR. And even if they were, it still wouldn’t be worth the time.

Then there’s the “statistics” block. Here you’ll find information on the monster’s six base abilities, it’s base attack bonus, it’s CMB and CMD, the feats it has, the skills it has along with any racial modifiers, and the languages it speaks. I confess that I find most of this to be at least marginally useful. Certainly it is essential to know the combat maneuver scores of anything the players might fight. And even if I don’t need to know the bonus that a Couatl has to its survival check, I can accept that others do. But what is gained by meticulously calculating how many skill points each of these creatures receives per hit die? Is it imperative that each monster can be reverse engineered, just so others can have the satisfaction of discovering that there was indeed an internal logic at play? I remember that after I had finished with the Corpse Sewn Hekatonkheires, I realized that I had forgotten to add feats. I then felt forced to search for ways to empower a monster which I knew was already powerful enough to suit my needs.

So what’s the solution? To be frank, I don’t have one right now. As I mentioned above, I see the value in challenge rating. It provides a measuring stick, and its never bad for a GM to have a fuller understanding of how something will impact their game. But I don’t think that measuring stick is worth the eternity required to achieve even the most uncertain result. For now, I’ll resign myself to making estimates about a creature’s abilities. Perhaps at some point in the future I’ll come up with and post a new system. But, for now, I think it’s simply important to acknowledge that the current system is bad. It is broken, and should not be used.

The Wide-Swing Dilemma

My party’s cleric wields a large, two-handed warhammer. It’s not a weapon which appears in any of the Pathfinder books I’ve read, but I include it in my games as a piece of standard equipment because they are awesome. In our last game session, the party was ambushed by a number of animated goblin skeletons while they were exploring the base of a giant statue. As monsters go, skeletons are not particularly deadly. But they were numerous, and none of the players had ever encountered a creature with damage reduction before. The party’s ranger was none too pleased when his arrow simply clattered through the undead’s ribcage without dealing damage.

Once I explained how damage reduction worked to my party, they figured out that the cleric’s warhammer, as a bludgeoning weapon, was able to overcome this defense. The barbarian cleverly responded by finding the largest rock she could, hefting it, and waddling around the battlefield smashing skeletons to pieces. The rogue and ranger did the best they could, but found that their piecing and slashing weapons weren’t up to the task. They encouraged the cleric to take the forefront in the battle, since her weapon was ideally suited to the fight. She did, and eventually ended up in this position:

I know, my battlemat is out of scale with the miniature base. I need to do something about that eventually.

Anyway, when the player found herself in this position, she told me she wanted to try and attack all three of the skeletal goblins in a single horizontal swing. I couldn’t think of a single diegetic reason why she wouldn’t be able to attempt this. I made a quick ruling at the table, and told her that she would be able to attempt it as a full action, but that each attack would be made at a cumulative -2 penalty. So her attack on the first goblin in her arc would be at a -2 penalty, the center goblin would be at a -4 penalty, and the final goblin would be attacked at a -6 penalty. This seemed like a reasonable penalty to me, and I had the player roll her attack dice.

As it turned out, none of her attacks landed, nor did any of her attacks land on her next turn when she tried the same tactic again. The penalties didn’t even come into play, she never rolled above a 10. Bad luck, but the party prevailed, and continued on with their adventure. But the encounter stuck with me throughout the rest of the evening, and I’ve continued to ponder it ever since. My ruling ‘steps on the toes’ of two mechanics built into the Pathfinder game: multiple attacks from a high base attack bonus, and Cleave/Great Cleave feats.

If you’ve played Pathfinder, or D&D 3.x, you’re familiar with these rules. Each class has a base attack bonus which rises as the character goes up in level, and this bonus is added to most types of physical attack that the character will make. Once the creature’s BAB gets high enough, they gain secondary, tertiary, and even quaternary bonuses which are lower (-5, -10, and -15 lower) than their full BAB. As a full action, the character can make multiple attacks per round using progressively lower bonuses. But while a character must be at least level 11 to gain three attacks with their BAB, my table ruling allowed a 2nd level character to attempt three attacks. And she did it at a -2, -4, -6 penalty, rather than a -0, -5, -10 penalty. A net bonus over the official way of doing things.

Gaining iterative attacks from base attack bonus does have a few benefits which I would not have allowed the cleric, had she asked. For example, a character attempting multiple attacks using their BAB is allowed to choose the order in which they attack their foes, can take a 5ft step in between attacks, and can even decide whether or not they want to continue attacking, or take a move action instead, after the first of their attacks. None of these should be possible if all of the attacks are made in a single fluid motion. But nor would they seem to make up for the fact that my cleric was able to access an ability which (according to the rules) was far beyond her ability.

The second rule I stepped on the toes of, the cleave and greater cleave feats, serve a similar function. If a character with the cleave feat successfully deals damage to one foe, then that character may make a second attack (at their full BAB) against another adjacent enemy. The greater cleave feat works the same way, it simply allows the player to continue making new attacks against adjacent enemies so long as the chain of successful attacks remains unbroken. Both feats subject the player to a -2 AC penalty for a round after use.

My player did not have the benefit of being able to use her full BAB on each attack, as the cleave feat allows players to do. But she also did not suffer a -2 penalty to AC, nor did she need to successfully deal damage to the first enemy in order to attack the second, or the third. And, on top of that, she didn’t need to take 3 feats (Power Attack > Cleave > Great Cleave) to make the attempt in the first place. Once again, it seems that my table ruling gave the player more a net bonus over the official rules.

Despite my ruling interfering with two official rules, I can’t help but feel that I acted correctly. I still cannot see a single diegetic reason why Gibbous the cleric would not be able to attack all three of the closing skeletons with a single horizontal swing. And while I’m sure the rules could be debated forever, I don’t particularly care. Combat balance is not sacrosanct. Player Agency is.

None the less, I am left with a few thoughts on how to improve my game in the future.

If a player attempts this tactic again, I think they should take a -2 penalty to AC for being off balance. I think it makes a lot of sense that a player who attempts a really wild attack wouldn’t be able to block attacks as effectively.
If a player attempts this tactic again, a slightly more harsh penalty might be appropriate. A -3 cumulative penalty, instead of a -2, should be sufficient.
Players with high base attack bonuses can make iterative attacks as a standard action, rather than a full action. This is a house rule that my twitter friend Rilgon first pointed out to me, and I’ve thought it sounded like a good idea for awhile now.
I long ago abolished the Power Attack feat from my games, because it falls prey to my problem with feats. I now think I’ll remove the Cleave feat for the same reason. Great Cleave can remain, as a means of allowing players to overcome the cumulative attack penalty, but only if they hit each time. After that the penalty stacks for each attack they miss.

I’m curious how other GMs would have handled this situation. Personally, it’s just edged me closer to the day when I build my own tabletop role playing system, with blackjack and hookers.

Page by Page: Gary Gygax's DMG Part 4

This is the fourth installment of my continuing series on the 1979 Dungeon Master’s Guide, written by Gary Gygax. This post begins with the section “The Adventure” on page 47, and continues through Underwater Spell Use on page 57.

Adventures in the Outdoors Gygax recommends designing your game world around a 20-40 mile hexagon, and breakin30g it down into smaller hexagons for travel. As I’ve discussed at some significant length in the past, I prefer to design my game world around the 6 mile hexagon which seems to have become standard in the OSR. And having done so, I’m at a loss for how a 20-40 mile hexagon would even work. A hexagon six miles across can contain an immense amount of variety, which becomes especially obvious when you apply a scaled hexagon to a real world map. On my own maps, I’ve often found that a single hexagon has so much stuff in it, that it’s impossible to fit all of the necessary icons into each hex on the page. So I honestly have no idea how you would do it if the hexes were five times larger, or more.

I suppose it might be useful to create a very general map of an entire continent, but then the continent map would need to be broken down into the a smaller map for the areas the players were actually adventuring in.

Chance of Encounter Here charts are given to help the GM determine the chance of an encounter based on population density, and to know when an an encounter should be checked for. These are two factors I did not consider when working out my system for running encounters on a hex crawl. I like the idea that more densely populated areas have much lower odds of an encounter. I’ve always left the probability of an encounter up to GM discretion, but this is better. It’s good for a system to be consistent, because then players can learn the system, and make intelligent choices about how and where they will travel. When players notice that they encounter fewer monsters in areas subject to regular patrols, they may be more likely to stick to the roads.

There’s also a chart here which lists six times of the day: morning, noon, evening, night, midnight, and pre-dawn. Those times are cross-referenced with various terrain types (plains, forests, deserts, etc) and there is either an X, noting that an encounter should be checked for at that time while in that type of terrain, or a -, noting that an encounter should only be checked for if the party “numbers over 100 creatures.”

I would really like to know whose party numbered over 100 creatures.

In my games, I just roll for encounters once per hex, and once in the evening, assuming the party is traveling consistently. I do like the idea of encounter rates being affected by terrain type, however. It provides some additional depth to what each terrain type functionally means for the characters. Instead of a marsh just being a muddy and smelly place, it’s also a place where encounters can happen at any time of the day.

I would like to point out that I’m pretty sure Gygax is only writing about monster encounters, though. When I make an encounter table, I allow players to find any number of things, ranging from monsters, to buildings, to NPCs, to treasure, and even adventure hooks. So were I to use this system, I would want to modify it so that the reduced encounter chance only affected monsters.

Encounter Distance I’ve long known about this and thought it was a good idea, but I’ve never implemented it in any of the games I’ve run. Essentially, when a random encounter is rolled, if one group or the other is surprised, then AD&D GMs were supposed to roll a random distance between the party and their foes. I’ve always found it easier to arrange surprise battlefields myself, based off the party’s marching order. But I do like randomly generating stuff, since it helps me to avoid any biases.

Becoming Lost Getting lost in the wilderness is something I covered briefly in my aforelinked post on hex crawling. Gygax and I seem to have essentially the same idea, though I disagree that it should be impossible to accidentally move in the right direction. I don’t see why not.

I also like the idea of the players hiring a guide to avoid getting lost. I hadn’t thought of that.

Flying Mounts I don’t really have much to say about this. Gygax’s rules for flying mounts are solid. I like the point that flying creatures large enough to support a rider will require a large amount of gold every month in order to keep them fed (300-600gp). It’s a good method of preventing players from gaining access to this kind of boon too early in the game.

What really strikes me as I read this, though, is that I don’t recall ever reading about flying mounts in 3rd edition or Pathfinder. The fact that the players will eventually gain access to flying mounts is assumed, and covered in depth. I wonder when that changed? Flying is still a large part of the game, but it is mostly assumed to come from the Fly spell, it seems.

I also like the detailed discussion of aerial combat. Gary’s solutions are simple, but they look like they would work well.

Waterborne Adventures Like the section on flying, the rules seem to be solid, but they’re not exactly a revelation. Boats of X type move at Y speed, and have Z hit points. Brendan recently pointed me towards a post on Delta’s blog which has some strong criticisms for these rules which I would have missed.

On my list of things to work on and write about is “Making Sea Travel More Engaging.” I may return to the rules Gary presented here when I do that, but I think that more is needed if traveling on a ship is going to be engaging for the players.

Underwater Adventures How to handle underwater adventures is a topic I often see discussed on /tg/. The idea is intriguing, but it obviously requires some different mechanics than a standard game. How do the characters breathe? How does water affect their movement? How are three dimensions handled? The rules presented in this section of the DMG are functional and cover all the questions I can think of related to underwater adventuring.

On a lark, I pulled out my 3.5 DMG, and I found this comparison interesting:

“As all readers of fantasy know, the ocean floor is home to numerous ancient submarine civilizations and dark, green realms of creatures half-man and half-fish. Your players may have heard tales of the mountains of unken loot that have been collected there over the centuries, of such things as pearls the size of a man’s head, of beautiful mermaids with green eyes and blue skin…If they should find some way to investigate these stories, how will you handle it? This section deals with methods for conducting underwater scenarios.” -Gygax, DMG, Page 55
“Aquatic terrain doesn’t offer the variety that land terrain does. The ocean floor holds many marvels, including undersea analogues of any of the terrain elements described earlier in this section. But if your characters find themselves in the water because they were bull rushed off the deck of a pirate ship, the tall kelp beds hundreds of feet below them don’t matter.
Accordingly, these rules simply divide aquatic terrain into two categories: flowing water (such as streams and rivers) and non-flowing water (such as lakes and oceans).” -Monte Cook / Jonathan Tweet / Skip Williams, 3.5 DMG, Page 92.

Favorite Quotes from this Section

“If this [designing a continent] is not possible, obtain one of the commercially available milieux, and place the starting point of your campaign world somewhere within this already created world. At the risk of being accused of being self-serving; I will mention parenthetically that my own WORLD OF GREYHAWK, (published by TSR), was specifically designed to allow for the insertion of such beginning milieux, variety being great and history and organization left purposely sketchy to make interfacing a simple matter.” – Gygax, DMG, Page 47

Variant Spell Preperation

Casters are overpowered in Pathfinder. It’s not exactly a controversial statement. They’re less overpowered compared to non-casters than they were in D&D 3.5, but that’s not saying much. Wizards were demoted from Gods, to merely Demi-Gods. Finding ways to creatively nerf wizards has become a side hobby of mine. I’d like to bring them in line with the other classes, without taking away of the flavor which I view as central to the class.

In early editions of D&D, Magic Users gained their spells at random, and that served as an effective balancing device. And while I think it’s a really cool idea, I don’t think it fits into the Pathfinder mythos very well. A Pathfinder wizard is a scholar; there is nothing random about how they go about their business. I’ve suggested before simply removing any spells that a wizard gains by leveling up, and instead offering the wizard spells as treasure. I still like this idea a lot, but I understand that not everyone can get behind such a large nerf. It has also recently been suggested that any spell a Wizard casts from a scroll should count against their total spells per day. I quite like this idea as well, but obviously it’s not sufficient to completely balance the class.

While reading a recent post over at Brendan’s site Untimately, I struck upon another idea. What if the spell slots of the Wizard (or any other Caster) were not level specific? According to the current Pathfinder rules, every time a wizard gains a new spell level, they have only 1 spell slot for that level. At the next level it goes up to two slots, two levels after that it goes up to three slots, and three levels later it maxes out at four slots. By level 20, a Wizard is able to prepare four spells from all ten spell levels each day, for a total of 40 spells every day. If they like, a lower level spell can be placed in a higher level spell slot, but that always feels kinda wasteful, doesn’t it?

Using this idea, a wizard will still have spell slots, and still prepare their spells using a Vancian “fire and forget” system. But instead of having X number of slots for Y level spells, the caster will instead gain generic spell slots which can be used to memorize spells of any level. The catch is that each spell requires a number of spell slots equal to its spell level to memorize. So a fifth level spell will require five spell slots.

The way the system scales is really quite interesting. Using the official Pathfinder rules, characters who reach a new spell level can only prepare a single spell of that level until they gain a new character level. Using system, however, characters probably have enough spell slots to prepare several of their highest level spells as soon as they gain access to them–but at the expense of only having a few spells to cast for the day.

I feel like I’m writing ‘level’ and ‘spell’ a lot.

Another interesting thing about this system is that it becomes remarkably easy to scale the wizard’s level of power until you find a good fit for your game. If you’re running a low magic game, Wizards start with 4 spell slots, and gain 2 new slots each time they gain a class level. If you’re running a game with more magic, wizards start with 3 spell slots, and gain 3 each time they level.

The system seems elegant to me, but I haven’t play tested it yet. I wish I could claim credit for coming up with the idea first, but it appears Brendan beat me to the punch by almost a year. And apparently an old sourcebook called The Principalities of Glantri Gazeteer beat him to the punch by several decades. Still, I think the idea deserves some consideration.

Introducing New Characters to Your Campaign Milieu

Introducing a new character to an ongoing campaign is always a challenge for me. Maybe it’s because I place too much emphasis on making the game world coherent. I suppose if I wanted, there would be no real problem with introducing new players the same way videos games do when you plug in a new controller. “Player 2 has joined the game.” I don’t actually know if it would bother my players to have new characters suddenly appear as if placed there by the gods. For me it would be jarring; I like the world to feel consistent. I’m curious to know how other GMs handle this.

There are two situations when a GM is typically faced with integrating a new character into the game. Either a new player has joined the game, or a regular player’s character has died and a new one must be introduced.

On the one hand, I don’t think characters should simply appear. Adventurers wandering through a desert should not suddenly find themselves with a new companion by their side. There should be some “in-game” explanation for the character’s appearance, and for the character deciding to join the adventurers. Players wandering through a desert might find their new companion unconscious and dehydrated. Once the party saved the new arrival’s life, the new character could join the party out of gratitude. One of my time honored methods of introducing new characters is to have them enter the game as henchpeople of NPC quest givers. The NPC sends their trusted servant along to ensure success, and once the adventure is over, the character can choose to stay with the party if they please.

On the other hand, players should not be left sitting on their hands while they wait for the rest of the party to find them. They’ve come to your game table to play a game, not watch helplessly as others do so. This is particularly true for new players. Most players will approach a new group with justified trepidation. We’ve all heard horror stories about terrible GMs. Making a new player sit around for fifteen or twenty minutes doing nothing is a good way to end up as one of the subjects of those horror stories yourself.

So, introducing a new character is a balancing act between maintaining a logical world, and keeping players engaged in the game.

Within my last three gaming sessions, I’ve had to introduce two new players into my established gaming group. The first player entered the game just as the party was starting a new adventure. The party had ended the previous session by returning to a lone wizard’s tower with the magical reagent he had asked them to find. They accepted his offer to rest and resupply there, and in the morning as our next session began, he offered them a new quest. He needed a relic retrieved from the depths of a far off dungeon. In travelling there, the party would pass through a small human settlement, and I thought that would be the best place for them to encounter the new half elven rogue who had joined the group. I could even have the wizard tell them that they’d need to hire somebody who could to pick locks when they passed through the town.

Unfortunately, it would take about an hour of gameplay to reach the town, so that was right out. Lacking any better ideas, I simply had the wizard introduce the rogue as “an associate who also recently returned from performing a task for me.” He said the rogue would be helpful, and poof. The party was formed.

I only now find myself thinking that perhaps the game might have been improved by running two concurrent adventures. One where the party was journeying to that town, and another where the rogue player was going through a brief solo adventure in the town. I could switch back and forth between the two parties each ‘day’ of game time. That may be something I need to try in the future.

The very next session, we had another new player join the game. This one was a gnome barbarian, which was a particular challenge. The previous session had ended in a dungeon which, for unrelated reasons, had been magically warded to prevent gnomes from entering it. I wassn’t quite sure how I wanted to handle the issue, because I had gone to great lengths in the previous session to establish that even gnomes of great wealth and power had been unable to find a way to enter. It seemed ridiculous that a level 1 barbarian should be able to make it.

Fortunately, the players had already discovered a room filled with gnomish statues, and confirmed that those statues were actually real gnomes who had been turned to stone. Before the game started, I gave the new player a little background: she was a warrior who had fought beside the gnomish King Teleron against an army of Giants, Ogres, and Orcs. In the battle of Stonefist Peak, she had been magically turned to stone, and she’d spent the last 200 years as a statue.

I thought this was a really elegant solution, but again I was faced with the problem of potentially forcing her to sit the game out while the rest of the party tried to figure out how to break her curse. My original plan had been to make freeing those gnomes a potential long-term goal for the characters, but now I needed a way to do it immediately. So, when the game started, I had the players find a scrap of paper at the bottom of a treasure chest (which they had looted just before we ended the last game) which came from the diary of one of the dungeon’s prisoners. The prisoner’s diary explained that Demon’s Blood (which the players already had on hand) could be used to reverse the spell. They poured the blood on one of the statues, and the new player’s gnome did a happy little flip and shouted “ta da!”

The way I introduced that second character was somewhat more elegant than the way I introduced the first. None the less I had to fudge some stuff around to make it work: finding the diary which wasn’t there before, whichever statue they had poured the blood on would have been the correct character, etc.

How do you handle introducing new characters to your game?

Page By Page: Gary Gygax’s DMG part 3

This is the third installment of my continuing series on the 1979 Dungeon Master’s Guide, written by Gary Gygax. This post begins with the section “Time” on page 37, and continues through Illusionist Spells on page 47.

Time What Gygax wrote here about time and how to keep track of it is fascinating and vital. So much so that I’ve already dedicated not one, but two posts to exploring it. I see no need to repeat myself here.

Day-to-Day Acquisition of Cleric Spells In D&D 3rd edition and Pathfinder, obtaining spells is a pretty straightforward procedure. Every morning the cleric prays for an hour, and all their spell slots are filled for the day. In 1st edition AD&D, as is often the case, there’s more to it than that. There is additional background, which seems to have been dropped from later editions because it complicates the game. And while there’s something to be said for cutting out unnecessary complications, I have been learning that many of Gygax’s original ‘fluff’ offers interesting adventure opportunities.

For a 1st edition cleric, only first and second level spells can be obtained through simple prayer. More advanced spells of third, fourth, and fifth level must be gained by beseeching one of your deity’s powerful servants each morning. To put it in terms I imagine many of my readers are familiar with, the cleric must communicate directly with an angel each morning in order to receive those spells. And for spells above fifth level, the cleric must communicate with their god directly. Not just once, but every morning.

The interesting thing about this is that if the cleric has acted against their god’s dictates within the last day, then they know they must face that god again the next morning when they ask for spells. And Gygax flat out says that for particularly serious transgressions, the cleric’s god may choose to simply obliterate the offending mortal.

Acquisition of Magic-User Spells Since I first learned that oldschool Magic Users learned their spells at random, I’ve been torn on the concept. On the one hand, I like selecting my spells carefully. It allows me to create effective strategies, and it meshes with my conception of wizards as magical scientists. On the other hand, I love randomization. Being given a random set of tools and needing to figure out a way to be effective with those tools is an intriguing challenge, and one I always enjoy. I look forward to playing some 1st edition once the WotC reprints come out, so I can make a more informed decision about which method of obtaining spells I prefer.

I have to say about this section, though, that Gygax seems a little overzealous about preventing players from obtaining spells too easily. I understand that easy access to spells can unbalance a game, by Gary literally says that if a player saves the life of an NPC who was already loyal to them (like a hirling) then that NPC will (at best) be willing to allow the PC to copy one spell from their spellbook in exchange for a spell and a minor magic item. The rules literally dictate that exchanges of spells should never be equitable for the player. This seems odd to me.

Spell Casting For those unaware, Dungeons & Dragons has always used something called Vancian Magic, named for Jack Vance, the author whose work the system was based upon. It’s also sometimes called “fire and forget,” because every morning a caster must memorize their spells, and once the spells are cast that memorization is wiped from their mind. In the editions of the game I’ve read, that’s about the extent of the information given. Here Gygax goes into greater detail. He explains that each spell is a combination of symbols and sounds which are charged with energy from one of the planes of existence. When combined into a certain formation, the energy of those planes is released in a limited fashion, causing a magical effect. Those symbols are then consumed by the magic which passes through them, not unlike a fire consumes fuel. Whether the symbols are on paper, or in the mind of a caster, they disappear.

Gygax writes nearly half a page on this topic, and recommends that for additional background, GMs read The Eyes of the Overworld, and The Dying Earth by Jack Vance. As well as The Face in the Frost by Bellair. Having not yet read these books myself, I cannot comment on them beyond Gygax’s recommendation.

Gygax also notes that while the words of a spell are typically used to bring the effect forth, and somatic (hand movement) components to the spell are used to “control and specify the direction, target, area, etc.” This brings to mind the interesting possibility of allowing casters to bring forth spells without somatic components–but in doing so they will have no control over how the effect manifests itself.

Spell Explanations Here begins a lengthy section where Gygax adds “DM’s Notes” for many of the spells present in AD&D. It doesn’t include spell descriptions, but most of the spells have self explanatory names, so I was able to follow along just fine. This section seems like a useful tool for the GM. It offers advice on how to adjudicate instances where players attempt to use spells in unusual ways which might end up being overpowered. For example, Gygax notes that casting the spell “light” upon one’s eyes does not grant a character “luminescent vision,” but rather blinds the character for the duration of the spell. Entries like this one make me wish GM notes for spells had been perpetuated through later editions of the game. It’s not only useful for determining how to handle a specific case, but it’s useful as a general guideline for how to handle players hoping to push the boundaries of what a spell can do.

On the other hand, I don’t see why “Blindness does not restore lost ocular organs” could not have been put in the spell description itself.

Aerial Servant I simply find this funny. Ever since I became interested in this hobby, I’ve heard from religious nutjobs that D&D teaches kids to cast “real spells,” and that players must learn incantations to the devil in order to succeed in the game. The notion is preposterous of course. Spell casting is normally handled simply by naming the spell and saying your character casts it. Players rarely have the spell’s description memorized, much less an incantation to go along with it.

None the less, the DMG says that players should be required to indicate which type of magic circle they’re using when they cast this spell. I laughed.

Favorite Quotes from this Section

“Once a cleric changes deities, he or she must thereafter be absolutely true to the new calling, or he or she will be snuffed out by some godlike means. It is 90% unlikely that the cleric’s first deity will accept him or her back into the fold after falling away, unless some special redemptive agency is involved. There is no salvation for a thrice-changed cleric; he or she is instantly killed.” -Gygax, DMG, page 39
“a hollow voice rings forth and commands: “GO FORTH FROM HERE AND RETURN NOT UNTIL YOU BRING CAPTIVE THE HIGH PRIEST OF OSIRIS AND ALL OF THE ALTAR SERVICE OF HIS TEMPLE AS SACRIFICES TO ME IN TOKEN OF THE SINCERITY OF YOUR TRUE REPENTANCE!” -Gygax, DMG, page 42

Page By Page: Gary Gygax’s DMG part 2

The second in my continuing series on the 1979 Dungeon Master’s Guide, written by Gary Gygax. This post begins with the section “Money” on page 25, and continues through Loyalty of Henchmen and Allied Creatures on page 37. You can see the first post in this series here.

Player Character Expenses Gary recommends that players be forced to spend a certain amount of gold each month on general upkeep. This covers all the numerous costs which are too painstaking to track during the game itself: the cost of meals, lodging, ale, minor tools, etc. This is something which actually exists in Pathfinder. You can find it under “Cost of Living,” on page 405 of the Core Rulebook. In many ways, I think the Pathfinder system is more elegant than Gary’s, but I’ve never heard of anyone actually using it. I’ve even failed to implement it myself. That’s something I need to improve on.

Reputed Magical Properties of Gems Every edition the game has some type of list which itemizes the various values of gems, but I love that Gygax devoted half of a page to explaining the type of magic each gem is related to. I can’t speak for the historical accuracy of the list, but gems and other precious stones have been said to have magical properties throughout history. Gygax specifically states that simply owning a stone does not grant any magical benefit. Rather, the purpose of the list is to give game masters a frame of reference they can draw from when creating magical items. If an NPC gives the party a magical stone to ward off a curse, then the GM can make the stone Topaz, whereas if a wizard wants to make a Ring of Guile, the GM can require them to hunt down some Serpentine.

Helmets A common argument in the tabletop community centers around helmets. Some think they should add to a player’s armor class, while others (including myself) argue that a helmet is part of whatever armor the player is already wearing. If anything, players should receive an AC penalty for not using a helmet! Gygax takes an interesting position on this issue: if no helmet is worn, then roll a d6 along with each attack roll. If a 1 is rolled (1-3 for intelligent creatures) then the head is attacked directly, and it only has AC 10.

Dexterity Armor Class Bonus I find it very interesting that the 1st edition AD&D rules say that a character wearing heavy armor does not lose their dexterity bonus to their Armor Class. The restrictions on players are generally more harsh in older editions than they are in newer ones. But perhaps I’m simply misunderstanding because I lack a proper background in how Armor Class worked during this era.

Hirelings There is a lot of emphasis placed on the search for hirelings, and bartering with them for their services. I find this idea intriguing. As a player, I imagine that once I’ve established a stronghold, I’ll try to recruit NPCs I meet during my adventures to come work for me. If I meet a city guard or blacksmith I like, I offer them a sum of money to come live in my stronghold, and spend their days guarding my treasure, or making my weapons. As a GM, I imagine each NPC added to the player’s stronghold as a possible adventure hook. Maybe the blacksmith has a gambling debt, and somebody will come to collect on it. Maybe the city guard is a deserter from a massive army which demands the players turn him over.

Sages I don’t recall when I first encountered the concept of sages–wise and elderly keepers of knowledge. But from the first time I heard about them, I was fascinated. There’s something romantic about the life of a scholar, and I’ve always enjoyed having my players encounter them. For a long time now, I’ve allowed players who fail a knowledge check by 10 or less to know of a sage who can answer their question. But I’ve always been interested to know more about the oldschool origins of these characters. And Gygax did not disappoint me. Very few topics have received three full pages worth of coverage in the DMG so far, so I’m quite happy! There’s a lot of information on how to randomly generate a sage’s fields of knowledge. And I particularly like the idea of hiring a sage, and having permanent access to their immense knowledge on a given topic.

How would you utilize a sage within your stronghold who knew everything there is to know about, let’s say, birds? It might seem useless, but I’ve found that “useless” resources can be a huge benefit, if you figure out how to use them properly. Perhaps this sage could advise you of a method to coax carrier birds to land in your citadel, and allow you to intercept messages from other kingdoms. Or maybe their knowledge could provide the fortress with a source of food during a long siege?

Henchmen I’ve never been at all satisfied with the way D&D 3.x/Pathfinder handle followers. The leadership feat has always struck me as clunky and difficult to use, so I’ve been surprised to learn how differently followers were handled in older editions of the game. Rather than being an obscure ability which only a few players will pursue, it seems as though Gygax expected every player to eventually acquire a few NPC hangers-on. The system for recruiting them is a great deal more advanced, detailed, and elegant than the one presented in Pathfinder. I particularly like the fact that a full page is devoted to calculating a creature’s loyalty. The extremely simple loyalty system described in the Leadership feat has never sat well with me.

The comparison between oldschool and modern methods of attracting followers is something I would like to go into in more detail, but it will require a full post to do so. I’ll hold off on that for now.

Favorite Quotes from this Section

“Such short-term employment cannot last beyond one week’s time, and the sage will thereafter not be available for at least one game month — as there are more important and constructive things to be done than answering foolish questions, anyway!” -Gygax, DMG, Page 33
“Thus, suppose a sage is asked a question out of any of his or her fields of knowledge. If the question is of general nature, the sage will hedge and talk around the point, or just possibly sit and look wise for 4-6 rounds before answering that the question is beyond his or her learning…” -Gygax, DMG, Page 33