0 Level Characters in Zylarthen

There aren't any.

That is, Zylarthen avoids distinguishing, say, 1st level player character Fighting-Men from any other able-bodied fighting types such as non-player character soldiers, mercenaries, etc., at least in any general sense. Among other things, all use the same attack and saving throw tables, though for simplicity, soldiers and mercenaries might sometimes use the "Up to 1" hit dice row of the Monsters Attacking table if keeping track of their weapons becomes more trouble than it's worth.

Now, note that I use the phrase in any general sense. There are a few specific ways in practice that player-characters will differ from other types.

1. Members of the Fighting-Men class (whether player characters or non-player characters) get 1+1 die of hit points as opposed to simply 1 die of hit points for all other able-bodied types.
2. All starting player characters get as many hit point roll mulligans as they need so as to guarantee their hit point roll will be at least 4.
3. All player-character or non-player character members of a class have the chance to gain levels by accumulating experience points.
4. Only player characters or important non-player characters ("important" probably ruling out mercenaries etc.) get to roll on the Zero Hit Point table, thus having a chance to cheat death, if only temporarily. 

That said, it is implicit in Zylarthen that the difference between, say, a classed Fighting-Man and a soldier is merely one of, so to speak, initiative or chosen circumstance. It's certainly not genetic or metaphysical or anything like that. So, for example, when player characters have mercenaries arrive in response to their advertisements--anything from Barbarians (1 silver a day) to Cataphracts (20 silvers a day)--the rules make it clear that they could either be hired in their "ordinary" role, or if the player characters desire, any of them could be invited to be "close associates"--Fighting-Men with the potential to gain levels--as long as they are promised at least half-shares in any treasure.

So, in essence, the only thing that separates you (as a starting character) from that "typical" or "average" guy with a sword over there is that you're brave enough (or stupid enough) to tramp into that dungeon a day's ride away. Or rather, you are that soldier, but you have a desire to make something of yourself by tramping into that dungeon. This may or may not be a good thing.

One might say that Zylarthen shares with Dungeon Crawl Classics the idea of the funnel. Except that in Zylarthen, the funnel isn't something that happens before first level; it is first level. That's a bit of an exaggeration but still...

Why did I design the game this way?

Well, first, since Zylarthen was intended  to follow OD&D in spirit, I wanted to eliminate as many AD&D accretions as possible. And AD&D made much of the distinction between 0 level and leveled types, among other things introducing the term henchmen for non-player characters you could hire--who had a character class and the potential to gain experience and thus level up--as contrasted with hirelings--who were just "normal" mercenaries. In truth, the idea of a Normal Man with attack numbers inferior to starting player characters was first introduced by Holmes, but I'm not sure whether the idea originated with Holmes or whether he wasn't just giving an early launch to an idea that was being tossed around by the AD&D planners. It's also possible, I suppose, that Gygax or Arneson had intended the 0 level distinction for OD&D but hadn't stated it explicitly, or that it was present in some form in Chainmail. Nevertheless it's not in the OD&D text itself.

Second, adding another row or column (for 0 level types or normal men or whatever) to the attack tables just seems fussy. What's the purpose of it exactly? Why are, say Bandits any better at fighting than the average mercenary you might hire? Or, to put it a different way, why go to the trouble of adding an entirely new class or category of people, just to make it clear that bandits (or player characters) are 5% better? Again, what goal does that serve in game terms?

But finally and most importantly, introducing the concept of 0 level characters was in my view one of the first steps into inducing the players to think of their characters as pumped up superheroes--complete with elaborate back stories and titles, etc.--before they had even raised a sword against a Kobold. The Gygaxian conception outlined in The Dungeon Master's Guide (1979) was almost Nietzschean. Only 1 in 100 humans in the average village, town or city were leveled or even had the potential to level. Needless to say, I find the whole trend to be annoying for about five different reasons.

Here's one of them: I wanted Zylarthen to be in part a game about heroism. And yes, I even felt that it had the potential to teach children about this virtue, at least in some small and non-obnoxious manner, without of course getting in the way of the game's primary purpose--using one's imagination to have fun. Not to sound too curmudgeonly, but the point about heroes and heroines is that they need to earn the title. They're not born but made. Or rather, they make themselves through their own actions. Though, having teachers or role-models can obviously help. The anti-0 level thing is only a small part of promoting this idea, I know, but it is a part.

Those who choose to act as heroes or heroines may succeed completely--killing the monster or saving the land or the prince or whatever, perhaps even getting rich as a reward for their efforts. Or they may succeed only partly. Or they may die in the process.

But it is the act that confers the title.

Why a Silver Standard?

Seven Voyages of Zylarthen uses a silver standard. That is, the prices for adventuring items are quoted in silver pieces and the experience points needed to gain levels (which approximately track the numbers of OD&D) match up with silver pieces, not the gold pieces of OD&D.

It's not original.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess does it. And even Gary Gygax himself implied that he might have done it if given the chance to do Dungeons & Dragons over again.

Why?

Well, first of all, it's more historically accurate. Silver has always been much more plentiful than gold (while remaining rare, with additional stocks difficult or costly to obtain) and thus better suited to minting coins. Here are some rough facts:

1. The silver penny of Medieval, Renaissance or Tudor times in England was about the size and weight of a modern dime.
2. The silver shilling (worth twelve pennies) was about the weight of an Eisenhower Dollar, though with a somewhat smaller volume.
3. Very very roughly, and taking into account expected oscillations, debasement and subsequent inflations, in-kind payments and so on, a shilling was often equal to a day's wage of a farmer or manual laborer. Or conversely, it was about what you needed to pay for a day of food and shelter. People often cut pennies into quarters to pay for cheap items.
4. Historically, gold was always 5-20 times more valuable by weight. Or since gold was twice as dense as silver, 2-10 times more valuable by volume.
5. Thus, depending on the ratio of gold to silver, one could carry a year's salary in a belt pouch and a large fortune in a small sack.
6. Silver shillings or gold sovereigns—'pound' coins equal to 20 shillings—weighed about half as much as the 1/10th of a pound stipulated in OD&D and AD&D. (For much of the period in question, 'pound' and sometimes even 'shilling' were so-called units of account, rather than names for actual coins.)

For More Things in Heaven and Earth (my '16th century' proto-Zylarthen) I created a very fussy (but fairly historically accurate) table of coin weights and values:

(An encumbrance 'item' is roughly equal to five pounds of weight, similar to the encumbrance scheme of Zylarthen.)

It was wise to jettison the above for Zylarthen, but I will probably use it in my pending 'Tudor' or 'Elizabethan' supplement.

However, much more important than 'realism' was the way that the monetary values and exchange rates of OD&D completely undercut a robust and varied coin system. Since even mundane and cheap items were expressed in terms of gold, it wasn't clear what purpose copper and silver really served. Why would any but unintelligent monsters hoard such coins? But the Dungeon Expedition example in The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures along with of course the Treasure Tables themselves, seemed to suggest that they did—'The chest with the poison needle is full of copper pieces—appears to be about 2,000 of them'. It was as if modern day gangsters did much of their business in pennies, going around with sacks of them, keeping them in elaborately protected safes, etc.

So for Seven Voyages of Zylarthen I, so to speak, shifted things one column to the left, with the standard metal of account now being in the middle of the other two. I kept the variance in values from lowest value coin to highest value coin at 1:50 the same as in OD&D, though this is much narrower than the 1:200 variance in AD&D that many of us are most familiar with. Here are the relevant comparisons:

OD&D:

AD&D:

Seven Voyages of Zylarthen:

The 1:5 copper to silver exchange rate allowed copper pieces to still maintain some meaningful value and give men and monsters a reason for hoarding them. On the other hand, I wanted gold to become something truly valuable, sort of like the status of gems in OD&D, which I thought made more sense both from the standpoint of 'realism' as well as how gold is usually treated in fantasy stories, fairytales and the like. Basically I wanted to give it more allure than just something you use to buy a coil of rope with.

I've heard that referees wanting to switch from a gold to a silver standard often run into opposition from their players—'he's taking our gold away!'. So I would be interested to hear from any Seven Voyages of Zylarthen play testers out there as to how the silver standard has worked in practice.

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UPDATE ON TEAM OLA: A number of wonderful and generous people have pledged $500 since last Wednesday to sponsor my Chicago Marathon run in support of the Our Lady of the Angels Mission on Chicago's West Side. Thank you again! I am very grateful. 

I still have $500 to raise by Marathon day, Sunday, October 12th. Only four days left! If you haven't already done so, please consider sponsoring me in support of a group that does great work! Any gift of $75 or more will launch either the four Seven Voyages of Zylarthen physical booklets or a cool Steve Prefontaine DVD on an inexorable trajectory towards your home. My donation page is here:

Donate to Team Member Oakes Spalding (again, it goes directly to the Mission, not me).

And more information is here:

Mission of Our Lady of the Angels

Team OLA page with cool Team OLA Motivational Video

 Cheers again and please pray for me if you can.

OSR Art Friday: The Adventuring Party

This piece was one of the first published by the artist and game designer Tom Wham, who joined TSR is 1977. It first appeared in the 6th printing of the original 'White Box' edition of Dungeons & Dragons, replacing the section of text that in previous printings had described the Balrog--excised due to legal pressure from the Tolkien estate. It also appeared on the front page of the 1979 bluish 'wizard logo' Character Record Sheets.

Here they all are--the Fighter with his sentient magic sword, the conical-capped Magic-User hiding behind him, the Thief in the process of picking the Magic-User's pocket and the beneficent Cleric (is he trying to gently dissuade the Thief or naively oblivious to his action?). To me, they are united in having an almost maniacal look about them, as if to say, this is what the lure of treasure does to everyone.

Wham would do many other drawings for TSR and later other companies including his own, often combined with game design such as in his brilliant Awful Green Things from Outer Space. Most of his drawings were comical or light-hearted in style but not all of them. He also composed the Monster Manual's Beholder. (Though, now that I look at it again, even that awful creature appears ever so slightly comic.)

In a blog post contrasting his work with that of David Trampier, Matt Finch references the above drawing while aptly describing Wham's contribution:

...Tom Wham's picture is an adventuring party seen from the outside, from the perspective of the gamer looking in. Because let's face it, most of our gaming sessions have plenty of Tom-Wham-adventurer moments in them. Quoting Monty Python? That's the Tom Wham guys. Dancing around the table when your roll for dexterity comes up triple 6's? That's the Tom Wham guys.

Quick quiz: In what fundamental ways does 2nd edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons differ from 1st edition? THACO and skills would be possible correct answers, of course. But here's another one:

There are no cartoons in 2nd edition AD&D.

Or at least there aren't in the 2nd edition Dungeon Master's Guide. Contrast this with the multiple cartoons (with captions!) liberally sprinkled throughout the original DMG:

P. 34:

P. 35:

P. 44:

So here's another difference between the old school and newer editions (for those of you still keeping count). The old school had a sense of humor. Newer editions often give off a ponderous air of humorless self-importance, as if to say, 'don't laugh, it will break the spell'.*

Also, prestige classes aren't funny.**

Recently Jon Peterson unearthed and published a sort of variant or possibly even proto-version of Dungeons & Dragons, played in Minneapolis in 1974. Among other things it featured giant carnivorous meatballs. I think many of us would agree that 'official' OD&D was wise not to go that far, though if you wanted more of that sort of thing, there was always Tunnels & Trolls.

However, in the Golden Age of the game, there was a sense (at least at some level) that things shouldn't be taken that seriously, partly because we all were well familiar with how the game was actually played. Despite some of the fantastical depictions in the media--like Tom Hanks and friends sitting around a spooky table that featured candles and crystals--we all knew that in the end we are all just a bunch of pimply kids getting potato chip grease on our graph paper and riffing about Monty Python or Doctor Who in between rolls.

The game was cool. No question about it. But what was wrong with laughing with it and at it from time to time, as well as (on occasion at least) laughing at ourselves?

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*2e was still old school in many ways, and to be fair, I liked much of the art in 2e, but on some things the vibe had already changed.

**Unless you say some of the names aloud to your wife. For the list of over 800 prestige classes I published a few weeks back (stolen from Wikipedia), I stuck a few phony names into it--such as inserting 'Swiss Burger with Bacon' in between 'Swift Wing' and 'Sword Dancer'--to see whether anyone was paying attention. My wife, at least, thinks I'm a funny man.
'Wearer of Purple.'
'That's hilarious. You're a funny man.'
'I didn't make that up. It's one of the real ones.'
'You're lying. You made that one up.'
'I didn't.'
etc.

OSR Art Friday: The Magic Mouth

This is the first of a series that will appear every Friday.

By "OSR Art" I mean artwork of the original or classic games--including of course Dungeons & Dragons--as well as that featured in more contemporary efforts such as Swords & Wizardry, Lamentations of the Flame Princess and others.

These games are or were better partly because of their art. A game is not merely defined by the abstract mechanic of the rules. For an entire game to aspire to be art in the more general sense (which, in my view, every game should, even in the smallest or most humble of ways) the physical product must also be attractive. And the art inside the game should be inspiring, evocative, thought-provoking and memorable.

Yes, it should try to more than being a tacky rip-off of a video game screenshot.

As Dungeons & Dragons devolved, beginning with 2e and picking up steam downhill with 3e, 4e and now 5e, the quality of the art devolved with it. I actually think the cause and effect works both ways. If you know that on every other page your text is going to be paired with blaring CGI-like color images of "Tieflings" or "Dragonborn" your design ideas and prose may very well sink to match that.

The illustration above is for me the most iconic interior drawing of any of the classic books. If it doesn't encapsulate the wonder and mystery of the dungeon, what could? Note that like most of the best classic pieces, it's not about combat, and it features relatively "normal" looking figures (if Hobbits and/or Dwarves can be considered normal)--not pumped-up Rambo types.

I like the way the light sources--the torches and magic sword--are emphasized, and the fact that it takes place on a stairway--going down.

The drawing appears on page 108 of the original 1978 Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook and is by David Trampier, one of the leading artists of the first years of TSR.

For those of you who haven't seen it (probably not very many), enjoy! For those of you who have seen it, here's a bittersweet reminder of what once was.

Favorite Published Adventure: A4 In the Dungeons of the Slavelords

The neat thing about this adventure, or so it seemed to me at the time, was starting the players off waking up in a sandy cave, presumably deep in some underground maze, where they had nothing but loincloths--no weapons, armor, equipment, precious magic items or memorized spells. Also, it was pitch dark. There were things scuttling about that would scuttle even faster during the earthquake tremors that would go off at increasing frequency. Did I mention that it was pitch dark?

To get out, they had to be smart about things they found--bones they could use as clubs, tar for improvised torches, etc.--but also needed to put up with a certain, so to speak, grossness level--making friends with fungus people via a disgusting spore ritual, climbing a bridge made of dead giant ant husks, and so on. 

I purchased the module along with the others in the Slavelords series, shortly after it came out. It seemed incredibly cool to me and I couldn't wait until my players were powerful enough to try it. I had to wait a year or so, as I remember.

Looking back, this "tournament" module violated a number of "old school" tenets, or at least it did the way I used it. First off, I had to "railroad" my players into the predicament--indeed more than railroad them, I had to throw a set of antagonist at them that they obviously couldn't defeat or run away from. They actually made a good run at winning against, I think, an 8th level party, so I had to make use of the deus ex machina of sleep gas. As I remember it, one of the players threw me a look as if to say, "That's so obviously unfair. What's your game, anyway?" He found out when he woke up in the dark wearing nothing but a loincloth.

Secondly, the module instructed the DM to make the players think the cavern or (as they would later discover) island would blow up at any time. But of course, if one had railroaded them into the thing in the first place, imposing a volcanic TPK on characters the players had been playing for over a year of real time would have been mean. So that was also sort of fake.

Nevertheless, it was still amazingly fun.

When the party emerged from the caverns onto the beach of the volcanic lake, their patron, Rellian, the 18th level Wizard, was there to meet them with all of their "lost" equipment and magic items. Triumphant, they flew out on the back of a tame Red Dragon, watching the world explode far below...

First RPG Purchased: Advanced D&D Players Handbook

I bought the Players Handbook after discovering Dungeons & Dragons in the Winter of 1978-79. Thirty years later Tim Kask would declare:

It all starting going bad with the publishing of AD&D, The Player’s Handbook... 

So I guess I was late to the party, as always.

In seriousness, I agree with Kask that the seeds of what was to later go wrong with the game were contained in that book--the legalistic codification of the rules, the excessive detail offered in the spell descriptions, the further importance placed on superior ability scores and thus the ability score "inflation" that went with it, and finally the additional class and race options for player-characters--something that at the time probably seemed like an undeniable good, but would lead down the road to "kits" and "builds" and all sorts of other horribles.

But, we're taking about the seeds. Both at the time and looking back, the book itself was stunning--perhaps the best single RPG product ever.

And of course it began with the art. That cover summed up Dungeons & Dragons for me--and it still does: In a room, presumably somewhere deep in the dungeon, we are witness not to a scene of combat but to the aftermath of one. Two characters (thieves?) are attempting to pry the jewel out of the eye of a grinning idol. Two others are consulting a map--where to go next? A fighter is sharpening his sword next to the bloodied corpses of some kind of reptile, while a magic-user, leaning on a staff, looks on.

The interior art by Trampier, Sutherland and others contains some of the best illustrations the genre has ever produced. For me, this piece in particular is iconic:

And of course there was Gary Gygax' wonderful prose and, well, opinions:

You will find no pretentious dictums herein, no baseless limits arbitrarily placed on female strength or male charisma, no ponderous combat systems for greater "realism", there isn't a hint of a spell point system whose record keeping would warm the heart of a monomaniacal statistics lover, or anything else of the sort.

Let's give him the last word:

All in all, this is a game for enjoyment. We are certain that it will provide endless hours of entertainment and excitement. That is the sole purpose for its creation. So enjoy, and may the dice be good to you!