Alignment in OD&D and Zylarthen, Part I

From The Dragon No. 39. Guess what alignment he is.

In these posts, I won’t be tracing or debating the changes, variances or related minutia of alignment through the editions—such as the three-point vs. five point vs. nine point systems, or the alignment languages question, etc. Rather, I want to look at the notion of alignment in general.

The basic idea goes something like this (these are my words, not text contained in any edition):

Each player-character must at the start of play choose a moral outlook, called an “alignment”, which will guide and to some degree limit the choices and actions of the character within the game. Alignment, along with class and race will be one of the factors to take into consideration for proper “role-playing”.

I actually think alignment is one of the more consistent things through the various editions of Dungeons & Dragons (again, if one ignores changes at the margins such as whether there are three, five, nine or how ever many of them), so there isn’t any old school vs. new school issue here. True to form, though, OD&D had only a few lines on the matter—as opposed to the pages often spent on it in later editions:

Before the game begins it is not only necessary to select a role, but it is also necessary to determine what stance the character will take - Law, Neutrality, or Chaos…Character types are limited as follows by this alignment. Men & Magic, p. 9.

Oddly, the text then immediately switches focus to monster (not character) types, presenting three lists that outline the alignments of the various intelligent monsters. Here is the full text, including that of the above:

Note that most monsters appear on only one list. A few appear on two—either Law and Neutrality or Chaos and Neutrality—but only one—Men—appear on all three. (Technically, Lycanthropes are also on all three but that’s only because, as we’ll find out later, there are different types of them.) That there is no underline for the "Men" under Neutrality or Chaos is I assume a mistake. 

Precisely what is meant by taking a stance, or perhaps more importantly, what is meant by the labels Law, Neutrality or Chaos is not explained. Obviously, though, the composition of the lists says a lot—Unicorns and Patriarchs are Lawful, Evil Priests and Vampires are Chaotic, etc.* A bit more about alignment will be sketched in later in discussions of some of the spells and the properties of magic swords (of all things). For example, for the spell Reincarnation, we learn that a character may only be reincarnated as a creature of the same alignment.

The major points that emerge from the full text are these:

1. Law and Chaos appear to at least track good and evil (whether they are precisely equivalent to them is left unsaid).
2. One's alignment is pretty fundamental to one's being. It might change (perhaps as a result of a cursed item) but that would be a big deal.
3. For Player-characters alignment is an individual choice, made early—at the time of character creation.
4. However, for all except player-characters and perhaps some important non-player characters, alignment seems to be a collective thing. For most races, every member of that race will (it is implied) be of the same alignment. And even for those races that can vary, the variance seems to go by group. For example, in the “Men” category, Dervishes are Lawful while Pirates are Chaotic.

What is wrong with this scheme? What is right with it? Did I do anything differently in Seven Voyages of Zylarthen? More in Part II...


*Wikipedia fib alert: the entry for Alignment (Dungeons & Dragons) reads “Dwarves were Lawful and elves Chaotic, while humans could be any of the three alignments. [citation needed].” Actually, as the above makes clear, both Dwarves and Elves are listed as being potentially either Lawful or Neutral (along with Gnomes and Rocs). Good luck on that citation.

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.

Your Campaign Setting: Middle-Earth or Narnia?

So which is it?

Yes. It's got to be one or the other.

What do I mean by that?

Middle-Earth is a stand in for a more naturalistic setting. Yes, it's a fantasy world. But given certain assumptions, it makes sense. There's an explanation and a reason for everything. It's consistent.

Narnia indicates more of a fairytale setting. It might have rules, but they are the twisted rules of faery. Or at the extreme, anything goes.

Now, I think in previous posts I've made a few small snarks at what I have called 'naturalism' as understood in the above context. But my purpose here is not to say that one approach is better than the other. If I seem to argue for Narnia it's only because I think it's been unfairly neglected as a viable alternative.

Let's first look at Middle-Earth. In his seminal study Tolkien: Author of the Century, Tom Shippey convincingly shows that one reason why Lord of the Rings works and works so well is that J.R.R. Tolkien built it up from firm mythological and linguistic foundations. We all know that Tolkien started with the language, then created the history, then, almost as an afterthought, wrote the story. Of course it wouldn't have worked if he had not been an outstanding tale teller. Thank God he turned out to be. But every creature, every place, every name has some basis in Old Norse or Old English, or well, some language or another as long as it was old (and Northern European). Shippey convincingly shows that only a handful of scholars at the time (and sadly, perhaps none in the present) knew as much about these languages as Tolkien did, such that they could have fully appreciated the depth and accuracy of what he accomplished. Yet one of the reasons that his writing resonates with us--even though we almost certainly are not fluent in, say, Medieval Icelandic--is that at some level (perhaps even an unconscious one) we understand that it's all consistent and all true--in the sense of being based on actual, partially internalized myth or dim linguistic memory. Okay, perhaps I'm not putting it quite right. But you get the idea.

Now, Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were friends. But it's no secret that Tolkien found Narnia less than satisfying. There was no deep tonal underpinning to it. It was just a story for children with nothing less and nothing more than the sorts of things that children might like--witches, dragons, talking beavers, even Santa Claus. He found this annoying.

I don't. I like both approaches in the context of fiction, although I agree that from the point of view of sheer artistic value and weight. Tolkien's Middle Earth would have to win out. I agree with Shippey that, given certain assumptions, Tolkien is not merely the fantasy author of the century, but the author of the century. That's a big deal.

But what works from the point of view of an OD&D campaign? I think it's fair to say that many of us have had grandiose visions of being, well, Tolkien. Give me a few uninterrupted months (away from my studies, my job, my usual family responsibilities or whatever), and I will create a consistent world that my players will appreciate and love. I'll put together the natural history, the political history, the languages, the religious anthropology and all the rest, and it will be rich, cool, consistent and, in its way...true (just like Tolkien's).

Now, I think this is laudable. But let me suggest two potential problems with it: 1. None of us has the time or (sorry) the knowledge to really do it justice. We just don't. None of us is Tolkien. But perhaps more importantly, 2. what works for successful fiction does not necessarily work for successful campaign design from the point of view of gaming, or more accurately, fun gaming. Plenty of referees and players have discovered (partly through purchasing Middle-Earth settings such as the 1980's I.C.E effort) that Middle Earth is neat to have as a setting for a story but in the end is often pretty boring to play a fantasy adventure game in.

Quick quiz, which setting--Middle-Earth or Narnia--features more OD&D creatures? The answer is Narnia by about a mile. Here's a partial listing of Narnia creatures that were on the original OD&D lists, most of which did not appear in Middle-Earth: Apes, Giant Bats, Bears, Giant Beavers, Boars, Hobgoblins (though called 'boggles' in Narnia), Centaurs, Dryads, Efreet, Ghouls, Giants, Gnomes, Griffons (spelled 'Gryphon'), Incubi, Djinn, Minotaurs, Mermen, Ogres, Pegasi, Salamanders, Sea Serpents, Spectres, Sprites, Giant Squid, Trolls, Unicorns, Werewolves, Evil Wolves and Wraiths.

OD&D isn't Chainmail set in Middle-Earth, it's Narnia plus dinosaurs and robots.

AD&D and then the successive editions of AD&D and 3.0+ D&D gradually diverged from this. In part this was because the basic D&D setting with its canonical monsters from original diverse mythologies more and more became a naturalistic setting. We forgot that these creatures came from wildly different traditions. The set of them became a myth of its own. Language groups and families were postulated, natural histories of the different races and creatures were invented and so on.

It was a series of brilliant posts by Wayne Rossi's in his blog Semper Initiavus Unum On the OD&D Setting that first jolted me out of seeing things in the naturalistic terms that my teenage exposure to AD&D predisposed me to. I'm not saying this view is necessarily better. But I am saying it's a bit truer to OD&D and certainly worth considering.

For the sense of wonder, magic, romance and, yes, fun.

I tried to do it for my own game.

I'm not claiming you have to include Santa Claus. Then again...

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.

Game Review: Swords & Wizardry White Box

This is the first in a series of reviews of some of the so-called 'clones' of old school editions of Dungeons & Dragons. Let me first define some terms:

A clone is a game that adheres closely to the mechanics, substance and/or presentation of a particular edition or editions of Dungeons & Dragons such that without the legal protections of the Open Game License and the Systems Reference Document it would clearly be violating copyright law.

A retro-clone is a clone that on the main strives to emulate a particular edition as precisely as possible.

A neo-clone is a clone that uses an edition or editions as a template but is designed to differ substantially from the original.

The original is the edition the clone is, well, cloning.

Now on to the review.

Game: Swords & Wizardry White Box (2009).

Availability: Softcover: $9.99. Hardcover: $18.99. Boxed Set: currently unavailable. PDF: Free.

Status: Neo-clone.

Original: The Three Little Brown Books (1974), or more accurately, the first two of the three--Men & Magic and Monsters & Treasure.

Introduction: Swords & Wizardry (2008) was the third major retro-clone to be published after Labyrinth Lord (2007) and OSRIC (2006). A year later in 2009, Swords & Wizardry White Box was released, authored by Matt Finch and Marv Breig. Unlike other clones, Swords & Wizardry never tried to emulate one particular edition of OD&D. Rather the intention was to emulate a style of play over a particular time period. If Swords & Wizardry as a whole embraced a sort of average of the original 1974 edition + the supplements + Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, White Box was an attempt to dial things back to the minimalist mechanics and presentation of the 1974 version. So, although it's not specifically designed to be a clone of the three little brown books, we'll use those as a point of comparison.

Comparisons with the Original:

1. The first thing the reader notices is that, unlike the original, Swords & Wizardry White Box is extremely well organized and presented. Now, don't misunderstand. I never thought that that was a major fault of the three little brown books. But some do. White Box has an attractive and readable contemporary font and layout. There's a full table of contents for the entire game, and so on.

2. White Box adheres to the minimalist mechanics and substance of the original. There are approximately the same number of items of equipment for purchase, spells, monsters and the rest. However White Box comes in at only about 70% of the word count of the original. This is primarily because most of the material in the third of the three little brown books--The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures--is absent from White Box.

3. White Box maintains the six classes of the original, including preserving the idea of race as class, jettisoned in the later editions. Ability Score adjustments and bonuses are slight, as in the original, but altered somewhat. The confusing 'point swapping' mechanic for the purpose of upping one's experience point bonus, is dropped in favor of giving a +5% adjustment to high wisdom and charisma scores. And an optional adjustments for high or low strength scores is added.

4. Unlike in the original, weapons are given variable damage rolls, though this is done in a simple and elegant way, more like the Moldvay/Cook Basic/Expert set than the proliferation of possibilities offered in Greyhawk and even more so in AD&D.

5. Spell lists are very similar to the original with only a few small differences. The number of monsters is approximately the same but includes a greater diversity than the three little brown books. About half are from the original with the rest coming from the supplements or even the Monster Manual. This is a good example of where, to frame it positively, Swords & Wizardry White Box is less interested in historical purity than, well, fun.

Minor Annoyances:

(I will include this section in all reviews, no matter how much I like the game overall.)

1. In a number of places White Box goes out of its way to, in its own words, present 'options for your consideration'. For example, you can give Fighters with a 15+ strength a +1 bonus on attacks. Or not. Or make the requirement slightly easier at 14 or even 13. I used to like this. Now I don't. Do not misunderstand. That White Box, like the original, stresses that the referee and players can and should modify the rules according to taste is absolutely correct and laudable. But, before I do that I want to know what the authors think. After all, presumably they know much more about the mechanic than I do. They thought about it, wrote it and playtested it. They're the authors after all. So while I reserve the right to change things, I have a rational interest in knowing what they prefer.

2. White Box 'rationalizes' certain mechanics of the original, such as the saving throw system. As opposed to the five categories of the original--Save Versus Death Ray or Poison, Save Versus All Wands - Including Polymorph and 'Paralization', Save Versus Rusting, Magical Vibration Attacks or Coughing Fits (okay I made up that last one) and so on--there is only one saving throw number that increases (or decreases) by 1 per level. Different classes get small bonuses on some kinds of saving throws. Parallel to this is a general smoothing out of the attack bonus increases per level. Personally I find chunky and discontinuous increases preferable (for a variety of reasons) and I would rather, say, save versus Dragon Breath than, well, just make a saving throw. It's increases the fairy tale otherworldly vibe for me. But I admit that I might be in a minority on this. I could mention 'descending armor class' but I won't. I don't want to seem too much a curmudgeon.

3. Why oh why do most old school games list all spells alphabetically, as opposed to listing them alphabetically only within the spell levels? Since almost all do it, many must like this approach. I don't.

4. White Box also rationalizes the way magic items are 'assigned' to treasure hordes. Again, when I first read the rules, I thought they were an improvement. Now I think the Swords & Wizardry system is a needless and confusing complication. And without being too ideological about it, scaling the power of magic items found (as part of the official mechanic) is too rational and new school for me.

5. White Box is somewhat schizophrenic as to its audience. In some ways it purports to be an introductory game--with its explanations of what role-playing is, the kind of dice used, and so on. But I can't imagine anyone unfamiliar with these sorts of games simply picking it up and playing it. Again, there is very little material--short of a view general paragraphs--on dungeon design, wilderness adventures or campaign creation. By contrast, the original game had all of that and more (though some would say it was frustratingly ambiguous or incomplete), going as far as presenting detailed rules for aerial combat and sea combat, among other things. Now, in regards to the last two features, I think it fair to say that few actually used those rules. So, from one point of view it makes sense to ditch them. But even if they weren't used, they still (in my view) served to spark the imagination of the reader. This is the sort of world we are in (Gygax and Arneson seem to be saying): the wilderness is dotted with castles where Lords challenge intruders to jousts, Viking longships cruise the coasts, and sieges often feature Balrogs hurling fire over parapets. Leaving that consideration aside and stepping back to the issue of game mechanics, how would novice players be in any position to make informed decisions on the options White Box puts up for for their 'consideration'? White Box is a great system for, say, an experienced referee to use with novice players. But that's different.

Major Triumphs:

1. For a few years, White Box was the only major game in town that emulated the really minimalist approach of the three little brown books. That there is now more competition is not a fault of White Box. It did it first.

2. In places, Finch and Breig precisely and evocatively describe the old school approach in words that have never been equaled:

The rules are extremely short, compared to the multi-paged rule-libraries required to play most modern roleplaying games. Yet this game contains within itself all the seeds and soul of mythic fantasy, the building blocks of vast complexity, the kindling of wonder. The game is so powerful because it’s encapsulated in a small formula, like a genie kept imprisoned in the small compass of an unremarkable lamp.

There’s not a lot of detail given about the monsters, because the more detail given, the more your own mental image of the fantasy world is going to be locked into a single track. We’re not going to say that giant ants are red, nocturnal, three feet long, and fond of eating Elves. Because in your mind, they might be blue, diurnal, five feet long, and eat only plants unless they’re attacked. Details about monsters toss roadblocks in front of your imagination. Yes, details can also inspire the imagination, but we’re making the assumption that if you’re interested in fantasy gaming in the first place, you’ve got a good imagination that doesn’t need details about the size of a giant ant.

I didn't include much of that sort of thing in my own 'minimalist' old school game, partly because I knew I couldn't possibly improve on the above.

3. The writing is punchy, crisp and fluent. And no, that's not a feature of all old school games--even of otherwise laudable ones. And yes, it matters.

4. The PDF is free. It sounds almost condescending to mention that, but it shouldn't be. Finch and Breig don't want to bilk you. They just want you to have as much fun playing it as they (I'm guessing) had writing it. I have no doubt it made a number of old school converts. I know that because I was one of them.

Overall Assessment:

That there are more Minor Annoyances than Major Triumphs is a feature of my review template more than anything else. Swords & Wizardry White Box is one of the best products the OSR has produced. Any clone of the three little brown books must take the measure of it, and will in some ways be measured by it. There are now other options out there that may appeal to slightly different audiences--Delving Deeper for historical purists (believe me, there's nothing wrong with that!) and my own humble effort, among others--but White Box is still the gold standard.

Should All Weapons Do 1d6 Damage? Revisited

Almost three years ago I asked that question. I gave a short answer nine months ago, but I'd like to go into a bit more detail in this post. Here are the possible arguments. The answer, given the sum of them, is a qualified Yes.

1. Should all weapons do 1d6 damage?  Why not?  Combat is abstract.

This is not a good argument. Indeed, I find this kind of argument to be quite annoying. OD&D is a game. Therefore, combat must be abstract. Logically, there are an infinite number of possible combat mechanisms that will all be abstract, at least to some degree. So, the question is which abstract mechanism to choose. Thus, when defending one abstract mechanism against another abstract mechanism, it's obviously not enough to simply declare that it's abstract.

2. In a certain sense all weapons do the same damage in the end.  Being fatally stabbed by a dagger is just as bad as being fatally stabbed by a two-handed sword.

This is half right. It works if there is some other mechanism for differentiating the effectiveness of weapons. Thus, the damage might in the end be the same, but there may be different chances (perhaps based on a variety of other contingent factors) for two different weapons to end up actually inflicting damage. If you're stabbed hard in your Adam's apple by a fountain pen, you'll be just as dead as if your entire head was lopped off with an axe. But there is a reason why men marched into battle with axes (or swords or spears or pikes, etc. etc.) instead of fountain pens.

3. It’s simpler.

Also half right.  Simplicity is not always better. But it often is. On the other side, complexity can enhance the fun of decision making, can make the play of the game more interesting and can enhance the illusion of realism. But it can also detract from each of the above things. One of the main considerations of good game design--perhaps even the main consideration--is correctly judging which side of the scale is heavier in each relevant situation.

Simpler can be better

In this case, in my view, simplicity wins, partly for the reasons given in 4, below:

4. Rolling different kinds of dice (as well as different numbers of dice) for each weapon distracts from the “ballet of combat”.  Having all weapons do 1d6 focuses attention on the combat not on the dice.

This is wholly and precisely right. You don't want a boring "conga line". You do want tactics, maneuvering and in a word, thinking. Of course, having a good referee and good players is crucial. But it also helps if you rid the situations of as many additional distractions as possible.

5. Having some weapons do more than 1d6 damage introduces an annoying sort of inflation into the game.  If, for example, the damage done by a two-handed sword is increased from 1d6 in Men & Magic to 3d6 damage in Greyhawk (at least against large creatures), then to be fair (or rather, in the interests of realism or consistency), many of those large creatures must have their damage increased as well.

This also is precisely right, and the empirical part of it is borne out by the history. I guess the counter-argument is that all things being equal, inflation is supposed to be neutral. If everyone has an average of 100 hit points and all weapons do an average of 20 points of damage, then in theory that shouldn't really be any better or worse than if everyone has 10 hit points and does an average of 2 point of damage. But of course, having more points is worse. Large numbers of hit points amount to, again, just another distraction. The more hit points everyone has the more the emphasis is on, well, hit points, as opposed to the combat itself. Or, to the extent that hit points should matter, the less they do, if that makes sense. Perhaps there's a parallel with the more runs vs. less runs argument in baseball. People like it when their team gets a run (obviously), so (the argument goes) why not increase the number of runs for everybody? There's a reoccurring tendency to do this in baseball, with curmudgeons like me always saying "you think you're making it more exciting, but in fact you're making it less exciting."

6. Having all weapons do 1d6 damage introduces more diversity in the choice of weapons.  From the point of view of fantasy role-playing, this is a good thing.  If weapons do different amounts of damage, players will gravitate to only a few of them--those that do the most damage.  That’s a bad thing.

Half right. You could construct a rules algorithm that balanced extra damage against other considerations with negative effects, but in practice this is rarely done. Why it's only rarely done is an interesting question that I don't really have an answer to.

7. Having all weapons do 1d6 damage allows you to come up with other reasons (more fun and more realistic) to choose some weapons over others—some weapons you can charge with, others might be better at piercing armor, etc.  This is healthy.

Three-quarters right, although in practice such rules can become fussy and irritatingly discontinuous.

8. It’s a feature of the original game.  How could Gygax and Holmes have been wrong?

Half right (!). This argument carries some weight with me, among other things because OD&D circa 1974 had already undergone extensive play testing for years with really good referees and players. They had to have been on to something.

A diversity of weapons-Jim Roslof from Keep on the Borderlands

So on balance I'm on the side of all weapons generally doing only 1d6 of damage. But I admit that the case is not cut and dried. You can have a perfectly acceptable old school experience with variable weapon damage. My goal is to persuade people to at least try uniform 1d6 damage--the message being that it can work.

For Seven Voyages of Zylarthen I adopted uniform (or almost uniform--see 3, below) 1d6 weapon damage. But I differentiated weapons in eight or nine other ways:

1. Each weapon has a different To Hit progression for the eight possible armor classes, which among other things allows for meaningful differentiation in terms of effectiveness against different kinds of armor (or hide, natural plating, etc.). Swords are good against no armor or light armor. Maces and blunt weapons are good against heavy armor, etc. And of course certain weapons are pretty good on average. Certain weapons are not, etc.

2. Each weapon has a weapon class, for the most part based on weapon size and length. Higher weapon class weapons are more effective on the first turn of melee. Lower weapon class weapons are more effective on the second and subsequent turns.

3. Some weapons have either a penalty of -1 or a bonus of +1 on damage inflicted against large creatures. This is one minor exception to all weapons doing 1d6 damage. But it makes intuitive sense. Against a large creature you want a weapon with good, so to speak, penetration power.

4. Some weapons break more than others (for simplicity's sake, this is almost entirely based on cost, but I think cost generally tracks breakability).

5. Cost. This is a factor at low levels, enhanced a bit due to the weapon break rules.

6. Weapons have different space requirements. Whether the referee decides to rigidly enforce this is of course up to her.

7. Whether or not the weapon is wielded with one-hand or two (thus allowing or not, the use of a shield or off-hand weapon). A few weapons--the sword and spear--can be wielded with either one hand or two.

8. Encumbrance. If you want to carry a battle axe (which in Zylarthen is pretty large), then you're going to move slower and sacrifice potentially carrying other weapons or useful items of equipment.

9. Other miscellaneous special considerations for certain weapons--"staves shall be splintered", fighting with an offhand axe or dagger, breaking wooden hafted weapons with large swords, etc.

10. Finally, whatever weapon is used, there is always the option of decreasing one's To Hit chances by 5 (out of 20) but adding an extra die of damage. Theoretically, you could add multiple dice by sacrificing 10, 15 or more To Hit numbers. In my view this potentially adds an interesting decision--you can "go for it" if your back is to the wall, etc. It also on average speeds up combat at high levels. (If your base To Hit is 10 or less, it's to your advantage to add sacrifice "To Hits" for damage, at least in terms of expected damage value). This is of course also a semi-exception to the "all weapons do 1d6 damage" rule.

I feel that the above may make Zylarthen's weapon and combat system seem overly complicated. But in practice I do not think it is. Many of the rules are optional. And in the more basic cases I tried to "bake things in" to a few simple tables as opposed to forcing players and referees to add or subtract eighty-five separate bonuses or penalties.

I'm interested in other opinions, especially from those who have played in or refereed campaigns under both systems.

The Setting of Seven Voyages of Zylarthen

A "colorized" version of the full-page Batten drawing in Vol. 1, p. 27

First, a digression:

In the Foreword to Seven Voyages of Zylarthen I called the game a "re-imagining" of the original edition of Dungeons & Dragons.

I want to first explain what I didn't mean by that. It's not OD&D updated with more modern rules or supplemented with my own house rules (though it does undeniably contain some of those). Nor is it a precise clone intended to mimic, say, the rules mechanics of the three little brown books or some other early edition of the game (that wouldn't really be a re-imagining). Nor is it an attempt to place the game in an alternative or more specific campaign setting.

In denying those approaches I don't mean to be critical of them. Indeed, part of why I ultimately rejected them is because they had all been done and done well before. And of course, the current existence of a diversity of great OSR efforts now coincides with the republication by Wizards of the Coast of most of the original rules sets--either in "deluxe" hard copy editions or PDFs.

So I decided to look at things from the inside out, so to speak. It's now forty years since the original "woodgrain box" became available, and we now have a great deal of hindsight. New school people would say we have learned how to do things better. Old school people would say we have learned how trying to do things better can often lead (unintentionally) to doing things worse. For my part, instead of identifying what was wrong with the original game, I wanted to identify what was right about it, and then, so to speak, double down (or even triple down!) on what was right about it in a way that, without the benefit of any hindsight, the original game didn't and of course couldn't do.

I admit that in the process I did want to fix a few things. As much as I love the three little brown books, there are a few rules or parts of them that are odd or perhaps even broken. But the idea was not to jettison those things, but rather to make them work, if possible by harnessing the numerous design principles of the original game that did work.

Caveats and comments before proceeding further:

1. It might be objected that in replacing Clerics with Thieves, I did indeed jettison one of the fundamental parts of the original  game. I don't see it quite that way, but the "no-Clerics" thing is best left for another post.

2. What I think works (or doesn't work) is informed very much by an old school perspective. So, for example, I like random non-naturalistic tables. I think they work. Indeed I think they they work in a big way. So I included more of them. As an example of how I used them to fix what was to me a somewhat broken mechanic--the issue of languages--what languages characters or monsters might speak was given a determination mechanism that parallels the OD&D Treasure Table with its various lettered "Treasure Types".

3. Do I think Zylarthen is better than the original game? Well, in part or in some ways I like certain things better. That's true almost by definition, as there would have been no point in writing it otherwise. But overall I'm not so egotistical (or stupid or silly) as to say that it's a better game. Of course it's not. The original edition of Dungeons & Dragons must remain the unchallenged King of all such games  More importantly, if there is anything in Zylarthen that is good, it is good derivatively--good precisely because of what Gygax and Arneson originally created. 

Now, to turn finally to the subject of the post--the setting of the game. In the Foreword I identified what I took to be one of the wisest aspects of the original Dungeons & Dragons:

It invoked many sources—King Arthur, the Crusades, Middle-earth, the Arabian Nights, pulp fantasy, fairy tales, even science fiction. Its breadth of tone was a virtue, offering to the players a multiplicity of delights.

Spell Casters in Men & Magic--European, Indian and Egyptian (?)

The game explicitly claimed to be "medieval". But of course it wasn't. Critics might say that Gygax and Arneson threw in everything but the kitchen sink into the setting. Some are annoyed by that. And indeed one direction taken by contemporary OSR efforts as well as of course by the progression of the various official editions and expansions, is to try to place things in a more "consistent" or "authentic" setting. So, for example, we have seen 16th Century, quasi-historical Middle-Ages and Middle-Eastern themed efforts, each selecting one or two strands of the original and expanding on it, while jettisoning or reducing in importance the other strands. Again, I'm not being critical of those attempts. There is a place for them. And again, one of the reasons I chose not to go down that path is because, paradoxically perhaps, there wasn't that much room to be original. So many things had already been done and done well.

Most importantly, however, if I were to "re-imagine" the original game in a way that took account of all of its strengths, I couldn't go down that path.

Interestingly, that's not how I originally thought of things. Indeed, I only came to that view fairly late in the game. But I was lucky I did. My writing of Zylarthen, or the game that would become Zylarthen, meandered for perhaps two years before that insight made it suddenly take off.

"...16th Century, quasi-historical Middle-Ages and Middle-Eastern themed efforts…"

I chose those examples because they express the actual evolution of the setting for my own game. First it was More Things in Heaven and Earth, with an Elizabethan or late Tudor setting. It had a pseudo-Catholic tinge, so I suppose it would have been somewhat different. But creating an entire OD&D neo-clone around it would have been, well, boring (though I still reserve the right to put it into a short Zylarthen supplement).

Then, in considering art for the game I came across the wonderful children's illustrations that Howard Pyle did for Otto of the Silver Hand, Robin Hood and other works. The drawings were fun but also sort of dark and gritty. For a short period, I thought of titling the game Coat of Mail.

A wonderful illustration by Howard Pyle-not used in Zylarthen

Finally, after much of Zylarthen had been written and the final title (with its obvious allusion to Sinbad) had been chosen, I thought of making the game more explicitly Middle-Eastern. So, for example, many of the weapons on the list were given Persian names such as "Tabarzin" for battle-axe. Again, luckily, I soon realized that this would have been a mistake.

For the final effort, rather than emphasizing one of the strands at the expense of the others, I decided to add to all of them!

This is I think most apparent in the "new"* monsters: King Arthur, the Crusades and actual history get a nod with the addition of Vikings and Turcopoles. Middle-Earth is referenced with the re-introduction of True Wraiths. Classical myth and history is represented by the named Titans (and Titanesses) as well as barbarians and soldier types (including Amazons) based on Classical, Byzantine and early Persian categories. The Arabian Nights flavor is represented in the title and much (though not all by any means) of the art. The Witch is based on the standard fairy-tale version. Burroughs' Martians make an appearance in force, and most of the "alternate" (for legal reasons) monster takes are science fictional entities.

*Of course, none of the "new" monsters were truly new, but appeared in one form or another in either the three little brown books or early official supplementary materials.

I suppose one could reasonably say that the overall setting of Zylarthen might be slightly more middle-eastern or at least "southern" than that of the three little brown books, though I'm not sure I'd agree even with that. Again, I think the inclusion of "medieval" in the subtitle of the first edition of Dungeons & Dragons throws people off.

In Zylarthen, proper names for places and persons, and explicit history were generally avoided, with a few exceptions. Earth, Mars, Jupiter and the Sun are named. "The Ancient Wars between Law and Chaos", apparently instigated by a trouble-maker named Mendax (aka The Liberator) is described. And there are a few Christian references, something as a Christian I felt important to include in what was after all a game set in an otherwise very Pagan world. But in my view none of these are essentially determinative of any particular time and place.

Finally, in regards to setting, I should mention the artwork of Zylarthen. There are close to a hundred pieces, all by the same artist--the turn of the century illustrator John Dickson Batten. I said elsewhere that once I had chosen the works of Batten, the art actually began to inform the setting and even the writing. Batten's works appeared in children's fairy-tale books. But appropriately enough they were also from a diversity of sources--English, Celtic, general European, Middle-Eastern and Indian. In my humble view, the art was not merely the best art I could find for free, but was in fact precisely right for what I was trying to do. I couldn't have paid for anything better. To the extent that Zylarthen as a visual or physical product succeeds it does so due to Batten. But equally importantly, to the extent the setting and tone are interesting or attractive is also I think due to Batten. Indeed, he deserves an entire post, and will get one soon.