Page 21: The Monster as Player Character

(This seems to be a particularly important passage- I’ve transcribed the text to a separate page for the convenience of readers.)

The argument on this page has always stuck with me as the clearest distillation of Gary Gygax’s view of gaming and of the DM/player relationship; it is a discussion that has stuck with me over the years as a good representation of one school of thought, albeit one that has thankfully fallen from favor in role playing games of late.

Gygax’s argument here is that players should be “strongly discouraged” from running “monsters” as player characters. The logic behind this discouragement is tangled in a mess of several underlying assumptions about the game and the motivations of its players and we should examine them each in turn.

First, he assumes that in almost every case, the desire to play a “monster” comes from a wish to “dominate” the game, presumably by playing some high-powered being such as “a strong demon, a devil, a dragon, or one of the most powerful sort of undead creatures”. The only exception granted is for “truly experimental-type player[s]“, who wish to “satisfy a curiosity” but even they are expected to “drop the monster once he or she has examined its potential”. Again, we see the inherent regard for players more as potential wreckers of the Dungeon Master’s careful work rather than collaborators in a joint project, as well as the belief that players are solely seeking power.

I am fully aware of power gamers and munchkins, having gamed with both (though I will state that I never really was one); I’ve seen wish-fulfillment fantasies made flesh- well, paper at least- in the form of 30th level Fighter/Magic-User supermen with an unlimited portable hole full of artifacts and an army/harem of totally loyal female polychromatic dragon allies. I have also seen good game brought low by high-concept/low-utility characters like butterfly winged ninjas (remind me to tell the story of Darren versus the Annoying Kid some day), pacifist empaths, and peg-legged dwarf pirates. I’ve even witnessed fully ‘letter of the rules but not the spirit’ characters built solely around exploiting a poorly written rule- Singularity Man (a character from a Champions game who combined shrinking, flying, and extra density powers to ludicrously devastating effect) I’m looking at you… though you are impossible to see since you are the size of a molecule and move at the speed of light. My point is that while I’ve seen every type of abuse that Gygax warns of I don’t see the potential for abuse as enough justification for barring players from doing it. Every rule system can be gamed, so to speak.

What of a game like Vampire: the Masquerade (or Werewolf, Mage, or Wraith… or Nobilis… or Unknown Armies- you get the picture) where you start out playing a “one of the most powerful undead creatures”, albeit it ones who are weaker than many of their peers, but immortal monsters nevertheless. Is that game an on-its-face failure because everyone is inherently powerful? Consider the average sci-fi game in which players can travel faster than light and carry enough firepower to slag a conventional modern army. Does this starting power make the game any less playable? If the potential “monster” character is to scale with the power level of your other characters- who Gygax states may gain power of such to rival “a demon, arch-devil, or demi-god”- how does this hurt the game?

Even players not obsessed with dominating the game, are assumed to be disappointed when their “monster characters” are unable to quickly advance in level; the example given is of a gold dragon player character who will only gain in power as they age, presumably taking much longer in game time than the average campaign. Apparently being able to have routine character improvement is the sole motivator for players.

Another argument against “monster characters” is the game’s need for a “humanocentric” focus. For the Dungeon Master, this is because they are assumed to be “design[ing] a world, piece by piece, as it a jigsaw puzzle were being hand crafted”, a world that is founded on an internal logic and consistency that must mesh perfectly with earlier parts. Without the help of “history, folklore, myth, fable and fiction” to back us up, we will almost certainly fail and so must base our world on the aforementioned body of human experience. A game centered around a non-human world-view will be “shallow, incomplete, and totally unsatisfying, and “even if the DM is a “Renaissance Man and all-around universal genius with a decade or two to prepare the game” (is this a dig at M.A.R. Barker?)” it won’t be able to surpass the collective inventive work of the whole of mankind.

There is much in this point that I think is flawed. Game worlds, as Gygax imagines them, are an illusion. Few people created their campaign settings in a single stroke, instead they tended to grow, pearl-like, around the seed of a location or region. If they expanded, it was by a process of evolution, not of seamless additions by some celestial tinker. Few did so without some birthing pains or adjustments. Compare them to a t.v. series or movie franchise- how many are without continuity errors or a retcon? While certainly these can damage a product, they are not destructive elements fundamentally.

Consider also the various products of human creativity that Gygax considers to be necessary touch-stones for a solidly founded world. Human culture is so widely varied that I think it belittles it to assume that each element is part of a logical and cohesive whole or assumes that the body of work comes from a single (probably Western) source. Consider the cosmology of the Popol Vuh; how many players or Dungeon Masters would find they easily mesh into a game world based on the underlying beliefs of the Maya?

There are also some inconsistencies in Gygax’s argument. If human culture is so fundamental to any “good” world, why then can players take the roles of elves, dwarves, halflings, and gnomes? Aren’t these being coming from a fundamentally different understanding of the world and too alien for play? Can a player get inside the head of a 400 year old dwarf? What about a female player with a male character (and vice versa)? How much farther from the humanocentric world is the outlook of the average humanoid?

While he explicitly states that he is opposed to “monster characters”, in several places outside of the DMG, Gygax provides discussion on how to do so- consider the half-ogre as described in Dragon magazine (issue 29) or the Drow elves. They are a race of subterranean elves with a culture that is generally anarchic, matriarchal, and ‘evil’, worshiping a demonic spider goddess. They have a host of inherent magical abilities that put them far ahead of the average human character at start. Are they not, appearing as the villain in so much of what Gygax wrote, monsters?

With all of this against them, Gygax still “allows” Dungeon Masters to include these sorts of characters in game, though his implicit suggestion is those doing so are either unintelligent or bad players. I find his passive aggressive tone (“restriction is best handled by restriction not refusal”) in his suggestions to the Dungeon Master to be more damaging to a game than any single poorly-conceived or unbalanced character ever could be.

One final criticism, though one not directly germane, is the implicit sanction the game provides to players to commit what is not-wrongly described as genocide. “Monsters” like orcs, goblins, kobolds, and their ilk are classed together as “humanoids” and as a class are inherently evil and worthy of slaughter. Hell, the game provides stats for even humanoid children. What sort of “monster characters” does this create? Is this the part of “the best of [human] imaginative and creative thinking” we want to embrace? I’m sure to return to this point later, but I wanted to give it voice now, in hopes of eliciting the opinions of my reader(s)

Art: At the top of the page is the first illustration since page 9’s dice. Done by artist Dave Trampier (signed DAT), it depicts a dragon (presumably a green dragon judging from the breath weapon, though not the pool-playing one he is best known for) in a fight with a group of kobolds. Oddly enough, the kobolds are losing.

Page 20: Trap setting, assassination fees, and poison

We’ve got a few bits of the discussion of thief abilities to cover. The first is read languages, a curious skill since language ability is a pretty easy thing to obtain in AD&D since even characters with an 8 Int (and remember that 10 is considered average) have a bonus language… and someone with 18 have a bonus of 7, most characters should be bilingual at least. What this says about my difficulties in studying foreign languages is an exercise I leave to the reader.

For thieves, this skill isn’t a carte blanch to read every language they come across, as it only applies to languages “the thief has encountered sometime in the past” and not at all to “ancient and strange languages”. I’m not entirely sure why thieves have a chance to do this and, say magic-users can’t (as opposed to thieves’ cant), but such are the mysteries of Gygax.

Thieves (and the thief subset class of assassins) can also set traps- the focus here seems to be reminding the DM that failure to properly set traps is dangerous. Given the number of traps in the usual dungeon, one would assume their is some sort of firm of 17th level thieves who make their living preparing the various poisoned locks, pit traps, and scything blades that even the Crypt of Humbo, the mildly wealthy Cooper are chock-a-block full of.

After traps, we turn to discuss the experience points granted from a successful assassination… why is this separate from the discussion of experience points that comes later (page 85)? Considering that an assassin would get the regular experience for killing something, plus the spying bonus, plus the experience for the payment (ah, AD&D where you got experience for being paid/stealing treasure. Did Enron’s executives become 30th level thieves?)

Poisons are the next topic and I must confess that I don’t think I’ve ever read these paragraphs before, most likely due to my previously mentioned having never played an assassin. First off is yet another excuse to separate a character from his or her gold pieces; 9th level assassins having the option to study four poison-related topics (injected, ingested, mixed, and poison manufacture and antidotes). Each lesson takes between 5-8 weeks (i.e. 1d4+4) at 2,000 to 8,000 (or 2d4) gold pieces per week. Huh? So, you train as an assassin for years and they don’t cover poison until assassin graduate school? This sort of limitation is artificial and baldly derived from a belief that “game balance” should trump realism. I, who am by no means a 9th level assassin, could probably whip up some rather nasty poison if I put my mind to it- not that I would, of course! (NSA agents and other law enforcement types, please note my general adherence to pacifism and love for humanity and my very poor grades in chemistry.) Clearly Gygax has some moral issues with assassins and poison (as he says on this page that he finds the topic “distasteful”) and these are reflected by some of the weird and arbitrary restrictions me puts on its use. Still, despite these reservations, he includes a discussion of several types of poison and even their costs- which are surprisingly low, considering how much training in them takes!

Page 19: Spying concluded and Thief Abilities

Gygax provides a few modifiers to the basic chances of a spy being uncovered (which is different than mission success), from 1% per week w/ “no precautions” to “double modified % chance twice per week” w/ “strong precautions”. These levels are further defined thankfully… though in a medieval or early modern setting I can’t see many organizations with any organized security, aside from a military camp or the innate security arising from being a close-knit group. The anonymity of crowds and the obscuring fog of bureaucracy are relatively modern inventions and rather anachronistic for a setting where much authority arose from a personal connection to a leader or clique of powerful individuals.

If a spy is caught or fails in their spying roll, a table is provided (w/ modifications to use in the case that the spy was actually caught); most of the time (60%) the spy simply fails, sometimes in a way that precludes further spying. The rest of the time the spy is caught and imprisoned, sometimes being tortured, killed, or made a turn-coat. This strikes me as illogical. If Parslisk the Grey, 13th level assassin, is sent to spy on the Great Library of Khem, I doubt the librarians there, however doughty and bold they are, will be able to do much more to him than die messily when they try to apprehend him. Likewise, Murtaw the Unwarry, 1st level assassin, sent to investigated the Knights of the Sacred Wombat, would seem to be both more likely caught and either killed or forced to betray his employer. More importantly, why the hell is such fun action occurring off-stage and being handled by die rolls? Wouldn’t it be more fun to roleplay the damn thing out, even if as only a night’s diversion?

Amusing note: “Spies who are absolutely dedicated to their master or a cause cannot be assassins normally hired to spy, but such can exist. These spies will never become double agents. On any dice roll over 60 [are caught] they simply kill themselves.” Charming.

Turning now to sports news… err… thieving… we are presented with a discussion of the various thief-ly abilities from the Dungeon Master’s perspective “to prevent abuse of these activities”.

For the unaware, thieves have a host of special abilities, usually governed by some percentile skill system (i.e. you have a 25% skill and therefore succeed 25% of the time). These skills are back stab, pick pockets, open locks, find/remove traps, move silently, hide in shadows, hear noise, climb walls, and read languages (covered on the next page). (In the game Call of Cthulhu, all but two of these are specific skills; I guess the standard investigator in that game has much in common with the AD&D thief- fond of B&E and low on hit points…)

There are some gems in the descriptions here “certain creatures either negate surprise or have no definable ‘back’, thus negating this ability” and “most [dungeon walls] will be slippery due to dampness and slime growth”. I guess the dungeon’s owner never hired a maid service- I imagine a gelatinous cube with a little white hat for some reason.

Some of the information is useful (you can try twice in a round to pick a pocket, locks usually take 1d4 rounds to pick, the rate a wall can be climbed, etc.) but most of these helpful facts are buried in a mountain of intuitive descriptions of the activities. Use the provided rates that walls, even “non-slippery ones” with “ledges or many projections”, can be climbed per round would have put a dent into the usual ascents of 1000′ sheer cliffs that many characters routinely undertook. Oddly enough, the assumption here is that the DM would make all the various rolls for the thief character. While this is logical and would add suspense (and is something I’ve seen in other games), this is something I never saw happen in practice.

New word: croodle (seriously; it is used as a synonym for creeping)

Page 18: Assassin’s followers, warhorses, and spying

(How is that for an eclectic collection of topics?)

Unlike other classes, where newly advanced characters attract a body of followers, assassins seem to be like bees- rising to 14th level (“Guildmaster”) causes 75% of the old membership to depart the guild (perhaps to open their own themed restaurant?) en masse. Apparently you can’t just get promoted after years of murderous work and have cake and (presumably black) party hats. Whatever the workplace dynamics are at the guild, the DMG provides a table for you to determine A) the number of guild members, B) their race and level (incl. potential multi-class character), and then C) asks you to remove 75% of them as they depart when the new guildmaster takes over.

Now, I’ve heard of some absurdities in gaming (Traveler characters who can die during character generation for example) but rolling up 7d4 characters to only then drop 3/4ths of them seems mighty foolish. Thereafter there is a discussion of replacement assassins (all at 1st level), a similar treatment of promotion to “Grandfather of Assassins” (the highest rank- and yes, you must kill your way to the top) and instructions for using the earlier tables for rolling up his or her lackeys, 75% of whom will also leave. Finally, the piece de resistance, a rule for rolling randomly to determine when the new followers will arrive (a needlessly complex system, at that). While there are a few sops to some actual use of judgment and or narrative choices (“it is recommended that you develop henchmen for the Grandfather/Grandmother after discovering the abilities of his or her followers”), for the most part this is an exercise in excessive randomness being equated as fairness.

(It might be me, but there is also no clear statement of how many new assassins the Guildmaster will attract either, though a number less than 28 is implied. At least you’re allowed to have your henchmen welcome them into the guild and don’t have to do so personally. Otherwise, I envision a Mr. Roarke styled meeting, a la Fantasy Island, though with more poisoned daggers.)

The last of the attracted followers (though the first to arrive if we consider the required level) is the paladin’s warhorse. In the circles I gamed in, paladin was not an oft-run character class, perhaps due to the various restrictions in behavior and treasure capacity, but I played with a bunch of hooligans, apparently. That being said, I don’t think I ever saw a paladin collect a warhorse, though I find the character-specific side-adventure a helpful concept that would be used by the various DMs (and GMs) I gamed with, for other classes.

I suspect the “vision-quest completed by besting some challenging foe” is inspired by the later versions of the Arthurian legend. “In short, the gaining of the destrier is a task of some small difficulty… and will certainly test the mettle of the paladin” and “if the character loses paladinhood for any reason, there will be an immutable emnity between character and mount” both speak to that sort of basis. If nothing else, the possibility that a character might be less intelligent than a the warhorse (not the paladin though), which is rated as having an Int of 5-7, amuses me.

Having covered all the possible henchpeople (apparently magic users and illusionists don’t attract followers, despite the fact that every wizard’s tower I raided was packed to the gills with evil allies, while monks only attract 1st level monks) we now turn to… spying?

In what seems to be another example of rules overkill, we have a full page of material discussing the various types of spying missions (which seem to be mostly undertaken my assassins, though thieves clearly have a better assortment of skills) by degree of difficulty- simple, difficult, and extraordinary, chances of success, and time required to complete… chance of discovery and failure are mostly on the following page, so I’ll leave those for tomorrow.

None of this is really rocket science… well model rockets, but only ones that explode after launch. Some missions are more challenging than others and the higher level of the spy, the greater chance there is for success. Okay. More challenging missions take longer. Check. (Add in security quality of target from the next page; also reasonable.)

I think in most games, if a player was not taking part in either the planning or execution of a spy mission, there would be very little in the way of dice rolling and it would be much more shaped by the narrative utility of the mission. Once again, “fairness” rules and tables abound.

How useful can this section really be? Assassins are, by the rules themselves, evilly aligned and I suspect that hiring one would probably count as an evil act. How many characters have the need to hire spies anyway? Certainly not your average hack-n-slash dungeoneer. Is this another element from what I suspect is Gygax’s Ur-high level game? Probably. At least there wasn’t a Top Secret cross-over- the game, not the movie. That would have been great!

New words: destrier, mettle, immutable, enmity

Extra: my old bookmark

Perhaps this is some sort of nadir of pointlessness, but I thought I should mention that when I began to look at the DMG again, I discovered I’d left a bookmark within, toward the back in the monster tables (I don’t recall the exact page, unfortunately). I thought I’d give a brief description for the sake of completeness, having discussed the book’s various dents and stains already.

The bookmark, printed by the DaMert Company of Oakland, California, has a diffraction grating on one side and a definition of what diffraction grating is on the other side. There is a crease running across the width of the bookmark. The definition given is:

Diffraction grating produces a rainbow effect by reflecting light from many closely spaced parallel lines. The different colors result when light is modified by the lines so that light waves of a particular frequency, or color, are reinforced. This effect was first explained in 1802 by Thomas Young, a pioneer in the wave theory of light. there are over 14,000 lines per inch on this material.

This was a gift from my mother and was almost certainly purchased from a local museum where we both enjoyed whiling away the hours. Like my Halley’s Comet shirt (but unlike my crystal radio set, wooden dinosaur model, and countless other bits of educational bric-a-brac) it has somehow stayed with me over the years… most likely because I forgot it was there. Strangely, it makes me ever so slightly glad it did.

Page 17: Follower tables continued

We continue on with the follower tables, starting with the ranger.

I’ve always had a soft spot for the class. Fighters could be interesting, but often turned into either ‘tanks’ or ‘knights’ (this was before we had cavaliers and barbarians to use, as those sub-classes of fighter tended to draw out the folks who played those two types of characters) without much personality. I think I had characters from every class- save assassins and paladins (as I never had the scores)- but of all the fighting types, I liked the ranger best, if for nothing else than the class’ spell abilities at high levels.

Compared to clerics and fighters, rangers make out pretty well in terms of followers. They have to make multiple rolls- first to determine the total number of followers (2d12); those with fewer followers get a bonus to all subsequent rolls, those with more a penalty. Mechanically this seems to be a way to prevent some rather overbalancing results as we shall see. Thereafter for each individual follower another table is rolled to determine the nature of the follower be they humans, demi-humans (dwarves, elves, etc.), animals, magical mounts, creatures, and special creatures. Each subset has its own table; combined with the bonuses/penalties due to the number of followers, rangers with only a few followers tend to have more powerful ones while those with a larger number tend to have more mundane, somewhat weaker ones.

This system isn’t perfect though; the single most powerful creature is a copper dragon (1-5 on the “special creatures” table) and if you have the two lowest results (+20% and +25% to each roll respectively) the lowest result you can hope for is 26- treant. Half the time you’ll end up with a weretiger, which isn’t terrible, but who wants a lycanthrope when you can have a dragon? Additionally, if you roll up more than two rangers as followers (an unlikely event looking at the table) you’ll violate the (weird, seemingly Tolkien inspired) rule that no more than three rangers can work together. How do they form unions? Be that as it may, having a bunch of diverse followers (all classes but assassins and paladins are possible) mixed with a few creatures (giant owls, hippogriffs, pixies, storm giants, etc.) beats the hell out of 10 to 60 light infantry in padded armor, at least in my book.

Turning to, or is that skulking up behind, thieves draw more thieves to themselves… I’ll leave any of the more obvious jokes about politics to my reader(s)… and the tables provided determine number (which again modifies the quality of recruits as the ranger table did), race of thief (again, the modifiers skew the results to an extent), level of thief, and, in the case of 1st level non-human thieves, a table to determine that, if they are multi-classed (as 25% are), what the second class is. While that sentence is a bit of a run-on, I think it follows logically.

Tomorrow this section concludes with assassins (and the paladin’s warhorse, oddly enough).

Page 16: Character races and followers

(I’m bending my own rules a bit, as the first sentence of this section starts on page 15.)

Two distinct topics are covered on this page- a rough description of the general qualities of the various game races and tables to determine the various followers that high-level characters will attract.

The races discussed are the standard AD&D/fantasy assortment:

Dwarves- “dour and taciturn… given to hard work… their chief love is… gold”

Elves- “they concern themselves with… dancing and frolicking, playing and singing… tend toward haughtiness and arrogance [but] they are not inclined to regard their friends and associates as anything other than equals.”

Gnomes- “most lively and full of humor- often on the back side of practical jokes… love all sorts of precious stones… in most other respects are much like dwarves”

Half-elves- “usually much like their elven parent in characteristics”

Halflings- “prone to favor natural beauty… love creature comforts… love stories and good jokes”

Half-orcs- “are boors… rude, crass, and generally obnoxious… most are cowardly… tend to be bullies and cruel to the weak… this does not mean that all half-orcs are horrid, only most of them”

These basic races are so ingrained in my concept of the fantasy milieu that it is hard to unpack these descriptions since they (as part of the general AD&D/D&D world-concept, not these words specifically) probably formed the first understanding that I had of these terms.  Gygax and his associate drew on fantasy literature (including the earlier forlklore that inspired the fantasists) and selected this interpretation of six fantasy races; with humanity as the sun (more on that in a few days) to their world and each of these races like a fun house mirror version, accentuating some strength or weakness of man, or showing what we’d lose if loosed from the mooring of our mortality in the case of elves.  I think their selections work relatively well, and have formed a pretty stable basis for much of the pop-fantasy worlds that we have today, though some races tend to be dropped more often- Pratchett only kept the dwarves in the foreground and made the elves much more in line with fairy folk (i.e. very nasty and cruel) but added trolls; World of Warcraft  drops halflings but adds a few more “evil” races.  I’m saddened to note that gnomes were dropped from the upcoming 4th edition of D&D.

I don’t want to enter into a full discussion of this topic (since the section “monsters as player characters” is but a scant few pages away) but I’ll simply note for now that orcishness is by its very nature implied to be a bad thing, and that orc, unlike the other races discussed (save perhaps the halflings, who collectively are described as universally positive) don’t have a balance of good and bad (or at least potentially bad) features.

Turning to the next part, followers, I should mention that at certain high levels of advancement (usually 9th and up) player characters can attract followers, usually by building a fortress or other center.  Oddly the DMG doesn’t say anything about the requirements to attract followers, since that material is discussed in the Players Handbook.  On page 16 we have tables for clerics and fighters and the start of the tables for the ranger class, though I’ll leave those until the next entry.

Clerics attract a body of 0 level men-at-arms (the ranges are given as 2-8 or 5-30 rather than 2d4 or 5d6 for some reason) but don’t seem to attract any actual other clerics.  Checking my copy of the Players Handbook (which could be a blog of its own)  there is no discussion there of the cleric attracting any other clerics either.  Most curious…

As for fighters, they attract a group of 1st level clerics… just kidding.  They roll on two tables- one for leaders (4 possibilities) and another for the followers (again for options).  They are, save the leader, 0 level fighters, but they are somewhat more numerous and better equipped than the cleric’s followers.

I’ve never been sure of what the point of this would be?  Wargaming?  Fielding an army (who would probably die very quickly) in the face of some high-level monster?  I’ve always had a suspicion that the various trappings of high-level were a means to begin to circumscribe powerful characters.  Sure, Barmok the Bold is a 15th level fighter, but he’s too busy running his castle to adventure much any more.  Perhaps Gygax was inspired by the Parents/High School/College/Find a Job/Mortgage/Kids theory of life? “I’d love to help you drive off the armies of the White Necromancer of the North Ghizraelu, the Unliving, but I’ve promised the kids I wouldn’t miss their game and the wife’s been on me to clear out the moat again.  Can I get a rain check?”

New words: haughtiness, boors

Page 15: Death and “Abilities”

Do characters ever die of old age? I’ve played in games where enough time goes by the characters have aged, even retired to being NPCs (and in a game of Pendragon, gotten old enough to have grandchildren, but that’s another story) but I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a PC dying from something other than unnatural causes- unless the Dragonlance novels were as directly based on gaming as they read, but I think that’s more an exception that proves the rule.

Obviously mortal beings are, by very definition, finite and as Terry Pratchett has so (sic) humourously pointed out, there is nothing quite as ridiculous (if also sublimely amusing in the right hands) as an nonagenarian barbarian;this section seems to be an entirely reasonable, if relatively superfluous inclusion unless you’re running a multi-generational super-epic campaign.

A minor comment on the page also suggests that stat losses from all disease (and parasites) can only be countered by magical means; tough luck there, herbalists!

(Perhaps I’m being a bit morbid, but I feel obliged to note that by these tables, Mr. Gygax rolled between 1-10 and an 8. I, like many countless others, wish the dice had been more favorable.)

In a whiplash transition of the sort that I’m sure I’ll grow accustomed to as the blog progresses, the next topic is a definition of the six “abilities”; here abilities are the six primary statistics for characters- strength (including “exceptional strength”), intelligence, wisdom, dexterity, constitution, and charisma.

Obviously there were various shortcomings to this six-statistic system-if nothing else the very clunky “exception strength” subset (for any potential reader who is reading this and somehow not conversant in AD&D- skip several paragraphs down here for some explanation) demonstrates that even from the start there was something a bit wonky about things. Later the list would expand to include comeliness, useful in differentiating looks and charm. While I don’t think any system got it completely right (Rolemaster’s 10 stats is at least three too many), since so much that came after AD&D was based on AD&D 3-18 continuum, it is useful to understand what the relative worth of this progenitor system is. Clearly this range is derived from the fact that six-sided dice are ubiquitous (and only gamers are aware that there are anything other than d6 out there; consider the results of a google search for images of dice); there is no logical basis for a Strength of 3 being some human minimum and 18 as an upper limit (pardon me, I mean 18(00)) is even more arbitrary. This range is built on the convenience of its generation- it gives a reasonable range (sixteen possible results) quickly and easily for almost any gamer. 5d4 would give us just as many results with a more moderate distribution, but who has four-sided dice?

But what of the “abilities”? Strength is defined as “a composite rating of physical power, endurance, and stamina”; intelligence as IQ plus “mnemonic, reasoning, and learning ability; wisdom as “willpower, judgment, wile, enlightenment, an intuitiveness”; dexterity “hand-eye coordination, agility, reflex speed, precision, balance, and actual speed of movement in running”; constitution is “physique, health, resistance, and fitness”; and charisma† as a “combination physical appearance, persuasiveness, and personal magnetism”. These six composites are a pretty reasonable encapsulation of the range of human qualities though reasonable people may quibble on their relative importance within their individual spheres.

In my gaming experience, the problems that arose from this arrangement came from instances when either statistics were equal or when individual qualities within the broader categories were in conflict, especially in character creation. These weren’t common occurrences, but when they did arise they were often difficult to adjudicate. Dexterity, in particular, was the focus on debate whether low dex characters were by definition clumsy or just not good under stress. Ah, minutia.

Tomorrow: Character races and classes

(One bit of ephemera that is of use to DMs but isn’t repeated in the Monster Manual is the average strength of various humanoid races. I don’t think I ever knew that on average gnolls had an average strength of 16…)

*: Here Gygax describes himself, saying “while the intelligent character will know that smoking is harmful to him, he may well lack the wisdom to stop (this writer may well fall into this category).”

†: The three examples given to show charisma isn’t looks are Caesar, Bonaparte, and Hitler. Oddly enough I didn’t expect to see any of them show up in a fantasy game. I guess Rasputin (the example of an 18 Con) was lonely.

New words: mnemonic, Rasputin

Page 14: Diseases and Parasites

Continuing on this topic, we are presented with several tables for determining the severity of the infestation/illness, the effected organs or organ system, as well as potential adjustments (mostly based on hit point totals or Con).

While this more generic table is preferable to a length list of real-life diseases, if watching House has taught me anything (aside from wondering why Hugh Laurie isn’t on a much better show, since that one is written with a flow-chart) it is that diseases often may arise in one part of the body but have symptoms that manifest elsewhere.

That is most likely a moot point however, as there is little chance that anyone ever ran their game using these rules as written.  No one who wants to play a heroic fantasy game also want to be brought low by something so mundane (and I mean that in every sense) cause as an “acute, terminal disease of the lungs”.  They want to die in either A) Battle, B) due to a fiendishly clever trap, or C) of an overdose of wenches.  Since very few of us have a chance to doing at least two of these, the fundamental escapist desire that brought us to the game would deter anyone from having Yzoralk the Master of the Tower of Ebon Flame die from a heart attack like great uncle Ralph.

At least STDs got a shout-out (I’m looking at you “generative organs”… well not literally).

New words: cardiovascular, gastro-intestinal, generative, infestation, malady, acute (unless I had just read The Tell-Tale Heart)

Page 13: Aging and Disease

Ah, the inevitable horrors of life, in game form!

While I doubt this was oft referred to, this page outlines Gygax’s thoughts as it pertains to the age maximums of the various standard AD&D races. Elves live a long (up to 2000 years in the case of Grays) time while the earthier races live progressively shorter spans. In case you were wondering, a venerable half-orc would be anyone over 60. Those orc retirement homes are notoriously unkempt.

Here also we have a presumably little-used table of the effects of aging on character statistics. Happily, according to the DMG, since I first read this book, I’ve gained one point of Strength,Constitution (the way this is written, it would seem that every character has a Con and Str +1 bonus if they start at the ages provided on the previous page), and evened out in the Wisdom department.

In a possibly even lesser-used section, the various magic causes of aging are discussed (1 year for haste, limited wish, speed potions; 2 years for restoration; 3 for alter reality, resurrection, and wish; 5 {!?} for gate.) I understand the desire to check the use of certain magics, yet why does a haste spell cost you one year of your life? No other 3rd level spell is nearly so taxing on the health of the caster. Gygax seems to assume unless there is some serious penalty for using these magics, the campaign (and the game) would be overrun with them.

Turning to disease, we find ourselves mired in a section that is wacky in the extreme. Didn’t Gygax just talk about how this game isn’t a “simulation” of the real-world and that the game play is the thing? Here we have a suggestion that “each game month you may wish to check each character to determine whether or not he or she has contracted a disease (or disorder)”. Adding insult to injury… or is that giardia to dysentery?… is an additional discussion of parasites! Nothing says high fantasy adventure like fleas and ticks, clearly.

I understand that there might be some use of a discussion of disease and parasitism, especially considering how often characters muck about in the sewers of various cities (admit it- you had characters knee-deep in sewage, slitting open otyugh gizzards looking for jewels) but at the same time, how often did Frodo or Fafhrd come down with tapeworm?

The only saving grace is that, as outlined here, your chance of catching a disease or picking up a parasite is relatively low; 24% if you are a filthy diseased octogenarian living in crowded city built on a malarial swamp (in summer); 16% for filth, swamp-dwelling, polluted water drinking raw meat enthusiasts, respectively.

Tomorrow: “types” of disease!

New word: venerable