Lift Bridge Game Updates

While most of the players have turned over since this picture was taken in Nov. 2012, this accurately depicts the space in which we play Labyrinth Lord at Lift Bridge Books in Brockport, NY.  

Much as I reported last March, I have been away from blogging (and may remain so) for awhile but am very busy gaming! Today I want to post a couple updates about my open-to-the-public Labyrinth Lord game that meets twice a month at Lift Bridge Book Shop.

Repurposing Classic Modules
The Lift Bridge-based group has been adventuring in central and eastern Ara, having found a dwarven artifact weapon called Whelm in the treasure horde of a green dragon they slew a few days east of Kaladar. A few sessions ago, that magical dwarven warhammer communicated to one of the party members -- an elven thief named Rux Joopy -- and offered him a chance to become dwarven champion and hero. Rux accepted, and instantly transmogrified into a dwarf. The party then marched north to Gannar and received the blessing of King Robert V, who charged them to seek out another missing dwarven artifact, the sword Skeenkarbulo, rumored to be held by the vile fire giant king Snurre in the heart of the mountains.

As those in the know will have deciphered by now, I have been having a grand old time using some classic TSR adventure modules as the basis for this group's recent exploits. I am not slavishly following all the directives in these modules -- turning the resting place of Whelm into a dragon's horde rather than (primarily) the haunt of a crazy wizard, for example -- but rather modifying them to fit our own ongoing pursuits. Fun!

They've been fighting a lot of these . . . 

. . . and today they fought one of these . . . 

. . . and saw a couple of these things mating!

Starting New PCs

When PCs die, or when new players join the group, I have been starting off the new characters that replace them at a higher level than 1st, since the bulk of the party is now up at 5th and 6th level on average (Voltage the Druid, the longest-lived and most powerful character in the party, hit 7th level at the end of last session). The rough guideline I used is:

Average Party Level                Starting XP

         4th - 5th                                    4,400

         5th - 6th                                   10,001

Not much else to report, just that we're having lots of fun.

UPDATE 9/22/14: Glancing over an old set of House Rules from my "home" campaign, I was reminded today that the Lift Bridge Campaign adopted a new ongoing ruling yesterday: During chargen, attribute scores are generated by rolling 4d6, discarding the lowest die roll, and assigning the result to each attribute in order: STR, DEX, CON, INT, WIS, and CHA. 

Games to Play Before I Croak

A long time ago Beedo posted about the D&D modules he'd like to play before he "finally hangs up the dice for good." My own D&D "bucket list" includes not only modules but also some OSR-ish games I would like to play before my final days. To wit (and in no particular order):

- LotFP Grindhouse Edition: I hope I get to referee or play in an LotFP Grindhouse campaign at some point. Raggi has written a really clear and functional rules set and has added some inventive twists, in particular his Specialist Class, that I would love to road-test. Maybe Spawn of Endra could be persuaded to run LotFP one day?

- The Grinding Gear: Of all the Raggi modules I've seen, this is the one I most want to run a PC group through [see my review here]. Maybe as a one-off, or as a tournament module at some future convention. Maybe it could be done over two consecutive convention sessions.

- The Isle of Dread: Gods, this is the "classic" module I most want to run but never have. That dino on the cover has always appealed to me, as does the module's open-ended "sandboxy" nature. Viva Moldvay!

- Knowledge Illuminates: A strong module with which to kick off a campaign and/or unite a band of adventurers -- perhaps this may be run in my public gaming group in the coming year, or perhaps to start my next Arandish campaign, if the current one ever reaches an ending point. Tim Shorts' fresh, generative module is a terrific wilderness campaign-starter which I've reviewed here.

- Mutant Future: To be fair, I've played this one: I entered the OSR via Mutant Future, playing in Carl's awesome campaign which eventually wrapped up. One day I would like to run a Mutant Future campaign, or at least a few sessions of the game, to see how I like it. I have only played, but have never run, a post-apocalyptic game (outside of Shadowrun, a game I have run in the past but have little interest in playing again), and Mutant Future would probably be my system of choice, unless I get more serious about learning Twilight 2000.

- James Bond 007 or Top Secret: One day I will get around to running a "contemporary" espionage RPG, at least as a one-off or short "single mission" campaign, and it will likely be using one of these two systems.

"Hey Carter, can't we be friends?"

The Village of Hommlet As Adventure Locale

I am a big fan of pilfering ideas, maps, and locales from various published adventure modules and gaming publications. While the Lands of Ara is to some extent a full-fledged game world, with many basic assumptions built in and many others organically accruing over time, it has always also been a place into which I can ungraciously shoehorn a modified map from a Gygax module, a random encounter idea horked from Jeff Rients' blog, and/or an entire megadungeon by Michael Curtis. To me this "sampling" is absolutely integral to my DM'ing process: not only do I enjoy buying, reading, and raiding other creative people's RPG'ing products, but I am also a fairly half-assed and slapdash preparer, so when the PCs suddenly decide to visit a place I haven't yet mapped, it is great fun for me to just choose an old TSR module and use (parts of) that. In short, I like allowing significant input from outside sources, sometimes randomly generated, sometimes deliberately planted, to infuse Ara with elements that exceed the limits of my own imagination.

Along this line, last summer there was a spat of creative blog talk about using TSR's 1979 adventure module, The Village of Hommlet, as a launching point for different types of campaigns. Of course, James Maliszewski has succinctly assessed why Hommlet makes such a rich foundation for old-school adventure in general, but in particular I refer to two separate posts (here and here) on James Smith's previous blog, The Underdark Gazette.*  scottsz in particular gets going in the comments of the first post above with a proposed 'alternate' version of T2, T3, and T4 -- and it rocks! Here are some excerpts:

[Given] how Furyondy and Veluna take such an interest in events of the Temple, characters at 2nd level could take a trip to a garrison to report their findings and make contact with more forces of Good/get more background about the history of the Temple. They might ask an 'official' historian (and not some Hommlet druid) what happened. Perhaps they'll get the truth or another part of a mystery. A full 'city module' isn't required - people of importance would want to prevent any panic about the Temple's resurgence.

If module T2 - Temple of Elemental Evil was targeted for levels 2-4, involved a lot of investigation and 'mood buildup' and led to a Temple visit, PCs still aren't likely to get inside - but at least PCs get there. T2 could culminate in rooting out and nullifying the Greyhawk influence of Temple operatives outside the Temple, even if such influence was to powerful entities in Furyondy or Veluna.

T3 - The Elemental Keys could be about finding (a) particular artifact(s) allowing entrance (perhaps Goldenskull wasn't kept inside the Temple but safeguarded elsewhere!), and wouldn't require railroading if the characters were already (falsely) accused of 'treason' and being hunted.

T4 - The Lady of Fungi begins with entrance to the Temple and reaches Zuggtmoy. Throughout the 'T' series, the assumption is that the 4 classical Greek elements are what are referred to by Elemental Evil - an assumption that proves to be dangerously incorrect!

And then there's James' own proposal to mash-up some of the Hommlet premises / adventure seeds with fungi-based zombies for what he's calling Death Fungi Doom:

I didn't want "T2" to be a megadungeon. I wanted it to be T2, not T2-4 and suitable as a follow-up to T1. Also, T1 is taking place before the Giants/Drow modules, as those events are going to be in play, whether or not the players decide to investigate.

The fungal dead are human corpses whose bodies have been overtaken by a virulent strain of unwholesome fungus. These alien spores animate their non-living hosts into a nightmarish semblance of life and seek to spread the colony into new, recently-deceased corpses.

And of course, instead of a Vampire, down there, we have Zuggtmoy, needing the PC's as much as they're going to need her! And a certain bizarre, keening/humming plant creature, which puts fungi into a stasis, instead of undead. Crypts? Or, maybe thousands of dead combatants, strewn about the dungeon. Put into stasis right before the demonic fungi, was ready to activate their corpses.

Maybe old Zeke has been making forays into the place, taking out bodies one by one and burying them. Unawares, of the quiescent evil, of all that sickening growth. I might need to tweak the timeline, a bit. Maybe decide that St. Cuthbert's followers believe all bodies must be buried. An anti-cremation doctrine might fit well, with old Cugel-dudes historical inspiration.

Now, as an added bonus, I can throw a few scary undead encounters into the dungeon. :)

This all was and is very exciting and inspiring. How fortuitous for me that I ordered module T1 around the same time as these posts (July 2011), and have since had a chance to plant its titular village somewhere in the Lands of Ara.

--
* The Underdark Gazette has been taken down from public view, and therefore my links may not work for you. However, James told me that anybody interested in seeing the old material directly may request access by contacting James via email at dmkastmaria at gmail dot com. See also his current blog, Dreams of Mythic Fantasy.

The Tower of Death Lives!

Sometimes working on an exciting project gets me enthused about other, related projects as well.  I suppose a kind of synergy develops; the thrill of the first project spills over a bit and fuels my productivity toward the second.

Spawn of Endra and I have been making great headway lately on the Lands of Ara Compendium 2011, due out as a free pdf in a couple of weeks.  The compiling, revising, and copy editing of the material for the Compendium has gotten me re-jazzed about The Tower of Death, my OSRCon-inspired adventure module project.  This past week or so I have taken three key steps toward developing that module for eventual release:

1.  I emailed Spawn to see if he would be interested in doing the module's cartography.  He said yes!

2.  I emailed Johnathan Bingham some ideas about the module's cover illustration, and he agreed to take the job, which will likely evolve as another full-color collaboration sketched by Johnathan and colored by his wife Daisey. Hurrah!

A glimpse of my OSRCon notes for The Tower of Death, plus some new ideas on the right-hand sheet.

3.  With these great talents onboard, I felt morally obligated (and genuinely inspired) to dig out all my handwritten notes and drawings and scribbles and half-formed ideas from OSRCon, and to begin typing them up.  I got on a roll: over the course of this week, the text for The Tower of Death has gone from a scattering of mostly handwritten notes scrawled on maps and a few bullet-pointish descriptions to nearly eight pages of typewritten material broadly organized as a module.  I have even made some expansions and revisions along the way, streamlining certain parts of the module and elaborating certain other areas that were only very vaguely sketched for OSRCon play. 

Compendium first, I know!  Nevertheless, it has been fun to let another Lands of Ara Enterprises project take me over this week, especially since I couldn't pester Spawn too much over Compendium matters as he is completing final revisions on his doctoral dissertation.

More to come!

Reflections on my Top 5 TSR Modules List

Interestingly, the Top 5 list I posted yesterday clearly reveals the effect of the OSR blogosphere upon my thinking about published modules. Before starting this blog (and reading other folks' blogs) in September 2009, I would not consciously have known the difference between a "funhouse" dungeon like S2 and a "hexcrawl" type like D3. I would not have been able to see WHY Moldvay's B4 is possibly the most amazing module ever, even though I read it in my early days and was impressed (if a bit intimidated) by its account of how factions work in the Lost City of Cynidicea.  Now I do understand these things and I think my game is better for it.  These days I have a better grasp of the type of DM I am and the kinds of published materials that will work best for me.

I have posted before about how I came of age in the RPG hobby during TSR's "tournament module" publication phase in the early 1980s, and have admitted that therefore S2 White Plume Mountain was an early favorite module of mine. Yet my Top 5 list doesn't include White Plume, except as a possible runner-up to Tomb of Horrors for spot #5. Why?

Because despite the influence of nostalgia upon my Top 5 TSR Modules list -- e.g., B2 is the first module I ever played so has a special place at the table for me -- nevertheless it is not primarily a list about nostalgia, but a list about how I approach D&D now. And the OSR blogosphere has exerted quite an influence upon what I currently value, or perhaps has helped me to obtain better clarity about what I have valued all along.

What is clear here is that for me, it is all about the sandbox, which is probably why -- modules or no modules -- I have always been such a big fan of wilderness travel and wilderness adventures.  I prefer open-ended, location-based adventuring and, S1 and S2 aside, this has more or less been true all along.  In fact, despite early exposure to (and great love for) the "GDQ" series of modules, which could be seen by some as a kind of proto-"adventure path" (and therefore not very old-school), what stands out for me about that series are a few of its key locations: the Shrine of the Kuo-Toans, the Vault of the Drow, Lolth's Demon Ship, maybe the frost giants' Glacial Rift.  My taste in what makes those modules really cool (big, open-ended locales like the Vault) vs. less memorable (the dungeon-crawly G1 and G3) tells me a lot about my own burgeoning preferences as a DM, my own leanings toward skeletal "plot" structures, collaborative adventure creation, and spur of the moment in-game improvisation. 

As fellow 2nd Generation D&D'er James Maliszewski has written:

"What I advocate is that modules should be made more, well, modular and that means providing lots of options and alternatives that a referee can then use to make its contents his own rather than someone else's. [. . .] What modules gave me [as a young referee] was a structure -- map, room descriptions, game stats, etc. -- onto which could hang the story my friends and I created as I refereed their adventures. What I think has happened over the years is that, because "adventure module" has become so strongly associated with the notion of a pre-made adventure story, gamers now simply recoil at the notion of having to "make up the story yourself." They see it as too much of a chore, when, in point of fact, creating a plot/story is the easiest part of being a RPG referee, not the hardest."

Indeed! Like Maliszewski, I just need some basic structures -- a lawful Keep near some chaotic Caves, a big underground Vault with warring factions, a Lost City with the same -- and I can hang all manner of stories and plots and adventure hooks upon it. So my Top 5 module choices represent adventures with a lot of that quality of modularity and, well, the ability to be flexible enough to have things "hung" upon them. In fact it is this same impulse which led me to include Q1 on my list, because I view it a very useful old-school refereeing sourcebook, if not a spectacular module strictly as writ. But to an old-schooler, a few basic skeletal ideas that can be run with and variously modified are as (if not more) valuable than a tightly scripted, coherent, stand-alone adventure in many cases.

Allow me to close with another Maliszewski quote, this one taken from his review of Dwellers of the Forbidden City, a TSR module I am more or less completely ignorant about but that came up in yesterday's comments:

"Dwellers of the Forbidden City is only 28 pages long, so it's necessarily brief when it comes to describing its titular locale. Yet, that never bothered me. Indeed, I think it's probably one of the great strengths of the module and the reason I was able to use it so often: it was easy to make and remake the City to suit my present needs, whatever they were."

5 Best TSR Modules Ever (For Now)

Here is my list of the five best TSR modules ever. I am deliberately doing this from the hip, not letting myself overthink it, just going with what feels right.

1. B2 Keep on the Borderlands
As James Maliszewki and Justin Alexander have pointed out, Gygax's B2 is a totally classic example of old-school module design, with the Caves of Chaos acting as a kind of introductory megadungeon (in a feat of "implied expansiveness" as Maliszewski puts it) set in a wilderness locale.  What is not to love about that?  This is an endlessly customizable and modifiable module, thus achieving very high re-playability value.  And it has the advantage of being the first module I ever played or DM'ed -- it came in my Holmes boxed set -- so it surely set the tone for EVERYTHING that followed in my RPG'ing career.    

[EDIT: Read this post (and also this comment) for a really sharp, spot-on deconstruction of the usual assumptions made about B2.]

2. B4 The Lost City
I am so hot to play this one that it will very likely be the first scenario I trot out for the upcoming public Labyrinth Lord Game at my FLBS in September.

3. D3 Vault of the Drow
This one has always haunted me, it describes such an evocative and adventure-pregnant place.  Vault of the Drow is essentially another sandboxy hexcrawl, with political intrigue, factions, and the like built in to the various locales in the setting. I submit that this module represents the true climax of the G1-3 and D1-3 series, and could easily be used as the central locale for an entire underground campaign.  Note that it was somewhat difficult for me to choose this one over D2 Shrine of the Kuo-Toa, another personal favorite, but in the end it is the expansiveness of the Vault itself (and the spookiness of the Fane of Lolth) that gets me.

4. X1 The Isle of Dread
The coolest "lost island" hexcrawl. Badass dinosaur on cover. Lots of replay value since encounters can easily be modified or swapped out. What's not to love?

5. Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits
This last is a controversial choice because I am not really judging Q1 on its merits as a module alone, but more as a demonstration of what an extraplanar adventure can be. As I have discussed before, Q1 is not so much a module I want to run as a module I want to keep around as a reference and inspiration, to be read, pilfered from, and re-skinned in other guises -- more of an idea generator than a full-blown adventure. Looked at this way, even the map of the Demonweb alone is worth the price of admission! Maybe if we called this publication The Planar Travel Handbook and thought of it as more a sourcebook than a module, people would appreciate it more.

To be fair, if I were judging the Top 5 only in their functionality as playable adventure modules, I would toss out Q1 and give fifth place to S1 or S2, probably the former.

Image copyright 2009 Evil Brain Jono.

What I Have Learned
The above list tells me that I like sandboxy wilderness hexcrawls, and seem to prefer dungeons that either mimic such hexcrawls in an underworld environment (D3) or else directly provide them (X1, B2). It also shows my age, as I clearly prefer the "old classics" that I grew up with -- all my Top 5 modules were published before 1983. 

Please note that of my Top 5, I have only actually played one of them, i.e., The Keep on the Borderlands.  It is therefore possible -- perhaps even likely -- that some of my module choices here are based upon my desire to finally play them rather than a verified-by-real-game-play knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses.  Perhaps my next task will be to connive ways to run and/or play in all of these modules at some time or another in the near future -- or at least the first four.

The Limits of My Knowledge (and Sample Size)
To fully grasp the limited relevance of my current Top 5 list, one must know what a pitifully small "sample size" of TSR modules I chose from in making these selections.  I have actually owned, read, and/or played a relatively tiny fraction of all TSR's published modules -- to say nothing of other old-school third-party publishers like Judges' Guild, a company whose work I know hardly at all.

To remedy the small scope of my current "classic module" knowledge, one of my new projects is to slowly acquire some of the old, out-of-print classics and read them, maybe even play them. Along this line I recently ordered T1 The Village of Hommlet from Noble Knight, and I look forward to finally laying eyes on a module of which James Maliszewski and Joseph Bloch think so highly.

But as you will see below, my need to make up for knowledge gaps in this area is rather great -- as I said, the number of published TSR modules I have actually used or even read is woefully small. I guess that's what happens when you start world-building: you get lost in your own game-world and use published modules less frequently.

So:

TSR Modules I've Played
B1
B2
S1
S2
G1-2-3
D1
D2

TSR Modules I've Read but NOT Played
A1
X1
X3
B3 (both versions)
B4
D3
Q1
C1
I3
I6

Q for Queen of the Demonweb Pits

[Note: Any non-gamers tuning in to this series of posts are invited to consult my New Reader Introduction for some RPG-specific definitions and a general introduction to the Lands of Ara blog.]

Module Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits marks the conclusion of an epic series of classic D&D modules that begins with the G1-2-3 series Against the Giants and continues with the D1-2-3 Descent / Kuo-Toa / Vault of the Drow adventures. Q1 is typically thought to be somewhat inferior to its six predecessors, yet I find that for me, it has sparked a great deal of inspiration over the years. I would even say that it is my third-favorite module in that whole linked series, after D2 Shrine of the Kuo-Toa and D3 Vault of the Drow.

I would urge my readers to check out James Maliszewski's retrospective on Demonweb, wherein he accurately notes that Module Q1 is historically "the first official example of planar adventuring for Dungeons & Dragons" and that "the design of the Demonweb itself is extraordinarily clever." Both of these factors make this module stand out in my mind even though I have literally never run it or played it. As I have suggested before, when it comes to other planes of existence, Q1 is the most influential D&D publication I've ever read; its version of planar adventuring is the one that has stuck with me, defining how I see other planes working in the D&D game in general. Rather than putting forth a bunch of strange abstractions and diagrams (as in the Dungeon Master's Guide), Module Q1 shows us how extraplanar adventures can really work. And, appropriately to its subject matter, it is weird as hell.

Like James M., I like the weirdness and grandeur of the Demonweb, especially its Escherian overpasses and underpasses and its numerous portals to "other" Prime Material Planes. I remember first looking at that Demonweb map as a kid and thinking "what the hell IS this thing??" It just doesn't look a thing like any other module map I know of. The one part of the Q1 map package that does look anything like a typical D&D dungeon map turns out to be deck plans for a steam-powered Spider Ship -- wacked!!

Of course, many D&D gamers have expressed dissatisfaction with Q1, especially in comparison to the awesome G- and D-series modules that precede it.  I myself admit that it would take very special circumstances and a very special party for me to actually want to run Demonweb.  But it is an essential part of my D&D module collection, and one I turn to for inspiration and ideas more than practically any other.

Top 15 Classic OSR Blog Posts: On Game Design and Campaign Resources

What follows is part two of a three-part list of individual blog entries that fulfill my criteria for being "classic." Let me again emphasize that these are MY picks for blog posts I return to again and again, posts that have been most influential to ME over time. It is therefore likely that my using the term "classic" is a misnomer, as that status should really be conferred via some process of group / community consensus.

Part one of the list included Classic OSR Posts on the subject of "Theory and History," i.e., general ruminating or ranting about what our hobby "means," discussing the role our blog community plays in the development and sustenance of that hobby, and/or documenting the real-world history of D&D, TSR, et. al.

This post deals with Classic OSR Blog Posts about in-game matters like setting design, DM strategies, good role-playing, creating new game content, and the like. At times, the distinction between the two broad topics was a difficult -- and ultimately arbitrary -- one to make. For example, is Zak's "How Much Do You Want To Be A Wizard?" simply about what happens at the game table (hence justifying its inclusion here), or is it a more general philosophical manifesto about good DM-player relationships and gaming-group chemistry? (I suppose it's both.)

Criteria / selection process:

1. I went with relatively well-known or "popular" OSR blogs. My main way of determining said popularity was by consulting Cyclopeatron's December 2010 report of Old School Blog rankings -- no post could be deemed an OSR "Classic" unless it came from a blog that scored fairly high up in those rankings. I didn't have a specific numerical cutoff point in mind when I started, but in the end, the lowest-ranked blog represented in this second part of the list is in the 18th rank; some are un-rankable (i.e., Wordpress, etc.); and I make a special exception for Gorgonmilk, a new blog by a veteran blogger.

2. The "test of time" was a factor, but an extremely minor one. While some readers could (rightly) argue that "Classic" implies something that has been around for awhile, remember that this is MY fucking list so in a few cases I included much more recent posts that happened to capture the "Classic" ethos or strongly spoke to me as I was compiling this Top 15. But overall I tried to favor posts that had been around in the blogosphere for a little while.

3. I play Labyrinth Lord in a Tolkienesque / Gygaxian mode. That preference surely colors my choices here, since (for example) there are no posts listed that deal with Gamma World / Mutant Future, Traveller, T&T, etc. -- believe me, it was hard enough narrowing this thing to a mere 15 posts as it is.

4. Lastly, in terms of my engagement with the online community, I mostly just read OSR blogs. I do not visit the discussion boards, I am not an avid web-surfer, etc. So everything on this list is stuff I found via my own primitive knocking around in the OSR blogosphere. Many apologies in advance if my own ignorance diminishes the interest or accuracy of the list.

All that said, I strongly urge anyone who disagrees with what I've included here or who spots obvious omissions to offer corrective comments below, or, even better, create your own "Classic Blog Post" lists as well -- I'd love to read them!

Note that this list is NOT in order of preference or "rank," but simply organized in a way that makes for interesting reading if read in this sequence.

1. James Edward Raggi IV, LotFP, "Guide to Adventure Writing"
Still my favorite general guide to good adventure design, written by the best module writer in the OSR.

2. James Maliszewski, Grognardia, "Locale and Plot"
This characteristically sharp analysis by James M. of old-school module design principles should be required reading for anyone wishing to design adventures with an old-school feel.

3. Zak S., Playing D&D With Porn Stars, "Riddles In The Dark (or, Earn It)"
More from Zak Sabbath, this time about why game balance (in the contemporary sense) sucks (my words). This post outlines how PCs should develop during game play, NOT as a result of complex character "builds," an idea I emphatically agree with. It is a relatively recent post but one I could not resist including.

4. Greg at Gorgonmilk, "On Boiling Down Your Setting to its Essential Salts"
The most recent offering on the list, this post by Greg (formerly of Eiglophian Press fame) offers a list of possible concepts that can be used to generate a "post-Tolkien" fantasy campaign setting. The post itself may not be "classic" yet, but the ideas it proposes surely are.

5. James Maliszewski, Grognardia, "Of Ancient Empires"
James' comments in this inspiring post refer to the background of his own megadungeon project, Dwimmermount, but the core idea is applicable to all of us megadungeon creators. A terrific idea!

6. Al Krombach, Beyond the Black Gate, "Megadungeon Resources"
Al Krombach is one of the great champions of megadungeon design philosophy and toolkit provision currently working in the OSR blogosphere. His list of megadungeon design resources is succinct, accessible, and absolutely essential reading for anyone wishing to design a megadungeon. I might especially wish to single out his superb (and fun!) Random Area Name Generator, which I have used many times. Also deserving of honorable mention are Al's yearly Beyond the Black Gate Compendiums for 2009 and 2010 -- chock full of great stuff!

7. Rob Conley, Bat in the Attic, "How to make a Fantasy Sandbox"
Rob Conley's thoroughgoing series of blog posts on Sandbox Design is required (and therefore "classic") reading for anybody in the OSR who wants to sit behind the DM's screen. Indispensable!

8. Michael Curtis, The Society of Torch, Pole, and Rope, "With New Old Eyes"
Curtis' reflections about what make a good megadungeon, written just as he completed the first volume of his Stonehell, constitute "classic" and essential reading for any megadungeon creator.

9. Dyson Logos, A character for every game, "Maps"
Though my Arandish campaign owes a huge debt to many of the classic posts listed here, I would say that the biggest practical contribution has come from Dyson Logos' excellent wordpress blog, A character for every game. Dyson is a very talented cartographer, and I have used three of his maps / dungeons -- Goblin Gully, Coruvon (which I used for the Arandish town of Swampsedge), and Level 1 of his mini-megadungeon, Dyson's Delve -- in my campaign so far. I will continue to use them. And while my praise here focuses on Dyson's maps, please check out his blog's other offerings as well, such as his Random polearm Generator and his great posts about elementals.

10. Dyson Logos, A character for every game, "2d6 Thiefing"
There has been much debate about and tinkering with the thief class waged over the years. Some have argued that it is an unnecessary / oxymoronic D&D class, others have expressed dissatisfaction with the B/X thief mechanics and have offered their own versions (e.g., Al K. and James M.). Yet Dyson's simple 2d6 system for handling thief abilities is the most elegant and appealing solution to the thief "problem" that I have yet seen.  In fact, I am such a fan of "2d6 Thiefing" that I have both installed it as the standard for thieves in my Arandish campaign, and Spawn of Endra and I have borrowed the concept in order to create 2d6 Bardery.  Dyson also reprinted this piece in Dyson's Dodecahedron Vol. 1 Issue 1, which is well worth downloading in its own right!

11. bat, Ancient Vaults and Eldritch Secrets
I cannot single out one post here, but must simply include the whole blog as one huge, ongoing, excellent resource for old-school gaming ideas.  The fact that bat cranks out a new spell, monster, or magic item pretty much every day of the year astounds me, and the fact that so many of them are so goddamn good is the sweet icing on the cake.  I cannot begin to tell you how many spells I have horked from "Ancient Vaults" -- but if I ever finish those Elementalist NPCs for my Arandish campaign, my great debt to bat's work will become readily apparent.

12. Jeff Rients, Jeff's Gameblog, "How to Awesome-Up Your Players"
Great DM'ing advice helping you to "empower the players to make the game a non-stop high-octane freak-out"!  Who can resist that?

13.Zak Sabbath, Playing D&D With Porn Stars, "How Much Do You Want To Be A Wizard?"
Zak is the best blogger around when it comes to discussing the intricacies of DM-player dynamics, and this is his most "classic" post on the matter. I am also fond of his more recent posts comparing RPG groups to rock bands and discussing RPG group "Design Specs", but I still choose this earlier post on player buy-ins as more "classic," nuanced, and outright true.

14. Alexis, The Tao of D&D, "30 Ways Not To Cheat At D&D"
I admit that Alexis' work at the Tao of D&D is at times daunting to me, both due to his high level of granularity and his sometimes inflammatory prose, but I am nevertheless glad that Alexis exists. And once in awhile, he hits a nail so squarely on the head that I am glad I check in over at his blog from time to time. This list of 30 player principles is one such post -- a great assessment of what we might call "gaming table ethics" that I feel would improve play for anyone who rigorously followed them. Not quite as impactful but still deserving of honorable mention is Alexis' post on the role of the DM, "The DM is Not a Player."

15. Noisms, Monsters and Manuals, "Gaming Advice #1: Don't Be A Dick Head"
How much more succinct can one get? Noism's key piece of advice here is fundamental to keeping our time at the game table enjoyable, and is certainly deserving of timeless, "classic" status.

And a Bonus Post Deserving of Honorable Mention:

Zak Sabbath, Playing D&D With Porn Stars, "Urbancrawl Rules For Slacker DMs"
Sadly for me, this is one of those really conceptually brilliant ideas that it is very difficult to see myself ever using in play. I am a bit too much of a Gygaxian naturalist / in-depth world-builder to likely ever need to use this elegant system for figuring out city travel distances, because I already know the basic layout of most of the major Arandish cities my PCs would visit. But nevertheless, this is one of the most memorable blog posts I have ever read on any subject, and I think Zak's idea here perfectly embodies the on-the-fly, random-dice-rolling, old-school gaming spirit I so dearly love. Bad ass!

Next time: "The Best of the Rest: Classic Posts from Less-Followed Blogs"

Payday Ordering Spree

Today was payday, and of course that is a great time to stock up on old-school gaming products, so that is just what I have done.  Let me share the highlights of my three-part consumerist orgy:

1.  Ordering two classic TSR modules from Amazon.com Marketplace vendors.  There are two AD&D modules from the olden days that I have been wanting to obtain print copies of, both for the sheer fun of it (I fetishize books) and also because I intend to get working on Labyrinth Lord conversions of them as soon as they arrive.  Like JB at B/X Blackrazor has done with his excellent B/X conversion of White Plume Mountain, I intend to make my Labyrinth Lord module conversions available as free pdfs to all you folks in the blogosphere once I complete them.  I don't wish to reveal exactly which modules I ordered just yet, because my players could be reading this and there is a good chance (I hope!) that at least one of these adventures may find its way into my current campaign.  (Remember, I am extremely lazy so usually don't convert or adapt stuff unless I plan to use it.)  Suffice to say that I found the two modules I wanted for less than $10 each, cover price.  The shipping bumped them up to about $13 and $15 respectively, but that still feels like an excellent deal for two much-beloved classic modules in "very good" to "like new" condition that I know I will use again and again.  Score!

2.  Ordering a hardcover Labyrinth Lord Revised Edition rulebook and a print copy of Stonehell megadungeon from Lulu.com --  at a discount!  There is -- for two more days, until the end of the weekend -- a 10% discount to be had when ordering certain stuff from Lulu.com, so I took advantage of that deal to order two essential OSR products.  The first is simply a hardcover version of a book I already have and use, the Labyrinth Lord  rulebook.  My players have been using my paperback copy at the gaming table a lot, and despite the fact that my friend Carl brings his paperback copy too, those greedy players seem to like to refer to them a fair amount as we play.  So my desire to have an exclusive DM's copy of the rulebook, combined with my tendency to fetishize books in general, led me to the conclusion that I should purchase a nice, hardbound copy of the rules set I will doubtless be using for years to come.  This hardbound Labyrinth Lord book was my most expensive and extravagant purchase of the day, but well-justified I think, now that I have a weekly LL campaign underway.  My second Lulu purchase was the much-anticipated (by me) and much-lauded (by James Maliszewski and others) Stonehell megadungeon.  I have seen the pdf preview version of Stonehell, which I liked, though I kind of need a print copy of a thing in my hands before I can really get familiar with it.  So the pdf and the positive reviews of Stonehell whetted my appetite, and that combined with my general appreciation for the work of Michael Curtis -- do yourself a favor and check out his superb Dungeon Alphabet, reviewed here -- made my purchase of Stonehell in print inevitable.  The fact that the multi-talented Carl also has published artwork in Stonehell only sweetens the deal (support your local artists!).  I don't know exactly how I will use Stonehell in my Arandish campaign yet, but I know I will find plenty of inspiration and good material to hork (or possibly use whole-cloth) within its covers.  Score!

3.  Going to my favorite local game store and buying $10 worth of dice.  I have been feeling a bit short of d12's and d8's lately -- I only own one of the former and two of the latter! -- though this hasn't mattered to me all that much in recent years since I have mainly been a player in the game sessions with my former 3.5 group and my current Mutant Future group.  But now that I am the referee of a full-blown Labyrinth Lord campaign, I feel the need to have more dice on hand to share with dice-less players etc.  Plus, it is far more fun when rolling for things like starting gold or flaming oil damage to actually have three (or more) eight-sided dice to roll at once.   So today I went to Evolution Games in south Eugene and picked a grand total of twenty dice out of their 50-cent basket.  There were a lot of pretty ones -- I somewhat fetishize dice -- so I walked out with a bunch of d20's and d6's I probably didn't need, but also with 4 or 5 more each of those much-needed d8's and d12's.  Score!

Pilfering from modules and elsewhere

As James Raggi IV has written, “I challenge the role-playing blogosphere to name the primary influences in your personal game, so we get a flavor not of what set of rules you decide to use, but what kind of game people can expect to play with you! Minimum five. No maximum. Plus include what people might assume influences you that you actually reject.”

Agreed.  I accept the challenge; my five top influences:

1.  D&D Modules, especially S1: Tomb of Horrors and B2: The Keep on the Borderlands.  The Keep is part of my earliest RPG’ing DNA: it is the first module I ever played or refereed.  I still use it obliquely to this day: along with certain other module maps (including S2: White Plume Mountain and “Trollstone Caverns” from the T&T Rules manual) I often appropriate the maps from The Keep on the Borderlands to use in a stock-it-myself fashion—especially the maps inside the book of the keep itself and the area around the Caves of Chaos.  Gygax’s Tomb of Horrors I utterly love and, should a group of characters ever become powerful enough, mark my words, I will send them there.  I have only ever run Tomb of Horrors once—and not to its full conclusion—yet I always await my chance, not because I am a “party killer” type but because I think this module is the ultimate test of a role-playing group’s inventiveness, skill, and gaming intelligence.  I therefore assume that Acererak’s Tomb exists in every campaign setting I ever run, that through the Demi-Lich’s malevolent power, the Tomb is theoretically present in multiple campaign dimensions simultaneously.  It is always out there waiting in the Swamp until some party is brave enough and prepared enough to go find it.

2.  James Bond films.  Epic, intricate plots with lots of secret doors, hidden rooms and huge underground/underwater lairs populated by megalomaniacal arch-villains and their minions and flunkies.  Hmm, sounds a lot like a D&D dungeon. . .   I watched the hell out of these movies when I was a kid and I still love them, up though the Brosnan era anyway.  The kind of larger-than-life quality of the Bond films is appealing to me as a referee.

3.  Tolkien, especially Moria and everything in The Hobbit.  Okay, there may also be a tiny bit of Minas Tirith’s DNA in Ara’s Free City of Kaladar (along with a healthy dose of the bazaar on Deva from Robert Asprin’s Myth Adventures series).  But I really think The Hobbit has been one of the most influential books on how I view heroic fantasy and how I referee.  When I picture a hobgoblin, it is The Hobbit’s hobgoblins I see.  Its motley (if well-pedigreed) group of self-righteous, thieving dwarves single-handedly taking on a killer dragon is a scenario ripe for D&D appropriation, not to mention The Battle of Five Armies, which no doubt led to my penchant for huge, epic land battles at the climax of my campaigns.  Of the three books of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring has always been my favorite, and the Mines of Moria are pretty much the scariest and most inspiring fantasy adventure locale I have ever read about.

4.  Ray Harryhausen films:  While I LOVE the films of John Carpenter, I don’t know if they have had much direct influence on my game, except possibly The Fog.  But Harryhausen’s wonderful stop-motion animation work in such films as Jason and the Argonauts, The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, and Clash of the Titans absolutely inspired how I think about and visualize epic fantasy and my FRPG campaigns.  Not only do I love these Greek-myth-inspired tales for Harryhausen’s awesome animated creatures, but for their stories as well: there is as much battling of wits as physical combat, many puzzles to solve and lots of poetic justice.  Hurrah!

5.  Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom Books, esp. The Gods of Mars.  Tars Tarkas rules!  I was very young when I read these books (seventh grade) so I cannot claim to remember much in the way of specific plot details, but these stories almost completely define “science fantasy” for me, a beautiful blending of sci-fi and fantasy elements.  Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber were a later influence for me along this line. 

And three influences I Hate to admit to:

1.  Star Wars.  It is entirely probable that my obsession with swamps ties back to Yoda’s creepy swamp planet, Dagobah.  Not to mention Mos Eisley Cantina, the standard against which all subsequent “wretched hives of scum and villainy” would be judged, and surely a prototype for the seedy, black-market, backwoods towns that abound in my campaign world(s). 

2.  The Fiend Folio: I love the Brits, and while I admit this may qualify as a weakness in the case of the Fiend Folio, I have always rather enjoyed this tome and particularly some of its illustrations—see the full-pager on p. 60, or the depiction of the skeleton warrior on p. 79, or the githyanki (a personal favorite monster) on the cover.  Granted, many of the monsters within are useless, and I would not actually use a great many of the monsters listed in the Folio myself, but nevertheless I really love and do use a select few, especially the firetoad, the hook horror, the needleman, the elemental princes of evil, the Githyanki, and the iron cobra.

3.  Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail.  Here I particularly refer to the Black Knight fight scene, for the extreme volume and distance of the blood spurts once the Black Knight starts getting dismembered.  Combat results in my campaigns are always quite bloody and graphic, especially when a party foe is killed; blood and internal organs spurt intensely and far.  As one former player put it, my campaigns seem to take place in “high-pressure worlds” where everybody’s blood and internal organs are under a lot of pressure, so as to shoot out really far once pierced in combat.