#Basic D&D

[oldschoolfrp]

The calendar tell me it's July 27, Gary Gygax's birthday, so I rolled up a character -- 3D6 rolled six times in order referencing Holmes' 1977 basic D&D rules (his tidy edit of Gygax and Arneson's original 1974 little books):

Srength 8

Intelligence 13

Wisdom 10

Constitution 8

Dexterity 10

Charisma 8

In old school D&D this is a perfectly viable character with no penalties, before 50 years of stat inflation was built into the rules. He could be almost anything, but will be most capable as a magic-user, receiving a +5% bonus to earned experience for having a 13 in the prime requisite ability.

Magic-users and thieves get only a D4 for hit points in early editions, and as often happens I rolled a 1. Survival past the first few levels will be extremely unlikely, but it always was for those classes. He'll need to hide in the middle of the party and hope for the best.

3D6 x 10 for starting gold pieces results in only 60, but he doesn't need much gear. He'll carry some basic tools and a bundle of empty sacks to help carry treasure after his one and only spell is spent.

With Int 13 he has a 65% chance of having a specific level 1 spell in his book, and will have a minimum of 5 and a maximum of 8. He can roll in any order, and can reroll from the list if they fail to meet the minimum. On the first pass through the list he fails to know Detect Magic, Magic Missile, or Hold Portal, but his book holds Charm Person, Dancing Lights, Protection from Evil, Read Languages, Read Magic, Shield, Sleep, and Tenser's Floating Disc. From that list of 8 he can choose one spell each day to use, only one time per day. In combat Sleep and Charm Person will be useful for reducing the number of opponents.

[crash-likes-cookies]

So for anyone interested in the differences of earliest DnD, I found this thread and made it visually easy to access.

(all credit for this goes to Adam Dray, check the link for the entire post)

[inbarfink]

[fnrrfygmschnish]

Tonight I fiddled around with solo-playtesting OSE again!

Returning from last time (...because he was the only survivor of that fight with the skeletons) is Wimp Lo the thief, represented by the little black ninja like before. And yes, I added all the money and several useful items from those less-lucky characters' backpacks to his inventory... He is a thief after all!

New party members include Friar Quagg the cleric (the Quagsire), Squishy the magic-user (the orange ninja), and Paunch the elf (the Hitmonchan, because I have so few humanlike figurines lying around besides those tiny ninjas and didn't want a full party of just color-coded ninjas. 😂)

Also tagging along is Pothead, a normal human (level 0) who Wimp Lo hired as a retainer, represented by the little green soldier guy.

Squishy is so named because of his unfortunately low Constitution stat that guaranteed the most HP he could have starting out was 2... And he was not that lucky, so yep, just a single hit point for the poor guy. He was much luckier when I rolled for his starting spell randomly and got Sleep!

Paunch on the other hand ended up with... Ventriloquism. But I think he'll be okay without a really powerful spell, he was rich enough to afford great equipment and also rolled *three* stats in the 16-17 range.

Pothead, as you might expect from a level 0 ordinary human, was also very squishy -- he also rolled only a single hit point. He did come with decent armor and a crossbow, however, so ideally he'll just... not get close enough to anything to get hit.

Rather than just having a fight with a mess of skeletons, these guys took a trip across some woods, where I picked a random encounter for them from the appropriate table included in the OSE rules tome.

The result? Giant Crab Spiders, which are described as ambush predators that blend in with their surroundings. Rolled for how many appear, and got two. They're a bit scarier than the skeletons from last time (more HP and a dangerous bite attack), but I figured I'd go ahead and see how things turn out...

So I plopped some plastic spiders from my bag o' bugs on the tops of two of the trees and then rolled to see if the spiders surprised the party, which was very likely due to their camouflage. But nope -- it was the other way around, actually! Wimp Lo and friends snuck upon the two spiders and spotted them up in the trees before the spiders were aware they were there.

Noticing the spiders perched in the trees ready for an ambush, Paunch fires at one... and misses by a mile, lodging one of his arrows in a tree instead. Wimp Lo and Pothead both have better aim, and the spiders (having taken a point or two of damage each) are now aware of their presence...

...Just in time for Squishy to finish casting his Sleep spell, succeeding in causing *one* of the spiders to abruptly doze off as if it hadn't just been lightly scraped by a crossbow bolt. Everyone readies their weapons and watches as the second spider comes scuttling down from the tree...

...and then rather than attacking, it immediately goes scurrying off away from them as fast as its eight legs can take it, disappearing into the woods! Since half of the spiders were incapacitated after the Sleep spell, I made a morale roll for the remaining one and it came up as a 12 -- the highest possible on a 2d6 roll. Anything above a 7 would've meant the spider would flee.

So... In a complete contrast to the run-in with the half dozen skeletons, everyone survived this time! Even the spiders!

Rolled to see if there was any random treasure left behind in the area (stuff previous victims of the spiders may have dropped), with no luck. Everyone now has 10 XP more after successfully disabling or scaring off the spiders, though, and Pothead is upgraded from level 0 classless minion to a level 1 fighter.

Well, that was definitely quicker than the last time, but still a lot of fun. It's interesting to see how drastically different things can end up from one game to another, even just playing the rules 100% as-written without even getting other people involved. After a few more of these for rules familiarity and just general practice, maybe I'll try to see if I can get actual other people to play with me sometime 😂

[deadpoolsmom]

as far as one piece antagonists go Crocodile truly gets absolutely scooby-doo’d at unmatched levels

He immediately falls for a phone scam and from basically little garden to rainbase he doesn’t even know the strawhats are alive (and clowning towards him at incredible speed). As soon as he does, they’re in his house tearing at his walls and bringing marines into his villain lair.

He uses a literal floor trap door over a gator pit to catch them, gets phone scammed again, full scooby-doo chase scenes after Chopper through the streets while still missing him, and suddenly his prisoners have escaped his impossible cage, and his giant bananagators are dead. and Nico Robin saw it all happen.

He then spends rest of the arc complaining about those meddling kids and their dog “strawhat pirates and their weird pet” and at no point does he even know how many strawhats there are.

Like yeah he keeps having plans on top of plans to stop everything Vivi can do but also she keeps coming up with a new thing to do (Tom and Jerry ass dynamic).

Part of it is that he’s underestimating them and keeps grandstanding villain monologuing but also teens keep killing hundreds of his grand line bounty hunters and he straight up does not know what is happening.

Cause he IS trying to kill them he’s sending top assassins after them and ripping out luffy’s organs, the whole time he’s yelling HOW ARE YOU ALIVE?? DIE. as whack-a-mole Luffy keeps inventing new ways to hit him.

[glow-in-the-dark-death]

To Be Wooed

I blacked out and wrote this. This is so silly to me.

Enjoy!

Look Danny didn't mean to kill the Joker it was an honest mistake, he was still recovering from escaping the GIW and whatever they had used on him had still been in effect when he honest to Ancients ran into the fake clown.

Of course it doesn't look like an accident with how he left the Joker

But it was!

Really it really was!

Whatever the GIW did was out of his system, but that still left a very dead and coreless Joker.

Yeah...apparently Joker had a core, but not anymore because he ate it like it was pop rock candy, if the weird cousin spicy version of it. He still feels like he has some of it stuck in his teeth.

Anyways! Not the point!

Joker! Very dead at his feet, what is he supposed to do-

THUMP

Oh Ancients he's going to die again that's the Red Hood!

"Uh...I can explain, well not really. But it was an accident! I promise and-"

"You killed him?"

"I'm really sorry? He bumped into me, it was an accident I swear!"

"Go on a date with me."

WHa-what?! Did he just hear correctly why would he ask him out out of nowhere it made no sense and..oh.

Red Hood's been touched by Death not like him but enough to count, and enough to have some ghostly instincts.

Okay ghostly courting he can do that, he totally can, no sweat!

Shit who is he kidding he may have the instincts but he was never actually taught how he's supposed to use them or anything.

Well he's always been good at making it up as he goes, and at least his instincts will help push him in the right direction.

So he should just do what feels natural to him.

"Yes I'll go out with you. If I were to make jewelry and knives out of his bones would you accept them?"

"...For me to wear and use. Yes."

~

Danny freaking out about just killing and kinda eating someone: I'm in so much trouble!

Jason behind him fixing his appearance: "Well hello there handsome come by here often?"

~

Joker bumping into Danny: "ahAHA you will make a good experiment!"

Danny is high as a kite and getting the munchies: "I didn't know I could order food with my mind!"

Joker: "Whut-"

~

Jason seeing Danny absolutely wrecking Jokers shit: *Ghost Instincts Activated*

~

Jason falling fast for Danny without even knowing his name: "Can I pretty please kiss you?"

Danny realizing what's going on but still being clueless: "Does that mean you will accept these gifts made from Jokers bones?"

Jason's Ghost Instincts rising to a fever pitch: "I'm going to woo the fuck out of ya and then we'll get married then we'll fu-"

~

Danny's Ghostly Instincts being connected to his 'Protection' & Jason's to his 'Revenge' showing these kind of specific gestures towards them is incredibly romantic.

~

Jason and Danny's relationship basically:

~

~

~

#They're like Morticia & Gomez absolutely smitten for each other

#Jason brings a crying & beaten up GIW who has been stalking Danny

#Danny almost swooned

#They start flirting with each other while standing on top of the GIW dude

#Jason's goons are happy that their boss found 'The One' apparently but can they please stop eyefucking each other while they're there and-

~

Just an Idea

[soaked-doors]

pov the reaper that’s dragging away your boyfriends soul says something so freedomphobic you hit his corpse with the nika stare

[adanddavid]

This is the book that got me into D&D and TTPRGs.

115. Tom Moldvay - Dungeons & Dragons Basic Rules (1981)

So, in early 1981 we got a new version of the Basic Set which included character sheets, dice, rules and the B2: Keep on the Borderlands adventure module. I've covered Keep on the Borderlands before as it came out officially in 1979, so the only truly new thing in the set are the new Basic Rules. This rule book is basically an update of the 1977 J. Eric Holmes rules but there are some considerable changes.

One of the most immediately apparent changes is the fact that it's just a better and easier read. The rules are similar but better explained with more practical examples and some cool illustrations, also including a nice directory of monsters and magical items to be used in adventures spanning levels 1 to 3. One of the effects of this set, coming out. as it did, during the height of D&D fame, was to make Keep on the Borderlands one of the most popular of all adventure modules and certainly one of the most widely played. 

There is another major change for the game, however. While Holmes' version created a continuity between D&D and AD&D, telling players that when they "graduated" from third level they should look to AD&D rules to continue playing their characters, this version distances D&D from AD&D by directing players to the Expert Set of D&D therefore not directing players to the Advanced version at all. With this set D&D is now a completely distinct game from AD&D, which even if that was the official position by Gygax in the pages of Dragon magazine, for example, was not really the case in practice. Next up, we will look at that Expert Set that came out at the same time as this Basic one. 

[crumb-crumblet-s-crumbington]

shattered glass B-127

[bridgekc]

did anyone order a luffy mermaid au?

in this universe, he’s usually a person with legs cuz of the human-human fruit, but he also falls in the water all the goddamn time and reverts back to fish.

he still gets all weak in the water cuz of the devil fruit, so he’s kinda just a useless floppy fish sometimes 😅

[oldschoolfrp]

Zargon awaits beneath The Lost City -- Kevin Glint updates the look of a classic encounter from module B4, first drawn by Jim Holloway:

Quests from the Infinite Staircase (July 16, 2024) will include 5e conversions of 6 D&D/AD&D adventures from the 1980s:

B4: The Lost City by Tom Moldvay (1982, originally for Moldvay's version of Basic D&D)

UK4: When a Star Falls by Graeme Morris (1984, originally for AD&D)

UK1: Beyond the Crystal Cave by Dave J Brown, Tom Kirby, and Graeme Morris (1983, AD&D)

I3: Pharaoh by Tracy and Laura Hickman (1982, AD&D)

S4: The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth by Gary Gygax (1982, AD&D)

S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks by Gary Gygax (1980, AD&D)

[isjasz]

[Day 364]

O7 For day 364 I decided to throw in a bit more food into the wild as a treat /SILLY

Designs by @gingermaple once again :D

[destronlok]

Keep on the Borderlands (OSE) - Battle Report - Session 1

I have just finished my first session of Old School Essentials using the module - B2 Keep on the Borderlands. I want to post a summary of the session here so I can chronicle the adventure, in an attempt to help me remember what’s going on, reflect on it and learn from it.

This is probably going to be difficult to understand for those that have not either played or read the adventure. I probably have got things wrong as well, so go easy on me.

Character Creation:

I decided that I would go through the process with a player who hadn’t played in a while, but due to this and arrival times, everyone did character creation at different speeds and times. I also think I provided too much information to starting players. I didn’t need to give them the full details on every class, just a short summary. I also think I should have only given 1 summary sheet for each player, I feel making players share some information might have guided them if they were working together on character creation.

I only had time to grant 1 random rumour to a player before beginning. It referred to an area called “the northlands”. Since I did not use this terminology again, the player did not know what the rumour was about.

The process probably took longer than I thought, maybe 40-60 minutes for 4 players. The results were Dante the Cleric Theric the Thief Maximus the Fighter Cuicatl the Magic-User Since the module stated to give additional support to groups with only 3 players, I did not grant any additional items to the party. This I think was a mistake.

Initial Encounter & Town:

The party were on their way to town, I started the first combat encounter. The magic-user cast Sleep, which ended the combat a lot faster than I was predicting. I could not work out if sleep required a saving throw. The players recieved 30XP and and 55cp from this encounter. As well as 3 swords.

The players continued toward the town, and I told them about the basic services on offer. The cleric visited the chapel and was warned of the priest. The magic-user drank a few pints of ale and received additional rumours. One of them was blatantly false. At the time, I couldn’t work out how to convey it sounding true, especially when the player asked for more rumours.

The cleric and the fighter hired additional help from a magic-user and cleric.

These two NPCs were:

Farned of the Great Church, Cleric Glom the Mighty, Magic-User

I should have realised at this point that the party did not have enough fighters. I looked at their numbers and made the thief roll a reaction for the next NPC to hire, I also made the NPC ask for a large sum of money to be hired. In retrospect, I should have given the party more fighters for free. However, the high price for that one hireling (an Ogre called Borc) was explained later as being necessary to pay for the large amount of food an ogre requires.

The party booked a room for the night and rested so the magic-user could memorise spells.

The party embarked on their expedition without any additional purchasing of equipment.

Arriving at the Caves

The journey to the caves was not very eventful. I feel that the process should be expedited. Travelling in the area surrounding the keep is not interesting. There’s nothing that tells players to go off the road. But I did tell the players to find the caves by following the road, through one of the NPCs. I also used one of the NPCs to give the players the basic tips on starting in the caves of chaos (sticking to the starting areas).

Although the players couldn’t really tell the difference between each cave entrance. There was no info there to give them in the module, so I had to improvise. I’m going to add more of that next time. This was a problem as well when the players entered a cave of goblins. There were 3 passage ways, and I couldn’t work out how to distinguish them, and the rolls to listen for noises were bad.

The players encountered a group of 6 goblins, but the retainers were sent to the front lines. The combat was slow at first because we were learning, but it sped up.

I didn’t add much detail to the room though, so there wasn’t much to interact with. Next time I have to at least throw in a table and a few chairs.

The Battle

I feel like player facing rolls helped a lot with this encounter. It seemed to roll ok. However, the players had a lot of bad rolls and the goblins gained the upper hand. I had to consult the rules quite a bit for some things like morale. I also did make any loyalty checks for NPCs. Not sure I should have.

The goblins lost about half their forces, passed two morale checks and began to fight to the death. They killed Farned and Glom. Even with two of them remaining, Cuicatl also fell. I was not prepared to kill a character, but the players did help me and reminded that it had to be a possibility. Cuicatl fell without casting a single spell.

I did not inform the party of Glom’s spells or Farned’s oil and so they did not know to use those, and I did not make them use them, so that was definitely a huge mistake on my part.

After the battle, the party got 30XP and 17sp. Not nearly enough treasure to justify the deaths of their comrades.

The players returned to town and hired new NPCs at a cheapre rate. I rolled insane stats for a fighter which will join them. The player with the magic-user seemed ok and seemed somewhat excited to play the Ogre next time.

Summary

This is a wargame. Players need as much info as possible to succeed. 6 goblins was frightening and dangerous. I’ve got a whole host of improvements for next time, including increasing rewards, the chance of rewards, better telegraphing danger and other clues, as well as some other changes. I’ll definitely add more fighters in next time.

It was still kind of fun though. Characters died but players weren’t annoyed, and I don’t think anyone felt like I was being unfair in anyway, but I should have reminded the thief and magic-user of their abilities.

Until next time.

[shaneplays]

Chris Holmes has a unique historical perspective on fiction writer John Eric Holmes and Holmes Basic D&D, given that he’s JEH’s son. Chris is doing cool stuff in his own right, including his fantasy art and a day job where he gets to introduce kids to D&D. Chris’s posthumous RPG project with his father called Things Better Left Alone. How much did JEH make for creating the first D&D Basic edition? Chris and Shane have different approaches to playing with alignment. What is Chris’s favorite D&D edition (it’s a trick answer). Edgar Rice Burroughs. Send in the Pinkertons! Tarzan’s super power. Weresharks. Ask Cthulhu. Zombie movies, Rob Zombie, Dragula, and Sherlock Holmes.

[fnrrfygmschnish]

So, recently I've found myself watching a lot of YouTube videos of random people talking about various versions of D&D and related games, and though I've never actually played anything it's been pretty interesting.

I ended up ordering this book, and it showed up at the post office this week!

It's essentially the same rules as a version of "basic D&D" (as opposed to Advanced D&D, because for weird legal reasons they had to have two separate D&D product lines back then) that was going around in the early 80s, but with certain names changed to avoid legal trouble (you can't call your floating eyeball monster a Beholder or use the term "Dungeon Master," or they'll sue you.)

After reading through a bit, I decided to poke around with character creation a bit and then did a bit of a "test run" of the combat rules. So here's our party, as represented by random toys I had lying around...

Stomptoitles the cleric, who was so broke that he had to choose between armor and a holy symbol; ended up going with the armor because it was somewhat unclear exactly what the holy symbol was used for and I figured it was only needed for casting spells -- which clerics in this version don't get until level 2!

Wimp Lo the thief. We trained him wrong on purpose, as a joke! He started out broke too, but thankfully the ammo for his sling was just random rocks he found on the ground.

Jason Wideman the fighter, who was very unlucky with his HP roll (ending up with only 3 HP), but much luckier with his starting money roll (he could afford plate mail *and* a shield on top of various other starting stuff.) He was also terribly unlucky with his to-hit rolls, which I took as his not terribly smart self (int 9 and wis 7) taking a while to realize that sticking a spear between a skeleton's ribs only works if they *have* anything between their ribs.

And Neen Jah the magic-user, who looks like a ninja because it turned out I didn't really have any figurines who looked even vaguely wizard-y. Just for fun, I rolled his starting spell randomly rather than picking Magic Missile or something -- and ended up with "Read Languages" which was, of course, not useful in a fight. So I had him use some of his nicely sized pile of starting gold to buy a tinderbox and a bunch of flasks of oil and "cast" Molotov Cocktail instead.

I had them come across a group of skeletons (some of which look like mummies because it turned out I only had two of these dollar store skeletons and one didn't want to stand up on its own.) I rolled randomly to see how many and got six, which seemed like a bit much -- so I had them show up in two waves. Once they had taken care of three, two more appeared from around a corner!

Poor ol' Stomptoitles forgot he had the power to "Turn Undead," and got killed in one hit (the sword wielding skeleton slashed him for 5 damage, and he only had 4 HP.)

Neen Jah, lacking a usable spell and not wanting to get up close, chucked holy water (which missed) and then a couple flasks of burning oil (one of which hit, and the damage from the lingering fire destroyed that skeleton the next turn), but got unlucky when the last two arrived -- his last oil flask missed, then one ran up and killed him.

Jason fought a group of them up close pretty much the whole time, with his armor ensuring that they almost never hit him -- he only actually got hit twice despite being the focus of 2-3 skeletons pretty much the whole time. Plate mail and a shield together feels *really* strong, which seems appropriate. Eventually he was beaten, thanks to his unfortunately low HP and a lucky roll from one of the last two skeletons, but it took a while and he finished off a couple skeletons pretty much singlehandedly.

Wimp Lo got hit once early on and then immediately ran 50 feet away to snipe at them with sling-stones from a safe distance... but because we trained him wrong on purpose as a joke, he kept rolling 1s and 2s. When he did hit, though, those rocks did the job pretty well! He took out more skeletons than anyone else and in the end was the only survivor.

Some thoughts on things that stood out to me: plate mail and ranged weapons both feel really strong, which seems fitting for the whole medieval fantasy concept. I noticed that I started coming up with more description of what was happening over time -- how when a skeleton rolled a 5 it just missed its target entirely, while an 8 meant the attack bounced off Jason's armor and a 15 was close enough that it had to be actively blocked with his shield. Character HP being a die roll at level 1 leads to very fragile characters so I can definitely see why more recent versions let you go with the max possible HP at level 1 and only rolling dice for it after that. The idea of the wizard throwing Molotov cocktails for lack of an attacking spell was a lot of fun and more than makes up for the fact that you only get a single use of one spell at 1st level.

It was a pretty neat first experience with the game, and basically my first experience with *any* game along these lines. Despite the lack of... y'know... other people to play with. Maybe someday!

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 271

“Grandmother is visiting,” Damian suddenly said with no warning and with his usual not-quite demanding tone. 

“Who?” Tim wasn’t the only one to startle, seeing as Bruce had practically froze, a downturn to his lips in a silent show of confusion. 

Damian scowled. “Are you deaf Drake? Grandmother is coming to Gotham to, quote, make sure I am being properly cared for.” None of them had known that Ras was with anyone actually. At least Tim was pretty sure that would have been in the files. 

“Oh?” Dick didn’t quite crouch to Damian’s height but it was a near thing. “She-” “He,” Damian corrected, interrupting him. They all exchanged a glance before Dick continued. 

“Is he coming to the Manor or…” 

Damian scoffed again, a tiny bit of a flush against his face. “No, Grandmother will most likely be staying with Akhi-”

Now wait one moment-

“YOU HAVE ANOTHER BROTHER?!”