A few months back, in Vaults of Pahvelorn, my character Eriara’s apprentice died. It was really too bad, he’d shown a great deal of promise (took out an entire flock of pegasi)! but ultimately succumbed to one of the most ancient sources of character death: a large rolling stone. We weren’t even able to recover his hat.

I told the mighty Brendan that Eriara would like to search for a new apprentice. As she’s only 12 herself, I noted that I’d very much prefer a young apprentice. Someone who wouldn’t have any problems taking orders from a child. Brendan did some rolling, and informed me that the only hireling available was an 86 year old man.

I was…annoyed.

I wasn’t upset or even really frustrated, mind you, but annoyed. I had gotten the exact opposite of what I wanted, and since magical healing in Pahvelorn has a small chance to age your character by 1 year, this 86 year old bastard may well die of old age. I understand that in this form of play, we give dice the power to tell us how the world exists. Sometimes it doesn’t exist in a way which is advantageous to us. I embrace that, but it doesn’t mean I’m always happy about what I get.

I took him, because he was the best I could get. I dubbed “Ginny Bo” because it sounded ridiculous and I wanted to make this imaginary person feel bad about being my only option. I didn’t train him as a magic user. I intended to use him merely as a torch bearer until we got back to our home town where I could search for a proper hireling. But then something started happening.

I don’t remember if it was Brendan, or I, or someone else who said it. But it was agreed that Ginny Bo had lived a long and boring life. That he regretted not being more adventurous in his youth. He had decided to jam all of the life he could manage into his last years. This was convenient for me, since I kinda wanted him to die. Using this as justification, I sent him into all manner of dangerous scrapes. And even though he was rarely effective, he somehow managed to end up alive at the end of every session. I began to inject more personality in the character for shits and giggles. Before I started to like him, the rest of the party already loved him. That proved infectious because soon enough, I loved him too.

His adventures at this point are too numerous to recount, but you’ll find hints of them in the ever-lengthening titles he’s given to himself: Ginny Bo of the Devil’s Helm. Wielder of the Black Sword Obynig, called “Butter Steel.” The Giantslayer. The sludgifier of the Great Worm.

All of that is my long, rambling way of leading up to my problem: morale checks. In OD&D, when a player character tells a hireling to do something which places them in particular danger, the GM makes a die roll to determine whether that hireling will obey, or flee. The mechanic is important, because it prevents the player from having a bunch of entirely expendable pawns they can order about without repercussions. But it doesn’t work for Ginny Bo.

The crazy things Ginny Bo does aren’t done because Eriara orders him to do them. He does these crazy things because he’s a glory hound eager to make his mark on the world before he dies. If he were ever to fail a morale check (which he hasn’t yet) and flee from danger, it would break the wonderful illusion of his character which has amused us all so very much. Yet as a GM myself, I wouldn’t ask Brendan to exempt Ginny Bo from the rules for role playing reasons. That’s just not how I like to play.

Fortunately, I came up with a better idea. Last week I got permission from Brendan to draft a random chart. One which will serve as an alternative to mere flight in the event that Ginny Bo ever does fail a morale check. The idea is that while Ginny Bo will never flee from danger, he might become so wrapped up in the adventure that he acts to the detriment of himself or the party.

Here is the chart, as I’ve drafted it. A 1d6 should be rolled in out-of-combat situations (such as dungeon exploration), whereas a 1d12 should be rolled in combat.

1. Ginny Bo begins to monologue. He rants about his greatness and his achievements.
2. He opens the nearest door and charges through it heedless of the danger, or charges deeper into the most dangerous looking part of the wilderness.
3. He attempts an overly complicated maneuver and throws out his back. For the next 3 turns he can’t do much more than walk around and carry a few things.
4. Ginny Bo realizes HE ought to be the party leader! He begins barking orders at the rest of the party. All of his ideas are terrible.
5. Falls asleep, probably standing up. He is very old, you know.
6. Regardless of any need for stealth, he shouts his name and attempts whatever task he was given recklessly. He will probably fail spectacularly.
7. Ginny Bo drops his weapon and headbutts the nearest enemy. (Probably while wearing the Devil Helm).
8. He puffs out his chest and taunts enemies. Possibly offering them a “free shot.”
9. Attempts to perform a Karate-Kid style leg sweep. There is absolutely no power behind it, and he looks like quite a fool impotently kicking at his opponent’s legs.*
10. Tries to twirl his weapons around in a fancy display of swordsmanship. Drops his weapon.
11. Tosses aside any armor which can be easily removed and declares “I can take ye’ naked!”
12. Attempts to tackle opponent and wrestle them on the floor. Regardless of the opponent’s size.

*This may or may not be based on an actual childhood experience.

The art in the DMG is pretty sparse…so here’s an amazing photo of Gary Gygax I pulled from the D&D Documentary.

This is the fourteenth installment of my continuing series on the 1979 Dungeon Master’s Guide, written by Gary Gygax. This post begins with the section “Monsters and Organization” on page 104, and continues through “Siege Engines and Devices of War Defensive Values” on page 110. My purpose is not to review the DMG, but to go through it as a modern gamer, learning about the roots of Dungeons and Dragons, and making note when I see something surprising or interesting, or something which could be adapted for a modern game.

You can read all posts in this series under the Gary Gygax’s DMG tag.

Monsters and Organization, Repetition: So, this is just kinda silly, but I thought this passage was odd:

“As has been stressed herein, you will find that it is necessary to assume the various roles and personae of all creatures not represented by players. This can be particularly difficult in combat situations. You must be able to quickly determine what the monsters involved will do in any given situation, and this can be particularly difficult in combat situations.”

Monsters and Organization, Make a Note: Gary writes that before the players announce their course of action, the GM should write down what the monsters will do. That way, when the players argue that the monsters seem overly-intuitive, the GM can show the note he or she made and prove the monsters decided on their actions before the players did.

I’m sure Gary found this useful, but it seems like strange advice to me. In all my years as a GM, I don’t think I’ve ever actually had a player argue with me. At least not very forcefully, and certainly not so frequently that I’ve needed to develop counter-measures for it. My general impression is that Gary liked to…’stress’ his players more than I do, so perhaps that was a factor. But ultimately, if I had a player who questioned my honesty so frequently that I needed to start using counter-measures to prove I wasn’t being unfair, then I would be fine telling them to leave my table.

Monsters and Organization, Six Examples: It’s been a lot of pages since I saw something this awesome. Modern DMGs need to include this information. It doesn’t even need to be updated, they can just copy it from the 1979 DMG, and past it un-edited into the new ones.

Gary goes through six different groups the players might attack, and provides two examples for how each might react; with the first being how they would react to the initial attack, and the second being how they would react to a second attack a week following. It’s one thing to say over-and-over again that the GM should control the monsters and NPCs intelligently, it’s a different thing entirely to have detailed examples for undead, giant ants, orcs, a small town, a bandit camp, and a fortress. I would honestly say I learned something from this section.

Use of Non-Human Troops: When I started reading the DMG, all I knew about it was that a lot of people consider it to be one of the most important RPG books ever written. A work so profoundly insightful and ahead of its time, that even modern works which attempt to build on its success have not made it irrelevant. A book which got it right, while so many modern books somehow get it wrong.

I’ve found this to be half true. Yes, much of the book is amazing and awesome. Often in these fourteen posts so far, I’ve written that some section or another ought to be included in modern RPG texts. In fact I wrote that just a moment ago, just scroll up to the previous section!

Unfortunately, for every great section like “Monsters and Organizations,” there’s a section like “Use of non-human troops,” which is gratuitously useless. The fact that the various fantasy races don’t get along with one another is well documented. There’s even a “Racial Preferences Table” in the Player’s Handbook, which is referenced here. I can see how that would be useful.

Do you know what isn’t useful?

The knowledge that a weak human leader with no officers to directly control troops will only have a 25% chance to control the actions of a group of Kobolds. But I can raise it to a 95% chance if the player is a strong leader, and I have plenty of officers.

Who cares? 

I suspect this subject (which seems to come up often) has a lot to do with Gygax’s roots as a wargamer.

Underground Construction: What did I JUST say?!

Constructions: Here, Gygax lists a number of building types, and their costs. He gets into detail like doors, arrow slits, etc. This level of detail does not interest me, nor can I really figure out how it should work in play. I can’t even imagine how long it would take to price out this kind of stuff.

Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen rules for crafting a stronghold which I actually liked. Does anyone know of an example? Or perhaps I should just craft my own.

Siege Engines and Devices of War: This seems really overly complex to me. This feels like it was written for a war game where siege weapons would be a major game element, rather than for a role playing game where (ostensibly) individual character actions would be the focus. There’s two full pages of rules for hit determination, attack values, defense values…I think it may be more complicated than AD&D’s actual combat system.

Image from the DMG. No artist identified.

This is the thirteenth installment of my continuing series on the 1979 Dungeon Master’s Guide, written by Gary Gygax. This post begins with the section “Non-Player Characters” on page 100, and continues through “Hiring Non-Player Characters to Cast Spells or Use Devices” on page 104. My purpose is not to review the DMG, but to go through it as a modern gamer, learning about the roots of Dungeons and Dragons, and making note when I see something surprising or interesting, or something which could be adapted for a modern game.

You can read all posts in this series under the Gary Gygax’s DMG tag. And yes, this is the second day I’ve posted one of these in a row. And nobody can stop me! Mwuahaha!

Personae of Non-Player Characters: Random charts to determine an NPC’s traits are nothing new. Though, I suppose they probably were new when this book was published. None the less, the concept is commonplace enough that I don’t really have anything to say about it.

The execution of this particular set of charts, however, is odd. Some of the charts seem to overlap each other (such as Alignment & Morality. More on that later), while others seem only marginally useful, such as “Energy” and “Thrift.” Why does every NPC need to be defined on a scale between “Slothful” and “Driven?” Despite these complaints, the charts are pretty good. I like the idea of rolling for an NPC’s level of bravery, or their level of honesty. I don’t recall seeing those on most NPC generation charts, and it seems like something I would use.

Reading this section gave me an idea I’ll need to play with at some point. The gist of it is a set of ‘tiered’ random charts for determining NPC traits. The first tier contains only the most vital information for generating a random NPC, such as their age, race, and profession. It’s small, and can be kept at the table to quickly come up with interesting characters. The second chart would be a little more detailed, and could be used if this particular NPC ended up sticking around for an entire game session or two. It would determine character traits which might not be immediately apparent, such as the character’s piety or knowledge. If the NPC became a long-term addition to the game world, a potential third chart could be used to give them some items of minutia (backstory, marital status, etc.) which the GM can use to keep the character interesting over time.

Morals:

“Morals refer to the sexual tendencies of the NPC, although this trait rating can be used with regard to some ethical questions.”

Um…WHAT!?

First, why is that a thing the GM needs to know? Second, why would this come up? Third, why is sexuality framed as morality? This bothers me a whole hell of a lot. Look at the possible options when rolling on the ‘morality’ table:

Morals (d12)
1. Aesthetic
2. Virtuous
3. Normal
4. Normal
5. lusty
6. lusty
7. lustful
8. immoral
9. amoral
10. perverted
11. sadistic
12. depraved

The progression is pretty clear: the more sex you have, the less moral you are. I’m just happy he didn’t go so far as to define what he meant by terms 8-12. I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t like knowing what G.G. thought of my sexuality.

Non-Player Character Encounter/Offer Reaction Adjustments: This is a good example of what I was referring to yesterday when I wrote that Gygax was a poor communicator. I honestly have no idea what anything in this section means. At all. There are some words, and some percentages which can either positively or negatively affect something based on aforementioned words…but that’s all I can gather.

Based on the title of the section, I imagine there’s a concept described either elsewhere in the DMG or in the PHB which I’m supposed to apply this section to. But that doesn’t really help me much.

Height and Weight Tables: Why not use the tables that were printed for player characters? Why did they need to be printed again? 0.o

Special Roles of the Dungeon Master: I don’t have a lot to say about this section, but I feel like I’ve been harshing on Gary a lot in these last two segments. So I want to point out that these ~1.5 pages are great. They cover their topic in detail, along with an example to help budding GMs understand how the directives presented here function in play. I particularly like the subsection on monsters, which demands that the GM always play the monsters intelligently. And demands it with no lack of emphasis, going so far as to say “In all cases, the DM is absolutely obligated to play the monster in question to the best of his or her ability.” The example of play demonstrating the difficulties a player might encounter when searching for an NPC wizard is also very well written, and pretty funny to boot.