Wait til I talk about house rules.

Call me crazy, but I'd like to lock myself in a room for a week and rearrange the contents of the DMG and PHB. Especially crazy since my layout experience is limited to many years of cursing at Microsoft Word.

Anyway, here's my first stab at rearranging the contents of the DMG and moving sections elsewhere.

Dungeon Hack Rules Review

Firing in the Melee

By the book, you would roll semi-randomly based on relative size and numbers before the "to hit" roll is made. ("The minor difference represents the fact that there will be considerable shifting and maneuvering during combat which will tend to expose both opponents to fire on a near equal basis.") I don't know if it's worth the continual effort, though I think we've found how advantageous missile fire is when playing by the book. I wouldn't be opposed to make that semi-random determination only if the shooter misses the "to hit" roll for the intended target.

Spellbooks

We assume every magic-user starts with a standard spell book. A travelling spell book costs 500 gold pieces for materials, and five of them can fit in a backpack. I think the spellbook "capacity" as listed in Unearthed Arcana is a little harsh. We'll worry about it when people start accumulating 40 or 50 spells. The primary reason to have a travelling spell book is so that you don't lose your only copy of your spells. NOTE: It does cost 100 gp per level for each spell to record a spell in your spellbook.

Training (since people are slowing approaching 2nd level)

p86 of the DMG has (as I'm sure you're shocked to discover) a pretty extensive system for the cost and time of training. While I think the concept has merit, I don't think we want the *average* 1st level character to disappear for training for 3 weeks at a cost of 4500gp to reach 2nd level.

Here's my suggested compromise, which I've used in past AD&D campaigns: Upon gaining sufficient XP, you get the new hit points immediately. Training is required for improved saves, to hit, class abilities and must be done by an NPC of the desired level or higher (until name level). This process takes 1 week and at a cost of 1000gp of pre-advancement level. Service, oaths, quests, loans, and trades of magic items can all reduce or eliminate the training fee.

Deity list (for Mark)

• Hanalla - light, hierarchy, pride, political power
• Thumis - wisdom & education. Scholastic, fussy and over-precise, well meaning old duffers.
• Belkanu - the afterlife and other planes.
• Avanthay (f)- the elements, fertility, harvests etc.
• Karakan - Glorious War, honour, violence in the cause of the state.
• Haru - darkness, chance and mystery.
• Kasarul - knowledge, secrets, and magic.
• Sarku - Death, or more precisely Undeath and Immortality.
• Dalamelish (f) - beauty, enjoyment and pleasures of all kinds.
• Vimula - Violence and burning things.

Shields

• A small shield can be counted against only one attack per melee round.
• A normal-sized shield can effectively be counted against two attacks per melee round.
• A large shield is counted against up to three attacks per melee round.
• Attacks from the right flank and rear always negate the advantage of the shield.

Tim Kask Method of Rules Adjudication

Try following this step-by-step procedure to resolve situations not covered by the rules:

1. Make something up.

Bugbears are silent?

Listening at Doors, from the DMG

Race Of Listener Chance Of Hearing Noise

Dwarf 2 in 20 (10%)

Elf 3 in 20 (15%)

Gnome 4 in 20 (20%)

Half-Elf 2 in 20 (10%)

Halfling 3 in 20 (15%)

Half-Orc 3 in 20 (15%)

Human 2 in 20 (10%)

Once you add in the racial modifiers, these are the same percentages as a 1st or 2nd level thief.

OD&D Quote of the Day

"Anyone with a Wis of 4 is obviously Lawful, and probably a dwarf."

Dungeon Hack Rules Commentary

Dungeon Hack Scientists have found the OSRIC pdf to be reasonable sit in for an actual copy of the 1st Edition AD&D books. Tests have indicated that carrying an actual copy of the idol-cover Player's Handbook with you will improve you luck on saving throws. Unless stated otherwise, the OSRIC pdf and the Gygax PHB will be interchangeable. In the case of conflict, assume the PHB is authoritative until further clarification. To start things out, the following rule exceptions or clarifications will be in effect. Experimentation (and large quantities of caffeine) is essential to quality Dungeon Hacks, so these may change after group discussion. We'll try to keep the website up to date: http://sites.google.com/site/dungeonhack/ Again, some of these may be obvious to people who have recently reread the rules. Please reply with any questions and we'll update the list. * No weapon specialization. Alternate method may be used with group vote. No other Unearthed Arcana rules/races/classes are being used at onset. * In "the old days", we always played with double damage on a natural 20 to hit. I'll leave this up to group vote. * Demihumans will be limited in levels as shown on pg14 of the PHB. Ignore footnotes - ability scores do not matter. * Magic-Users being with a standard spellbook containing "Read Magic" and three other 1st level spells from the PHB. * Magic-Users will be required to roll to learn new spells (pretty much by the book). * We'll be using spell components to some extent. If the component is rare, expensive, or has a listed GP cost, assume you'll need it. This should minimize bookkeeping. Casters will be assumed to have reacquired more mundane component as a part of the living expenses. * You're unconscious at 0 HP, dead an -10, and heal 1 HP/day. * There is no need for training upon reaching 2nd level. We'll discuss a compromise if people approach 3rd level. * We'll be using the combat pretty much as written. It's explained clearly with excruciated detail to examples and exceptions here: http://www.dragonsfoot.org/php4/archive.php?sectioninit=FE&fileid=263&watchfile=0 - It's really not that bad, it just goes to crazy heights to resolve initiative ties (NFL playoff levels). We'll simplify things like surprise segments and weapon vs armor by group consensus after a few combats. * We'll be trying this system for encumbrance: http://sites.google.com/site/dungeonhack/rules/supplies-and-provisions (until people are trying to carry back four suits of plate mail from fallen foes I'm not concerned with counting every dagger and dart. What we want to simulate is the effect of limited food and light resources, and limits on the ability to fight/flee while carrying a dragon's horde worth of coins)

Another Reason for Demihuman Level Limits

Quoth TheDungeonDelver on Dragonsfoot:

"There's this guy who used to post on a message board I frequent. He went by the nickname of 'Halaster Blackcloak' and it pisses him off to no end that anyone uses level limits. That's why they're in effect in my game."

A Short List of Setting Assumptions

From rpg.net:

A short list of setting assumptions that make D&D work:

1) Adventuring is very, very deadly. Most adventurers fall down holes and die.
2) Mages are rare and secretive. They do not integrate into legitimate power structures; rather they hoard their knowledge from rivals and from a fearful world. The world that had mages mass-conjure and mass enchant now lies in ruins. people loot its' remains, usually dying in the process
3) Peasant is not the default origin. It is younger noble with no inheritance.
4)You are not buying and selling at village smithies. You flog to travelling merchants, nobles, wealthy collectors, wizards and barons.

The Future is Awesome

From a Planet Algol session: "The party accepts a commission from the proprietor of the Lamia's Breath Intoxicating Vapour Lounge in Agog city to recover a runaway synthetic prostitute from a do-gooder hero, Gan-ron the silver man.Their reward for returning the synthetic being 250 gold credits value of Gamma Orichalcum, a soft, highly reactive, radioactive metal that is also a potent hallucinogenic stimulant."

Also, the referee in Mutant Future games is called "Mutant Lord". This may be my new dungeon master title.

An old schooler's take on Dragonlance

There is many things I like with DL:
-- An intolerant order of sorcerers who hunt down all MU who don't want to join and obey.
-- The three orders of knighthood.
-- Draconians.
-- The post-apocalyptic fantasy feel.

There is likewise many things I don't like:
-- Ansalon is too small for my taste (but relatively easy to double all distances)
-- I hate Kenders and Tinker gnomes, I really hate them.
-- I dislike minotaurs and would replace them with Greyhawk's Scarlet Brotherhood.
-- I dislike the timeline after the war of the lance (easily discarded)
-- I dislike priests have no spells during the war of the lance. (Nonetheless, also easily houseruled: priests of ancient deities would have been specialty priests ala 2e, but don't exist anymore. However, druids and clerics are available as PCs, though rare as NPCs; clerics would be akin to later 3e DL mystics.)

Last: I would have the half-orc race being hobgoblins instead, and playable as such in the setting.

Enjoy it. I may never laud Dragonlance again.

Draconians > Dragonborn

Mapping Tools

Classic Blue Tile Set

Dungeoncrafter

Crazy Old Men

There are a lot of rules like this in OD&D that are seemingly random and don't make much sense. The problem, I think, is that the majority of D&D gamers don't play the game in the same way that Gary did. The newer players were using D&D to simulate grand fantasy and heroic questing rather than the looting of ancient ruins. So, a lot of rules got lost in translation, because they didn't make sense with what people were doing with D&D. Played closer to Gary's vision, they seem a lot more sensible.

Nathan P. Mahney - Save or Die!

Cutting Corners for Hirelings and Henchmen

LabLord Creator and Record Sheet

We didn't even name our characters until they reached 2nd level.

The DM at the blackboard was Corbin. Take away his glasses and shoes and he looked exactly like the centaur from the cover of the original Monster Manual. Corbin would stand in front of a blackboard like a professor and run enormous dungeon crawls with 15 or 20 players at a time. A few of the players had high-level characters (as in, level 5 or so). The rest of us played 1st- and 2nd-level henchmen -- NPCs, essentially -- and we died like flies. We didn't even name our characters until they reached 2nd level. It was nothing to burn through two or three characters in an afternoon. Your goal was to live long enough to become a real member of the adventuring party and not just another nameless corpse on the heap. The only characters who got respect from the higher-level PCs were clerics. As long as you had a healing spell, you were useful. Otherwise, there was no pity in Corbin's dungeons. Low-level characters were there to open doors, peek around corners, and walk down corridors ahead of the heroes, poking everything within reach with a 10-foot pole.

- Steve Winter, Editor for the AD&D 2nd on his first D&D campaign.

Shields.

FACT: Shields are undervalued.

Differences between 1st & 2nd Edition AD&D

Difference between 1E & 2E

But, here's the thing. I dig 4E & always felt that 3.x was more Rolemaster than D&D. I missed OD&D, AD&D 1E, BECMI, B/X all of that. C&C is cool, but misses the mark for me. I used to vehemently disagree with ANYONE who felt that Feats & Powers stifle roleplaying. But I dont now. Its not intended in design, but if you make a Feat, to balance you can't let someone narrate that effect. Its not fair to the person who took the feat. And Powers, IMHO are cool & flashy, but instead of focusing on doing cool stuff our group just resource manages our abilities. Now we're all spellcasters. The ideal thing is that we can choose all these different rules that are, originated from, or were inspired by these different editions of D&D or Chainmail. So, our group has played 4E for awhile now & we're looking at trying something less constrained, in our humble opinion. We want to let our imaginations, not Feats or Powers guide our fates. I think 4E is whats best to bring younger players in. Its slick & has terms they understand. I'm apparently a newly formed grognard, because I want to say "I'm doing X." And my DM can say well then add your Level or don't add your Level & let's see what happens, not look over my sheet for the Feat it requires or see which Power to use next.

On rpg.net, regarding "AD&D 3rd Edition"

Mind = Blown

Go suck on your THAC0

Thieves and Traps

"One of the interesting peculiarities about the Supplement I (and Holmes) thief class is that, while it possesses a "remove traps" ability, it does not possess a "find traps" ability, which wasn't introduced until the AD&D Players Handbook and also adopted by the Moldvay rules. (As an aside, it's worth noting that the Cook/Marsh Expert Rulebook lists only "remove traps" as a thief ability on its class tables, although one presumes this is just an editorial glitch). I surmise that the thief lacked an explicit "find traps" ability, since it was simply assumed they had the same chance to find them while searching as any other character class (1 in 6). Thus, thieves were adept only at overcoming traps once found but lacked any special skill in finding them."

From Grognardia

Old School Maps with Excel

http://www.gnomestew.com/tools-for-gms/mapping-for-the-rest-of-us

Initiative and Movement

"In a nutshell, it's an approach that uses variable action speed combined with a cyclic initiative queue to serve as a "positioning" mechanic; i.e., instead of depending on your position on a battlemat, the tactical subsystems are designed to depend on your position in the queue. Most of your options revolve around fiddling with the initiative order; for example, instead of having effects that slide your opponent around the battlefield, you have effects that mess with their position in the queue, generally to their detriment. This is how most turn-based CRPGs out of the last fifteen years have handled tactical positioning."

Consider this stolen for d20Shawn 6th Edition

From Dwimmermount:

"I'll also note that the "Dave Arneson rule" for converting gold into XP is working beautifully. I only give XP on treasure that is spent. This means that every time they find gold or gems or whatever in the dungeon, they have to use it to buy things for themselves, whether they be scrolls, new gear, hirelings, or just a night out on the town if they want to gain experience points from them. This has served two purposes: 1) They must return to Adamas if they want to spend big sums of money and 2) They are perpetually poor. I am very satisfied with this, as I am with the campaign in general -- an excellent session overall."

Sayeth Old Geezer:

"Back in Brown Box OD&D, you NEEDED henchmen.

Thus, Charisma was VITAL, not a dump stat.

This is a case of the game being played WAY differently from how it was conceived."

Vecna = Vance

In games of Dying Earth, (player character)magicians must resist their Arrogance attribute in order to share spells with other magicians.

"Without the DMG, you're also missing the incredibly important Treasure Parcel table. The game kinda breaks without it."

"Well, not a Rolemaster level chart, but yes, a chart. Basically, you have the AC numbers running along the top and the various weapons running down as the column. When attacking, you find the row with the appropriate weapon, then run across to the AC number and that shows you what you need to roll to hit. Thus, swords work really well against unarmoured folks, but not well at all against plate mail. A mace, OTOH, is the reverse."

-- Armor Class in "Spellcraft & Swordplay"

Awesome Ideas

At least we also get encouraged for giving out exp for Learning Experiences aka Bad Things such as being cursed (250 exp) and tripping a trap (50 exp). Reminiscent of the system in Tunnels & Trolls where you get points for a missed Saving Roll. You also get XP for casting spells (100 for a spell useful to the party in general like "Create Food & Water")

(from Arduin)

House Rule Inspiration

House Rules from Jeff

Skills System for Skill-less Editions

http://poleandrope.blogspot.com/2009/03/skill-less-skill-system.html

Dungeoncrawling in Tekumel

From Grognardi

In OD&D, one-quarter of all "magic items" consist of treasure maps. This percentage is reduced to one-tenth in AD&D, but that's still sizable. If you've ever wondered about the origin and purpose of the read languages spell, look no further than treasure maps: "the means by which directions and the like are read, particularly on treasure maps."

Compare to 4E.

"A cloak of elvenkind is of a plain neutral gray which is indistinguishable from any sort of ordinary cloak of the same color. However, when it is worn, with the hood drawn up around he head, it enables the wearer to be nearly invisible, for the cloak has chameleon-like powers. In the outdoors, the wearer of a cloak of elvenkind is almost totally invisible in natural surroundings, nearly so in other settings. Note that the wearer is easily seen if violently or hastily moving, regardless of the surroundings."

Caraousing Rules and Mishaps

Jeff Rient has some fun carousing rules. The full post includes more details, including a carousing mishaps table, but here's the basic mechanics.

From Jeff's gamblog: http://jrients.blogspot.com/2008/12/party-like-its-999.html

"At the beginning of a session if a PC is hanging around Ye Olde Village Inne with nothing better to do, they can roll 1d6 and spend 100gp times the roll on liquor and/or lechery. The character gains experience equal to the gold spent. The d6 x 100 standard applies to villages only. A PC could travel to a town or city and debauch much more efficiently. Towns are worth d8 x 150 gp/xp and cities d10 x 200. The city of Hautville is worth d12 x 250 owing to its extreme wickedness."

"The party ended up consisting of two fighters (Grognard Whiplash and Fergus Landry), two magic-users (Wheelz and Reginald Featherweight), a cleric (Deric Holyborn) and a dwarf (Fonkin Wurp). I thought that was a very reasonable mix of character types. It was just big enough that the two wizardly types could concentrate on mapping and holding the lantern, with only the occasional intervention to cast sleep or slay a fake dragon with a thrown dart."

From The Society of Torch, Pole and Rope post regarding terrible monsters.

http://poleandrope.blogspot.com/2009/02/ten-monsters-i-loathe.html

Eye of the Deep: “Hey Dave! What if a beholder got drunk and fucked a lobster?” “Sure. They didn’t seem to mind the armadillo with a propeller.” Not even an ecology by Ed Greenwood could save this mess. Let’s face it: Most of the aquatic D&D monsters just plain suck. Morkoth, I’m looking at you…

From Hong on rpg.net

"However, my impression is that old-skool gamers tend to see combat as something you engage in only in extremis, because it's dangerous -- someone could get killed waving those sharp sticks around, you know...(There's also an unstated assumption here, that M-Us should eventually have more raw power than fighters -- but again, raw power isn't so important in the old-skool way of things, because if you're doing it right then you can win without ever needing all that power.)

Contrast this to modern-day gaming, where you tend to get more focus on individual encounters as rewarding in their own right. Along with this, you get another unstated assumption that the default way of overcoming a challenge is to blast through it. This is a significant paradigm shift, from a dungeon being a series of obstacles that you avoid or surmount, to being a series of encounters that you defeat through force of arms -- IOW, violence has gone from being peripheral to the dungeoneering experience, to being central to it. Now things like encounter pacing and class balance become more important considerations, and people start taking seriously questions like "are we done for today"."

APPENDIX 0: ENCUMBRANCE OF STANDARD ITEMS

Item Encumbrance in gold pieces

Backpack 20
Belt 3
Belt pouch, large 10
small 5
Book, large metal‑bound 200
Boots, hard 60
soft 30
Bottles, flagons 60
Bow, composite long 80
composite short 50
long 100
short 50
Caltrop 50
Candle 5
Chest, large solid iron 1000-5000
small solid iron 200-500
small wooden 100-250
large wooden 500-1500
Clothes (1 set) 30
Cord, 10' 2
Crossbow, heavy 80
light 50
Crystal ball, base and wrapping 150
Flask, empty 7
full 20
Gem 1-5
Grapnel 100
Hand tool 10
Helm 45
Helm, great 100
Holy water, potion bottles 25
Horn 50
Jewelry, large 50
small 1-5
Lantern 60
Mirror 5
Musical instrument* 350
Pole, 10' 100
Purse 1
Quiver 30
Rations, iron 75
standard 200
Robe or cloak, folded 50
worn 25
Rod 60
Rope, 50' 75
Sack, large 20
small 5
Saddle, light horse 250
heavy horse 500
Saddlebag 150
Saddle blanket (pad) 20
Scroll case, bone or ivory 50
leather 25
Spike 10
Staff 100
Tapestry (very small to huge) 50-1000+
Tinderbox 2
Torch 25
Wand, bone or ivory case 60
box 80
leather case 30
Waterskin or wineskin, empty 5
full 50

This is the "to hit" chart from the 1st edition DMG. Comments to follow.

From rpg.net

"We had a nice old school moment in last night's 4e session. The party had advanced into the enemy king's bolthole cum treasure chamber, and killed the king; now they were going to get them some loot. One of the traps was a room full of mould that grew incredibly fast if fed on magical energy and emitted hallucinogenic spores. The party retreated, and one of them sprayed the mould with lamp oil before igniting it with a burning rag thrown from a sling.

Leading to thick clouds of hallucinogenic poisonous smoke.

The party's response? "Ah, sod this, it's too dangerous. We'll come back when it's burned itself out." And they noted the place's location and moved on.

Old-school to me says 'problem solving not via skill checks and rules but via OOC ingenuity and use of resources'. It also says 'bastard DM piles complication upon deadly complication onto simple looking traps'. And finally, it says 'the dungeon is cautiously explored as opposed to brainlessly moving through from encounter to encounter while pinging Spot checks.'"

No Mercy

Small is Beautiful

I vote Taladas.

Old Aurim, once the seat of a vast empire, is only a narrow shattered strip covered in ash and lava. There was a time when it was larger, the greatest land of all Taladas. But that was before the stone
from the sky ripped the better part of the land away and threw up the towering mountains across the plains of Aurim. Ina single instant, the Empire of Aurim disappeared forever.

Taladas is still pretty cool

Always good to see some Taladas discussion. I, too, have really embraced the setting as the finest example of a Sword & Sorcery/Points of Light setting ever published by TSR (well, excluding the Conan RPG, of course). At the risk of incurring the wrath of the moderators, I have found it an excellent setting for the latest edition of the worlds's most popular roleplaying game, with only minimal tweaks to the existing races and classes. We have six characters: A Hoor Warlock follower of Usa the Mighty, an Auric Paladin of Reorx, an Uigan Ranger, a Minotaur Warlord from the League, an Auric Grey-Robed Wizard from the Academy, Initiate of the Graylord, and an Auric Fighter, a Legionnaire from Eragas. All started out in the outpost town of Brilmantir in the Steamwall Mountains, and have had run-ins with hulderfolk, hurdu, degenerate lizard-folk, and their Black Drgon "god", Maladraxus, ancient, pre-cataclysmic tombs and their guardians, horrid swamp-creatures, spawned by unknown chaotic energies, and a strange, bronze-coloured egg, inscribed with mysterious sigils, about to hatch...

Random Chargen.

My post to an interesting discussion, relevant to old school games.

Mass Combat Rules

http://www.farlandworld.com/battle.html

Mulligan Stones

http://www.rpgblog2.com/search?updated-max=2009-01-12T07:13:00-05:00&max-results=10

Mulligan Stones will again be used. They may be used to re-roll any player dice roll. Every character will start the game with one. They are handed out (sparingly) for good roleplaying, teamwork, great one-liners, fervent game participation, and general awesomeness. In a new twist, they may be used to add +5 to any one player roll (limit one Mulligan Stone per player roll). 

A player may use their Mulligan Stone on another player's roll, provided that other player agrees.

Mapmaking Links

Inkscape Tutorial

GIMP Tutorial

Fancier Tutorial

AutoRealm Tutorial

Simplified OSRIC Combat Sequence

http://www.philotomy.com/combat_sequence.html

Monsters and Organization

As has been stressed herein, you will find that it is necessary to assume the vorious 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.

It is necessary that you make a rule to decide what course of action the monsters will follow BEFORE the party states what they are going to do. This can be noted on the area key or jotted down on paper. Having such notes will save you from later arguments, as it is a simple matter to show disgruntled players these ”orders” when they express dissatisfaction with the results of such an encounter. The intelligence and wisdom of concerned monsters are principal determinants of their actions and/or reactions. Consider also cunning and instinct. It is also important to remember that lawful indicates an organized and ordered approach, while chaotic means a tendency towards random, individual action and disorganization; but these modifiers must also be judged in light of the monsters concerned, of course.

-DMG, pg 104

Graph/Hex Paper

http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/

More on mapmaking.

Planning the Campaign

• "two campaign articles in Dragons 63 and 65, and would advise anyone starting a new campaign to check them out: "Plan Before You Play" and "Law of the Land."
• two pieces of local info (rumours, legends) per character, written on index cards and randomly distributed.
• "The old man hadn’t said much about the job before he got himself killed, just that you were to conduct him to the town of Dressanthorpe and that you’d be payed the going wage for bodyguarding/escort work and, afterward, he’d tell you more if you wanted to brave a greater danger and reap a greater reward. Well, it turned out the journey was danger enough. The four bandits that attacked you were either desperate from hunger or too drunk to know better. It hadn’t taken long for you to subdue them when they burst, screaming, out of the brush along the side of the road. Unfortunately for the old man, one of them wasn’t too bad with his sling and got in a lucky shot before falling to your swords.
  
  It was bad enough the old man died just as you arrived at your destination. The fact that he obviously intended to cheat all of you just made it worse. The pouch he wore so prominently on his belt, the one he led you all to believe was full of gold, turned out to hold mostly copper; definitely not enough to pay you all off at the price he quoted. The sale of his clothes, weapons and other items had barely earned enough cash to buy you a night’s lodging and some warm food.
  
  But he hadn’t left you entirely empty handed. The hidden pocket he’d had sewn into his coat had been decent, but not good enough to escape detection during the close inspection you’d given him while looking for enough cash to fund your journey home. You hadn’t found any cash, just a letter on old, fading parchment. It was obvious that the letter was what brought the old man to this town on the edge of the kingdom, at the foothills of the Trollstep Mountains; and that his allusion to “greater risk for greater rewards” meant he’d planned to offer all of you a chance to seek the treasure described in the letter.
  
  And so, you find yourselves sitting around a scarred old table, in the darkest, remotest corner of Dressanthorpe’s only Inn staring at the letter, reading it over and over again, trying to decide between working your way back to more civilized lands as caravan drovers or bearers and heading up into the mountains to find a fortune."

Old School Primer: For Players

Tips for Players

1) View the entire area you’ve mapped out as the battleground; don’t plan on taking on

monsters in a single room. They may try to outflank you by running down corridors.

Establish rendezvous points where the party can fall back to a secure defensive position.

2) Scout ahead, and try to avoid wandering monsters which don’t carry much treasure.

You’re in the dungeon to find the treasure-rich lairs. Trying to kill every monster you

meet will weaken the party before you find the rich monsters.

3) Don’t assume you can defeat any monster you encounter.

4) Keep some sort of map, even if it’s just a flow chart. If you get lost, you can end up in

real trouble – especially in a dungeon where wandering monster rolls are made

frequently.

5) Ask lots of questions about what you see. Look up. Ask about unusual stonework.

Test floors before stepping.

6) Protect the magic-user. He’s your nuke.

7) Hire some cannon fodder. Don’t let the cannon fodder start to view you as a weak

source of treasure.

8) Spears can usually reach past your first rank of fighters, so a phalanx of hirelings

works well.

9) Check in with the grizzled one-armed guy in the tavern before each foray; he may have

suddenly remembered more details about the area.

Shawn's Sacred Cows

1. Ability Scores are rolled 3d6 each, in order. You can ditch the set and roll a new set if you don't like what you get.

2. Demihuman level limits. Multiclass if you want to keep up over the long haul.

3. Infravision, not nightvision.

4. Characters start at 1st level.

5. Dungeons mean: need light sources, need henchmen to carry light sources, having henchmen eaten by wandering monsters if you waste time.

6. You get XP for treasure.

7. No cavalier, barbarian or drow PCs.

8. Magic items should never be available for purchase. Except for potions and scrolls.

Clever HP rolling method

Summary:

When a monster is encountered roll the HD on the spot behind the gm screen. Use the dice as hp trackers.

http://odd74.proboards76.com/index.cgi?board=monterstreasure&action=display&thread=458

Original Dungeoncraft articles

http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/dnd/dungeoncraft/

Map Tool

http://www.members.tripod.com/rooksnest/academy/geography/geography.htm

We start with a quote

"I need to clarify, I game mostly because I never get to kill apemen in real life; I hate apemen and I was born to kill them. Therefore, gaming allows me to fufill my destiny."

Rock on. Today's Links.

Random Equipment

Blackmoor

Reference Sheets

Fuck yeah, spidergoats!

Mutant Future!

More links

http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/encounter-critical.htm

http://greyhawkgrognard.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2008-12-03T21%3A00%3A00-05%3A00

http://carcosa-geoffrey.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2008-12-06T23%3A15%3A00-07%3A00&max-results=7

http://shamsgrog.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2009-01-13T07%3A46%3A00-05%3A00&max-results=3

Goin' back to Cormyr.

Quote the poet: "Don't call it a comeback. I've been here for years."

Here are some links I'm accumulating. Organization will come.


http://forum.rpg.net/showpost.php?p=9837537&postcount=62

http://forum.rpg.net/showpost.php?p=9837745&postcount=66

http://www.swordsandwizardry.com/

http://www.lulu.com/content/3019374