25 Years Ago...

It's the end of August, and there are two more Map-a-Week offerings to look at. The first is a 60-line Legend to mark out the contents of a map, and the second is a map of several sets of Ruins . There are only 54 numbered locations on this map, though. Now, the ruins can be linked together if you so desire; there are connection points that could, with some minor effort, be used to travel from one map to the next. There are also stairs on each map, but unless you're linking them all with a single spiral staircase, you won't be able to use the stairs to connect all the maps; there's only one staircase per map. Each map has a minimum of two entry points that can lead outside or elsewhere in a ruined complex, so the maps can be used almost as geomorphs if you so desire. They don't line up perfectly, but it's easy enough to add a short corridor with a curve in it to fix those discrepancies. The five maps all suggest underground complexes; only the last one has no a...

So I had an idea about using the various Map-A-Week posts and giving them a purpose outside of just...well, being a map. So far we have two villages, a 'typical dwelling', and a city. A small city, but still a city. And there's more tomorrow. Therefore, it's time to put these maps to use and...start building something vaguely resembling a campaign setting. This is something I'll work on piecemeal between posts on the various products that come out. September is going to be a heavy month; there are eight separate products, including the Dungeon Master's Guide  to cover. But I can do one map at a time, I think, and have enough to do something interesting. So, we'll start with the first Village map, which I shall repost here: This map is identified as 'Village 1'. That's not much of a name, of course. Let's run up the trusty Fantasy Name Generator , and...Highwich sounds decent. It rolls off the tongue nicely, anyway. So, Highwich it is. Okay, s...

In the halcyon days of 2nd edition, the RPGA set their games in Ravens Bluff, a city of the Forgotten Realms. With the onset of 3rd edition, they are switching to Greyhawk, bringing back the original D&D fantasy realm (with Gary Gygax's full approval, of course). This opens up a much wider area for adventuring (a continent vs. a city), so any kind of adventure is possible. This is a very good idea, since not everyone wants to do urban-style adventuring all the time. The LGJ is intended to be an ongoing RPGA publication discussing the new setup for the Association's adventures and adding to the Greyhawk campaign for regular gamers as well. I'm not sure if this was available on store shelves or if it was strictly available to RPGA members at the time. But I did get a copy of it along with the Boxed Set, so let's see what we have. So, this is a 'sneak preview' issue, only 12 pages in length. It introduces the 'Living Greyhawk' setting, which is a shared...

Okay, I was going to do the other magazine next, but time is short tonight, so I'll make a quick entry instead. The official character sheets for 3rd edition are a bundle that include a generic sheet for any and all characters, as well as class-specific character sheets for the eleven character classes. It also includes a 'companion' sheet for a druid's animal companions. The sheets are very nice, and copies can be downloaded all over the internet. However, I got a partial package of the original sheets in my copy of the Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Game  boxed set. It's missing the generic sheet, and has about half the classes plus the companion sheet. The only issue I have with the sheets is that other than the generic sheet, there's no room for multiclassing on these. If you use the bard sheet, you'd better plan on staying a bard, or get ready to transfer your character to another sheet when you switch classes. So, the generic one sounds like the one ...

We continue our exploration of the first 3e Dragon Magazine with...a Random Adventure Generator. Well, we haven't seen one of those since the 1e DMG, so we're definitely going old-school here. But this is much different from the 1e version, which just let you randomly roll up a map of a dungeon and randomly stock it. This...this is the storyteller version of that. Instead of randomly determining where the PCs are going as they explore, this generator gets villains, victims, obstacles, rewards...as I said, it's telling a story in adventure form. So, not as old-school as I initially thought. Then we have the fiction. Dragon Magazine almost always included a short story of some sort, mostly by unknown (at the time) authors, but they had some big names show up as well such as Fritz Lieber and Gardner Fox, not to mention lots of Dragonlance stories over the years. This time around we have another big name in sci-fi/fantasy literature: Ben Bova. I'm not familiar with his work...

Okay, this is the transition issue for Dragon Magazine, where 2nd edition is officially dead and everything is 3rd edition now. This is very different from the transition between 1st and 2nd edition, where there was no defining point where you could say 'that was a 1e magazine, this is a 2e magazine'. When 2e began, it was around Dragon 142, but there were still 1e articles as late as Dragon 169, two years later. Now, the demarcation is crystal clear. So, what do we have in this magazine? Well, there's a lot of introduction to 3rd edition stuff in here, of course. There are also a couple of articles that really should have been included in the rulebooks because of how important they are. We get a Sage Advice column that answers a lot of questions about the new rules, a mini-campaign set in Sherwood Forest complete with legendary NPCs, some cartoons, some player and DM advice...and ads. Lots and lots and lots  of ads. I'm not going to go into detail on everything, but I...

  I know, I said I'd get to the first 3e Dragon Magazine, but there was a  family tragedy  last night, so I'm jumping to the first online adventure that WotC produced for 3e instead. But first, you'll note the map above, which is the latest Map-a-Week release,  City . It's a nice little map that has plenty of uses. So, when 3rd edition began, Wizards of the Coast produced a stack of adventures that were released online for free. The first of these came out concurrently with the new Player's Handbook . It is available  here , along with the accompanying map. These adventures are also available as downloadable PDFs from DriveThru RPG, if you are so inclined, for a nominal fee of $0.99 US. Alright, The Burning Plague is a short, 11-page adventure (plus map) for 1st-level characters that takes place in a small mining community named Duvik's Pass. The wells are poisoned and the crops are blighted, and many of the people are falling sick and are near death. The party ...

Okay, this probably should have been reviewed first before the Player's Handbook , but it didn't arrive in the mail until after I'd already started the PH  review, so here we are. This is the 3rd edition equivalent (or closest possible approximation) of the old Mentzer Red Box for BECMI D&D that came out in 1983. It's a stripped-down version of the rules that focuses on simplifying the rules for beginning players. There's no character creation; you have eight pre-rolled characters to choose from, and that's it. Four of them are iconics: Tordek, Mialee, Jozan, and Lidda. The other four are new, being Redgar the human fighter, Naull, the human wizard, Eberk, the dwarf cleric, and Kerwyn, the human rogue. The box I bought didn't come with dice, but everything else was included, as well as some extras: I mentioned receiving a partial set of character sheets as well as a complete DM's screen. I also got some extra stuff from the 2004 version of this box, ...

As we wrap up the 3e Player's Handbook , there are a few bits and pieces to go over. First of all, the Appendix explains rounding, which basically boils down to fractions always rounding down except for damage and hit points that always have a minimum of 1 point. Then we get the rules for multipliers. It's a bit more complicated; a single multiplier (x2) is applied as usual. But if there is an additional multiplier, the second multiplier (and subsequent ones) are added to the first at a value of one less on the multiplier. So a x3 multiplier combined with a x2 multiplier would end up being x4 (x3+(2-1)). Next up, something new for D&D  rulebooks: A glossary! That's right, an eight-page glossary covering all the important terms. Earlier editions never had a glossary, although quite a few rulebooks did (including Champions  1st edition, which I am currently blogging about in a Let's Read on my Sprigg's Scribblings blog). You know what else they didn't have in...

So, Chapter 11 is the list of spells. Actually, it starts with the lists of spells by class. Every class gets its own spell list (sorcerers and wizards share the same list, though). So, bards no longer use the same spell list as wizards did in 2nd edition, and paladins don't leech off the cleric list anymore. This is a very good change, since it never seemed appropriate to have bards flinging fireballs . The list includes a very brief (usually single-line) description of the spell's effect, which is nice to have handy. Bards have up to 6th-level spells; paladins and rangers have up to 4th; clerics, druids, and sorcerers/wizards have up to 9th level. The bard spells are more along the lines of enchantments and sound-related spells, which makes sense considering they're bards. One very interesting addition: Bards get healing spells now. Not a lot, but still, it's quite the change. Paladin spells are more martial in nature, rangers are more wilderness-warrior focused. The ...

So the next two chapters are really short in comparison, so I'm going to cover them both in today's post. I'm running out of August, and there are still a few things to post about other than the PH, so I want to get through this a bit faster. Chapter 9 covers the basics of Adventuring, starting with carrying capacity (aka encumbrance for the old-school players). The new system is pretty straightforward; everything you carry or wear has a weight value, so you simply add them all up and compare the total to your Strength score on the Carrying Capacity table. For example, if your total weight carried is 46 pounds, and you've got a Strength of 14, that would qualify as a 'light load', meaning you can move at your full movement rate in a round. That same 46-pound load on a Strength of 10 would be a 'medium load', which not only slows you down a bit, but like armor, can affect your maximum Dex bonus and your penalty to certain skills. So, this system is defini...

Now that we've got all that cumbersome 'character creation' stuff out of the way, let's get to everyone's favorite part of the game: Combat! This is a meaty chapter, with a bunch of new information that threw off 2e players, but it's a workable system (seeing as it's been in use now for a quarter-century with endless variants). Let's see what we have. The chapter starts with what is basically a combat example using the characters from the NPC closeup archive that I mentioned in the Countdown articles: Tordek the dwarf fighter, Jozan the human cleric, Mialee the elf wizard, Lidda the halfling rogue. They're facing off against an equal number of orcs. The example runs through the various things characters can do in combat, and the elf nearly dies in the process. It's a quick fight that lasts four rounds and results in one surviving orc escaping as the party tends to the fallen elf. Pretty straightforward stuff. There's a page that covers 'C...

You know, I wanted to put some art on this post, so I did a Google Images search for 'half-orc ranger'. Do you know what I found? Tons and tons of half-orc rangers, all of them wielding SWORDS and BOWS. But I did find one picture that at least came close. Okay, it's supposed to be a barbarian; he's got a huge two-handed axe, his armor isn't quite right, and those are probably arrows sticking up over his back...but at least he's got axes. The wolf is artistic license, I suppose. I'll take it. And credit to  Miles Loth, the artist . Way more talented than I am. So, here is Relgar Bloodhawk, the half-orc ranger. Race: Half-Orc Class: Ranger Level: 1 Age: 18 Height: 6'1" Weight: 190 lbs. Alignment: Chaotic Good Deity: Obad-Hai Strength: 18 (+4) Dexterity: 11 Constitution: 15 (+2) Intelligence: 12 (+1) Wisdom: 14 (+2) Charisma: 7 (-2) Armor Class: 13 Hit Points: 12 Fort: +4 Ref: +0 Will: +2 Speed: 30 ft. BAB (melee): +1 BAB (ranged): +0 Initiative: +0 Fe...

First of all, I need to interrupt this read-through of the 3rd edition Player's Handbook  to mention an online release that happened exactly 25 years ago today (see why I named the blog that way?): The next Map-A-Week  for August 17, 'Typical Dwelling'. So, that's a thing that happened. And here it is, in miniature: I also received a package in the mail from Noble Knight Games that contained the stuff I needed from August 2000's D&D released, namely the next Dragon magazine and Living Greyhawk Journal #0, as well as Dragon 272 (the one with the big dragons). I also bought the original Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Game  boxed set that was released that month, an intro to the game for beginning players. I will be reviewing it after I do the PH . But I was surprised to find that inside of it was not only all the material from the original box sans dice, including the mail-in cards for Dragon magazine subscription, but it also had an intact Dungeon Master's ...