25 Years Ago...

I lied; there's one more thing on the November list. There's no Map-a-Week for November 30th, but there was an undated file linked to the Arena from last week. This is the introduction to the D&D Fight Club . What is the D&D Fight Club, you ask? Well, apparently there's a rule about not talking about it, but I intend to break that rule quite thoroughly. From what I can see, there have been several articles on the Fight Club prior to this time, but they were not given proper dates, all being set for January 2nd, 2000. Obviously there was no 3rd edition yet except in the playtesting stage and the Countdown articles in Dragon, but these articles must have been coming out at least by August. Still, I've not discussed them yet because they are linked to the Arena map, which didn't arrive until last week. So, I'm going to include those creatures in the December writeups. So, what is this all about, then? Well, it's a way for a DM to set up a fighting tourn...

Okay, so there are a couple of things to get to in the online department before we call it for November. I received my December package today, so that will be fun to go through here. Before I go on, though, I want to thank everyone who has been reading this blog; some people are going all the way to the back, and I'm surprised that the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer  is so popular. Again, thank you; it's nice to know that this project is being seen. Alright, enough of that sentimentality stuff. Let's get to it. There are two more things that were posted in November on the WotC website, so let's go over them. Up first is a series of posts called Realms by Night. I really should have started going over this in August when the first 3e post on the topic went up on the site. But it predates 3rd edition anyway, being started in January as part of the 2nd edition wind-down. The entire series is available on the Forgotten Realms Helps website; the Internet Archive of the series ap...

Alright, let's continue with this and finish off the month's stuff with a bang. December will be much lighter than November, so I'll get to that campaign stuff I wanted to work on this month. But first... The next article in this issue is 'All Over the Map', which is a detailed explanation of how WotC prepares maps for their products (or for the Map-a-Week feature). Their goal for this edition was consistency; 2nd edition did have a lot of different mapping styles depending on the product line, so tightening things up and making a more focused template for mapping was apparently a priority for the design team. I'm fine with that. Their maps don't just include dungeon layouts and wilderness maps; they also include the various examples, combat diagrams and charts that pepper the rule books to illustrate things like cover, attacks of opportunity, and flanking. The design process is pretty well-described, but it's not going to be all that interesting for non...

So, for a few years in the late 90s, Dragon had been producing an additional issue each year, the Dragon Annual. This was the fifth one, and the first one for 3rd edition games. There's plenty here, so let's get right to it. Dave Gross starts us off with an editorial that talks about the new edition, of course. But the most interesting part of the editorial is the invitation for people to send in campaign descriptions of their ultimate fantasy realm that will surpass the Realms and Dragonlance as the Greatest D&D Setting Ever. Yes, they actually promised to read these brief descriptions, and they promised to actually print a brief article on the best one they received. Well, that's certainly incentive, isn't it? The thing I like about this issue is that they don't waste a lot of time on ads; they get straight to the first article on page 10. This is a series of tables to randomly generate the names of various businesses in town. This is a really good idea, becau...

This is the final Map-a-Week for November 2000; it's the Arena , another futuristic, Greyhawk 2000-style map. I don't really have anything to say about it, so I'll just leave it there.

So, this is the second of the 3rd edition Dungeon Magazine issues. This one definitely has a peculiar theme to it; nothing is quite what you would expect. I'm going to skip the letter column and editorial and get right to the adventures this time. The first adventure is called "Deep Freeze". This one is for 2nd-level characters, and is 'officially' set in the Theocracy of the Pale in Greyhawk, but it can easily be adapted to any campaign setting, such as the Forgotten Realms, Mystara, or Ravenloft. No, none of those have been adapted to 3rd edition at this point in time, but it's still possible. So, this is yet another 'find a missing person' adventure hook, and this one takes place in winter. There is an insane asylum up in the mountains where the missing people are supposed to have gone. When the party gets there, of course the guy in charge has no idea where they are. This is about as paint-by-numbers as you can get. The smarter play would have been...

Alright, we continue where we left off, in the Polyandrium, where the PCs are going to be entering into two unlooted crypts. The first is the Crypt of Rothilion, which is currently inhabited by a trapped creature thanks to all the wards and seals around the crypt. What sort of creature, you might ask? How about a mind flayer lich? Yeah, you're not fighting that thing. But all it's trying to do is escape, so once the lich realizes the party has broken the seals, it will attempt to get past the party and flee. Which sisgood, because I don't care how good you think you are, you're not going to defeat a CR 19 undead mind flayer with the powers of a 9th-level sorcerer. It's just not happening. So, let it run away and be thankful. Looting this crypt will give the party an important item, Rothilion's staff of justice , as well as the key to the next crypt, the Crypt of Orbakh. Orbakh's crypt has its own extra-special visitor, this one being a deepspawn that was bro...

Alright, boys and girls, children of all ages...let's take a look at what is basically a sequel adventure to the original Pool of Radiance  computer RPG from 1988. For those who don't know, that was the very first true D&D computer game. There had been plenty of other CRPGs before then, starting with the Ultima series, but Pool of Radiance was the first one that actually used authentic D&D rules. Or, at least, as close as we could get in those heady days when computers were still young and the Commodore 64 ruled the computer gaming world. Anyway, it's twelve years later in real time, and WotC put out the second Forgotten Realms product of the 3e era, which is a 96-page adventure starring the Cult of the Dragon, one of the Realms' big bad guy cults. Pools of radiance are, as the text explains, essentially raw pools of magic represented as water. they can be used for all kinds of effects, usually of a beneficial sort. However, the Cult of the Dragon is working on...

Okay, I am excited to have a physical copy of this one for a couple of reasons. First, it wasn't easy to get; it was sold out the first time I went looking for it, and I just happened to look at the right time. Second, it's actually got the poster map included! It's a map of the City of Greyhawk, which looks great. Very detailed, lots of marked buildings. Third...it's complete. I did have a PDF copy of this, but it was missing a page. So, I now have the proper and complete issue to work with. Hurray! The issue starts with some news on what's going on with Living Greyhawk. The Living Greyhawk Gazetteer  is, of course, available, and there are several scenarios available for different regions to get play really going. Oh, and there's an announcement that in January of next year WotC will be running an event at Winter Fantasy where they will be running a sequel to one of their classic modules: Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil . That's right, it's time...

The next article is 'How You Play the Game'. It's a player advice article about ways to keep the action moving. If you're a barbarian, don't sit around while the party meticulously examines every square inch of a room; just burst through the next door and let the dice fall where they may. DMs will like it because the action keeps moving, and hopefully the rest of the party will be okay with it, too. The idea, after all, is to play heroic characters, not, as they put it in the article, "the dungeoneering equivalent of forensic accountants". It's certainly a more exciting way to play, but it definitely has a different feel than the old-school style, where reckless play would almost certainly get you killed. 3rd edition characters are somewhat more durable than earlier editions, so this style can work here. Next is the monthly fiction story, "Another Name for Dawn" by Paul Kemp. It's set in the Forgotten Realms, in the city of Westgate. It...

Alright, let's get busy with Dragon #277. As you can see from the cover, this one is about futuristic fantasy, such as magical steampunk. There's plenty to go over, so let's not waste any time. We start off with ads, of course. Scale Mail is the first content we get, and I notice that there is a lot of commentary on the font choices for the new version of the magazine. Some of the things that irked me are getting other people just as irked. There's also stuff on the 'new' rules as the letters are now from people reading the Player's Handbook  and Dungeon Master's Guide . The Profiles article today is on an old-school editor, Kim Mohan. Kim was the editor of Dragon Magazine from issues 29 to 113, so 1979 to 1986. And there is an absolute ton  of great material in that run of Dragon, all of the D&D stuff of course for 1st edition (2nd edition wouldn't start until around issue 140) except for a smattering of BECMI material, plus tons of stuff for ot...

The Forge of Fury  is the second published adventure for 3rd edition, written by Richard Baker. It's for 3rd-level characters, who can probably get up to 5th level by the end of the adventure. It takes place in an old dwarven stronghold, which of course isn't inhabited by dwarves anymore. Shades of the Mines of Moria, wouldn't you agree? The adventure can be run as a straight treasure hunt; maybe the party found a map in the Sunless Citadel , for example. Or, a local lord hires the party to find the dwarven cache of magical weapons. Alternatively, the party can learn of the dungeon through a captured and charmed  orc prisoner that has been raiding the local area. The dungeon is set in the ruined stronghold of Khundrukar, built by the legendary dwarven smith Durgeddin the Black. There's some backstory included that the players can learn, but it's not essential; what matters is heading down into the dungeon to kill things and take their stuff, right? This adventure is...

Alright, this will finish off this volume, which took much longer than I had originally expected. And there's still a lot of stuff left to do, and only half a month left to cover it. So, let's go through the Greyhawk gods. One of the first things I noticed is that the gods are all listed alphabetically, full stop. It goes from Al'Akbar all the way to Zuoken. Why is this worth noticing? Because there's no separate pantheons; everyone is just lumped together. In the 1983 Greyhawk boxed set, the gods were listed with their racial affiliation so you could know that, for example, Kord and Wee Jas are Suel gods, while Heironeous and Pholtus are Oeridian. Some gods were held in common throughout the Flanaess, but you generally knew which racial group the gods focused their attention on. The way it's done here would be like if the Deities & Demigods  book lumped Horus, Kali, Thor and Zeus together without differentiating their cultural and racial backgrounds. I'm no...

Okay, we're in the home stretch, I think. Two more chapters to go. Tonight, it's the Power Groups in the Flanaess. We start with the most famous of these groups: The Circle of Eight. They get a column, which is a lot less than they got in the Living Greyhawk Journal #0  a couple of months ago. Since that was a much more thorough overview of the group, I'll send you there to refresh your memory. Next is the Horned Society. Unlike the Circle of Eight, these guys are not looking out for the interests of the Flanaess. Instead, they were basically a group of bandits that filled the void left when Iuz disappeared almost a century ago; when he returned, he wiped out the Hierarchs of the Horned Society and took over the country. Now, no one knows if they still exist at all, or if they might be an underground, hidden society like the Scarlet Brotherhood used to be, with agents hidden all over the Flanaess. It's left open-ended for the DM to figure out, which I approve of. The Kn...