White Dwarf Reflections #20

This issue Ian Livingstone wonders if anyone is really paying attention to their character’s alignment. Can a pack of murder hobos really claim they are Lawful Good in all honesty? Do any of them wonder about the alignment of the monsters they meet before wading into battle? Personally I still think the D&D alignment system is a good, broad starting point for building a characterisation (although only a starting point). It seems in 1980 people were thinking a little more about playing a character as much as a treasure gathering machine.

On the Cover​

The Interstellar Queen is dwarfed by the vast industrial complex starship in the depths of space (if you also read the old Terran Trade Authority Handbooks). This cover is the second one by Angus McKie, a regular contributor to the aforementioned TTA Books and one of the early artists to adopt computer aided design into his art. He would go on to develop several graphic novels with Dave Gibbons and Brian Talbot.

Features​

• Conversion (Roger Musson): This article does address an obvious omission in the abilities of Clerics, that of talking others into their ‘one true path’. While it’s a little unnecessary to have a whole rules set for this, and somewhat likely to cause arguments when a character’s alignment changes on a bad dice roll, it is not without risk to the Cleric. In later years this is the sort of thing we’d do with just role-play, but systems like this are how we reached those conversations.
• Dungeons and Dragoons (Phil Masters): A tour of the various types of troops found in the ancient world, from Assyrians to Romans, etc. While understandably brief to cover all the options it’s a great introduction to varying large ancient army cultures.
• Grakt’s Crag (Will Stephenson): An AD&D mini-module involving a trip into a tomb now occupied by an Ogre Mage. I’m not sure why the Ogre Mage chose to live there but he seems happy enough until the PCs turn up.
• Star Patrol (Andy Slack): A set of expanded career options for scout characters. While Scout characters are an option in the corebooks, this adds a great deal and I’d offer its essential detail.

Regulars​

• Character Conjuring: This issue the character class is The Alchemist. It’s a good reworking to offer potion makers as PCs although they don’t get to be very high level so don’t really work outside 1st edition. While the article doesn’t really suggest why such characters would go down dungeons it does offer some interesting options for creating a laboratory that are worth an article in their own right.
• Letters: Gone this month, the editor must need another break! But with all the new stuff something had to go.
• Molten Magic: Strangely two in a row, so its appearance may well depend on the size of the news section whose page it shares. New figures from mainly Ral Partha and a couple of Citadel and Asgard Miniatures.
• News: GDW continues to thoroughly support their Traveller line, and The Chaosium has a lot of Runequest waiting in the wings. TSR announces they are going to release the World of Greyhawk as a D&D campaign setting as well as a new hardback called Deities and Demigods (pick yours up quickly before the Melnibonean and Cthulhu Mythos are taken out). Games Workshop will be releasing four new board games we’ll see in adverts together for a long time: Warlock, Valley of the Four Winds, Doctor Who and Apocalypse. Games Day is also coming up in September. But the most interesting thing is the announcement that Yaquinto productions has got hold of the rights for the first ever licenced RPG: Dallas!
• Starbase: A new column by Bob McWilliams that will do for Traveller players what Treasure Chest does for D&D gamers. Finding a fitting place to begin, this issue it takes a look at starting a Traveller campaign.
• Treasure Chest: Keeping with the recent plan for a theme each issue, this article covers a variety of minor magical and not very magical items. Many are essential, but only in very specific situations (like Stirge repellent). There are thirteen in all so you will certainly find something useful here.

Fiend Factory​

A collection of new monsters created by readers. This issue they have a swamp theme, linking them into a short storyline which is a very good idea. There is also a competition to put stats and a culture to a series of five “Flymen” monsters pictured at the end:

• Cauldron Born (Tim Walters) Zombielike creatures born from an alchemical mix. Not too dangerous until one dies, and its hit dice and hit points are shared between the remaining ones. Could get very nasty very quickly.
• Creeper (John R Gordon) A paralysing mound plant creature with a nasty tentacle attack.
• Frog Folk (Phil Masters) A cruel and unpleasant community of humanoid frogmen who worship demonic gods.
• Melodemon (Michael Wilkinson) This crocodile headed serpent is actually a strangely charming singer, whose melodies can hypnotise and terrorise.
• Slime Beast (Dave Stapleton) A lump of sentient mud that can shift its consistency to immobile and very tough to runny but agile.
• Water Leaper (Roger E Moore) A froglike creature with limited flying ability who attacks fishermen after its eggs, which are a delicacy.

Open Box​

This month’s reviews are:

• The Awful Green Things from Outer Space, Board Game (TSR): This game has lasted for a while and will get a new edition as late as 2019. It is also passing through several hands, being a TSR product taken over by Steve Jackson games. It involves the crew of a spaceship trying to survive against the easily killed but quickly multiplying ‘green things’. Very silly and fun with a lot of craziness.
• Dark Nebula, Board/War Game (Games Designer’s Workshop): Yet another two person space battle game, but this time a follow up to the successful Imperium game set in the Traveller universe. In this game it is the Lion-like Aslan against the human Solomani.
• The Mystic Wood, Board Game (Philmar Ltd): From the same designer as Sorcerer’s Cave is a more quest-oriented version granting a bit more direction. Another of the great classics that will inspire things like Talisman. While it seems it won’t see many new editions (only Avalon Hill in 1982) it has several publishers, and may well have hit the high street as well as hobby stores.
• Traveller Supplements: Book 5 (High Guard), Supplement 3 (The Spinward Marches) & Supplement 4 (Citizens of the Imperium), RPG Supplements (Games Designer’s Workshop): This crop completes what we’ll later consider the full basic Traveller, with Mercenary and High Guard completing the rules and Spinward Marches detailing the setting. Pretty much from now on every Traveller supplement will insist you need Mercenary and High Guard to play! Having said that I can only be impressed as to how GDW is doing the release of these books, with both the right sort of thing coming out and the seemingly relentless pace of releases.

 

[Sossij]

Nice Chris Foss cover*

*pretty sure it's Chris Foss...

EDIT: It's actually Angus McKie. I knew I'd seen that weird swan-necked ship in a lot of books that also had Chris Foss stuff, but it's not his.

 

[sevenbastard]

I’m not sure why the Ogre Mage chose to live there but he seems happy enough until the PCs turn up.

You answered your own question earlier

Do any of them wonder about the alignment of the monsters they meet before wading into battle?

When you are a walking sack of XP best to lay low.

 

[Starmaster]

It' interesting that I still remember "Grakt's Crag" all these years later, even though it's probably been over 40 years since I looked through this issue. I got my first set of PHB/DMG/MM books May 1980, and I think I this may have been one of the first modules I ran for my players, but it's been so long ago, I'm not sure. I do remember all the weird scribblings (and magic mouth speech) throughout the tomb and how they sounded sort of like the scribbler's bad attempt at poetry.

 

[ilgatto]

I'll always have fond memories of Grakths Crag [sic], as it is the second published D&D adventure I ever played, back when everything was still shiny and new. Indeed, I still remember how we thought of the pudding in the shaft as "black mold" and how we - with our English lessons fresh behind us - just couldn't figure out what the word 'partaken' meant, not even after consulting a dictionary.
All in all, I think it is a neat little old-school adventure that hails from a time when many dungeons were also meant to challenge the players instead of just the PCs and it has some interesting puzzles in it to that effect - which will compel even experienced players to do some thinking in addition to their hackin' and slashin'. And I'd say that some minor work by the DM can easily remedy - perhaps even tone down a bit - its somewhat bizarre menagerie (and the bad poetry!). I mean, what are those thieves doing there?
In fact, I did so some time ago and then ran the adventure a couple of times for groups of longtime players - all of whom either didn't know of the adventure or had forgotten all about it. Must be an age thing.



And yes, that's Oceanus from U1!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

How many hit points are shared when a cauldron born dies? Its maximum hit points? The hit points it had left before the fatal blow? Is it just healing or can it effectively offer temporary hit points beyond the regular cap? (Temporary hit points weren't a thing in 1E, as I recall.)

It's a neat concept, but the devil is definitely in the details.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

The Interstellar Queen is dwarfed by the vast industrial complex starship in the depths of space (if you also read the old Terran Trade Authority Handbooks).

Yes, but people who've read Brian Stableford's Star Pilot Grainger/Hooded Swan series will recognize the "Queen" as the Hooded Swan herself, the "hero ship" of the series. That came first, and its repeat appearances as cover artwork explains why there were so many images to use in the later TTA books - as well as why it looks the way it does. It's not just a Concorde SST reference, and does look somewhat like a swan when you're looking for it.

The books are pretty good reads, FWIW.

But the most interesting thing is the announcement that Yaquinto productions has got hold of the rights for the first ever licenced RPG: Dallas!

That's definitely a mistake by White Dwarf. Dallas is infamous for being one of SPI's biggest flops and almost certainly fatal for the company, which would be gone soon after, absorbed by TSR. Yaquinto had nothing to do with it. It's also just the second licensed RPG after Heritage's old rules-light Star Trek game.

Nice Chris Foss cover*

*pretty sure it's Chris Foss...

EDIT: It's actually Angus McKie. I knew I'd seen that weird swan-necked ship in a lot of books that also had Chris Foss stuff, but it's not his.

Both of them appeared extensively in the Terran Trade Authority books, in part because they were very popular scifi novel cover artists so there was lots of material to work with.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

How many hit points are shared when a cauldron born dies? Its maximum hit points? The hit points it had left before the fatal blow? Is it just healing or can it effectively offer temporary hit points beyond the regular cap? (Temporary hit points weren't a thing in 1E, as I recall.)

It's a neat concept, but the devil is definitely in the details.

It's covered in the writeup. They start with HD equal to the number appearing-1 (so you'll never meet just one, NA is 3-6) and have this cute trick:

They have the following special ability: when one of their group dies, his original hit points and hit dice are divided up among the remaining cauldron-born. Any points and dice gained from the death of other cauldron-born would also be divided up. In addition to gaining hit dice, the armour class of all the remaining cauldron-born drops by one when one of them dies, and their move increases by 3”.

AC starts at 4, movement at 12. So you get the following possibilities:

3 appearing, each with 2HD and 2d8 hit points. Let's say for convenience thy have 8 hp each originally.

• First one dies, the two survivors each gain 4 hp, one HD each, and go to AC3 and Mv15.
• Second one dies, lone survivor gains another 12 hp (8 from #2 plus the 4 it got when #1 died) leaving it at 24 hp (including its own 8 plus 4 from #1 dying) minus any damage it took itself, counts as a 6HD creature, has AC2 and move 18.

The number of attacks a group generate decreases with casualties, but their total group hp remain the same until you get to the final one, their (fewer) attack are more accurate, saves are better, and both AC and move increase steadily. Pretty scary, and it gets way worse the more there are. To whit:

With the max 6 appearing, each starts with 5D and 5d8 hp (let's say 20 in this case, so 120 in the group).

• First drops, the other five all gain 4 hp and go to 6HD, AC3, Mv15.
• Second drops, other four gain 6hp and go to either two with 8HD and two with 7HD or maybe all with 7HD if you round down that split (let's go with rounding down for simplicity), and AC2 Mv18 either way.
• Third drops, the three 7HD survivors all gain 10hp, gain 2HD leaving them at 9HD, and wind up at AC1 Mv21.
• Fourth drops, two survivors gain 20hp each, "only" get to 13HD thanks to rounding, and have AC0 Mv24. Fifth drops and all you have to deal with is a lone survivor with a bonus 30hp (so 120 hp - personal damage so far), 19HD, AC-1 Mv27. Easy peasy, right?

And that's assuming they get HD increases rounded off rather than split by whole numbers, which would make them even stronger.

These things are hilariously overcomplicated (albeit not actually difficult) even for their era, and far, far more powerful than they first look. You effectively have to chew through the whole group's hp twice, with the AC protecting those hp increasing as you do so along with attack accuracy, saves, and movement - but they do throw fewer attacks and their two-handed swords don't actually hit harder as casualties mount. The "monstermark" ratings appear to show that the creator knew what he'd done:

Monstermark: Group of 3: 265; group of 4: 1105.5 (levels VIII and XI respectively in 12 levels — larger groups are way up on level XII)

I also note this bit of commentary at the end of the article:

I have not included any comments on the monsters, but it should be noted that a group of cauldron-born are particularly heavy.

Gee, do you think?

Even if FF hadn't been published already, this mess wasn't getting in it. You can find a very similar theme in one of teh nentir Vale monsters - a spectral legion or something like that where killing one boosted the hp of others. The mechnaic was much tamer and more playable, but still absurdly dangerous in large numbers.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Yeah, that's crazily overcomplicated. Much easier to just have them each do a healing burst when they die, doing healing equal to their original HP to all of their fellows who are in range.

I'll make that one of the first Shadowdark monsters I make here, when I get the homebrew monster thread going this weekend.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Never really got the impression that early TSR-era game design prioritized things like simplicity and playability when it came to monsters, and amateurs sure couldn't be counted on to do any better.