Search results

OD&D without supplements is the ideal "semi-freeform make it up as you go along" game, which gives you just enough guidance to set a baseline and some assumptions about what the game-world is like but otherwise leaves everything up to the individual players and referee. On the downside, this...

And, of course, OD&D. If you're playing a fighter (including a dwarf or hobbit) or cleric, buying gear is likely to take longer than all the rest of char-gen combined (which is why I advocate the use of pre-selected "Adventurer's Packs" (like in modules B3 & B4) for novice players).

QFT. I'm firmly of the belief that from their first appearance in OD&D supplement I the high level (7th-9th for mages, 6th-7th for clerics) were mostly for show, intended (as you said) to be given to liches, titans, and other ultra-high level NPCs and perhaps found on a scroll occasionally, but...

Yeah, I think the original intention was that for both finding traps and disabling large/simple traps (such as pits, deadfalls, tripwires, etc. -- the kind that can usually be disabled by cutting a rope, wedging a spike, etc.) that you're expected/required to deal with them on a...

Correct The magic-user knock spell specifically opens locks. If that's not available you've got 2 choices: 1) find a key (if there's a lock, it makes sense that there will be a key that fits it somewhere nearby), or 2) smash it (making lots of noise and probably drawing wandering monsters, and...

THAC0 works best as a static target number which the roll + adjustments has to equal or exceed, with target AC being one of the adjustments -- so you roll your d20, add all your adjustments for Str, magic, flanking, etc., and then add your target's AC (so if the target is AC 3 you add 3 to the...

Do mages get 6th level spells at 11th level or 12th in 3E? If the former, then yeah 12th level is probably a good cap. If the latter you might want to go a little higher (14th maybe, like the old Expert set) in order to give them a chance to play a bit with their shiny 6th level toys before the...

Heh, I shouldn't have even needed Google because I actually have all three volumes of ATWM (just bought the pdfs a couple-three weeks ago). In my defense, though, there are a LOT of monsters in those books, and I haven't had anywhere near enough time to digest them all yet...

Because the monster hasn't noticed you, because you succeeded in sneaking up on it, because that's part of what the surprise roll represents. QED. P.S. Thanks for providing that quote, The Shaman. I knew it was in there! :)

Judges Guild's Field Guide to Encounters perhaps? I never owned this but from what I understand it was chock-full of bizarre/lame monsters along those lines.

I'm fairly certain (not 100% because I don't currently have the books in front of me to check, but about 95%) that there's a mention somewhere in the 1E AD&D rulebooks that a party that achieves surprise can choose to avoid an encounter entirely (slip back around the corner, close the door...

"Moving quietly" in pre-3E D&D is subsumed into the surprise rules -- if you're moving quietly, being careful, and not doing anything else to draw attention to yourself (like carrying a light source) you have a chance to get a drop on the bad guys and possibly get one or more free...

The D&D Rules Cyclopedia was released in 1991 as a compilation of Frank Mentzer's 1983-86 expansion on Tom Moldvay, David Cook, and Steve Marsh's 1981 revision of J. Eric Holmes' 1977-78 introduction to Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson's 1974 OD&D rules. So while the lineage is direct, there's an...

We played R1 back in the 80s, tournament-style using the pre-gen characters, and had a lot of fun with it. There are lots of things that require player-level quick thinking and problem solving, some tied directly to the capabilities of the pregen characters (i.e. if they use this particular...

Except for Original D&D and every edition of Basic/Classic D&D from 1977 to 1996. Giving clerics spells at 1st level (plus bonus spells for high Wisdom, meaning that pretty much every 1st level cleric is going to have 3 spells) was a huge change in the class between O/CD&D and 1E AD&D -- a 3rd...

Just such an arrangement is implied in the random encounter tables in the 1E DMG -- "civilized/patrolled" areas have encounters least often (1 in 20 per check), a significant portion of those encounters (1 in 5?) are with patrols, and the rest of the encounters tend to be with humans, humanoids...

I think that applied only to followers, henchmen, and retainers (which is what all of the -igby's, even Bigby, started as) -- I'm pretty sure Gary named Yrag and Mordenkainen himself. FWIW I like all the anagrams and silly place and character names in Greyhawk (and in Glorantha too, for that...

In OD&D this ("the campaign is intended to be built around the megadungeon") absolutely is the assumption, and anything else ("high level" dungeons where the "1st" level is equivalent to what would be the 5th, or 9th, or whatever, level of the main dungeon) are an exception to the general rule...

XP awards in OD&D are based on a ratio of character level to dungeon level (or monster level, whichever is higher), but the ratio can never be greater than 1:1. So, if an 8th level character is operating on the 5th dungeon level he'll normally earn 5/8 XP from the monsters he defeats and...

There are quite a few orcs in Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, and adventure intended for 9th+ level characters.