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Ability Scores (continued) On page 16, underneath the Intelligence bonus table, is a nice, moody black-and-white art piece that I'm almost certain was done by Jeff Easley. We see four warriors from behind, approaching a ruined tower, while birds (perhaps bats?) flock in the sky. The action is...

Well, no, the DM is keeping a tally, in order to award XP. That's a problem with the understanding of the concept of a Caller, not with the concept of the Caller itself. Like I said, it was never explained very well, and was sometimes conflated, intentionally or unintentionally, with the idea...

A for h and n for s, gotcha! 👍

I pride myself on my ability to parse Parmandur posts, but I am absolutely stumped on what “cochise fueled” is supposed to be… 😅

Never had a Treasurer because the party would just split all loot as they found it depending on who could handle the encumbrance. If a Caller made a unilateral Call, I’d check with everyone to make sure they agree before acting on it. Then remind the Caller that their job is to poll the group...

2nd Edition technically has a turn, defined as 10 one-minute rounds, but its only use is in spell casting times and durations. In Moldvay, for example, everything outside of encounters revolves around the turn. Your base movement is how far you can move in a turn of exploration. A search of a...

Very much the case with me. When we got 1st Edition AD&D, I didn't even realize that the character generation methods were not in the Players Handbook. I'm sure I must have read in the DMG that the preferred method was 4d6-drop lowest, but it never stuck, to the point that when I read the 2nd...

Just catching up on some comments I couldn't reply to while my previous post was in draft form. I also agree with this. This printing of 2nd Edition goes all in on the blue, and I'm here for it. Yes, that was roughly our experience, as well. I started with Moldvay Basic, and then got the...

Next we look at Chapter 1: Player Character Ability Scores. And here I must make a personal apology to WotC and 3e. You see, I'm a SIWDCC man to the bone. So one I saw (initially in 4e, but also later in 3e) that WotC was using SDCIWC, I scoffed at a pointless change that obscured the prime...

We started with Moldvay Basic, and it said to use a Caller and a Mapper, so we did. What was great about mapping was that it represented a concrete record of our progress through an adventure. You start with a blank sheet of graph paper, and then little by little it grows and grows. If you're...

Welcome to the Second Edition AD&D® Game takes up page 8, and contains six sections: Why a Second Edition?, How the Rule Books are Organized, Learning the Game, The Second Edition AD&D Line, A Note About Pronouns, and Creating a Character. This section is meant for returning players, and new...

I like DEFCON 1’s approach, but the fact of the matter is, at the numbers WotC is dealing with, you can fill out the survey however the heck you want, and it won’t be more than a ripple in a river. Unless you organize some kind of mass action. 70% is the threshold for further iteration, 80% and...

I should note in passing that I did not expect we'd be having a 2nd Edition party in D&D Older Editions when I started this post last night.

In the course of another thread, I was comparing AD&D and AD&D 2nd Edition. 2nd Edition holds a unique place in my heart. After playing D&D from 1987 to 1991, in 1992 I used the money from my first summer job to buy the core books for 2nd Edition. The original AD&D books left me a little cold...

Yes. All classes get their subclass at level 3. Subsequent subclass features generally come at levels 6, 10, and 15, but it’s not uniform. As of the last playtest packet with the Rogue, they get their additional subclass features at levels 9, 13, and 17.

For reference, here’s Alphastream’s blog post detailing the Bookscan numbers. SCAG has already sold over 4,769 copies in 2023. This doesn’t count copies bought in hobby stores, or directly from Wizards/D&D Beyond. Tasha’s has 18,726 sales this year, and Xanathar’s has 17,727. Curse of Strahd...

I should note an amusing quirk of trademark and licensing regarding Call of Cthulhu. Naturally, Chaosium holds the trademark for "Call of Cthulhu." However, Hobby Japan holds the trademark for クトゥルフの呼び声 (Kuturufu no yobigoe, i.e., "call/cry of Cthulhu"). As a result, when Enterbrain got the...

So, I’m not entirely sure this is the reason, but it just so happens that Lovecraft’s pre-1927 writings went into the Japanese public domain in 2008. In 2009, light novel writer Manta Aisora debuted a series called Haiyore! Nyaruko-san (lit. Crawl Up! Nyaruko-san, later given the official...

Are you accusing me of this after I specifically called out their strong arm tactics?

So he was essentially missing 2007-2008, the year 4e was announced and the year it was released. I think we can reasonably assume that 3.5 did not do as well or better than previous years in those two years. Then, counting only 3.5's prime years, it did not sell as much as 3e did, and that's...