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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cleon" data-source="post: 8860285" data-attributes="member: 57383">OD&D didn't have ability modifiers to hit and damage at first (a high STR only have a fighter better XP and carrying capacity).Plus, the old White Box never having grapple rules. From what I recall you had to wait until BECMI and AD&D came out before you could wrestle.Anyhow, isn't this discussion wandering a bit off track? We've converting monsters here not discussing old RPG history!Well we've only got the White Dwarf text to work with. The monster's description plus the part of Albie Fiore's "module" that it crops up in says Squaarg's patrol around "beats" and try to incapacitate intruders. I'd guess their creators wanted to decide what to do with strangers who wandered into their mines themselves rather than discover a crushed body in the morning.Or it could be a safety measure so the Sqaargs don't kill friendly visitors or members of the dwarf community who forgot the password.I did wonder whether the Evil Dwarves could be Duergar, but those weren't a thing until the Monster Manual II came out in 1983 a whole three years after White Dwarf #21.It did cause me to briefly consider having them be able to comprehend Undercommon as well as Dwarvish, but I went for the single language in the Working Draft.In 1980 if a PC met an "evil dwarf" it was just a regular dwarf with an evil alignment, not a member of a malevolent race of dwarves. If my memory doesn't fail me there's at least one wicked dwarf fighter in published 1st edition modules from that period.</blockquote>

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