TSR Blast from the Past- How to Go Full Monty Haul in AD&D

[Snarf Zagyg]

But that specialness only extends so far- for example, being a half-elf makes you easier to bring back than a full elf. But being a half-orc does not.

1. Humans are always special to Gygax. They are always set apart. Open a random page and you'll find Gygax waxing poetic about humans. AD&D is decidedly humanocentric (in Gygax's conception, if not in actual play).

2. The reason half-elf takes less than either full elf or half-orc is simple. Elves and Half-Orcs cannot be resurrected. Why? Because Elves and Half-Orcs have spirits, not souls, and therefore they cannot be raised or resurrected, and can only be reincarnated. (Source- all the relevant spells, Deities & Demigods, etc.). Since they ABSOLUTELY CANNOT BE RESURRECTED per the rules ...

It, uh, makes sense that it take all the charges to resurrect them. Look, no one ever said it was going to be perfectly consistent. But as I've mentioned in many other threads, the Rod of Resurrection is the one exception to this rule, but it will cost you.

3. Why do Half-Orcs have spirits and Half-Elves have souls? shrug

 

[Flying Toaster]

“In that last thread, about overpowered magic items, I referenced the "Holy Trinity" in AD&D, which I thought was at least somewhat well-known. Well, I thought wrong!”

Holy Trinity of AD&D? Huh?

“A. So, do you like Thor?”

And as soon as I saw the word “Thor” I INSTANTLY knew what this thread was about...

 

[Flying Toaster]

It's Gygax. Humans are special.

Off-topic, but this has always made me wonder “special compared to what, exactly?”. Fantasy races and alien extraterrestrials were invented by pulp writers and Appendix N authors trying (and arguably failing) to imagine a non-human perspective which (as far as we know...) does not exist.

When Gygax was questioned on this point he purportedly explained that he favored human characters for RPG purposes because the human players would not be able to really imagine being dwarves or elves or whatever, but this always seemed like faulty logic to me. Those beings only exist because we collectively imagine them, and sometimes argue about what they should “really” be like. Furthermore, his players were 20th century American men who probably struggled to imagine being medieval knights or clergy too, let alone fictional vocations like wizard, but that was evidently not a problem. And despite occasional Gygax editorials in Dragon on the topic of “role play vs. roll play”, D&D developed from wargaming and was initially about Conan clones going tomb raiding, not about trying to explore the deep implications of living in a world where dragons and magic are real.

I have long wondered if Gygaxian “human supremacy” was influenced by the tastes of pulp figures like Astounding Science Fiction editor John W. Campbell, who preferred alien-free science fiction and would not accept story submissions unless the aliens were weak and primitive. Campbell eventually became unpopular with his own authors after a series of “just asking questions” devil’s advocate editorials which I cannot describe without breaking the “no politics” rule, but many EN World posters probably know about this already and anyone else can look it up for themselves.

It is interesting to see just how far the pendulum has swung in RPG fandom since the 70’s, with some grognards and OSR fans complaining about D&D 5E parties full of half-demon, half-dragon, three-quarter-badger multi-class alchemist/ninjas, and fantasy cities that resemble the Mos Eisley cantina scene from Star Wars. And then players who favor that style of RPG play respond by asking “Why would I want to play a regular human in a fantasy or science fiction game? I do that already in real life!”

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Off-topic, but this has always made me wonder “special compared to what, exactly?”.

CHARACTER RACES
After a player has determined the abilities of his or her character, it is then time to decide of what racial stock the character is to be. For purposes of the game the racial stocks are limited to the following: dwarven, elven, gnome, half-elven, halfling, half-orc, and human. Each racial stock has advantages and disadvantages, although in general human is superior to the others for reasons you will discover as you read on.
(PHB 13)

Humans:
Human characters are neither given penalties nor bonuses, as they are established as the norm upon which these subtractions or additions for racial stock are based. Human characters are not limited as to what class of character they can become, nor do they have any maximum limit - other than that intrinsic to the class - of level they can attain within a class. As they are the rule rather than the exception, the basic information given always applies to humans, and racial changes are noted for differences as applicable for non-human or part-human stocks.
(PHB 17-18)

THE MONSTER AS A PLAYER CHARACTER
...ADVANCED D&D is unquestionably "humanocentric", with demi-humans, semi-humans, and humanoids in various orbits around the sun of humanity. ...
The game features humankind for a reason. It is the most logical basis in an illogical game. From a design aspect it provides the sound groundwork. From a standpoint of creating the campaign milieu it provides the most readily usable assumptions. From a participation approach it is the only method, for all players are, after all is said and done, human, and it allows them the role with which most are most desirous and capable of identifying with. From all views then it is enough fantasy to assume a swords &
sorcery cosmos, with impossible professions and make-believe magic. To adventure amongst the weird is fantasy enough without becoming that too! Consider also that each and every Dungeon Master worthy of that title is continually at work expanding his or her campaign milieu. The game is not merely a meaningless dungeon and an urban base around which is plopped the dreaded wilderness. Each of you must design a world, piece by piece, as if a jigsaw puzzle were being hand crafted, and each new section must fit perfectly the pattern of the other pieces. Faced with such a task all of us need all of the aid and assistance we can get. Without such help the sheer magnitude of the task would force most of us to throw up our hands in despair. By having a basis to work from, and a well-developed body of work to draw upon, at least part of this task is handled for us. When history, folklore, myth, fable and fiction can be incorporated or used as reference for the campaign, the magnitude of the effort required is reduced by several degrees. Even actual sciences can be used - geography, chemistry, physics, and so forth. Alien viewpoints can be found, of course, but not in quantity (and often not in much quality either). Those works which do not feature mankind in a central role are uncommon. Those which do not deal with men at all are scarce indeed. To attempt to utilize any such bases as the central, let alone sole, theme for a campaign milieu is destined to be shallow, incomplete, and totally unsatisfying for all parties concerned unless the creator is a Renaissance Man and all-around universal genius with a decade or two to prepare the game and milieu. Even then, how can such an effort rival one which borrows from the talents of genius and imaginative thinking which come to us from literature?

Having established the why of the humanocentric basis of the game, you will certainly see the impossibility of any lasting success for a monster player character. The environment for adventuring will be built around humans and demi-humans for the most part. Similarly, the majority of participants in the campaign will be human.
(DMG 21)


etc.

Please note, I am not citing this with approval. I think that the increase in different media (including, but not limited to, anime and diverse science fiction and fantasy) since Gygax's time has certainly changed things from the view of "Humans, and maybe some Tolkien-esque races" to a more expansive view.

But I also think that saying that Gygax had a humanocentric view of D&D is as controversial as saying, "Gygax liked tables," or "Water is wet."

 

[Willie the Duck]

The TSR-era contained multitudes, pretty much from the beginning (and certainly by '75-'76, once the supplements started coming out). It was a harsh, no-holds-barred game where death came quick and your character was destined to lie a forgotten corpse at the end of a pit-trap spike because they were reaching for that last pile of copper. It was also the game with items of near limitless power, dragons you could turn into mounts, and spells which could rework realities. As much trash talk as was levelled against Arduin Grimoire and the admonishments in Supplement IV and all that, the foundations for this kind of escalation were laid out straightforwardly in the TSR-published material. Apparently also extant in EGG&co.'s actual games -- at least if we count the tales of them travelling between Greyhawk, Blackmoore, and Tékumel and crashing 3 world's economies; plus conjecture at what situation made the '10-20 wishes to raise stats 16+' rule for AD&D necessary, etc.

I've spent the last day thinking to myself, "Self, do you know what the world needs now? A long essay detailing how Gygax's fascination with appearing erudite caused him to overuse (and misuse) signals like q.v."

I think it speaks to a maybe-not-universal, but certainly common quality among people who were 'very bright young men/women' growing up (doubly so if it's less than well-recognized afterwards). It's part of my eternally unfinished post on nerd-dom, the lessons I've learned managing people who would mostly fit in here, and how the people who are often worst to nerds are other nerds trying to claim territory.

Gygax often sounds like a combo of that person online who keeps referencing the ludonarrative liminal qua verisimilitude of their ergo loquacious perspicacity, and the kid on debate team that made sure everyone knew they'd skipped 8th grade. But then, why wouldn't he (especially in the timeframe up to writing the core 1e books)?

He was one of us, after all. He also was a kid-then-adult who liked sci-fi, fantasy, history, and wargames; but then didn't exactly get showered in the typical accolades of nerd-dom. From dropping out of high school and college; to jobs as a marine, shipping clerk, underwriter, and shoe repairman; to the grognards of the time (in the wargaming community) deriding first Chainmail for its fantasy supplement compared to their historical gaming, and then D&D for being not wargaming (those were his people calling his hot new innovations not his-peoplish enough).

It can certainly come off as unnecessary, and maybe condescending (although I think further discoveries about Gygax in terms of ego or sparring with others probably colors that quite a bit). However, to me it comes off more as try-hard.

Well if we're talking about "weird things about powerful AD&D magic items", here's a fun one:
{Rod of Resurrection}

What I notice more than the charge cost is how it eliminates the rest requirement the spell normally has. Mister "You can not have a meaningful campaign if strict time records are not kept" is fine with the time-cost downside of a quality of the game being removed, so long as it is part of the limited and unpromised realm of found treasure. Extrapolating the logic of the rod bestowing the effect, I'm inclined to believe that using it also doesn't age the user 3 years, but perhaps telling which consequence is considered worth mentioning (admittedly this is already clarified in the unnatural aging rules).

That's another wrinkle, the text on DMG p. 13 is "Note: Reading one of the above spells from a scroll (or using the power from a ring or other device) does not cause unnatural aging, but placing such a spell upon the scroll in the first place will do so!" This only mentions scrolls, but the rules for crafting magic items includes "As DM, you now inform him or her that in order to contain and accept the spells he or she desires to store in the device, a scroll bearing the desired spells must be scribed, then a permanency spell cast upon the scroll... Wands and other chargeable items do not require permanency, and of course they are used up when all the charges are gone." Does that mean that the creator of a rod of resurrection had to create a scroll (accepting the aging hit) for each charge on the rod? Given that no demihumans can reach the level of cleric to craft such an item, we're looking at a human cleric with hopefully an 18 con (to survive the 50 system shock checks, even a 17 con/98%^50 puts us at 36%) and some kind of lifespan extension. With all that rigmarole, then seeing the party half-orc assassin need revival and 8 charges disappearing has got to be a gut punch. All the more indication in my mind that the magic item creation rules were more to keep PCs from doing so than really encouraging it.

 

[Clint_L]

To put 60 points of damage in 1e context, that kills most things in the monster manual in one round. Even most giants had fewer HP than that.

 

[Flying Toaster]

CHARACTER RACES
Each racial stock has advantages and disadvantages, although in general human is superior to the others for reasons you will discover as you read on.
(PHB 13)

Please note, I am not citing this with approval. I think that the increase in different media (including, but not limited to, anime and diverse science fiction and fantasy) since Gygax's time has certainly changed things from the view of "Humans, and maybe some Tolkien-esque races" to a more expansive view.

But I also think that saying that Gygax had a humanocentric view of D&D is as controversial as saying, "Gygax liked tables," or "Water is wet."

That initial quote about “superior racial stock” probably attracted little attention at the time, but is of course exactly the kind of thing that the Coastal Wizards, Paizo, and others have been trying to replace with new approaches, with attendant controversy.

I must have read all of this back in the day, because I read those books cover to cover, but it was far beyond the understanding of our teenage gaming groups. We mostly ran TSR modules and took a D&D-flavored background world as a given. When I tried to build my own world I got hopelessly bogged down trying to cram in everything but the kitchen sink: prehistoric creatures from geologic time, Lovecraftian horrors, sword & sorcery serpentfolk, Tolkien races, outer planes, etc. It became overwhelming. This Gygax quote stands out to me: “The game is not merely a meaningless dungeon and an urban base around which is plopped the dreaded wilderness”. Some OSR games and play styles seem to edge close to this in their eagerness to bring back the dungeon crawl and the hex crawl, while eschewing high fantasy save-the-world metaplots (something I actually dislike myself).

I do think it is interesting that Gygax himself later started to add more and more monster races, complete with the sort of power creep that seems inevitable in gaming supplements (it even shows up in something as different as the Civilization series of 4X PC strategy games). UA featured Underdark races with spell-like powers and other goodies “balanced” by easily forgotten daylight weaknesses. His own Half-Ogre article in Dragon magazine introduced the possibility of PCs with 19 STR, and the Dragonlance book had Minotaur PCs with 20 STR! One of the guys I played with back in the day would only ever play dual-wielding Dark Elf Rangers (gee, I wonder where that came from...), Half-Ogres, or Krynn Minotaurs.

I was just reading an EN World thread from back in April of this year which asked “How Fantastical Do You Like Your Fantasy World?”. Gygax’s discussion of what it takes to create a convincing fantasy world, and his opinion that DMs need to make things easier for themselves by using a human baseline, reminds me of some of the issues that came up in that thread. Many people wanted to start with a standard society of medieval European peasants, and then ramp up the fantasy weirdness as the PCs head out to the Borderlands and level up. But there was a notable minority who wanted to start weird and go from there, because they figure that is what fantasy games are for and they get enough “regular” already from real life. And some people wanted to square the circle with (an example I remember) a floating sky fortress of wyvern riders, where some poor churl has to shovel the turds and dump them far below*. I think I probably like that last approach best of all.

*In real life, nations fought wars over desolate rocky islets just barely poking up out of the ocean, because they were encrusted with mineral-rich seabird guano that had built up over centuries. Alchemists would probably pay handsomely for a steady supply of wyvern dung. Don’t throw that stuff away - no, I don’t care how bad it smells!

 

[Flying Toaster]

To put 60 points of damage in 1e context, that kills most things in the monster manual in one round. Even most giants had fewer HP than that.

For further context, one of my best 1E characters ever was a 10th level Mountain Dwarf Fighter with 20 CON and 122 HP (we played with XP penalties for demi-humans instead of level limits). After a full adventuring day he might not even fall below half of his hit points. At the end of the day our healers would cast any remaining spells, and he often felt perfectly safe declining their services: “Cure Serious Wounds? Nah I’m good, the Thief needs it more than I do...”

Meanwhile his buddy the 10th level Human Mage (we refused to say “Magic-user” ) had maybe 50 HP at most, and got pretty tired of high level encounters with monsters that had 50-75% magic resistance.

 

[Flying Toaster]

I think it speaks to a maybe-not-universal, but certainly common quality among people who were 'very bright young men/women' growing up (doubly so if it's less than well-recognized afterwards). It's part of my eternally unfinished post on nerd-dom, the lessons I've learned managing people who would mostly fit in here, and how the people who are often worst to nerds are other nerds trying to claim territory.

Gygax often sounds like a combo of that person online who keeps referencing the ludonarrative liminal qua verisimilitude of their ergo loquacious perspicacity, and the kid on debate team that made sure everyone knew they'd skipped 8th grade. But then, why wouldn't he (especially in the timeframe up to writing the core 1e books)?

He was one of us, after all. He also was a kid-then-adult who liked sci-fi, fantasy, history, and wargames; but then didn't exactly get showered in the typical accolades of nerd-dom. From dropping out of high school and college; to jobs as a marine, shipping clerk, underwriter, and shoe repairman; to the grognards of the time (in the wargaming community) deriding first Chainmail for its fantasy supplement compared to their historical gaming, and then D&D for being not wargaming (those were his people calling his hot new innovations not his-peoplish enough).

It can certainly come off as unnecessary, and maybe condescending (although I think further discoveries about Gygax in terms of ego or sparring with others probably colors that quite a bit). However, to me it comes off more as try-hard.

Regarding the odd jobs that Gygax did to support himself and his family before TSR, that kind of struggle can definitely put a chip on someone’s shoulder, particularly if they believe that they were meant for bigger and better things. And “cobbler” is quite literally one of those humble hard-luck occupations you see in grim (Grimm?) European fairy tales.

I can’t remember where I read this, but apparently some guy who was part of the 70’s Midwestern wargaming scene gave Dave Arneson a lot of stick for messing around with silly “fantasy” games. That is a perfect example of the sort of one-upmanship you often see in nerd circles, which can take on many forms. There can be gatekeeping based on age, experience, and other forms of seniority, and even a sort of faux-machismo, which is particularly ironic since nerd interests are often stigmatized as childish or not manly enough. Wargaming itself was always an obscure niche hobby which the mainstream might well have scoffed at:

“Grown men playing with toy soldiers? Hah! Everybody knows a REAL man plays poker with his old Army buddies, for REAL money, while drinking bourbon and smoking cigars!”

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I do think it is interesting that Gygax himself later started to add more and more monster races, complete with the sort of power creep that seems inevitable in gaming supplements (it even shows up in something as different as the Civilization series of 4X PC strategy games). UA featured Underdark races with spell-like powers and other goodies “balanced” by easily forgotten daylight weaknesses. His own Half-Ogre article in Dragon magazine introduced the possibility of PCs with 19 STR, and the Dragonlance book had Minotaur PCs with 20 STR! One of the guys I played with back in the day would only ever play dual-wielding Dark Elf Rangers (gee, I wonder where that came from...), Half-Ogres, or Krynn Minotaurs.

.... I mean .... like I always say, if you want to find a quote from Gygax that supports your position, you'll find one. And if you want to find another one that contradicts that position, keep reading- it will probably be in the same paragraph.

That whole thing about "YOU KANT HAF MONSTAR PLAYERS! NOOOOOOO!"

Um .... well, the Rogue's Gallery was released right after the DMG. At the back, it had a bunch of "personalities." (You know, after the awesome picture of the Illusionist).
Arrarat (Human Fighter)
Bigby (Human MU)
Ceatitle Trodar (Human MU)
Fletcher Dandria (Human ****)
Erac's Cousin (Human F/MU)
Grimslade (Human MU)
Gormadoc (Halfling Thief)
Lanolin (Elf F/MU)
Lassiviren the Dark (Human Assassin)
Luther (Human Monk)
Mordenkainen (Human MU)
Riggby (Human Cleric)
Robilar (Human Fighter)
Serten (Human Cleric)
Tenser (Human MU)
Valerius (Human FIghter)

...and...
Phoebus (Lizardman Fighter)
Talbot (Centaur Fighter)

So if you count it all up...
14 humans.
1 elf.
1 halfling.
1 lizardman.
1 centaur.


There's a lesson there, somewhere, but I sure as heck can't figure it out. I mean, other than "Yoo-mans!"