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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KirayaTiDrekan" data-source="post: 6306128" data-attributes="member: 6755061">Dungeons & Dragons Supplement II: BlackmoorOriginally published September, 1975Version being read and reviewed: <a href="http://smile.amazon.com/Premium-Original-Dungeons-Dragons-Roleplaying/dp/0786964650/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1427579093&sr=8-5&keywords=Dungeons+and+Dragons+Premium" target="_blank">Original Dungeons & Dragons RPG - Original Edition Premium Reprint</a> (November 2013)"Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames: Campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures"  by Dave ArnesonThe forward by Gary Gygax takes a tongue-in-cheek approach, warning players away from this highly addictive pastime that is D&D.  He also acknowledges that Blackmoor is the oldest and longest running D&D campaign and Dave Arneson's role as the originator of the dungeon adventure concept.  In the Men & Magic section of the booklet we are introduced to Monks (a subclass of Cleric) and Assassins (a subclass of Thief).  Monks are a sort of a weird hybrid between thief and druid, with unarmed combat thrown in.  Though a subclass of Cleric, they bear little resemblance to their parent class, with no spellcasting ability at all, just a list of interesting and unique special abilities.  Monks have the odd restriction of only allowing a certain number to exist at each higher level, thus forcing a PC monk to ascend the hierarchy via combat with NPCs (unless there are two or more monks in the party...that would certainly make for some interesting PC conflict).  Assassins are a bit more focused, functioning as thieves of two levels lower but gaining the ability to disguise themselves, use poison, and, of course, assassinate.  Assassins hit a glass ceiling at 13th level, with an additional "Guildmaster of Assassins" existing as a pseudo-level after that.  Following the two new classes, we have a hit location system that, to my recollection, was not carried forward in any later editions except as purely optional add-ons.  Moving on to the Monsters & Treasure section, we have some new monsters of note - A variety of aquatic critters, including the arguably iconic sahuagin.  There is also an interesting, albeit brief, discussion of were-creatures developing a split personality between their two forms.  The new magic items are also heavily centered around aquatic themes, including items like the Cloak of the Manta Ray and Helm of Underwater Vision.The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures section of the book focuses almost entirely on what is, essentially, the first official D&D adventure scenario, the Temple of the Frog.  We start with some background on the Brothers of the Swamp, a cult intent on forcing their view of evolution on animals to replace humanity.  In later years, the Temple evolved into an outpost for raiders and the like, though many of the cult's experiments remained.  Unlike latter adventure locales, the Temple of the Frog is not an abandoned or ruined place but a fully occupied base of operations with an adjacent town.  The maps are fairly sketchy and difficult to read, but the descriptions are quite thorough, detailing the town and temple as an active place, full of guards and surprises.  The current ruler of the temple is noteworthy because he is not native to Blackmoor.  Stephen the Rock is said to be from another plane or dimension.  With a name like Stephen, my first assumption is that he's from Earth and that's what I ran with in my loose adaptation of this adventure for my Sunday group.  Stephen also has access to high tech gear and apparently communicates with an orbiting satellite space station of some sort.  The details here are a little vague but this does continue the trend we've seen thus far of a heavier mingling of sci-fi in this earliest version of D&D, where-as later editions focused on the fantasy elements.  Another interesting detail...the entire temple can animate into a huge frog.   The book wraps up with a brief look at underwater adventuring, sages, and diseases.  Play-Through ReviewI loosely adapted Temple of the Frog for my Sunday group, using the D&D Next playtest rules (the last public playtest packet).  While I kept some of the key concepts (secret high-tech empowering the ruler of the Temple and the ruler being "not-of-this-world," I eschewed much of the layout in favor of episodic set-pieces, more in keeping with the style of the campaign I'd been running thus far.  I turned the temple itself into the head section of a dragon-shaped ship that crashed long ago, splitting into three parts on the way down (the other two parts will be used for Expedition to the Barrier Peaks and the spaceship section featured in the Wrath of the Immortals campaign).  Stephen became a clone of an Earth astronaut, one of the crew on the first manned mission to Mars.  The party was invited to dinner with Stephen, drugged, and captured, thus necessitating an escape from the dungeons of the temple.  While we had fun, I ended up feeling that I hadn't really captured the feel of the original and plan on giving it another go in the near future, with an eye toward staying closer to what's in the book while adapting it to D&D 5E.Next up: Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry(And you thought I'd give up. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> After a hiatus, I'm finally getting back to this insane little project. I can almost guarantee that there will be more hiatuses, announced and unannounced, in the future, but I plan on keeping at this regardless.)</blockquote>

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