Mark Rosewater Reminisces about D&D

[Abisashi]

Mark Rosewater is the Head Designer for Magic: the Gathering. You may or may not find this article interesting: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/mr294

 

[MerricB]

I love Maro's articles. I'll never look at raccoons the same way again.

Cheers!

 

[mmadsen]

I found this to be the salient passage:

She gives me an item called a Wand of Wonder. Basically it's a magical wand that has a random magical effect each time it's used. It's very powerful but highly unpredictable.

Cut to a month or so later. We'd decided to pursue the wizard that had been plaguing the kingdom and we're in his lair when we're attacked by a beholder. It's a pretty tough monster, but this one was like the evil wizard's pet and he had enhanced it. So our party is fighting it. Now remember, during the entire course of events I've been talking about, I'm blind. My party keeps me back because basically I'm useless in a fight and the chance of me hitting one of my party is high.

But one by one, the beholder starts taking out members of the party. No one's killed, but most are unconscious or paralyzed. The only one that's even able to talk is Arthur and he's bleeding badly. He's like, "Gemini, it's up to you."

I yell back, "I don't even have a spell that can really hurt this beholder—and that was if I could even hit it, which I can't because I'm blind."

Arthur screams, "Use the Wand of Wonder!"

I yell back, "Did you forget about the blind part?"

Arthur says, "I'll tell you where to aim."

So I get the wand out. Arthur guides my aim. I fire and... a stream of butterflies come out. This gets the beholder's attention and he fires something at me. I roll and it turns out I'm hit but just barely. Enough, though, that it knocks me back and I lose the wand. Arthur is yelling at me where the wand is when Charles announces that Arthur's character had lost enough blood that he falls unconscious. So I'm crawling around, desperately trying to find the wand. Meanwhile I can hear the beholder getting closer.

At the last second I find the wand, I turn and when I say I blindly fire I mean it quite literally. Now, at this point I have a bunch of dice to roll. First I have to see what effect the wand has and then whether or not I hit the beholder. Note that the wand's effects are all down in a chart. Charles has no control over what effect the wand creates. For suspense purposes, Charles decides that I'm going to roll first to see if I hit the beholder. I needed something like a nineteen or better on a twenty-sided die to hit it. Remember I'm firing blind from a laying position at a flying creature whose moving. All the other players have gathered around me. I roll. Nineteen. I hit it.

Now we have to see what effect the wand has. Remember that the wand could hurt the situation by doing something like making the beholder even bigger or do something harmful to me like make a toxic cloud. I roll. The beholder turns to stone. Everyone screams. I'm so excited, I pump my fist and yell out, "It's always fun until someone loses an eye!"

Charles looks at me and tells me the stone beholder falls to the ground, crushing my legs.​

I think that anecdote really captures a lot of old-school flavor -- particularly when you realize how much of it was dictated by random rolls combined with DM fiat.