This is the blog. Click here to go to the Zenopus Archives website.

Note: Many older posts on this blog are missing images, but can be viewed at the corresponding page in the Internet Archive

FEATURED POST

The Forgotten Smugglers' Cave: Index of Posts

An index of posts describing the Forgotten Smugglers' Cave, an adventure for Holmes Basic characters levels 2-4.                    ...

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

"Two or Three Figures Fighting Side by Side"


Over on Jeff's Gameblog, he asks if we've been doing minis wrong, and quotes a portion of page 10 of the AD&D 1E DMG (1979) that talks about three squares/figures per 10' wide corridor (i.e. 1" squares that represent 3.3' rather than 5'). This reminded me this idea goes all the way back to OD&D, Vol 3 (1974), where we see:

"There can be places where 300 Hobgoblins dwell, but how many can come abreast down a typical passage in the dungeons? Allow perhaps 3 in a ten foot wide passage, and the balance will either be behind the front rank or fanning out to come upon the enemy by other routes" (page 12, underlining is found in the original text)

Holmes included an interpretation of this idea in the manuscript for Basic (1977), which Gygax left unchanged as published: 
"Characters can be attacked by more than one opponent at a time; the Dungeon Master should be guided by the actual placement of the figures on a paper sketch or on the table in deciding how many opponents can engage as melee starts, always keeping in mind the dimensions of the dungeon itself. One would not expect to get more than two or three figures fighting side by side in a ten foot corridor, for example" (page 20 of the published rulebook; I covered this text in Part 16 but didn't note the original source for this rule).

Holmes possibly went with "two or three" based on the weapon length limitations presented in Greyhawk (1975). For example, a battle axe "requires not less than 4' of space on each side of wielder" per the table on page 15. Update: Holmes may also have been influenced by the rule in Empire of the Petal Throne (1975) that Jeff discusses at the end of his post, which allows for 1-4 characters depending on weapon size.

Finally, in the Keep on the Borderlands (1980), which came out after the 1E DMG, Gary elaborates on the "two or three" rule:
"In a standard 10’ wide corridor, the most common arrangement is two adventurers, side by side, in each rank; however, three characters could occupy a single rank if all of their weapons were small (such as daggers and hand axes)" (page 5; this text is found in both the original version for Holmes, and the revised version for Moldvay Basic).

Moldvay Basic (1981) itself, however, simplifies the rule to "Different marching orders may be used when opening doors, searching rooms, fighting combat, and so forth. The most common marching order is to explore in a column of two-by-two though this may vary in corridors of different width" (pg B19).

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Draw Your Own Floor Plan: Lava Pool Dungeon


Lava Pool Dungeon


This is a belated follow-up to two posts I made back in 2013, where I scanned maps from my youth drawn on photocopies of the "Draw Your Own Floor Plan" sheet in the back of the module B2.

Again, there's no surviving key for this map, but I'll note a few features:

As previously, black squares are pits and yellow squares are falling ceiling blocks.
2: Stairs lead down to a lower room, shown in outline. I'm not sure about the zigzag.
6: End of the corridor is the mouth of a monster! Note the little eyes and arms.
7: Ramp sliding down to a pit. Update: IIRC, this is from a similar trap in Tomb of Horrors.
9: Bridge over part of the underground river influenced by the river in the Sample Dungeon.
12: Trap where pressure plates at each end trigger the spiked walls to crush together.
13: Magic Pool. Not sure how the tiny area to the south was supposed to be accessed.
14: East side of room is cavern, with a secret door in one crevice.
15: Trap door in floor leads to tunnel under river and on to room 16.
16: The trap to the north of the room is a falling net. 
17: Waterfall, drawn falling down the edge of the map.
18: Crevasse in the middle of the corridor. The style of the crevasse is from the map features Key in Moldvay Basic, page B58.
20: Platform/Altar on the edge of a lava pool. The black spot in the lava may be a rock, or some sort of monster.

See also Drawn Your Own Floor Plan I and Part II. I just updated Part I when I realized that many of my friend's trap features were influenced by the Traps list in Moldvay Basic.

The Zenopus Archives website has a gallery with all of these maps in one place.

Sunday, May 17, 2015

Beyond the Door to Monster Mountain



Screenshot of Beyond the Door to Monster Mountain


Click here to download Beyond the Door to Monster Mountain

Here's something I finally had a chance to finish up. I turned the Monster Mountain micro-dungeon I posted here last year into a one-page pdf. It's written up for Holmes Basic, using the stat block from the original B2 Keep on the Borderlands - DX stat included. However, you should be able to use with any old D&D without changing anything.

It's modified a bit from the original write-up. I added one of my favorite monsters - stirges - to room 3 to explain the gem stuck in the crack in the floor. In Holmes Basic, stirges are treasure type Q, which is Gems or Jewelry only. I interpret this as a fondness for gems.

It's intended as an introductory adventure for new players, especially kids. The dungeon is a simple puzzle, and relies on text adventure type solutions - most rooms have an obstacle that can be overcome using an item found in a different room, although this being D&D other solutions are certainly possible, as determined by the DM.

The dungeon was built out of Lego Heroica, the sadly discontinued Lego game series from a few years back. If you have a few Lego Heroica sets you could recreate the dungeon build yourself. Otherwise it should be simple to recreate with dungeon tiles or for player(s) to map.

I ran this dungeon for a child running a single 4th level fighter, but it should work for four 1st level characters. So I'd call it an introductory adventure for 3-5 character levels. 

I've also added it to the resources on the Holmes Ref page.

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Part 49: "Will Drop on Unwary Adventurers"

Part 49 of a series of posts, indexed here, comparing Holmes' manuscript with the published Basic Set rulebook. Turn to page 44 of your 'Blue Book' (page 43 for the 1st edition) and follow along... 

For reference, here's a side-by-side view of the rooms we'll be covering in this part:

 
Room J: The spider room. Holmes describes it as 60 by 50 feet with doors in all of the walls, and this is accurately rendered on the published map. The original has the doors centered in the walls (as with most rooms), while the published map moves the east and west doors up a bit, and the north door to the right. In the original the south door does not lead anywhere; to correct this the published map adds a new a empty room ('E') in this space. This
results in the map spelling out J-E-H vertically, perhaps unintentionally.

The stated height of this room, 35 five feet, is much higher than the rest of the dungeon. The stair from the surface (at "START") goes down 25 feet, and the corridors are 10 feet high per Room C. Probably Holmes made this room higher just to give the spider a hiding place. But to fit in the geography of the area Room J must be beneath a higher part of the hills/sea cliffs than the ruins of the tower of Zenopus.

Here is Holmes' original version of the spider:

        A giant spider lurks in the darkness of the roof, thirty-five feet above. He will drop on unwary adventurers. He is Armor Class 3, plate mail, has 1 hit die and a poisonous bite.

A "giant spider" with 1 HD may seem surprising, but remember that at this time most giant animals in D&D did not have a fixed set of stats. I discussed this in Part 25 in the "Giant Animals and Insects" entry in the Monster List. In the entry Holmes suggested adjusting the hit die to the dungeon level, so it makes sense here that he places a 1 HD giant spider on the first level of the dungeon. Holmes used giant spiders with these same stats (AC3, 1 HD, poison bite) in the Second Example of combat; see Part 18 of this series.

As published, this spider's strength was increased enormously (literally!), as this paragraph in the 1st printing begins, "An enormous spider lurks...". The third sentence was also changed to clarify the monster's stats: "He is armor class 3 (plate mail), has 6 hit dice (31 hit points), and his bite causes 1-8 points of damage and is poisonous (-1 on saving throw dice because it is so strong)."

So, the plate-like armor was kept but the spider reclassified from "giant" to "enormous", with 6 HD. There was still no standard "Giant Spider" at this point; the 1st-3rd printings of the rulebook do not contain an entry for Spider in the Monster List.

The Monster Manual was first published in late 1977, about six months after Holmes Basic, and it finally contained a standard entry for Spider. This was eventually ported back to Basic, in the 2nd edition of the rulebook (Nov 1978), which contains a new entry for Spider, including Giant Spider. At the same time Room J was updated to change "enormous" back to "giant", reduce the HD & HP to 4+4 and 21, change the bite to 2-8 points, and remove the poison modifier. We can still use Gygax's original 'enormous spider' for a larger variety of the beast. 

In the last paragraph Holmes details how the spider makes a surprise attack :
-The spider randomly selects one character to attack.
-If the spider misses, it lands beside the character and "the battle proceeds from there"; it isn't mentioned, but presumably whoever has the higher dexterity would get the next attack.
-If the spider hits, it automatically knocks the character down and gets to attack again. Then the knocked down character attacks at -2 for one round, and then normally after that. 

This is interesting because the standard surprise roll is not mentioned, so it's not clear whether the DM should first roll for surprise. This would have been a good place to remind  a new DM of the surprise rules.

Holmes' original entry ends with, "There is no treasure in this room". The published rulebook adds a further clause describing a +1 dagger embedded in the spider. This strikes me as a very Gygaxian hidden treasure, particularly the aside that it is "evidently a souvenir from some previous battle". Presumably he thought the increase in encounter difficulty warranted a treasure. 

DM Guidance
-In Holmes' original, this provides an example of a "Giant Animal or Insect".
-Example of hidden monster, and as revised, a hidden treasure. The room hides the monster, the monster hides the treasure. 
-Rules additions for overhead attacks and knock downs.

Room K: This is the first of three cave rooms in the dungeon, and the second room traversed by the underground river, after Room H. There's not much to Room K other than being a location where "flotsam" (i.e. characters) swept away by the river in Room H ends up. This room is completely dark, so characters deposited here are in for some mucking about.

The original map has only a western shore for the room, but the published map adds a small shore on the eastern side as well. No changes to the text as published. 

Room L: The giant crab cave. This is the second cave room, and the third room with the river. Unlike room K, this room is lit by "phosphorescent fungus", which in the real world is also known as foxfire. Margaret St Clair's The Shadow People, an Appendix N book that I read and enjoyed, has an extensive worldwide underworld lit by foxfire, but I don't know whether Holmes was familiar with this book. Holmes used a similar concept in several other stories, including The Maze of Peril (pages 14 and 93; "caverns of glowing rock"), The Adventure of the Giant Chameleon ("there's some sort of glowing lichen on the rocks"), and The Sorcerer's Jewel ("The light, Boinger saw, came from a yellowish-green fungus that clung to the dark stone walls"). I hereby declare that all Holmes Basic dungeons should have an area lit by phosphorescent fungus.

In the manuscript, the giant crab has 1 HD, similar to the giant spider. In the published version, the crab is increased to 2 HD. The other stats (Move,  AC, and two attacks) are unchanged. Giant Crabs were originally in OD&D, Vol 3, in the "Special Suggestions for Monsters in Naval Adventures", where they are mentioned as being "a peril only near beaches", traveling 6" per turn, "attacking twice, once for each pincer", and having 3 HD, all of which all fits the Room L crab except for the HD. Later printings of the Basic rulebook specify that each hit does 2-12 points of damage, which comes straight from the varying attacks/damage table from the Greyhawk Supplement.

In The Maze of Peril, Boinger and Zereth encounter a giant crab, similarly hiding in the sand on the beach of an underground body of water. I wrote up a Monster List type entry for Holmes' giant crab here.

In the manuscript the description of the room ends with a single sentence, "There is no treasure in the cave". This sentence was deleted from the published version for unknown reasons.

DM Guidance:
-In the manuscript, the giant crab provides another example of a "Giant Animal or Insect". As published, it provides an example of a 'new monster' not in the Monster List.
-Another example of a hidden monster. Again, no mention of surprise rules.
-The phosphoresecent fungus is an example of variable lighting in the dungeon.

Room M: The pirate hideout. The description is one of the longest entries in the dungeon, and a centerpiece along with the thaumaturgist. These two encounters are linked via a charmed smuggler controlled by the magic-user. The cave that Holmes drew on the original map is faithfully rendered in the published version, including the details (two boats, direction to the sea), although a bit smaller than the original in relation to the other dungeon rooms, such as Room A.

There are no changes as published to the first paragraph, which describes the cave and the exit to the west. The sea cave provides an alternate (though dangerous) exit in and out of the dungeon. The entrance is about 500 feet to the west, which on the published map places the ruins of the tower of Zenopus about 1000 feet from the sea.

The second paragraph describes the pirates. Here is Holmes' original version:


    The cave is used by smugglers and pirates. There are three pirates present now, sitting in one of the boats, talking. They are first level (1 hit die), armor class 7, and are armed with cutlasses. (At the Dungeon Master's discretion he may increase the number of pirates.) Each pirate carries 2-12 gold pieces in his purse (roll 2 6-sided die). The pirates use the cave to hide treasures and there are chests in the first boat and a prisoner in the second boat. Every turn there is a 25% chance of another boatload of 3 pirates rowing in.

In the published version, the number of pirates in changed in each instance: the three pirates per boat in the second and last sentence sentences are changed to "four" and "2-5", respectively. And their hit dice is changed from "first level (1 hit die)" to "normal men (1 6-sided hit die)". As I described earlier, Holmes included pirates in the Monster List in the manuscript, and the details here match that entry, including 1 HD, leather armor, carrying 2-12 gold pieces each, and taking prisoners (i.e., Lemunda). Gygax deleted the Pirate entry from the Monster List, and correspondingly changed the pirates in this area into "normal men". He also added the "Normal Man" entry to the attack and saving throw tables, although no where else are they described. In fact, this is the only location in the rulebook where we learn that normal men have a d6 hit die rather than the standard d8 in the published rulebook.

The next paragraph describes the pirate's prisoner, the memorable NPC Lemunda. Unlike the two NPCs in Room F, Holmes' stat block for her does not include her actual hit points, just "Level 2, Hit Dice 2", and it was left this way for publication. There are no changes to Lemunda as published. The reference to Lemunda's father being a powerful lord in town gives us another detail about the Portown setting.

Next the pirates' treasure is described. Holmes' originally had 2000 and 1000 gold pieces plus the 12 gems worth 100 gp each. Gygax reduces the value of the treasure by changing the coins to 2000 silver and 1000 electrum pieces.

The final paragraph describes a hazard to be encountered if the PCs attempt to row out of the dungeon. In Holmes' original it is described as a "giant octopus", and has 2 HD. Gygax changes the name to "large octopus" and ups the HD to 3. Back in OD&D Volume 3, in the section for "Naval Adventures", Gygax described Giant Octopi as having 4 HD. Later in the Monster Manual he raised this to 8 HD. This explains why he changed the name of the Sample Dungeon to "large octopus"; it's not as big. Gygax also adds a new sentence at the end of the paragraph clarifying that the "octopus gets 6 attacks per melee round!", which was a detail in their description in OD&D, Vol 3.

Holmes previously used an octopus-like creature hiding in an underground river in his novel, Mahars of Pellucidar (1976).

DM Guidance:
-The pirates are an example of a group of 'normal men' adversaries.
-Lemunda is an example of a friendly NPC who can assist the party.
-As with the crab, this provides another example of a "Giant Animal or Insect" (manuscript) or a new monster (as published)
-Provides an example of a guardian for a secondary dungeon exit. 

Continue on to Part 50: "The Dancing Dagger is Hard to Hit" (Room N)
or Go Back to Part 48: "The Shadow on the Gnomon" (Rooms F-I)
or Go Back to the Index: The Holmes Manuscript