The Thieves' Guilds of Minaria

The poor thief has been the subject of many debates and contentions since his incipient introduction in Supplement I: Greyhawk. The most common complaint falls upon the low starting ability of the thief class. It is true, with most special abilities starting at 10% to 15% chance of success, the thief can hardly feel "special," but is instead discouraged from risking his neck on his dubious skill set. In fact, these scores only improve to an even 50% somewhere around 7th level in most editions of Dungeons & Dragons, when the thief's fighter and magic-user compatriots are well on their way to obtaining the defining features of those classes. The other common grievance is that the thief class is either unnecessary or even inimical to a proper Dungeons & Dragons play experience. When the thief was introduced to Original Dungeons & Dragons, he largely co-opted and made exclusive certain adventuring abilities that all dungeon-delvers had previously shared. Common skills such as climbing, trap-finding and lock-picking were suddenly the sole prerogative of the doughty thief, who seemingly had no other function in the game than to encompass all of the competencies once enjoyed by the original adventurers. Instead of stealing treasure, thieves had stolen adventuring proficiency from the other characters.

Feeling the acute loss of fundamental dungeoneering capabilities, some referees qualified these "new" thief skills with the superlative: as Robert Fisher suggests, perhaps all classes can move quietly, but only thieves can move utterly silently. Yet, this approach does not address basic skills like lock-picking or trap-finding—talents that adventurers previously benefited from but were now bereft of. It also did not confront the relatively low chances of success of novice thieves, which rendered their skills prohibitively futile. Other house rules diminished the great difficulty of these dice rolls by granting significant bonuses for easier challenges—a rusted lock or a crude trap door, perhaps. This latter method only solved the clumsy low-level thief by effectively ignoring the rulebook, creating a balanced skill progression where a thief always faced challenges relative to his skill and therefore had comparable chances of success regardless of level (perhaps the very antithesis of early Dungeons & Dragons).

So what is to be done about these dual problems—the loss of common adventuring abilities from other characters and the relatively ineffective ability of the low-level thief? In Minaria, thieves are a vital part of the party, and any party that enters the dungeon without at least one or two in tow is in severe danger. Of course, any character has the same ability to explore the tricks and traps of the mythic underworld—I listen to their descriptions, look at their character sheet and then let them try their luck on a single polyhedral die (perhaps 3 in 8, or 5 in 12, or 2 in 6 and so on). I will even let the player pick her favorite lucky die and then adjudicate the odds for that die type. This approach demands that the referee give a clear description of the terrain and the player gives a clear description of her action, but this action is open to any and all characters (thieves included). However, if the players cannot figure out the trap by asking questions, or if they get a close guess but botch the roll, only the thief has a second layer of defense. Here, the thief's training and skill competency kicks in, and after failing the earlier attempt the thief can make a free, back-up saving roll on the Thieves' Abilities table. These bonus odds are on top of the regular effort, and are a second chance that can rescue the party regardless of whether they have figured out the trap. Played a different way, the party can skip the initial roleplaying and just have the thief roll the ability check. If this is successful, the trap is automatically described and bypassed and the adventure continues without pause. If this fails, the party must take a closer look at the trap and roleplay their attempt to manually disarm it.

At later levels, when thief skills become very high, it is likely the party will increasingly rely on the latter method—making initial recourse to the thief skill to see if the roleplay element can be dispensed with and more exciting parts of the dungeon can be accessed more quickly. At earlier levels, however, the party will enjoy the grittiness of dealing with traps and tricks more directly. Still, all characters should have a chance to open locks, remove traps, pick pockets, move silently, climb sheer surfaces and hide in shadows, at least when they describe a reasonable strategy and have character scores to support it. When the dice turn against such dungeon-delvers, however, thieves have a second chance to catch their fall. Sometimes, the narrated attempt will be unreasonable, and the referee will simply have to say No. Even when such practical constraints limit normal classes, though, thieves should still get their chance to snatch victory from defeat. By allowing thief skills to operate like an extra safety net for dashing heroics, thief characters are encouraged, not discouraged, from using their abilities.

SUPER OD&D

Marv made an interesting comparison over on the Goodman Games boards. To me, Dungeon Crawl Classics is like a Super OD&D (in the tradition of Super Mario Brothers games). Indeed, it has many similarities to the three little brown books of the original game, yet it makes thewy additions and expansions to that base as well. The first volume of that game alone shares basic assumptions about the social scale of experience levels, the power of classes, the protected niches of characters, the nature of magic.

Take magic, for example. Via Chainmail, the magic system in the original game is highly unpredictable, where magic-users can cast a spell only to find their spell miscast without benefit (and lost), cast successfully (and retained for future use) or caught somewhere in between, in limbo until the next turn. DCC takes this basic principle and adds much more detail, so that miscast spells might also transform the caster into a hideous creature, or successful sorcery might prove unexpectedly powerful. Add in supernatural patrons and character-specific spell manifestations and you have a magic system that is built from the same basic foundation as OD&D, yet with much more muscle to it.

Similarly, the progression of power for fighting-men is modelled directly on OD&D. While later "advanced" editions of the game weakened the fighter, introducing the "linear fighter, quadratic wizard" quandry, it is important to remember that this problem is entirely foreign to the original three little booklets. A ninth level fighting-man was simply nine times more powerful than when he first started out (similarly so for magic-users). He fought as nine men, with nine attacks (each the strength of one man's strike). While his "advanced" cousing, the fighter of AD&D was reduced to two or three attacks a round, the DCC warrior returns to native soil in a unique way, making three attacks, each strike the strength of three men (for identical output to the OD&D fighting-man, but with less dicing). Add in critical hit charts, fumbles and mighty deeds, and again you have a robust and powerful addition to the original game.

Even the social scale of characters in DCC is reminiscent of the original game, where a first level warrior is no mere soldier. Roughly speaking, a first level character is already the hero of the townships, an unlikely local that rose to unexpected prominence for his deeds. His tales will be told in the few villages of the valley for several generations. A level two character is the celebrity of a major city, well known by all but the unsophisticated. By third level, an adventurer has already rose to the prestige of a conqueror-king or slayer, whose legend will endure. This is far removed from the scale of power in later games, but is actually perfectly in line with the concepts found in OD&D.

More comparisons can, of course, be drawn with the other volumes, but this is just what comes to mind while paging through Men & Magic. I am curious how this plays out over longterm play, but I suspect the pace and style of DCC would be very reminiscent of the original three little books. Of course, it was always a design goal of DCC, it seems, to start at 1974, but only go backwards from there, instead of forward into the future.

REVIEW: Advanced Edition Companion

Admittedly, you could say my understanding of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons is pretty limited.  In fact, I was born a decade after the original game and, while I was certainly aware of D&D by the late 90's, my roots in this hobby are more accurately located in the early computer adventures like Zork et al.  Yet text-based adventure games and roleplaying share a common ancestry in Gygax and Arneson, and I came to the "old school" editions years later, drawn in by games like HackMaster and communities like Dragonsfoot.org.

One of the core principles of those original "old school" games, in contrast with modern game design, is that the rules are unapologetically suffused a certain implied setting, but are not sacrosanct.  Indeed, if the original Dungeons & Dragons game was unambiguous in anything, it was clear in its demand for immediate renovation and construction.  The "retro-clone" games, modern offerings that emulate these classics, have by and large done a good job at achieving the sense of an implied setting, but only fairly recent offerings have demanded referees to step out of the bounds of the written word to construct his own gaming bricolage (Swords & Wizardry WhiteBox deserves this honour).  Advanced Edition Companion, from Goblinoid Games, completes a trilogy of retro-clone games (including Labyrinth Lord and Original Edition Characters) that realizes a fundamental truth of those original campaigns from the early 80's: no one plays with just one set of rules.  Instead, campaigns were more often then not a mad mix of Basic D&D, "three little books" and a couple of odd AD&D hardbacks.  I, for one, am excited to see parties of Level 3 Elves and Half-Orc Assassins adventuring together again.

Advanced Edition Companion offers 153 pages of new options for your Labyrinth Lord game.  There are 7 races, 10 classes, 56 pages of spells, 17 pages of new magic items, 37 pages of new monsters as well as a slew of other new rules options and random tables to make your game a little more "advanced."  While Labyrinth Lord emulates Moldvay and Cook's Basic D&D, with its clean, consistent and simple system, Advanced Edition Companion portrays the heady days of Gygax's Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition.  While these games were never fundamentally very different, the aporia at the heart of this combination has always been the varying levels of power between the two systems.  In the early days, this was bridged by sheer enthusiasm (and lack of other options).  Goblinoid Games has done an excellent job bringing this new supplement (along with the previous Original Edition Characters) into balance with the core rules, allowing referees to turn the detail "up" towards Gygax's AD&D or "down" towards Arneson's OD&D without ever having to worry about parity.


Of, the 7 new races, 4 are familiar and 3 (Half-Elves, Half-Orcs and Gnomes) are new to Labyrinth Lord.  All have been drawn up with the requirements, ability modifiers, minimums, maximums and racial abilities and class modifiers familiar to anyone with the "demon cover" book.  Similarly, 4 classes return while 6 are new (Assassins, Druids, Illusionists, Monks, Paladins and Rangers).  Again, all have been tweaked to match their "advanced" lineage.  The experience tables and hit dice are all perfectly consistent with Labyrinth Lord, although there is even a special option for "advanced" hit dice to bring all your characters up to the strength of the advanced game.  Among these rules, you also find optional rules for multi-classing, random age, weight and height, "advanced"alignment, secondary skills as well as some informative notes for comparing OEC, classic LL and AEC classes.  To match the new classes, the ability tables have been expanded to cover new ground (including "Spell Learning Probability" for high Intelligence and "Survive Resurrection" percentage for high Constitution).


The new spell section is divided into Cleric, Druid, Illusionist and Magic-User (high level Rangers cast from the Druid and Magic-User lists, while Paladins can eventually cast from the Cleric list).  I count over 200 new spells (approximately 80 new Magic-User spells, 60 new Druid spells, 50 new Illusionist spells and 20 new Cleric spells), which are basically drawn straight from AD&D and its supplements.


The monster section details nearly 200 new monsters, again drawn from the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons corpus.  In particular, the classic demon types are represented, as are devils and demon lords, with an impressive amount of new art.  Orcus is here, with his wand, as are other AD&D classics such as the Beholder (ahem, the "Eye of Terror," I mean) and Otyugh.  I am happy to see that many of these entries have been updated with some subtle new tricks to keep your players on their toes, while largely retaining their old feel; perfect for new and old gamers alike.


There are about 120 new magic items, with tables that incorporate all of the classic "B/X" magic items from Labyrinth Lord with the new material.  With the monster and magic item sections, I appreciate how Goblinoid Games was careful to key entries that were new to AEC, to distinguish from those that could be found in the original LL rulebook.  The new items are seemingly drawn from the original sources without many differences, although it is nice to have the random item tables from different games brought together in one handy reference.


Aside from these main sections of Advanced Edition Companion (including the obligatory equipment section), it's hard to overstate the usefulness of the sundry minor rules options spread throughout this book.  There is an excellent discussion on monster habitat densities and lair encounters, a plethora of new combat options (covering helmets, parrying, subdual damage, two-weapon fighting, magical stunning and paralysis, and a detailed treatment on poison), new rules for adventuring in the underworld (including infravision, ultravision, chances to notice invisible enemies, potion mixing tables and a useful table on humanoid spell casters).  There is a detailed discussion on cosmology (including the different planes of existence), as well as a very useful sampling of random tables (random tavern patrons, dungeon furnishings, traps, atmospheric effects like sights and sounds, miscellaneous room features and contents as well as a more detailed treatment of laboratories and torture chambers).


Overall, I think Advanced Edition Companion is a great success.  This supplement really expands the horizons of the already considerable Labyrinth Lord game, bringing the "advanced" feel to arguably the most popular retro-clone game on the market.  Furthermore, by allowing players and referee alike to mix options to suit their taste, Advanced Edition Companion pioneers new ground in reincarnating the exciting days of early 1980's gaming.  The biggest advantage here, however, is the simultaneous appeal to fans of three traditionally disparate editions of Dungeons & Dragons (Original, Basic and Advanced).  With the core game and now two supplements being built off the same solid foundation, referees can now host many different players, play styles and interests without slowing down the game one bit, allowing for even more players at the table.


Score: 1-5 on a d6 (Excellent)