Pulled It Off

Well now, that was a heck of a New Year's Eve.

Somehow managed to finish cleaning the house and getting nearly all the food cooked (and the kitchen straightened up) before the guests started showing up. The menu included English-style roast beef (a new recipe never before tried...got it from the Downton Abbey Christmas cookbook), my own butternut squash soup, oven-roasted Brussels sprouts, oven-roasted potato/sweet potato medley, oven-roasted vegetable medley (broc, cauliflower, and carrot), pasta carbonara (made by my son from scratch...yes, he makes his own pasta) and a pretty expansive charcuterie board put together by my wife after we found out (too late) that you needed a 48 hour notice to just order one. Everything got demolished despite one of the adults being a vegetarian, and two of them abstaining from dairy. I mean, that 5.5# roast? There's only a sliver of it left on the plate this morning...a sliver. And somehow we still have two six-packs of beer...oh, wait, because we killed four bottles of wine even before getting to the champaign.

Everyone managed to stay awake (even me...despite getting up at 7am and missing my afternoon nap), and the karaoke machine made an appearance circa 1am. Oh, boy. 

I slept till 11am.

My but the house is in need of some cleanup, today. Not much left for leftovers (except pasta...Diego went a bit overboard and we have a ton of extra drying on the counter). I'm not a big watcher of bowl games (especially now that they don't really mean anything to college football...or college football players/coaches), but I still think some relaxing on the couch is in order today (as he sips his freshly brewed pot of coffee at 12:04pm). Cleanup will happen...maybe even before I finish this post...but, yeah, I think I want to take it easy today. Maybe some Blood Bowl or a walk in the fresh air. After the rest of the family gets up, of course.

The last thing I'll mention about last night (before it slips my memory) is I once again had a chance to regale half-a-dozen adult humans with a 30-40 minute lecture on what Dungeons & Dragons is and the state of the hobby. Personal chef, physicist, patent attorney for Microsoft, Boeing engineer, contractors, political consultant...yeah, a bunch of successful professionals...all of them knew of the game, but none of them had ever played or had any experience with it, and they were just fascinated.  It's always odd to me how this thing I do can demand such positive attention...when, as a teen in the late 80s, early 90s the opposite was more often the case. Of course, I'm a lot more self-assured/confident these days (I made a roast beef for 14 people!), but I'm also more knowledgable. I know how to explain things in a way that is A) understandable, B) interesting/relatable, and C) inspiring (I think) to the listeners. When half the people say they want to give the game a try after I've delivered what amounts to a sermon on the history of the D&D hobby...well, I shake my head in amazement.

One of these days I'll get back to running for adults. It's nice that I can still draw. 

Okay, enough bragging; on to the New Year retrospective/resolution making!

Despite most of my local sports teams tanking their seasons...and a certain presidential election not going the way I would have hoped...2024 was damn sight better for me personally than 2023. I mean, no one close to me died, so that's a win, right? Some good coaching experiences (volleyball and soccer), won an adventure writing contest, penned an adventure for Cauldron 2024 (that got played by some 40-odd people), learned to cook a few new dishes (*ahem*), got to meet and share a beer with a couple of game blogging luminaries, travelled to both Europe and Mexico, reconnected with old friends, made some new friends, threw some parties, attended some parties, and got to run some high level D&D for my kids. Heck, I even got some blogging in...more than last year, anyway (though that was a pretty low bar...).

But I didn't write/publish any new books. Oh, I had some writing published IN a couple books, but they weren't my books...they were contributions to someone else's project. It's been a while since my last publication. Which is a bit of a bummer: I've had some time to write, I've had some ideas/things to write about...but I haven't put it all together. I've been undisciplined. And, jeez, you'd think at my age (51! I'm on the downward slope!), I'd be able to pull it together. Avoid the distractions from my purpose. 

Mm. Life is a challenge.

SO...looking back at my 2023 resolutions (the last time I posted such things...right before my life went off the rails a bit), I see that I hit on less than half the dozen or so I proposed. I think we'll try to keep this year's list a bit more modest:

Resolutions for 2025

• Sell my mother's house
• Write ONE book by the end of August
• Publish ONE book by the end of December
• Coach Sofia's soccer team to the playoffs (in October)
• Publish 100 blog posts (99 to go!)

There's more that I hope to accomplish this year: I am coaching Diego's last season of middle school volleyball this Spring, for example, and I'll be attending Cauldron 2025 in October and hope to make a good showing with my adventures-not-yet-penned. But these are the five things I really want to have done by December 31st; if I can look back to this post in one year and say I accomplished all of them? That will have been a spectacular triumph for Your Truly.

All right. That's enough for right now...time to get to that kitchen clean-up.

Best wishes to everyone...I hope nothing but the best for you and your loved ones this year; may you have health and happiness and may your sorrows be small and manageable. 

Fat Tuesday

Emphasis on the fat.

Tomorrow marks Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent for Roman Catholics like myself (as well as many other Christian traditions). No pancakes or leftovers in this house...I am currently cooking a pot roast (couple hours to go) while enjoying a delightful beverage of the alcoholic variety.

I've come to look forward to...and enjoy...Lent and its forty days. It gives me a good excuse to un-tether myself from the many vices and bad habits I've created...and enjoyed...over my decades on this planet. This year, I've decided to abstain from alcohol, white flour, and white sugar...all things that I should probably be abstaining from anyway (none of them are good for you, really). But the fact is I've been enjoying ALL of them in far too much abundance lately. The holiday season tends to do that...it's amazing how much weight I've put on since October.

But abstaining and fasting (I'll probably do a 7 day juice/water fast next week) are wonderful for clearing the mind, as well as the body. And I need to get "clear;" far too many ridiculous stresses on my mind the last many moons...really, since my mom died in April so, yeah, most of the last year. 

[I did get my shit together, round about September, but I started drinking again in October and everything kind of went down the tubes]

SO...one last evening of over-indulgence, and then six-ish weeks when I try to get a bit closer to God, and a bit cleaner with regard to my own "temple" (i.e. the body I've got to work with). Hopefully, I can re-establish some of the good habits I started building last Lent. 

Here's hoping.

Anyway. No gaming-related stuff to report at the moment, so I'll sign off. Happy Mardi Gras, folks! And happy Lent, as well.

: )

[for people interested in my pot roast recipe (which is delicious), I use this one from the internet. Enjoy!]

Like this, but my Dutch oven is
Seahawk blue (of course).

Return of the Jedi

Last night my family watched Return of the Jedi (AKA Star Wars, Episode VI). This was not our first time.

I was cooking dinner tonight...grilling, in fact (no rain...for a change)...and had briefly considered posting pix of how I make Paraguayan chimichurri and baked mandioca. Eh. Another time. My grill is on its last legs (at least the charcoal pan), and in need of a replacement (probably in the Spring). The film I just threw on as "background noise" while putting stuff together...although the movie I started streaming was Rogue One. It was my daughter that switched it to RotJ.

My daughter (Sofia) is nine years old. Because she is my daughter, she's already seen these films...multiple times. However, this is not the same with her classmates. Oh, some have seen the movies...her friend Posey, and most (all?) of the boys. But not her best friend (Milana), and another friend...Maddie...has only seen the original trilogy, and only over the last three weeks. 

They, of course, love it.

Still Good

So they've been playing a lot of "Star Wars" at recess. Acting out the movies. Pretending to be the heroes or the villains or the stormtroopers, etc. This is why she wanted to watch Jedi...they've been self-performing the films sequentially and only just gotten up to "Jabba's palace." Sofia says they know most of the lines (well, she does anyway), but she just wanted to 'go over it.' The film had only just started as my wife and son got home from soccer practice (her turn driving tonight), and Diego exclaimed "Hey! I want to watch!" So we did.

It's interesting, watching my kids re-watch these films...films that were so much a part of MY childhood (I saw all the original films in the theater...multiple times). Sofia is...mm...about where I was at her age as far as understanding goes, but interesting to see her amazement at non-CGI special f/x. My son is much more developed and mature for his age and eyes things with the critical eyes of a film critic and seasoned campaigner (a lot of pseudo-military stuff in these SW films and my boy is all about the war games and military history). 

BUT...just astounding how well they hold up as entertaining films for kids. I do not approve of, nor appreciate, all the the things my kids find "awesome"...a lot of their pop music, for example, or some of the kids shows they dig, or many of their book choices (I can't stand those "Wimpy Kid Books" and they both eat those up). But here's something that we all connect on.

It is also interesting that the 9 year olds are SO into this...perhaps this is the "sweet spot" for those movies? I believe Diego was about the same age when he started his "D&D Club" at school, mainly to run a Star Wars RPG of his own devising (based on the B/X chassis...natch). That club has since gone defunct, but the kids who enjoyed it are still playing D&D (albeit with different groups outside of school). But...Star Wars (and, specifically, the original trilogy) were a unifying factor. 

Sofia last night (during the opening scene in the new Death Star): "Darth Vader is the BEST!" He's pretty good all right, probably my favorite "supervillain" of all time. Religious zealot, scarred cyborg, rage-filled brute...plus, James Earl Jones. Just...menacing. Shiny helmet. Black cape. Featureless mask. It's all delightful. Jedi may be the worst of the first three films, but turning Vader into the hero at the end was a stroke of genius (although I prefer the original cut of the climactic scene which has NO inserted Vader dialogue during the crescendo of the film's score...why make the scene weaker, Lucas? Jeez).

Ok. I'll stop. 

[by the way, while Sofia has a huge appreciation for DV, I know that her favorite Star Wars character of all time...from all the films...is still Darth Maul. She will tell you the same, if asked. She prefers the Rebels for our Star Wars Legion games, but I'm guessing that'll change as soon as she sees a Maul model on the shelf]

Why am I talking about this? Partly to grease the ol' 'blogging wheels' (a little rusty lately). But also because it's (very slightly) pertinent to a project I want to talk about. NOT a Star Wars project, but...perhaps..."SW adjacent?" That might be accurate.

First, though, I need to get back to that whole 'procedural gameplay' thing I mentioned earlier. We'll get to it.

Writing Adventures

I got back into Seattle on Tuesday. My grandmother passed away yesterday (Wednesday); I got the call at the same time I was placing flowers on my mother's gravestone, one week after her burial.

Life goes on.

***

In addition to all the "real world" stuff I've got on my plate at the moment, I'm currently engaged in a crap-ton of adventure writing. I mean, a LOT.

The re-write/re-purposing of the I3-I5 Desert of Desolation series has been temporarily suspended. Not because it's not a great idea (I mean...I love it), that it's really not suitable (even as an open region of my campaign world) for exploration by characters under 3rd level or so.  And all my players are about to start over (Friday afternoon) with brand-spanking new 1st level characters.

TPKs have a way of resetting things.

SO, I need some low-level stuff to get them up to snuff. Because I've been busy, and because I needed a breath of fresh air, I took the time to comb through the racks and a game shop near my grandmother's house in Missoula. Shout out to Retrofit Games, which had an absolutely beautiful store and friendly/helpful staff, who were able to get me something sufficient for my needs (as well as great recommendation for a cheeseburger in town: Frugal's. Get "the Classic Fix"). 

What I got, was a 20 page DCC Lankhmar adventure module written by Michael Curtis called Grave Matters. I am on record as a "non-fan" of the DCC system (which I've played before, multiple times), but it's close enough to B/X...which is close enough to AD&D...that I can make it function with minimal work.

And I mean minimal. Curtis knows his stuff ("Duh," says all the people who own Stonehell Dungeon, etc. However, this is my first product of his so far as I know). For a measly $10, I got a book with TWO adventures (Grave Matters and Madhouse Meet), neither of which suck, and perfectly suitable for PCs of 1st and 2nd level. The treasure counts are even (well, almost) correct, which is the usual thing you find lacking in OSR games.

SO...yeah, Lankhmar-esque adventure is perfectly fine for my Bandit Kingdom Boise. And with a little x.p. under their belts, it should be a simple matter of slipping the group a treasure map to get them out into the desert...probably a nice way to leave behind past shenanigans.

But campaign stuff isn't the only thing for which I'm writing. Turns out I'm going to a game convention this year...my first since the pandemic...and even though it's not till October, I plan to be well-prepped for the three game slots I'm slated for. The con is called Cauldron, "the OSR EuroCon" and it's supposed to be a celebration of 1st edition AD&D that will play out over three days in Hessen, Germany. Fortunately, it is an international affair and so games will be run in English (the international language of tourists). 

Room and board...and beer...appears to all be included in the ticket price, but you have to bring your own books and dice, and I'm cognizant of my responsibility to represent the USA well (currently, I'm the only Ugly American on the docket). Because I am old and lazy, and because it is one of my most beloved adventure modules, I am re-writing I1: Dwellers of the Forbidden City into something suitable for a three-part, con-style adventure series that...um...doesn't suck(?) too much (??). 

Con games are tricky: you have a few hours to get down to business, and (hopefully) provide a fair amount of game play, with a satisfying (or conclusive) end. Cauldron also has the additional challenge of being run with ADDKON rules (Germany's version of the FLAILSNAILS conventions)...which for me means that I'm not running these as one-offs but as adventures that will impact the PCs even after I've left their schönes Land (und bier) behind. No apocalyptic party-nuking scenarios, just good clean AD&D.

ANYway. It should be great, but I want to play-test those, too. And ideally, that will mean getting my current group up to 5th & 6th level by the end of the summer. Doable...but a tall order nevertheless.

Especially considering Prince of Nothing just announced his (third) annual NoArt-Punk contest. And, of course, I want to enter (again). And, of course, I want to put forth a good showing and build on what I learned in the last two NAP events. And THIS year, the theme is "high level" D&D, something that holds a special place in my heart. My last two entries (one of which was a finalist and got a place in the book) were both written for parties of 10th-14th level. I'm thinking this year's will be more in the 9th-12th level range, but I already have an idea for it and it's a little on the ambitious side: something on the scale of 60-some encounters instead of my normal 30ish. Which (to give you some perspective) would be around 50% larger than all three scenarios I'm writing for Cauldron combined. No small feat, especially considering I need to draw the maps and I suck at maps.

But NAP III isn't due till November 30th. Prince suggested I write it on the long flight back from Germany to Seattle. We'll see.

Yeah: a lot of adventure cobbling going on at the moment, some of it fairly ambitious. But working with monsters and traps and treasures and fantasy scenarios is a welcome respite from dealing with all the other "stuff" that's going on in my life at the moment. And these respites help keep me...mm...stable? Not sure the word I'm looking for ("grounded" ain't it). D&D helps let the pressure off; it's the valve that keeps the steam from blowing the kettle. I'm not sure if my life would function better (or differently) without it, but for right now I'm glad to have it.

Later, Gators.

No Fun Friday

In my last post, Jacob72 commented (in part):

Logistics and encumbrance are proper fun killers for a lot of folks and I think that it is no accident that a lot of modern games and even OSR house rules lighten the burden of it by moving to a slots or item system. Even the Appendix N source material was vague about these aspects for Fafhrd & Gray Mouser or Cugel.

He also mentioned Prince of Nothing's somewhat recent blogpost on the subject. That's a fairly good one, but I'd also draw folks attention to his earlier post on the subject, especially the comments thread and some of my comments, which included nice pertinent links.

My own feelings on encumbrance were addressed back in 2020 (though I peg 2019 about the time those feelings "crystalized"), when I stated...in rather large letters:

You can NOT have a meaningful campaign if strict encumbrance records are not kept.

"Strict" is pretty harsh. I'm not calling for rigid, rigorous bean counting in play; as I wrote at the time:

In real life, we only bother with our nice, neat packing when we have ample time to prepare...say before setting off on a journey. However, what happens when you wake up late and need to stuff everything in your bag just in time to check out and make your plane connection? Stuff still "fits" (even those extra souvenirs and books you picked up while sight-seeing) it's just that your bags are over-stretched, bumpy, and straining at the zippers. Kept in a such a state, they will eventually wear out, burst their seams and fastenings, cause straps to break, etc. but for the short-term, they'll make it just fine. 

Treat your D&D encumbrance like that. Players can (and should be) exacting prior to game play (i.e. when preparing for their expedition). During play, don't sweat the small stuff too much. Packs and bags don't necessarily carry the exact weight listed. D&D encumbrance is a measure of bulk as well as weight. And different items made in different styles may encumber at different rates from "standard." Eyeball amounts. Have a rough idea of what each character can carry before movement decreases (that's part of your prep, O Great And Powerful DM). When the treasure carried (or goblin swords being looted for Lord knows why) start hitting...or coming close...to the break points in your notes, inform the players and ask them if there's any vital equipment they're willing to discard prior to being reduced to a crawl. Make them sweat the situation, without making them pull out their calculator app at the table. 

Time enough for the exact count in between sessions...presumably when the characters have made it back to town.

That's how I've been handling encumbrance for at least three years now.

I'm sorry if it sounds like a "fun-killer" for folks...math is hard, amIright? But let me tell you how it works in practice:

1. Despite being a geezer, I handle a lot of my DM prep on Ye Old Laptop (duh), mostly in Excel spreadsheets. Calculating monsters, treasures, experience, etc.? All handled quickly and easily, even without creating auto-formulae (which I have done in the past). Opening up a spreadsheet, listing weights for items, and hitting "sum" takes Very Little Time and is part of my prep/cleanup either pre- or post-session. I do it. I keep the players' character sheets, after all (keeping all the game material together in one place...i.e. with the DM...is convenient for staying organized). 
2. I don't write on or notate players' character sheets (while I retain sheets between sessions, their sheets are still their own). But when the next session starts, IF there has been a change in encumbrance level or movement (based on my calculations) I inform the player of this at the start of the session...just in case he/she wants to make a note (they usually do). Regardless, I take any new movement rates into account in terms of exploration (random encounters, resource expenditure, etc.), and mobility limitations (as per PHB p.101-102...inability to run, hustle, etc.). 
3. Once players are aware of their limitations based on encumbrance, they are more inclined to self-police themselves...cutting down on unnecessary equipment, choosing lighter weight armor, etc. They also start to get a good sense of when to leave a dungeon environment based on the bulging sacks of treasure that they are accumulating (contrariwise, empty sacks push them to explore further even as they eye their dwindling supplies of torches, etc.). I'm also quick to point out that a party can't travel faster than their slowest member, so they tend to HELP each other (both in terms of critiquing load outs AND sharing burdens between party members).
4. Between dungeon delves, encumbrance management provides an important logistical consideration for travel...how and what to hire, what animals are needed to pull wagons, do we charter/purchase a ship, etc. As you might imagine, it's far more fun (and entertaining) for players to organize their own caravan than to look for work as "caravan guards." That is work for broke-ass (or low level) adventurers...ignominious, thankless work requiring little skill and paying a pittance; far better to be caravan masters than caravan servants.

In practice this kind of game play actually works to engage the players' attention. It's not just an exercise in accounting; rather, it helps put the players in their characters headspace. Which is to say, it forces the PCs to worry about the same sort of things that a "real life adventurer" would be worrying about.

Let me drill down right here: I haven't played in a 5E game since the thing was first in public Beta testing. But I've since read the PHB and have heard many anecdotal accounts of gameplay. It appears that 5E mechanics engage players by focusing them on their character: its background, its abilities, certain choices that come up as the character rises in level. It is very inward looking...pushing players into their own imagination, from whence they (in theory) bring forth something to display at the table: their proficiency at "playing in character," their effectiveness in using their character's traits tactically, etc.

AD&D doesn't do this: after all, once you've rolled your abilities and chosen your race and class, there's not much more "introspection" that's needed. All paladins of a given level have the same abilities. There aren't any backgrounds. If you go buy the "racial preference" chart, every elf have a similar attitude towards dwarves and halflings as an any other.

Instead of focusing on yourself, you are forced to focus on...and engage with...the game and (presumably) the adventure at hand. Did anyone buy a rope? How many torches should we take with us? How much oil? The fighter's wearing heavy armor and has her hands full with sword and shield...how is she going to see to fight? Can the wizard carry a (full) large sack while maintaining the light spell?

Dealing with the "nitty-gritty" puts the players in the minds of their characters...it makes them feel like they're IN the adventure, rather than watching some show or reading/telling some story ABOUT an adventurer.  "Who cares whether I'm the illegitimate son of a blacksmith...how the hell are we going to get this chest of gold out of the oubliette without a block and tackle? And even if we do, how are we going to carry it out of the dungeon before some hobgoblin war party catches up to us?"

I prefer orienting the players in this fashion. It's not about being an anal retentive, number crunching rules-monger. What I have found is that without this "accountability," the game becomes less-and-less about experiencing adventure in a fantasy world. Which is (for me) the point of play. 

"How JB? How is it about 'experiencing fantasy adventure?' What you describe just sounds like an exercise in number juggling!"

*sigh* Okay. There's two parts to this thing...one for each side of the screen:

For the Players: they're NOT seeing a lot of number crunching. As I said, they get the end result calculated from me (weight, movement, etc.)...the same way they get the final tally of calculated experience from me. They can then make choices. "How much am I over? Fifteen pounds? Okay, what can I drop that'll get my load down to a more manageable level?" 

It's not Papers&Paychecks here. Look, do you allow your players to buy their own equipment? Choose their own spells and weapon proficiencies? And does that 'shut down' the game by over-burdening the players with choices? In my experience: no. Instead, it makes them think and consider things like an adventurer. It contributes to experiential play.

For the Dungeon Master: sure, you've got more work to do...but it's not that hard. Far harder to come up with a "new, awesome" adventure (the concept, the map, the keying, the stocking, etc.). It sounds more daunting than what it actually is.

And what is gained is enormous. Not only am I rewarded with players who tend to be more engaged and cooperative, accounting like this forces me to up my game as a DM and world builder. Spending the time to figure out the ins and outs of nomadic desert life from a historic perspective is fun research for me, but it also makes it easier to craft a richer, deeper campaign world that I find entertaining and worth engaging with...and I'd hope my enthusiasm (at the very least) bleeds through as extra energy during any game session I'm running.

Yes. Just from worrying how much water you need to carry and how much it weighs.

I don't doubt that some people shake their heads in disbelief at these ideas. I was much the same mindset, just a few short years ago, all but unwilling to even give this stuff a try. Suffice is to say: I'm a changed man. Having taken a few baby steps...and then a few more, and a few more...well, now I see that my prior thinking was in error. 

Maybe, once upon a time (in that fabled time before laptops and spreadsheets and the internet) such "minutia" was too much effort for the pleasure gained. Now, though, with the ease by which all this is accomplished? Not doing the work is just laziness. 

Happy Friday!

Dreaming Dromedaries

So, let's talk camels for a minute. For fun.

Per I3: Pharaoh, the players are given the following equipment (in addition to their normal gear):

GENERAL PROPERTY

Enough water for the entire party to travel in the desert for seven days (10,000 gp weight).

Three large tents with poles, 10 feet x 20 feet in size, weighing 4,000 gp each. They require four turns (40 minutes) to set up or take down.

One Writ of Authority granting permission to be in the Desert of Desolation. It weighs 1 gp.

Ten bundles of firewood weighting 20 lbs. (200 gp weight) each. One bundle provides one night's fire.

One old map of a pyramid. It weighs 1 gp.

EACH CHARACTER IS GRANTED:

2,000 sp for expenses.

Two bags containing food. One bag contains one week's standard ration [sic] weighing 20 lbs. (200 gp weight) while the other contains two weeks' iron rations weighing 15 lbs. (150 gp weight). 

Their choice of either a camel or a draft horse.

Earlier in the "prologue" section, the adventure is explicit that the party's escort provides them with "enough water for their party, including their pack animals, to travel in the desert for seven days." Each player is thus allowed to choose either a camel (presumably a dromedary, given the Arabian setting of the adventures) or a draft horse. Here are the movement rates given for both animal choices:

Camel (under 400# load): 21"

Camel (under 500# load): 15"

Camel (under 600# load): 9"

Draft Horse (under 400# load): 18"

Draft Horse (under 650# load): 9"

Per the adventure module, a character with a movement rate of 12" can cross one hex per two hours, and all movement should be adjusted accordingly (for example, a character with 6" movement takes four hours to cross one hex). Each hex is two miles across, so: one mile per hour at standard, unburdened (12") walking rate...with ten hours being listed as the normal limit of walking, that's 10 miles (5 hexes) per day.

This is the same rate given for Very Rugged terrain in the DMG (page 58), at least for a "movement afoot." It doesn't however, jibe with the mounted movement rates...but we'll get to that in a sec. Because the first question is:

WHY IN THE NAME OF ALL THINGS HOLY WOULD YOU TAKE A HORSE INTO A DESERT?

Let's start with water: the most important factor in desert survival. How much water does a human need to survive? Well, Ye Old Internets tell me that 3L of water per person per day is pretty much standard for desert survival. Since the party is being supplied with 7 days worth, that means 21L per person, weighing 21kg...about 46 pounds. 

Of course, horses need water, too: about 5 to 10 gallons per day. Since it's desert, and the horse is working, we could go with TEN, but let's just take the average (7.5). That's a bit more than 28L, so for a week's worth you're talking 199kg worth...nearly 439#. You're going to force the horse to carry almost 500 pounds of water, plus an armored rider, plus food?

No.

You know how much water a camel needs to carry for a week? Zero. Camels can survive up to 15 days without water. Assuming the camels were "gassed" up ahead of time, a seven day stretch is no issue for your standard dromedary. 

And how fast are they? Well, Arabian "baggage camels" are capable of carrying 200kg of weight up to 40 miles per day...and I assume this over desert, as that's the terrain for which they've been adapted. 

Horses hooves, meanwhile, are not suitable for desert sands AT ALL and will be slower then camels regardless of load and hydration; stumbling and leg-breaking is a major consideration if trying to push a horse for "speed" in terrain conditions like that posed by the Desert of Desolation.

SO...dromedary only. 440# of load weight (including rider), 20 hexes per day. Besides our 50# of water (and a hope and a prayer that the party can find an oasis area within 7-10 days), let's look at that OTHER gear we're carrying...we'll consider a party of SEVEN characters:

Food for marching soldiers is 3# per day. Until further notice, that's our "iron ration" weight. This, of course, matches the 30 coin weight given for iron rations in the DMG (p.225) if one assumes this is a daily amount. SO for each character, two weeks of iron rations = 42#...a little more than the 15 estimated in the adventure. Let's forget the "standard" rations completely.

Food for camels: it took me a while to find this, but it appears that a camel can "thrive" on just 5kg (11#) of dry feed per day. Assuming ten days (about the longest a waterless dromedary can travel while maintaining work level), that means 110# of feed. 

Tents are tougher. My internet tells me that a traditional Moroccan camping tent (camel and goat hair) of the dimensions listed will accommodate 17-19 people...which sounds quite large for a party of six to eight PCs. Until you realize that you also have to shelter the camels, especially during a sudden sandstorm. Maybe two would be enough (men's and women's). 40# each, however, sounds extremely optimistic. An ultralight, modern tent of the same dimensions has a carry weight of 106#. Can we just say 110# for the sake of simplicity? Sure, let's do that.

[***EDIT: Faoladh just pointed out (in the comments) that the original text listed tent weight at 400#, not 40#. That makes a SUBSTANTIAL difference to the calculations below and (if accurate) will limit the party to WALKING (rather than riding) until they can purchase/steal additional camels***]

Firewood is a bit easier. While rate of burn really depends on type and density of wood (and is generally measured in length), this web site gives some simple numbers that are effective: a "bundle" of prepared firewood weighs about 20-27#, will burn for an hour, and should be enough to cook a fast, easy meal (probably the only type that can be cooked on the hardtack/field rations PCs are carrying). I can roll with that, rather than make the PCs collect and dry camel dung.

Finally: 2000 silver pieces for each PC? Ignoring for the moment that "standard" D&D would account this as 200# weight, requiring several large sacks to load (each!)...ignoring that for a second, why would the local ruler would send good silver out into a cursed, magical desert on a probably suicide run? Just what are the characters supposed to buy with this expense money?

Well, anyway...when researching the medieval Middle East for my Five Ancient Kingdoms game, I did some research on the ancient coinage of the region. The silver dihram weighed 2.975g, giving about 150 dihrams to the pound. 2000 dihrams would thus weigh only 13.3#...far more reasonable (though still wondering why His Majesty would want to send silver out into the desert sands on camelback). 

And speaking of camels: 600 Greek drachma seems to have been about the right price for a camel "back in the day." The drachma was larger than the dihram (4.5g of silver), giving the replacement price of a dromedary something in the neighborhood of 908 dihram. Giving each PC enough money to buy two replacement mounts? Still seems overly generous...how about 500 silver per character (3,500 total for a party of seven), which is just a bit more than a three pound bag each. Keep those camels safe! Your lives depend on it!

SO:

322# of water + 294# of rations + 770# of feed + 220# of tents + 200# of firewood + 23# of silver = 1829# of gear.

Divided by seven camels = an average load of 261#. Each camel would thus be able to carry approximately 178# of additional weight (which should include 6#-8# worth of saddle and tack). Not much wiggle room there, especially if the party includes a lot of Big Boys (my height/weight tables are based on character species and character strength...fighters with exceptional strength are heavy). 

This is the logistics game which, in a forbidding desert wilderness, is a game of survival...even without factoring in dust diggers and bandits and purple worms. Figuring out how to balance the load/gear between party members is important...but FORTUNATELY with an updated movement rate (20 hexes instead of 6-7!) the party should be able to reach an oasis or two within four or five days, depending on how much time they spend exploring various adventure sites along the way. And if they're SMART they'll pick up extra dromedaries from the first camel merchant they come across, extending their range and ability to carry treasure/spoils.

But no horses please. And I really, really don't know what to think of the Symbayan "air lancers" and their pegasi. 

"Ship of the Desert?" Yeah. Absolutely.

Pride

5:20am on Tuesday morning. I am up (with coffee in hand); the rest of the household sleeps (except for the loyal beagle). Finally, it's time to write.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Solstice/Father's Day/Juneteenth weekend. I know I did. I am going to tell you about it now:

Saturday was a bit of this, that and the other thing, but we did manage to get into Ravenspire (my re-hashed version of Ravenloft) proper. So far, so good, and I'll write about this later. We should be able to play some more of it today, and I look forward to continuing.

Sunday, on the other hand, was dad's day, and while I would have been happy spending the day running D&D, my family had other plans. Specifically, they ran D&D for me. It went down like this: my son was peppering me with his usual slate of questions over dinner last Friday: what was my favorite AD&D adventure, what was my favorite AD&D character I ever played, what was my favorite character class, etc. He does this kind of thing a lot...asking my opinion on stuff, getting my insight, collecting recollections of my youth...unlike my daughter (she prefers to tell the stories, rather than listen to Pops bather on). However, this particular time he had an ulterior motive: 

Look, Pops, said he, I want to run you through an AD&D adventure for Father's Day, and I want you to use one of your old characters. You pick the module and I'll prep it and run it for you.

[it would seem that my family has finally come around to accepting their father is a Big Fat Nerd. Gifts I was given over a breakfast of biscuits and sausage gravy, which my lovely wife cooked for me (I am the only person in the household that will eat such fare...their loss...so it was a special occasion)...they included a new wallet emblazoned with the Dungeons & Dragons moniker and a 20-sided die and a flat black stocking cap that said "Dungeon Master" across the front. I was truly touched]

Well, I have to say I was pretty darn surprised by this offering. We had just finished discussing my past AD&D characters and the fact that I'd only really ever had ONE (many AD&D characters were rolled up by Yours Truly back in the day, but the vast majority had never seen table play). So it was that I found myself sitting down to play the Tomb of Horrors on Father's Day with a character that I hadn't used in 34 years, with my son acting as a proper AD&D dungeon master. 

...

...never would I have imagined, as a 14 year old, that such an event would ever occur...

We'll get to the game in a moment. We decided on S1: Tomb of Horrors as the adventure for a number of reasons. For one thing, my character was a high level character...whatever adventure got used would have to be in that high level (10-14) range. For another thing, it was short to prep...at 10 pages and a single map, it is one of the shortest classic adventures ever published...and in all honesty I didn't think there was enough time between Friday evening and Sunday for Diego to prep something like Vault of the Drow or Q1 (I know I'd need more time than that!). Finally, Tomb is one of those adventures I've run many times over the years...most recently in 2020 using the original OD&D version...but one that I've never suffered through as a player. As a one-off event using an insanely over-powered character, it seemed like a fine test: would my knowledge of the adventure module allow me to conquer the thing where so many others had failed before? I dug the adventure out of the closet and handed it over to the boy (with strict instructions to not let me read it/re-familiarize myself with it), while I set about doing my own "prep work."

In a dusty folder at the bottom of a pile of dusty folders containing pages collected across decades of RPG play, I have a sheaf of characters from my earliest AD&D campaigns. One goldenrod sheet may be the the earliest AD&D character I ever penned (a dwarf fighter-thief for my brother). And several of the sheets detail various iterations of my character, Landon, from the last long-term campaign in which I played. 

Some of these (the character at 1st level) are hand-written on loose-leaf notebook paper by my dungeon master. Others (later in his career) were printed up on fan-fold dot-matrix printer paper, pages and pages of magic items and "background material" (loves, hates, enemies, allies, etc.) accumulated over years of gaming. I don't usually go through this stuff...I am already painfully nostalgic, and there's a lot of "lost youth" and regret stuff I associate with my old gaming group...but I needed a version of Landon to play in the adventure.

We had decided to run the adventure strictly "by the book" (using only the PHB, DMG, and MM) so the first thing I had to do was clean up the character. Regular readers have heard me expound at length about how my old AD&D group tried to hew as closely to Rules As Written as possible, but we didn't always succeed. We incorporated Dragon magazine articles that we liked. We adopted various bits from the Unearthed Arcana and extrapolated on it. And quite frankly, we got some things WRONG in our interpretation of the RAW that I, as an older, wiser man, find a little embarrassing.  

I settled on the 16th level version of my character...I am fairly suspicious of the higher level versions of the character (my DM was tracking XP and advancement and I distinctly remember some hand-waving towards the end of the campaign). Landon was a 1E bard, so the experience point total for the character, even including his fighter and thief levels would put him on par with a 13th level fighter or wizard...i.e. right in the 10-14 level wheelhouse of S1.  More editing, however, would be required.

Ability scores got knocked down to their original levels (which were high enough) as I'm not sure how many librams and wishes had been used to raise those stats and questioned their accuracy. His exceptional strength was removed (bards don't get that), and his fighter/thief levels reduced to 7th/8th instead of 8th/9th (there's some discrepancy about this in the DMG and later TSR modules but I'm fairly certain this is correct). UAisms were axed from the sheet (including a huge swath of magic items, weapons specialization, etc.), as were unique magic items ("bad luck swords" and "endless bags of food"). Hit points were re-calculated (should have only had one hit die of thief and CON was now back to 15), and weapon proficiencies corrected. Finally, I removed his incredibly beefy psionics (one of his major advantages in our old campaign) because A) Diego hasn't incorporated them into the game, and B) per the PHB, half-elves shouldn't receive psionics. 

[there IS a later Dragon mag that corrects this...i.e. that allows half-elves to get psionics...but we weren't going to use apocryphal texts]

Even after all this, the character had (in my estimation) too much "stuff," so I went a step further: I advanced his age 34 years (real time, Jeffro!) and calculated the total cost of his living expenses from the passage of time: 652,800 gold pieces. I then sold off enough of his magic items and treasure to cover the deficit. What I was left with was little enough in the way of magic (bracers of defense, a magic sword and dagger, a single bag of holding, one ring of protection and another ring of feather falling) and something around 800 gold pieces in treasure. A bit better equipped than the pre-gens in Tomb...but then, this was all gear that had been found in actual adventures. 

Other than my character, our party was composed of pre-gens from the module itself. Sofia would play the 14th level magic-user, and we took along the 14th level cleric and 12th level paladin as NPCs. Since we were going "by the book," spells were memorized beforehand (including clerical and druidic spells) and I did the bulk of the selection, as well as the outfitting of the party members. Sofia chose her own spells (with some suggestions from me) and purchased her own equipment (Tomb pre-gens receive up to 1,000 coins of any type to spend, and up to 5,000 g.p. worth of gems).  Lastly, I recruited two henchmen (a 1st level elven fighter and a 1st level half-elf thief) and equipped them from my own (swiftly diminishing) funds. Light (leather) armor, ten foot poles and lanterns lit with continual light spells was the order of the day. 

So prepared, we set out to the conquer the Acerak's tomb...or die trying.

...

Hmm. How much to talk about? Well, I'll be brief:

Our extreme competence, our plethora of resources, and my personal knowledge served us well, ESPECIALLY in the beginning phases of the tomb...everything up to and through the "evil/good chapel" area. A piece of cake, really (Diego bemoaned that we were kicking the tomb's butt). But as we got into the middle section, my knowledge started to fail. I knew what was in the Tomb, I knew what we were looking for (and what to avoid), but I was less familiar with the actual logistics and placement. 

Tomb of Horrors is a GRIND. Even for someone like me...who has run it half-a-dozen times over the years and read the thing countless others. Finding and locating secret doors and passages is a pain. Trying to remember the later stanzas of the riddle...or not remembering their proper order can lead to panic. You second-guess yourself. You grow impatient. You fall into a pit or trip some trap that you damn well know you shouldn't have. The thing wears on you, the farther you get into it. Even without wandering monsters, being stuck in the middle of the dungeon with no readily available exit (those one-way teleporters), you end up feeling pressure. Even with the plethora of healing magic at your disposal, there is an attrition of the mind that occurs...the players argue with each other, tempers fray, snap.

It got us. Five and a half hours in (we were keeping time on a stop-watch) it TPK'd the whole party. Didn't even make it to "the columned hall;" opened the wrong door...incautiously...and put the whole expedition to sleep (no saving throw). We were then crushed flat by a stone juggernaut. Thanks for coming.

Totally, terribly unfair. Total asshole move, Gygax.

And it sucked...not because my long-time character had died (for all intents and purposes, he died a long time ago...in the Spring of 1988). No, it sucked because I wanted to beat the damn thing. I wanted to say that I killed Acerack and that he "wasn't so tough." But even knowing the adventure, I still screwed up. And paid the price. But really the only "loss" I took was to my pride...something I probably have too much of anyway.

And pride is easily replenished anyway. At least, it is for me. All I have to do is look at my children. My son, 11 years old, did an excellent job as a DM. My 8 year old daughter did a great job working with her old man (even saving my bacon by remembering a couple lines from the Acerack poem/riddle that I'd forgotten). Yes, I had to pull Sofia's character away from a couple of deathtraps that she wanted to wander into, but in the end it wasn't her play that killed us all.

Yeah, I am very proud of my children. I really can't express it.

Afterwards, we ate pombazos (made, again, by the wife) and watched Big Trouble In Little China, one of my all-time favorite films, and one that the kids had never seen. They liked it a lot...a perfect cap to a (mostly) perfect Father's Day. Maybe the best one I've ever had. They sure set a high bar for next year.

; )

Later.

Dragons & Hoards

This could probably have been entitled "Fantasy Economics (p.3)" but I thought the subject deserved a catchier title. 'Cause today we're talking dragons.

While it's easy to grasp how treasure might be mined, minted, and circulated in coin form (and thus acquired by adventurers) a more pressing/nagging question for some folks is certainly 'why do monsters hoard treasure?' While ancient tombs guarded by undead Midas-types are self-explanatory (reasons why they're un-looted remain unclear), what's less obvious may be the desire by living folk...the orcs and goblins and giants and whatnot...to acquire chests full of the local human currency. Surely they're not a part of the local economy, right? You don't find hobgoblins drinking at the tavern or shopping for knives at the local farmer's market, do you?

[well, you could, of course. The DragonLance books have occupying soldiers (including hobgoblins and draconians) interacting with the locals, buying food and drink, harassing the barmaids, etc. But injecting this kind of symbiotic relationship with sentient humanoids into one's campaign might make the players feel more like murderers than they already do!]

The mistake here is in assuming that the monsters have no economy of their own. Okay, slimes and golems and owlbears (probably) don't...but the sentient races most certainly have something. These are tool-using societies. They build, they manufacture, they eat food, they wear textiles, they have a language for communicating with each other. And remember what coinage is: an easy, portable medium of exchange for goods and services. Coins are certainly useful and practical for ANY sentient species, both within their own community and with other communities...at least those communities that aren't as xenophobic (and murderous) as your average human town or village.

[remember that bit in Tolkien about some goblins/orcs having alliances with dwarves? Forget "racial animosity" for a moment and consider that two subterranean species are most likely to simply be fighting...when they ARE fighting...over the same prime territory/resources/food supply. Kind of like real life humans]

Dragons, however, are a different matter.

Even mind flayers have societies (though probably not one you want to visit). Dragons, on the other hand, are solitary creatures, only occasionally being found with a mate or clutch of young. And yet dragons are renowned for their treasure hoards...in fact, it is the promised acquisition of vast wealth that can entice foolhardy adventurers to brave certain death in a dragon's lair.

[I mean, except for the grossly stupid 5E version of the game, with its empty-handed dragons]

But WHY do dragons have hoards filled with thousands upon thousands of coins? That is the question. Because it's a fairy tale trope? Because they collect shiny stuff like a magpie? Because they just want to deprive humans of their precious wealth?

The film Flight of Dragons (loosely based on Dickson's The Dragon and the George) suggests dragons covet gold to act as "fireproof bedding" on which to lay. I'm not buying it. Lizards and snakes suffer little discomfort sleeping on hard rock (they prefer it, in fact, as it helps warm their cold blood on a sunny day)...and, anyway, dirt is softer than metal and just as fireproof. Plus, dragon breath is extremely destructive...certainly hot enough to melt gold (in the case of red dragons). Besides, D&D dragons aren't exclusively fire-breathers and is a gold bed really going to help against acid saliva? How about electricity?

Let's start with biology.

The first thing everyone should understand is that dragons need to eat. However, they appear reptilian, which would generally means a slower metabolism. Large snakes (like boa constrictors) can go three to four weeks without eating. Crocodiles can go months (though they generally eat every other week). Komodo dragons eat only one meal per month.

So dragons probably don't need to eat all that often...which is a good thing because, being large creatures, they're going to need to consume large amounts of food when they finally tuck in. A snake will eat 15-20% of its body weight; Komodo dragons can eat as much as 80% of their body weight in a single day. Crocodiles and alligators generally eat as much as their prey supply allows (they'll just keep eating), but they can get by on 5% of their body weight every couple weeks and they're just fine. For me, I'm inclined to go the Komodo route (with long periods of sleeping/dormancy) in order to prevent the countryside from becoming too devastated.

Well, then how much does a dragon weigh? An excellent question, and one without an easy answer. Lots of editions of D&D provide numbers on length for the various dragon types, and some even give out wingspans (I think it's 2E that notes span as approximately the same as length), but there isn't any hard weight measurements...unless you go by 3E's size charts which are, frankly, preposterous. Dragons have to be able to fly, after all, and so weight in relation to wings becomes incredibly important.

Here's a good article on wing loading, applicable to both animals and aircraft. Wing load is expressed as a ratio of mass (in kg) to wing surface area (in square meters), and with regard to birds (who don't benefit from jet propulsion) the practical limit for flight is about 25:1 (some particularly ungainly gliders, like the albatross, might exceed this a bit). That is to say if the mass exceeds 25kg to the square meter of wing surface area, it ain't getting off the ground (hello kiwi!). As such, clocking a "colossal" red dragon at 12+ tons (per the 3E MM)...well, it ain't happening.

I spent the good part of the other day estimating mass based on comparable reptiles and various sizes of wings to arrive at sensible conclusions. In the end, I ended up going with ratios provided by the greatest dragon ever to grace celluloid: Vermithrax Pejorative from the film Dragonslayer. Created by Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins, the idea behind Vermithrax was to make the creature as frightening as possible while still making it fairly realistic and practical. The scale they decided on was a 40' length (which is more or less the scale of a D&D dragon) with a wingspan of 90' which, based on images I calculate to have a rough surface area of 107 meters square plus change. Given a scaled up Komodo for weight (something in the range of about 3 tons...Vermithrax is skinnier/tapered after all, and female to boot) gives us a wing load ratio right at the edge of the 25:1 mark...enough to get Vermithrax off the ground where she can soar on the air currents.

With these figures in mind and using the same proportions (in conjunction with the length measurements provided in the Monster Manual), I came up with the following average weights for various dragons (and, thus, the amount of food they need to consume):

• White: 1,620# (1,296# per month)
• Black: 2,531# (2,025# per month)
• Green: 3,645# (2,916# per month)
• Blue: 4,961# (3,968# per month)
• Red: 6,480# (5,184# per month)

There are better pix of
her wings...I just like this one.

These figures are ROUGH estimates, and don't take into account the vast range that can occur between size and age categories (not to mention dragons of different sexes...in the reptile kingdom males are generally 15-25% larger than females). However, it gives me an idea of what such a creature might be eating based on its natural habitat. 

[for example, a white dragon would do well with large seals or the odd polar bear, whereas a red dragon will need two or three cows, and a black dragon would be constantly eating whatever it can find in the swamp...much like a croc. Blue dragons would find it impossible to survive in a desert climate, unless eating some sort of fantasy critter (bulettes? small purple worms?)...in my own world, I'm more inclined to make them island dwellers and have 'em hunt pilot whale and similar aquatic mammals]

"But, JB...what does this have to do with a dragon's lust for treasure?"

Right...back to the point! This concept of dragons and their hoards are based on fairy tales, going all the way back to Fafnir, if not earlier. But fairy tales are stories and self-contained. They entertain us, perhaps impart a moral lesson, and then they're done...folks live 'happily ever after' or (like Beowulf) they don't. 

But with advanced gaming, we are engaging with the campaign world, living in it and experiencing the thing. The treasure of a dragon (for treasure they must have, it is part of what makes a dragon a dragon and part of the raison d'etre of adventurers braving their lairs) must make some sense. Certainly the size of the hoard being comparable to the dragon's age and might is sensible...it takes time to accumulate wealth, and dragons are long lived. But what about the HOW and WHY? Dragon claws aren't really designed for subtle manipulation, like picking up and counting coins. And while I can understand the odd magic item or piece of jewelry being the remains of would-be slayers that found their way into the dragon's den, surely those dead adventurers weren't carrying hundreds (or thousands) of pounds of coin on them...they went seeking death with EMPTY sacks, not ones already bursting.

It seems clear to me that for a creature that doesn't mine, and doesn't manufacture (or mint) that the best explanation for the treasure hoard is that it is TRIBUTE...tribute paid by lesser beings, bribes (in a way), to prevent the dragon from destroying villages and consuming both citizens and livestock. Of course, dragons don't go on shopping sprees, so the tribute simply accumulates over time (the hoard grows larger and larger) but dragons are an intelligent species...even the stupidest having an intelligence of 8 or 9...so they must have a reason for wanting and accepting such offerings:

1. Being an intelligent species, they understand the value of treasure and the size of their hoard is a matter of prestige and pride. A larger hoard symbolizes more power, thus a "better," stronger, smarter dragon. Dragons don't appear to have a society (though they might, just one invisible to the average human) but hoard comparisons could be used to determine rank and status among their own kind.
2. Size and composition of hoard would certainly be a factor in determining the suitability of a mate. D&D dragons are found in mated pairs, suggesting a form of monogamy or "mating for life." Not only does a dragon's hoard describe a better (more powerful) partner, but the joining of two dragons requires one to leave its hoard behind (they have no way to transport it!), so the dominant of the two must have a hoard of sufficient size for the both of them.
3. Dragons, as stated, need to eat...a lot!...even though (like reptiles) they can experience long periods of dormancy. While human-sized prey is hardly a snack for any size dragon (and a halfling isn't even a mouthful), a party of humans, plus their mounts and pack animals, might prove enough food that they can go without leaving their lair (thus conserving energy) for a longer period of time. A treasure hoard is thus an enticement for "intelligent" (i.e. foolhardy) prey to come to them. 
4. Finally, D&D dragons are portrayed as "cowardly" because of the rules for subduing dragons; however, this just shows their intelligence and sense of self-preservation. While dragons are loathe to relinquish any of their treasure (because a diminished hoard size is detrimental to the motives already listed) bribing powerful individuals is better than dying. Should a party prove too strong for an individual dragon, the hoard can be used to "buy off" the invaders. Being an intelligent being with a lifespan measured in centuries, dragons can afford to take the "long view;" better for a young dragon to seek greener pastures, establishing a new lair and beginning (again) the acquisition of tribute. Thus, the hoard also represents a bit of a "safety net," though some particularly old and curmudgeonly dragons might find it worth dying for ('I ain't moving!').

And so we have yet another reason that monsters will have a desire to accumulate treasure: living in wilderness areas inhabited by dragons, such creatures (goblins, trolls, ogres, etc.) will need all the money they can mine, borrow, or steal just to keep the dragons from devouring their villages. Human towns...what with their curtain walls and towers, armored knights and wizards...are too dangerous (or too much of a pain in the ass) for the average dragon to bother with. But out in the wilderness...in the swamps or mountains or jungle or arctic regions...a dragon can get by, hunting large game and reaping the rewards of subservient, fearful lesser beings who also make their homes far from the murderous humans and their allies.

Makes perfect sense to me.

; )

More Than Yule Gruel

I'm a snob about a LOT of things. Beer. Christmas music (well, music in general). D&D. Lots of things...I'm a pretty judgy, judgmental guy. But while I am perfectly willing to judge food, I wouldn't call myself a "food snob;" I enjoy food...many, many types of food...and it runs the gamut of comida that's available on this beautiful planet of ours. When I lived in Paraguay, I ate at the capital's most elegant, expensive restaurant every week (my wife and I'd have lunch there Thursdays), and were on chatting terms with the chef/owner. But sometimes you want nothing more than a $5.99 port cheese ball from Fred Meyer and a side of cheap crackers that won't get in the way of that bit of holiday goodness. I've eaten a multi-course meal from a Michelin Star chef in Spain, I've had steak tartar prepared at my table in Paris, and I've enjoyed an entire jar of Tostitos Salso con Queso with a bag of tortilla chips, and savored them all in (near) equal measure.

I've eaten a LOT of breakfasts at the Baranof. Greasy spoon diners are my jam.

There is, of course, terrible food and inedible food and foul tasting food. I've eaten at an IHOP one time, and could not power through more than two bites of their short stack: the pancakes tasted like the batter had been mixed with sawdust. I hate wasting food and I left my plate nearly full. Perhaps it was a bad batch...my friend in Mexico swears by the IHOP breakfast burrito and insists on eating one every time he's in the country (which is less often these days, unfortunately). But life's too short...and the sheer range of eating options to broad...to have yet enticed me back to that particular establishment.

With regard to Dungeons & Dragons, I've blogged before about the importance of including food in one's D&D game. Man, that was a long time ago, and while I stand by what I wrote then, it's not something I've remembered to stay cognizant of, what with all my focus on logistics and world building. 

[*sigh* So hard, so hard to be a Dungeon Master. Some weeks Dungeon Expert (or Dungeon Journeyman) is all you can muster]

Anyway, I've been somewhat lax of late in this aspect of running the game in an immersive fashion. And I've recently come into possession of a delightful little item that could act as visceral reminder at my table. My fellow blogger from Canada, Alexis Smolensk, mailed me a copy of his latest product...not a book, but a menu. Allow me to pump up his tires a bit.

There's no denying that this is a pretty strange objet d'art...a truly niche product for a niche hobby. A fantasy menu for a fantasy inn/tavern in a fantasy world. I doubt a 15th century road house (or even one three centuries later) would have provided any such item list to its patrons...literacy wasn't all that high prior to the 18th century. And yet D&D, for all its medieval trappings, doesn't overly trouble itself with such anachronisms, and...

Well, let's just get to it.

Physically (both visually and tactilely) the thing is beautiful. Hard cover wrapped in soft black leather(?) or a reasonable facsimile of, the thing is debossed or incised with "The Jousting Piglet" and the establishment's namesake logo in silver. The interior pages (four total) are lovely and feature about 80 tasty items that one might find (presumably) in a large fantasy eatery. Prices are given in copper pieces, silver pieces, and gold pieces, clearly marking this a game product for use with various versions of D&D all the way back to the original (which only used three coin types).

[more pictures here]

I'll be honest: when Alexis first wrote about his menu project, I was pretty ho-hum regarding the idea. Unlike some DMs, I don't use (or enjoy) "props" in my game. I prefer we keep everything, as much as possible, to the "realms of the imagination." You have your dice and your character sheet, and some paper/pencils for notes...what the hell else do you need? Certainly not costumes and handouts and blah-blah-blah...my job, as a DM, is to keep you engaged in play without resorting to the use of such crutches. Leave that stuff to the Call of Cthulhu "Keepers" who are trying to instill a "mood" or "atmosphere."

[he says in his most snide sounding voice]

But there's a bit more to this menu than meets the eye (and it does wow the eyeballs). The price list, for one thing. Those who follow the Tao's blog knows that Alexis has designed an entire system of trade and pricing for his world, considering supply and demand and travel, all based in real world resources in order model a fantasy economy that makes sense and is closer to actual/factual. I don't doubt that much of the pricing here has come out of his own rates (as well as his years of experience in the restaurant business) and this kind of information can be useful in breaking down the resources in a given area (and relative value of said resources). Far from just a simple "prop," this can be a valuable play aid in world building.

Of course, it would be difficult to believe that even a fantasy restaurant would have such a wide array of items in its pantry. Sea turtle soup only became a "thing" in Europe after the species was imported from the West Indies in the 17th and 18th centuries, and who knows when items like sauerkraut and caviar became popular menu choices in regions west of the Rhine? But here's the thing: nothing compels you to use EVERY item on the menu. Perhaps the Jousting Piglet is run by a wizard who can teleport all over the globe for his groceries...but the menu could just as easily be used for the Red Dwarf Tavern or the Inn of the Welcome Wench with the admonition to "ignore everything in the Kettle and Hearth sections that aren't pork" (or whatever). 

The menu likewise acts as suggestions for adventure (and treasure). Ye Old Wikipedia tells me that six pounds of turtle is a good dinner portion, and that green sea turtles weigh anywhere from 150 - 400+ pounds when mature (some up to 600#). If the turtle soup is 16 g.p. per portion, that ends up being a lot of treasure for each such critter caught and hauled back to port! Likewise, if a half-jigger of absinthe is worth 13 g.p. at the tavern, what's the value of a bottle of the stuff (hint: a fifth bottle would hold about 17 shots)? How much for a cask of pear cider when the price of a goblet is 5 s.p.? These are things you can throw into your adventure sites, rather than sacks of coins. Why drop a box of 3,000 copper pieces when you could have two kegs of "lordly stout" (29 c.p. per stein) instead?

And here you thought the menu was just a gimmick.

; )

The variety of items...meats, vegetables, breads, drinks, desserts, and dishes...is pretty astounding, each with a lovingly detailed description of its preparation. Everything here looks delicious. My daughter, reading through the menu, wants to go to the restaurant..."Can we please, PLEASE go to this place?" I have had to explain (multiple times now) that it's not a real restaurant, and that I'm a little short on silver and gold pieces. This has not gone over well. She'd really like eat the food described in the menu.

And, I admit, I feel much the same...remember: I enjoy eating. Some of this stuff just makes the mouth water; for example:

Jousted perch (5 s.p.)

Our specialty: choice perch newly caught, stuffed with anchovy, lobster & bread crumbs, roasted over a slow fire until moist, crisp and delicious

Or...

Roast fillet of veal (11 s.p.)

boned, skewered & bound, roasted above gentle coals, basted continuously; served with butter & bacon sauce

Or...

Mussels & potatoes (15 s.p.)

fresh plucked from the sea, boiled in their own liquor then sauteed, served with brown-fried potatoes, tomato and lemon slices

Or even...

Pumpernickel loaf (7 c.p.)

traditional Mackburg rye bread with farm brown colour & earthy aroma, reminiscent of dark chocolate & coffee

Man, I could go for a good loaf of pumpernickel and a side of their brown gravy (4 c.p.) along with a tankard of their roasted ale (13 c.p.)...that's a pretty good snack for two silver, though some might prefer the freshly churned butter ("compliments of our dear cow Beatrice") for one s.p. more than the gravy.

My son thinks the menu is pretty cool, and feels it would find good use at his gaming table (he's DM'ing AD&D these days). For him, he sees it as a useful tool to help put his players (all kids) in the right frame of mind for the game, and give them a good idea of the D&D world in which the characters reside. "Very medieval," he says, "Very neat."

Anyhoo...

The menu is a nice little luxury item for the DM that is otherwise "set" with the required complement of rule books, dice, and cooperative players. It's a niche product, but not an un-useful one. It IS a bit spendy (especially considering shipping from Canada), but for folks who have the extra cash, it's not a bad piece to aid in deepening and enriching one's campaign setting. And folks who do like (and use) props at the table will find this one pretty fantastic and...dare I say...flavorful.

Cheers to all.

Happy Christmas To Me!

Ha! The print run of the new book, COMES CHAOS, came through early...today, in fact. 

[well, not actually "early;" just earlier than anticipated (getting the right paper stock from suppliers has been, like everything during the pandemic, a bit complicated)]

Still: there it is. Spent a couple hours driving to and from Tacoma, picking up five crates of books. And they turned out really nice...far better than I expected or hoped. The whole time I was driving there I had this vision of me having to tell the folks, 'nope, that's not going to work for me,' and having to deal with all that fallout, but all my fears were groundless. Turned out quite nifty, despite being softcover.

SO...folks will notice there's a new button on the blog for ordering a print copy. Same price as the other books (it has a couple more pages than TCBXA, but I don't anticipate the weight being being more than negligible for shipping). Come and get it, people.

; )

In other news: I've had the chance to go over all the submissions received for my YEAR OF THE RAT contest. Despite the suggestion that it was too short a turnaround time, six folks got seven adventures to me BEFORE the deadline of midnight, 11/30. My own offering wasn't finished before 12:10am on 12/1 (as I noted in my last post) so, well, boo me. In my defense, I will note that I'm the only one to do an AD&D adventure, and I had to calculate the XP value of the three new monsters I included in the appendix (that's what I was doing at 11:57pm) which is, you know, ridiculous but I'm a bit of a stickler. I also cooked a six-dish meal for the family dinner (not counting the dessert) so...well, whatever. 

*AHEM* As I was saying, I've gone over all the submissions, and I have the two winners (not yet notified) as well as the short-list of entries that will be going in the compilation book. I'll blog about all that tomorrow.

Okay, that's it. Dinner tonight was a fantastic beef stew with a vegetable medley side and a really nice "Swiss peasant" loaf (now with 60% more peasant!). My glass of cab is sitting downstairs waiting for me, and I'm feeling pretty "holly-jolly." Later, gators.

Logistics

I haven't forgotten about the "god fighting" posts; they shall be continuing shortly. However, my daughter came down with a sniffle over the weekend and so both kids were home yesterday (school policy) which has delayed the next post of the series.

In the meantime, here's something else for folks to chew on:

Sunday we had the day off, and I mean a real day off. No sports, no school, no church (still closed without an appointment), no outdoor activities (it was raining). D&D was thus the order of the day, and the home game began exploring my rework of Xak Tsaroth, AKA The Sunken City of Doom. So far the party is still exploring the swamp, and have faced but a single encounter with lizard men (my world doesn't have draconians). Well, they also encountered some wolves along the road, but they drove those off. 

Not a lot of action, right? I can understand if that seems strange to some folks: running a typical B/X dungeon, I'd expect to get through six to eight combat encounters in a four hour session (depending on the level of opposition, the number of combatants involved, and the relative skill of the players); even for my young players, even running the (slightly) more complex AD&D, we'd expect three to four solid battles in a session...we were doing that easy when running UK3: The Gauntlet. 

But this is campaign play...advanced play. And the beginning of an adventure is always a bit slower.

We wrapped up The Forest Oracle pretty quickly...in brief, the PCs decided to leave "the Downs" (Thorp) to its fate, abandoning the quest in favor of more straightforward (and hopefully lucrative) pursuits. None of this 'go-here-do-that-get-this-other-thing-save-town' stuff. Besides, the undermountain tunnel had proven decidedly un-profitable and extremely deadly (they lost...mmm...three PCs in its depths?). More money had been found simply dealing with road bandits, and the players decided to cash in their chips at the nearest decent spot of "civilization:" the small village of Wenatchee.

[I say "village" because it has just under 500 inhabitants. However, Solace in Dragonlance has the same number and is called a "town" in module DL1]

It was in Wenatchee that the party made the acquaintance of Duke Van-Uz, an adventurer and nobleman who had learned of an ancient city, lost forever in the swamps known sarcastically as "Banks Lake." Supposedly, the place had been a thriving metropolis before the people turned away from the worship of their patron goddess in favor of other, darker gods. Legend says the goddess struck down the city in her wrath, sinking the entire place into the swamp and muck, and transforming its inhabitants into inhuman creatures. While most folks consider the stories to be nothing more than cautionary fables, the Duke discovered an old map on one of his ventures, that seems to indicate a large city did indeed exist some 300 years ago....

The Duke thinks the city existed and believes there may be ancient/lost treasures still to be recovered. After some negotiation, he's agreed to outfit the party (to the tune of 1,500 gold pieces) to launch an expedition, with the understanding that he expects a 100% return on his investment within the month. Formal contracts were drawn, along with the usual assassination clauses, and the party set about with provisioning.

[regarding assassination clauses and the D&D economy, I humbly direct your attention to the latest Grogtalk video, Money and the 1st Edition Economy. After the usual rigamarole of banter they get into the whole DMG bit about taxes, tariffs, expenses and fees...but the rather hilarious (and thoughtful) bit about the role of assassins guilds in AD&D society comes in at the 3:35 mark, and I'd recommend starting the video there...for interested folks, it's about 20 minutes of pure gold]

And that's where the time for the session got sunk. In my campaign, Xak Tsaroth is located about where Coulee City is in the real world, some 67 miles east of Wenatchee down US-2. Except there is no "US-2" and the ground is rough enough any kind of wheeled cart or wagon is going to take about a week just to get to the edge of the swamp (i.e. to about the place that wheels become useless). And that's a loooong distance to travel when you're packing in your own food supplies...there is NOTHING between Wenatchee and the site's location.

The party's original plan was to hire about eight men-at-arms, in addition to the henchmen they've already acquired, for a total party size of 13. Two carts were deemed sufficient, pulled by eight mules (four each). The cleric had also purchased a war horse which, along with his riding mare, would be making the trip. Figuring two week's travel (round trip) plus a week of exploration meant 21 days of food and feed for every human and animal in the party: a bit more than 3,500 pounds of provisions. Each cart, fully loaded, can haul 800#...less than a quarter of their required capacity for food alone. 

[we used 7.5# per day for "iron rations" based on the encumbrance figures given in Appendix O of the DMG. As of today, I'm willing to revise that to a more appropriate 3.5# food per person per day, with the difference between "iron" and "standard"simply being an issue of spoilage...but even so, you're only saving half a ton of cartage]

THIS. This is the reason why dungeons exist unexplored and unspoiled by every two-bit adventurer aspiring to the name. Because 60 miles might as well be 600 if there are no roads and no villages in between. The issue turned into an interesting dilemma of logistics for the players, as they played around with different combinations of distance, time, encumbrance, and (monetary) budget. Perhaps if they headed north, they could take a boat down the Columbia to the northern part of the swamp...except that there's no Grand Coulee Dam, and no real way to move wagons through 30 miles of bog to the (alleged) location of the lost city. Anyway, rafting through monster-infested swamps doesn't sound like the safest course of action.  

It took a good long time to reach a decision agreeable to both the party and their patron (they actually negotiated upwards from the original outlay costs). In the end, they purchased a single, four-wheeled wagon (drawn by an 8 mule team), and hired only five light footmen (four plus one sergeant); they did purchase good armor (chain) for everyone. The magic-user is driving the wagon; the cleric riding his palfrey. The party assumes that food eaten on the journey will allow space to be used for packing out...absolutely essential since they'll need to pay their sponsor 3,000 gold in treasure upon return from the venture.

SO. One encounter. Oh, and some wolves in the hills. Most of the men-at-arms were retained simply to guard the wagon and livestock while the adventurers proper push into the swamp's interior. The one lady-in-arms they took with them was slain in the first round of combat with the lizard men...not sure what they plan to do with her body, but the party is pressing on while they still have daylight. 

After all, they only have a limited number of days to explore before the food runs out.

; )