Fragments from Palace of the Vampire Queen

Palace of the Vampire Queen was the first adventure module ever published. You don't hear much about it outside collector's circles because it wasn't done by TSR or any of the big 3rd party outfits like Judges Guild. Nowadays a copy generally commands crazy stupid money from those completist collector types. When one of these babies appears on eBay the seller sometimes posts an image of a page or two. I've swiped a couple of those images, and got a few more from a link at Dragonsfoot, the official home of old school D&D awesome. Click on the small version to see these pages in their full glory. Enjoy.

The product is called ' Dungeon Master Kit - Number One'. The term module wasn't in use yet.

"The kit itself is only a basic outline - you can make it a dramatic adventure." A motto to DM by.

This intro is fabulous. If you can read that and not be ready for a kickass adventure, then you're in the wrong hobby, bub.Part of the leve 1 adventure key. I am totally swiping the Madman and his horde of cats and putting them in another dungeon. Coming soon to Jeff's Gameblog: my 3.5 stats for a Housecat Swarm.

The map itself may be crude but the marginal decoration is absolutely charming.

found another D&D comic ad

This one has made the rounds on the net before, but with both hot cleric ass and a red dragon making puppy eyes I could not pass up a chance to share it again. Especially with such a bright, clean copy.

Click to feast your eyes upon the nostalgic goodness.

The joys of ROM #24, part 1

The same week I scored some Team America I also got a few issues of ROM: Spaceknight, another Bill Mantlo scripted mind trip. This one features a trip to Xandar, the world that is home to Nova and the Champions of Xandar, a sort of also-ran space super-team that was eclipsed by the more popular Guardians of the Galaxy. Though Nova himself has had a recent relaunch that some people are saying is cool. Anyway, issue number 24 of ROM includes one of those great old D&D ads that was itself a comic strip.

Click on the thumbnail to awesome-size it.

Mighty Works of Moldvay

Tom Moldvay is one of the great unsung talents in the RPG hobby. I can't really tell you anything about Tom Moldvay regarding his biography or personality or anything like that. All I know about this guy was that everything he touched turned to awesome. Let me tell you a little bit about 5 books he worked on.

D&D Basic Rules (TSR, 1981)

Regular readers know that I started with these rules and that I simply cannot stop telling people how awesome they are. Tom Moldvay took the great start J. Eric Holmes had made with the original D&D Basic rules and distilled down to the awesome and then re-fleshed it out. I prefer Moldavy's edit not just for nostalgia reasons. The earlier Holmes version is still pretty crude while Mentzer's '83 edition kinda talks down to the reader. Moldvay's version is a sleek ass-kicking machine. Also, Morgan Ironwolf rules.

X2 Castle Amber (TSR, 1981)

I've had this module for years but I've not run it... yet. Based extremely loosely on the Amber novel series, this is one of those morks that annoys the crap out of people who demand 'realism' from their modules. But it is chock full of gonzo adventure. This is one of those great modules that you can just fall into and never get out. What I mean is that you could base a whole campaign on the plot threads contained within its meager pages.

Lords of Creation (Avalon Hill, 1983)

I've written about this game before. If you like wild and wooly multi-genre dimension-hopping madness, then this game is right up your alley. The rules are easy and clean. The various magical, technological, and psychic powers look like a hell of a lot of fun to play. And the skill system is one of the best I've ever seen. Folks looking for gritty resolution mechanics would do well to keep on looking, but if you interest is more along the lines of enabling whacky adventures, then look no further. This is the only skill system I've seriously considered adapting to Classic Traveller play. And the three modules that came out for this game are non-stop freak-outs.

The next two items are Moldvay works I do not own, so the info I'm passing on to you is second hand. Both are collector's items. And despite having a room in my house devoted to games, I don't consider myself a collector. I don't buy games based upon collectibility or rareness or resale value or crap like that. Up until now I've been too cheap to pay collector's prices for these babies. But I thought I would pass on what I know.

Seren Ironhand (Challenges International, 1986)

Holy crap, that cover is awesome! What adventurer worth his salt wouldn't want to visit that place? Seren Ironhand was meant to be part 2 of a trilogy of Moldvay written 3rd party modules, but neither the first nor last installment were published. Weird. Copies come up regularly on eBay, usually going in the high thirty or low forty dollar range. The same dude is always selling, so I assume he has a case of them he's trickling out. According to the non-TSR xD&D item list hardcore D&D collector James Sinks (he wrote the list of TSR products most collectors work off of nowadays) considers Seren Ironhand to be the best module he has ever seen.

The Future King (publisher and date unknown)

The cover pic is my sole source of info. I can't even tell you if this is a game or a module or what. But with Bruce Lee, Doc Holliday, Nostradamus, and Cyrano DeBergerac on the cover, how can this not be the coolest thing ever written? I really need to plonk down the money to get myself a copy of this thing. The prices at the one or two places I've seen it for sale make it a better prospect than getting Seren Ironhand. UPDATE: Found an old review!

Morgan Ironwolf: Old School Iconic

Using the word "iconic" to describe the exemplar characters for D&D is a new phenomenon. I hadn't heard term until 3E, with its more brand-savvy approach. But D&D had signature characters right from the very start, they just weren't branded as heavily as nowadays with their own novels and what all. The '81 Basic D&D Set that I started with had its own share of named characters, but head and shoulders above the rest stood Morgan Ironwolf.

Morgan appears in the text three times over the course of the 64 page rulebook, more than any other character. We first encounter her on page B13, where she is the character generation example. I absolutely love how the first 13 steps of chargen outline the creation of a classic butt-kicking high Strength/Dex/Con, low Int/Wis/Cha fighter. And only in the last step do we get this:

14. This player is female and decides that her character will also be female. Inspired by the name of Morgan le Fay from Arthurian legends, the player decides that the name of Morgan Ironwolf would be a good name for a fighter.

That's gender equality, Dungeons & Dragons style. It should be noted that this version of D&D lacks the penalties on female Strength that Gygax would be so rightly lambasted for in AD&D. Incidentally, I can't help but wonder if Morgan's last name was inspired by the Howard Chaykin character of the same name, who appeared in DC's Weird Worlds in the early 70s. Whatever the origin of the name, Morgan Ironwolf remains one of the coolest PC monikers in the history of the hobby.

On the page following the chargen example we get a complete character sheet filled out for Ms. Ironwolf. Click the teeny one below to see it in all it's glory.


Then on page 20 we're treated to this very excellent Jeff Dee illo of Our Heroine.


Okay, there's really nothing that proves that this picture is meant to be Morgan Ironwolf. The equipment she carries matches the chargen information and as kids that was all we needed to make the connection. As a grown man it strikes me as sexist to assume that the one female warrior illo simply has to be the only female fighter in the text, as if there couldn't be two female fighters in the world. But as a kid I was just looking for ways of making sense of the totality of the rulebook. As a result, that pic will always be Morgan Ironwolf to me. I have no doubt that Dragonsfoot is chock full of people my age who came to the same conclusion.

Morgan appears two more times in the text. On B28 the sample combat features her and her friends Silverleaf (an elf, of course), Fredrik (a dwarf), and the cleric Sister Rebecca. Morgan makes a good accounting of herself, killing one hobgoblin with an arrow shot and another with swordplay. She's wounded in the battle and wants to kill some hobgobbo prisoners, but Sister Rebecca threatens to get stingy with the cure light wounds should the the wretches be harmed. Those Lawful clerics can be a real pain in the ass sometimes.

The general example of play also features Morgan Ironwolf and the same cast as previous, joined for a while by Black Dougal the thief. I say 'a while' because he blows finding a poison needle trap and dies during the example of play. It has nothing to do with Morgan Ironwolf, but I absolutely adore this exchange:

DM: Black Dougal gasps 'Poison!' and falls to the floor. He looks dead.
Fredrik: I'm grabbing his pack to carry treasure in.

Damn, that is cold. The dwarf doesn't even confirm the dude is dead before he starts vulturing his stuff.

In the example of play the standout thing about Morgan is that her player (who we know is female) is the caller. No one I know has had a formal party caller in 20 years, but back in the day it was the most important player position. Much player-to-DM communication was filtered through the caller, who was tasked with speaking for the party as a whole. In my experience the caller was the de facto leader of the party.

So that's Morgan Ironwolf in a nutshell. As far as I know she's never appeared again in a game product. If you know otherwise, please clue me in.

Anyone got one of these?

In the 80's there was an issue of Dragon where a similar product was reviewed. It was called the Fair Shake Dice Device, but that was a clunky wooden think that was a bitch to transport. I know because I built my own as my project for 8th grade woodshop class. (Yes, I am that big of a dork.) This looks like it could disassemble to travel flat, which would explain why it's called the portable dice tower.

That Dragon issue also reviewed a couple of other dice oddities. Dragonbone was a handheld LED thingy that generated random numbers electronically. They were apparently built solidly, as I've heard of people who still use their Dragonbone two decades later. Then there was The D4 That Rolls, a d8 marked 1-4 twice. That's a great idea but I wouldn't use them today because, outside of casino d6s, 80's dice had much dodgier quality controls than models nowadays. I have seen some d12s marked with 1 to 4 pips on each side, but I've never found them priced cheap enough where I would feel justified in replacing my d4s with them. Over on Gamecraft someone highly recommended I get some of the new prism-shaped d4s from Crystal Caste. I just got done replacing my d4s, so I'd feel a little silly doing so again.

Proscriptive Campaign Creation

The one time I ran adventure S4 The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth it was a bit of a mess, yet it remains one of my favorite AD&D modules. Not because of the adventure, but because of the awesome insert, called simply Booklet 2: Monsters and Magical Items.

It's 32 pages long, the last 3 of which are specific information for the Lost Caverns. But the other 29 pages are chock full of awesome. The first eighteen pages contain the write-ups for thirty-odd new monsters. (All of which later appeared in the original Monster Manual II, so don't rush out to get this puppy just for the new critters.) Following the monsters are a few pages of magic items, including three nifty artifacts: Daoud's Wondrous Lanthorn, the Demonomicon of Iggwilv, and the Prison of Zagig. The Demonomicon contains several new higher level cleric and magic-user spells. One of these new spells, Henley's Digit of Disruption, was not reprinted in the original Unearthed Arcana tome, even though all the others were. After the spells and items are a brief essy on magical diagrams and a brief list of reputed properties of gems.

Taken together as a whole, the contents of Booklet 2 seem to be whispering a message into my ear. And that message is "make a campaign out of me". This almost random collection of monsters, magic items, spells, and miscellaneous bric-a-brac looks like just enough stuff for you to build a cute little setting. Give me this slim volume, a Player's Handbook, and a decent screen, and I could run a neat little mini-campaign without either the Dungeon Master's Guide or any further monster book. I'm not seriously suggesting that anyone do that. It would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Especially seeing as just last month Doc Rotwang! and I were mooning over the 1st edition DMG over at his blog.

Instead of being draconian about it and saying "I'm only using the stuff in this pamphlet", a fair more reasonable and sustainable approach would be to use the contents of Booklet 2 as the center pieces of a campaign that includes all the usual D&D stuff. So you could have orcs and dragons as needed, but the main threats of the campaign would be the derro and behirs or dracolisks from Booklet 2. Imagine a world where all the 'dragons' breathe acid AND petrify at a glance! That'll wake up some complacent dungeon hackers. (Incidentally, Jim Holloway draws the creepiest little derros I've ever seen.)

So this finally brings me around to the title of this blog post: Proscriptive Campaign Creation. The basic idea is to help yourself drill down on campaign creation through deliberate acts of omission. I find this approach extremely handy when dealing with kitchen sink settings or games with simply vast quatities of monsters and stuff. D&D being my prime example, of course.

By saying to yourself something like "Hey, this campaign is going to focus on this list of monsters" you'll achieve a tighter focus and a more memorable campaign. The big key is to pick memorable monsters across a wide spectrum of abilities, types, and power levels and to not paint yourself into a corner. When you've embarked on this type of exercise you need to remember that sometimes it's absolutely okay to occasionally break out the old standards like orcs and ogres. Hell, I'd be a bit sad to get through an entire campaign and never stab an orc at least once.

Generating the list of featured creatures can be the tough bit. I would absolutely love it if someone swiped the idea of using the S4 Booklet 2. Sign me up for any campaign where the Big Bads are the demon lords Baphomet, Fraz-Urb-Iuu, Graz'zt, and Kostchtchie. Remember Kostchtchie? He made the cover of Dragon once. That hammer of his may not be as powerful or have as much street cred as Mjolnir, but it's still pretty effin' cool.

Another awesome monster source for a proscriptive campaign would be the original Fiend Folio. Alot of people think of that book as the worst grab-bag of monsters TSR ever cranked out, but I think of it as a wonderful, glorious buffet of wacky critters. (You know, not many folks these days seem to remember that where we all saw the Githyanki for the first time.) Many of the monsters in the old Folio might be crap by today's standard of dungeon ecology and mechanical coherence, but if you used it as your sole monster book I guaran-damn-tee your players will never forget your campaign! For a modern D&D campaign I'd probably go off the beaten path for my monster source. My first pick would probably be Bastion Press's Minions, the 3.5 version of which is a PDF product called Complete Minions. Though I gotta say that it would be hard for me to put a Secret Eater into one of my games. They just look too much like Todd McFarlane's Spawn for me to take seriously.

In a game with lots of little shiny bits like D&D there are plenty of other things besides monsters that come in long grocery list quantities. Shining your light on just part of the list works with much of that other stuff as well. Going back to Booklet 2 for a moment, Daoud's Wondrous Lanthron, the Prison of Zagig and especially the Demonomicon of Iggwilv look like perfect Macguffin level artifacts around which you can build lengthy plot arcs.

The one thing I recommend DM's not trim is the list of character build options. I firmly believe it's the players' job to decide exactly what kind of freaks of nature they run. Don't let them roll over your campaign with some obscure ultrapowerful class or race from an oddball supplement, but give them a wide enough variety of nifty options to choose from and most players won't go that route.

My new toy

I don't have any interest in Wizards' new minis game Dreamblade, but dang are some of the figures cool. This particular figure had to be mine:


In Dreamblade this dude is the Knight of the Autumn Gate. That's a pretty cool title but to me he's the Bugbear King. I know he doesn't look anything like a bugbear, but at one time bugbears looked like him! The first illustration of a bugbear appeared in OD&D Supplement I: Greyhawk. Dig it:


Pretty much every subsequent appearance of the bugbear since then has depicted the giant goblinoids we all know and loathe. Turns out the creepy jack-o-lantern dude above was the result of a miscommunication. Gary Gygax once explained over at Dragonsfoot. "The pumpkin-headed bugbear was an artist taking literally my description of the monster as having a head like a pumpkin, i.e large, round flat oval."

The pumpkin-head version of the bugbear survived in Runequest under the name Jack-o-bear, so you can actually find a few lead minis of this throwback design. But a prepainted plastic figure was just too cool to pass up. Especially with that flaming sword, awesome armor, and wicked grin.