19 August 2009
Today’s Tabbloid
PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net
ROGUE FEED
Retrospective: TSR Mini-Games
AUG 19, 2009 12:01A.M.
I’m not a wargamer and have never claimed to be otherwise. I’ve known
many wargamers throughout my life and some, like my friend’s father
and brother, were among those who first introduced me to the hobby of
roleplaying. I’ve played wargames, of course, and even enjoyed the
experience from time to time, but, on the whole, I don’t have the
patience or attention to detail necessary to be a proper wargamer.
Likewise, while I have an interest in military history, my interest is
insufficiently obsessive to want to recreate famous battles on my dining
room table.
I like the idea of wargaming and I often feel like I ought to be kicked out
of the old school clubhouse for not having played a lot of ASL or Third
Reich back in the day. This applies equally to miniatures wargaming,
which I find even more attractive than hex and chit wargaming, but,
despite my best efforts to muster some enthusiasm for these foundations
of our hobby, I just can’t do it. Something about the reality of wargaming
is at odds with my expectations about it, which is why I’ve never
managed to get into anything more wargame-like than Axis & Allies and
even that pushed the limits of my mental endurance.
On the other hand, I was a huge fan of the mini-games produced by a
number of companies in the early 80s. Not all of these little games could
be described as wargames, but some of them were and I found them to
be just the right level of complexity for my feeble mind to grasp. TSR
published a number of these and I devoured them as a kid. My favorite
was Revolt on Antares, which was a science fiction game designed by
Tom Moldvay. Two to four players took on the roles of various factions to
take control of the planet Imhirrhos in the Antares system. It was a very
simple game but not so simple that it didn’t provide plenty of replay
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value and replay it I did. Other games in the series included Vampyre, a
horror survival game based on Dracula, Saga, based on Norse
mythology, and They’ve Invaded Pleasantville, about an alien invasion
of Middle America.
What I most enjoyed about all these games was that their rules were
short and easy to learn and thus easy to modify through house rules. I
remember that my friends and I created additional chits for use in some
of the games, as well as expansions to the tables of random events. These
games weren’t intimidating to us the way that “real” wargames were and
so we allowed our imaginations free rein when it came to altering them.
They were great “time filler” games for when we were waiting to start
roleplaying or when we didn’t have enough time to run an RPG
adventure, since most of the games lasted 45 minutes to an hour, which
is about the right length for me then and now.
I think I gave away my copies of these games long ago and I regret that
now. I’d love to re-acquire them without spending ridiculous amounts of
money, especially Revolt on Antares. These may not have been classics
of game design, but I enjoyed playing them. In my book, that’s the true
measure of a game’s goodness and these were some good games indeed.
ROGUE FEED
Dwimmermount, Session 18
AUG 18, 2009 07:41P.M.
Last Sunday’s Dwimmermount session went well and accomplished
much. Unlike most sessions, Session 17 didn’t end with the PCs leaving
the dungeon and heading back to Muntburg. Instead, they decided to
remain within the dungeon, which threw off my timekeeping records a
bit, but I didn’t mind, since it saved us a lot of time when it came to
kicking off Session 18.
The room they entered immediately after we started contained a locked
strongbox guarded by three shadows. Brother Candor was unhappy to
learn that, in OD&D, shadows aren’t undead — they’re raw Chaos given
malevolent intelligence as I explained them — and so can’t be turned.
They’re also immune to normal weapons and most of the party still lacks
magic items. This meant that only a few of the characters (and
henchmen/hirelings) were able to engage the shadows in combat. The
strength-draining ability of the creatures also reminded me that we
hadn’t established an exact ability scores of some of the NPCs, which we
rectified on the fly, as needed.
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net 19 August 2009

out a vale for Dordagdonar’s eventual stronghold.

The shadows, as it turned out, were guarding what was probably the
biggest stash of loot on the sub-level, necessitating that the party return
to the surface and then make the three-day journey to Adamas to get
gems/jewelry appraised and to unload some of their haul. While there,
they also stocked up on various supplies and tried to find ways to dispose
of their excess coinage. As I’ve mentioned before, I only give XP for gold
that’s spent. The intention is to keep the character poor but living high
on the hog, in true Howardian/Leiberian fashion. The problem my
players have discovered is that, after a certain point, it’s very hard to find
things to spend their money on. Since the highest level character —
Brother Candor — only just turned 5th-level, strongholds aren’t really an
option. Or are they? Dordagdonar’s player stated outright that he intends
to find a secluded vale near Dwimmermount and begin to build a home
for himself and, he hopes, other elves fed up with with having to live with
“ephemerals.” Interestingly, the other players were quite enthusiastic
about this plan and we’ve decided that our next session will be a
wilderness adventure, seeking out such a vale in the area around
Dwimmermount.
This was a very satisfying session and one that saw the players start to
think a bit more about their characters’ futures, at least in general terms.
They also began to ask questions about the world outside of
Dwimmermount, Muntburg, and Adamas. I was pleased by this, not
because I’m tiring of the dungeon — I’m not — but because it gave me a
chance to use a slightly larger canvas than I’ve used in the last five
months of weekly play. I don’t anticipate any world-spanning adventures
any time (if at all), but I’ve laid the groundwork for expanding the scope
of the campaign should the players ever wish to pursue it. Next session
should be interesting, since it’ll be our first fully-fledged wilderness
adventure and I am intensely curious to see what happens.
ROGUE FEED

With that decided, they returned to Dwimmermount for further Presenting a Monster
explorations. The section they were exploring was, as they’d noticed AUG 18, 2009 10:21A.M.
previously, one that had been shut off from the rest of the dungeon —
from the inside. Consequently, most of the rooms were empty, except for
a strange phosphorescent fungi that they avoided, for fear that it might
be deadly. They did find a room that contained a chute down to a black
pit, but none dared venture downward at this time. A room with a couple
of giant spiders did cause them some concern, but they eventually dealt
with the foul arachnids handily. Several more rooms were discovered
and their dangers, such as stirges, were avoided in the interests of
journeying downward to the next level.

The next level — roughly the fourth, by most reckonings — seemed subtly
different than the rest of Dwimmermount. There was less evidence of
regular traffic and the architecture looked both older and creepier. The
first room they entered had a statue of a robed figure with a stern face,
holding a upward-pointing sword in one hand and an open book in the
other. Brother Candor thought it might be another aspect of Turms
Termax, the Thulian god of magic to whom much of the dungeon is
dedicated, but he had no proof of his theory. The same room contained
the mummified head of a frog-like creature — like those seen earlier in
the dungeon — which bellowed a warning to the PCs, when they
approached it, claiming that death awaited those who ventured any
farther.
Naturally, the characters ignored the severed frogman’s head and sallied
forth into a maze-like series of corridors. Brother Candor was suspicious
and used find traps to avoid a couple of pit traps placed within these
corridors. He also began to think that, in future, he would take speak
with animals as his 3rd-level spell, since he figured he could use it to
communicate with the rats the characters have started to bring with
them as lures and “trap finders” when the spell isn’t available. A well
placed web spell cast by Iriadessa allowed the party to quickly dispatch a
group of frogmen they encountered along the way, before they decided to
retreat and head back to Muntburg, with the goal of preparing to seek
If you’ve followed this blog for any length of time, you’ll have noticed
that I’ve never been very consistent in the way I present monsters. That’s
because I’m constantly experimenting with different formats and I
haven’t yet managed to find a perfect one — “perfect” being that
combination of exhaustive yet succinct that quickly gives me everything I
need to know when using a monster in a game.
When I was a kid, I was very fond of the AD&D Monster Manual
presentation, but, as I get older, I find I like it less. I feel it gives too
much information to be useful in play. As a reference, it has value,
particularly if you’re of the Gygaxian naturalist persuasion. I myself have
definite sympathies for that approach, but there is, I think, a danger in
the way that the extensive Monster Manual descriptions, especially those
of the 2e era, set details in stone and implicitly establish an “official”
interpretation of a creature. The “Ecology of ...” series is the natural
evolution of this style of presentation and not one I much admire these

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net 19 August 2009

days. For my money, the Moldvay/Cook presentation of monsters comes

closest to perfect, although it has a few flaws. The biggest is that it
doesn’t include “% in Lair,” which is essential in a sandbox campaign or
indeed in dealing with randomly-rolled wilderness encounters. I also
think the inclusion of the XP value of each monster would make these
entries more immediately useful.

Of course, in the end, the form of the monster listings themselves is less
important than the short form used in modules. Nowadays, the term for
this is a “stat block” and, if I had to point to a single thing that drove me
screaming away from 3e, it was the ridiculous lengths of its stat blocks.
In the old days, most modules used a very abbreviated listing for
monster statistics, with the inclusion of individual hit points being the
only constant. I think that’s probably too little information unless you’re
running a LBB-only OD&D game, which is why, again, I prefer the
Moldvay/Cook short form for most of my purposes. It’s very usable,
sacrificing neither speed nor clarity, and, most importantly, it doesn’t
take up half a page even when describing extremely powerful creatures —
a huge improvement over the WotC editions.

I’m going to be posting some sword-and-planet monsters over the next

few days and I’ll likely be using my latest ideas about the “perfect”
presentation of monsters for old school D&D. Like everything here, I’m
always open to suggestions on how to refine my raw ideas. As much as
the monsters themselves, I’ll be looking for thoughts on their
presentation, since I’d like to come up with a consistent way to present
them that I can use from now on.