2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary - Day Fifty-Eight

Celebrating 2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary of Blackmoor and of Role-Playing!

Today we continue with Part 3 of our look at Dungeons & Dragons - Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures. Men & Magic Volume 1 of Three Booklets.

Now we come to the section Characters:

There are three (3) main classes of characters:
Fighting-Men
Magic-Users
Clerics

Fighting-Men: includes the characters of elves and dwarves and even hobbits. 

Magic-Users includes only men and elves. Clerics are limited to men only. All non-human players are restricted in some aspects and gifted in others. This will be dealt with in the paragraphs pertaining to each non-human type.

This what we started with in OD&D in the original version. Note that anyone could be a Fighting-Man, but Magic-Users were limited to men and elves, and Clerics were limited to men only. While I always ignored these restrictions in the base classes, I have seen many Internet arguments about these restrictions between the by the book group and the purists who ignore the letter and go by the spirit of OD&D which is opened-ended, Do It Yourself (DIY)/(MIY) Make It Yourself run the game how you want group. I define a purist as those who run the game as intended and the opposition is the by the book rules lawyers. As per my previous post (2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary - Day Fifty-Six):

The bottom line is that the rules, the guidelines tell you in no uncertain terms both explicitly and implicitly that OD&D is meant to be house-ruled, to be tweaked to suit you at your table. Every campaign should be unique and different - that is how the game was designed and intended. 

Again play any way you want, there is no bad wrong fun, just note that there is an intentional freedom in the rules to do whatever works for you. Some of us love that and others do not. That is why all of the hundreds of RPGs are derivatives of OD&D and in which various limits were imposed on the original freedom of the game. Yes, it is ironic that all of the added "options" are really added limits. In OD&D every character is unique if the player chooses to make it so.

I will note here that I am old enough to remember when it was never necessary to include disclaimers. Now some go over things with a fine tooth comb looking for something to be offended by. This is a very sad thing, I remember when a dozen people could argue about politics and religion for a couple of hours and then go out and have a drink together. Now such things lead to broken relationships, sadly this is what things have come to. It was much easier to do things in a large group back in the days when you only needed to agree on one or two things to go have fun together even if you disagreed about a lot of other things.

Fighting-Men: All magical weaponry is usable by fighters, and this in itself is a big advantage. In addition, they gain the advantage of more “hit dice” (the score of which determines how many points of damage can be taken before a character is killed). They can use only a very limited number of magical items of the nonweaponry variety, however, and they can use no spells. Top-level fighters (Lords and above) who build castles are considered “Barons,” and as such they may invest in their holdings in order to increase their income (see the INVESTMENTS section of Book III). Base income for a Baron is a tax rate of 10 Gold Pieces/inhabitant of the barony/game year.

Bitd it was obvious that Fighting-Men meant men and women. About half of the women (and men) in the group played fighters and it never occurred to anyone that women could not be fighters or that their stats should be adjusted. We invited men and women to the table, both came and played. It was a very long time later that I found out Gygax thought women would not be interested; however, his daughter(s) IIRC were part of the play-testers, this should have given him a clue. The different stat ranges and other odd things were not part of OD&D, those came about in AD&D and generated many Internet arguments, many of them quite bitter.

Magic-Users: Top level magic-users are perhaps the most powerful characters in the game, but it is a long, hard road to the top, and to begin with they are weak, so survival is often the question, unless fighters protect the low-level magical types until they have worked up. The whole plethora of enchanted items lies at the magic-user’s beck and call, save the arms and armor of the fighters (see, however, Elves); Magic-Users may arm themselves with daggers only. Wizards and above may manufacture for their own use (or for sale) such items as potions, scrolls, and just about anything else magical. Costs are commensurate with the value of the item, as is the amount of game time required to enchant it.

About half of the players (women and men) played Magic-Users. We allowed Magic-Users to use daggers and staff/quarterstaff and a crossbow as standard options. I did on occasion put in a magic sword geared towards a magic-user, but our magic-users as a rule did not want to join in combat.

Included in this section are rules for creating magic items and we heavily house-ruled this section, it also included rules for magical research which we also house-ruled. More information is provided in the Spells section. My more extensive house rules will be in a much later post in this series.

Clerics: Clerics gain some of the advantages from both of the other two classes (Fighting-Men and Magic-Users) in that they have the use of magic armor and all non-edged magic weapons (no arrows!), plus they have numbers of their own spells. In addition, they are able to use more of the magical items than are the Fighting-Men. When Clerics reach the top level (Patriarch) they may opt to build their own stronghold, and when doing so receive help from “above.” Thus, if they spend 100,000 Gold Pieces in castle construction, they may build a fortress of double that cost. Finally, “faithful” men will come to such a castle, being fanatically loyal, and they will serve at no cost. There will be from 10–60 heavy cavalry, 10–60 horsed crossbowmen (“Turcopole”-type), and 30–180 heavy foot.

Note that Clerics are either “Law” or “Chaos,” and there is a sharp distinction between them. If a Patriarch receiving the above benefits changes sides, all the benefits will immediately be removed!

Clerics with castles of their own will have control of a territory similar to the “Barony” of fighters, and they will receive “tithes” equal to 20 Gold Pieces/Inhabitant/year.

We only had one player that ever played a cleric in our games and he played nothing else. We also house-ruled in other people (besides troops) that would also come to such a castle for both Fighting Men and for Clerics. You will note that there is no mention of a Magic-User having a stronghold, I did construct house rules for a Tower. Those will be included later. I will note that the Tower could be off by itself or it could be allied with a "Barons" castle.

In the 5th print and later printings of the rules a change was added:

Note that Clerics of 7th level and greater are either “Law” or “Chaos,” and there is a sharp distinction between them.

I have never adopted this, Clerics in my campaigns are universally Lawful starting at 1st Level. All other classes in my campaigns are Lawful or Neutral. I have never run PCs as Chaotic.

These are the original three classes and we did not add any others until the last third of the school year. Over the four years of college, we used parts of all the supplements, things from The Strategic Review, things from The Dragon and eventually things from The Arduin Grimoire. We also had access to The Empire of the Petal Throne, Metamorphosis Alpha, and Gamma World which we dipped into. We did not see any other games during that time period. As I have noted before I did not see 1st Ed AD&D until a very long time later.

There is no section specifically for Men, but there is for Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits. Starting with the 6th printing Hobbits were removed from the rules, not by the Tolkien Estate itself. I have often felt sorry for the Tolkien Estate as they were taken to the cleaners long ago. I have zero respect for the sharks that take advantage of creative people and that trope continues to play out to this day.

Hobbits were replaced with Halflings, but I have always ignored that. After we started using the Greyhawk Supplement and we introduced thieves, then several people started playing Hobbits, before that, none did.

Also removed at the same time were Ents which were replaced by Treants and Balrogs which were just removed but not replaced until a little later. Again I ignored these changes.

More on these races in the next post.