Celebrating 2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary of Blackmoor and of Role-Playing!
Today is Part 27 of my series of looks at OD&D starting with Monsters & Treasure Volume 2. Today we will look at the second half of the table that opens Volume 2.
Unlike Minotaurs, Centaurs are said to be semi-intelligent at worse (noted later) and I have always treated Centaurs and Unicorns as fully intelligent.
Nixies, Pixies and Dryads I have never used, they just have not resonated with anything I have wanted to do.
Gnomes, Dwarves, Elves and Ents are all intelligent. No one has ever asked to play a Gnome or Ent, but I would be fine if they did. Gnomes I play as touchy and very concerned about the exact letter of a contract and very hard to deal with. They have strong magical powers and inclined to be isolated.
Pegasi, Hippogriffs, Rocs and Griffons are highly desired as mounts by adventurers with the first two reserved for smaller and lighter adventurers and the latter two working best for those who are larger.
Invisible Stalkers are a very deadly adversary as we will see later and are a lot of fun to use in a game.
Elementals are always a fun thing to use especially as minions of the villains. Djinn and Efreet have a multitude of ways they can be used and it is also good to switch things up from the standard myths and make them more mysterious.
Here we can see that the dungeon clean up crew as they are called are divided into different categories. We will get into some of the reasons these are divided in the coming days. Both Ochre Jelly and Black Pudding are fairly mobile.
Now Green Slime is immobile and Gray Ooze is nearly immobile.
As a player Yellow Mold is the one that I most do not want to run into as a player. Note that note of these have any treasure. It also says Nil for Lair, but really anywhere you find them is there Lair.
I grew up with horses as my father loved horses and working with them was what he preferred to do, but making a living interfered with that a lot.
While we mostly had riding horses, we did own some draft horses and dad farmed with horses until 1959, after which he used tractors. We also had a mule for a few years too.
All manner of insects and animals are a way to have some fun encounters and add a unique flavor to your world. Large herds of herbivores feed the variety of carnivores and monsters. Do not forget the ominivores and of course insects are ubiquitous.
And then of course we have the footnotes, that are there to inform you that there are options and not to blindly follow the tables. The movement rates are explained, although I intrepreted them as I noted before I read that far in the table. Yeah, I did not look at the footnotes until I reached the end of the table. So I just presented it the way I first saw it. It also refers you to the written descriptions.
Under special abilities it notes how to resolve things between Chainmail and these rules. Also please note that the earliest players were familiar with Chainmail and wargames before coming to OD&D, unlike later players who likely had not previously seen Chainmail and often did not have it. We ruled that no men could see in total darkness, but monsters and elves and dwarves could see in total darkness and could do so even if they were player characters. Also hobbits could see in total darkness. So only humans had that handicap.
In regard to Attack/Defence there is an interjection here about that and we will look at that much deeper when we get to Volume 3. I will note that against a player character, even a 1st level player character a Troll did not get six attacks for being 6 Hit Die monsters with the +3 to one die roll. But we did give them three attacks from day one, with two claw attacks and a bite attack. There were other monsters that got more attacks in a similar manner.
Tomorrow we will get into the descriptive text.
Today is Part 27 of my series of looks at OD&D starting with Monsters & Treasure Volume 2. Today we will look at the second half of the table that opens Volume 2.
Unlike Minotaurs, Centaurs are said to be semi-intelligent at worse (noted later) and I have always treated Centaurs and Unicorns as fully intelligent.
Nixies, Pixies and Dryads I have never used, they just have not resonated with anything I have wanted to do.
Gnomes, Dwarves, Elves and Ents are all intelligent. No one has ever asked to play a Gnome or Ent, but I would be fine if they did. Gnomes I play as touchy and very concerned about the exact letter of a contract and very hard to deal with. They have strong magical powers and inclined to be isolated.
Pegasi, Hippogriffs, Rocs and Griffons are highly desired as mounts by adventurers with the first two reserved for smaller and lighter adventurers and the latter two working best for those who are larger.
Invisible Stalkers are a very deadly adversary as we will see later and are a lot of fun to use in a game.
Elementals are always a fun thing to use especially as minions of the villains. Djinn and Efreet have a multitude of ways they can be used and it is also good to switch things up from the standard myths and make them more mysterious.
Here we can see that the dungeon clean up crew as they are called are divided into different categories. We will get into some of the reasons these are divided in the coming days. Both Ochre Jelly and Black Pudding are fairly mobile.
Now Green Slime is immobile and Gray Ooze is nearly immobile.
As a player Yellow Mold is the one that I most do not want to run into as a player. Note that note of these have any treasure. It also says Nil for Lair, but really anywhere you find them is there Lair.
I grew up with horses as my father loved horses and working with them was what he preferred to do, but making a living interfered with that a lot.
While we mostly had riding horses, we did own some draft horses and dad farmed with horses until 1959, after which he used tractors. We also had a mule for a few years too.
All manner of insects and animals are a way to have some fun encounters and add a unique flavor to your world. Large herds of herbivores feed the variety of carnivores and monsters. Do not forget the ominivores and of course insects are ubiquitous.
And then of course we have the footnotes, that are there to inform you that there are options and not to blindly follow the tables. The movement rates are explained, although I intrepreted them as I noted before I read that far in the table. Yeah, I did not look at the footnotes until I reached the end of the table. So I just presented it the way I first saw it. It also refers you to the written descriptions.
Under special abilities it notes how to resolve things between Chainmail and these rules. Also please note that the earliest players were familiar with Chainmail and wargames before coming to OD&D, unlike later players who likely had not previously seen Chainmail and often did not have it. We ruled that no men could see in total darkness, but monsters and elves and dwarves could see in total darkness and could do so even if they were player characters. Also hobbits could see in total darkness. So only humans had that handicap.
In regard to Attack/Defence there is an interjection here about that and we will look at that much deeper when we get to Volume 3. I will note that against a player character, even a 1st level player character a Troll did not get six attacks for being 6 Hit Die monsters with the +3 to one die roll. But we did give them three attacks from day one, with two claw attacks and a bite attack. There were other monsters that got more attacks in a similar manner.
Tomorrow we will get into the descriptive text.
No comments:
Post a Comment