The Ruins of Murkhill™ - OEOEFASRPG™

Hail Fellow and Well Met! This is my Original Dungeons & Dragons blog named for my main campaign The Ruins of Murkhill™. I have been playing and refereeing OD&D since Sept. of 1975. I am apt to talk about almost anything game related here. Open Ended Original Edition Old School Fantasy Adventure Sandbox Role Playing Games™ (OEOEFASRPG™) The Open-Ended Sandbox Exploration of Dungeons, Wilderness and Cities. World Building is one of the great pleasures of life.

Saturday, April 4, 2020

2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary - Day Ninety-Five

2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary - Day Ninety-Five

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

Today is Part 40 of my series of looks at OD&D starting with Monsters & Treasure Volume 2.

**For those coming in, in the middle of this series I am giving you my take on OD&D during my first exposure starting in Sept of 1975. For this first part it is just the first three books of the original woodgrain box set and prior to obtaining the Greyhawk, Blackmoor and later Supplements.**

Today we continue on with our look at the original D&D monsters starting with Horses and Mules:

HORSES: As explained in CHAINMAIL, war horses melee. The other characteristics of Horses (and Mules) are:

I would like to point out here that although I did not do it back in the 1970s, I later added in the weight that a Draft Horse or Mule could pull both alone and as part of various sizes of teams. I remember the Borax commercials and the 20-Mule Team of Death Valley. Also at that later time I also added Donkeys, Burros, Ponies and Oxen.

Horses and Mules are panic-stricken by raging fire and strange smells, although those trained for battle are not nearly so likely to be affected. Only mules are agile enough to be taken in dungeons.

Sorry, but while horses can be panic-stricken around fire, mules are on the whole more intelligent and much calmer than horses.

INSECTS OR SMALL ANIMALS: These can be any of a huge variety of creatures such as wolves, centipedes, snakes and spiders. Any hit will kill the smaller ones, while larger beasts (such as wolves) will receive one Hit Die. Generally speaking they will be Armor Class 8.

This is just using normal (mostly) insects and animals in your game and they should (IMO) be part of the encounters.

LARGE INSECTS OR ANIMALS: This category includes giant ants and prehistoric monsters. Armor Class can be anything from 8 to 2. Hit Dice should range from 2 to anywhere near 20, let us say, for a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Also included in this group are the optionally usable “Martian” animals such as Apts, Banths, Thoats, etc. If the referee is not personally familiar with the various monsters included in this category, the participants of the campaign can be polled to decide all characteristics. Damage caused by hits should range between 2–4 dice (2–24 points).

This includes dinosaurs and the historical mega-mammals. Both books and movies (creature features) are a great source of these creatures. From movies like The Lost World Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (book and movie), King Kong in the 1930s to all of those B-movies of the 1950s (and later).

OTHER MONSTERS: There is no practical limitation to the variety of monsters possible. In the campaigns associated with the play-testing of these rules there have either appeared or been postulated such creatures as:

Titans: Giants with limited magical abilities.

These were detailed in Greyhawk and most others were detained in the supplements or in AD&D. I used these in the game.

Cyclopes: Super-strength Giants with poor depth perception.

Juggernauts: Huge stone statues on wheels which crush anything in their path. They are motivated by some unearthly force.

Living Statues: Various stone and metal monsters which come to life if trespass into a certain area is made. One of these monsters was iron, impervious to all weapons save two special ones he guarded, had a fiery breath, poison sword, and a whip of Cockatrice feathers which turned the thing struck by it to stone.

I used all three of these IMC especially Living Statues, I use these a lot and they have been a boon to my dungeons. And for the ecology minded - they do not eat.