Celebrating 2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary of Blackmoor and of Role-Playing!
Today is Part 65 of my series on OD&D, with The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures Vol. 3.
**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.**
Now we will take a look at the Wilderness and it is always good to be reminded of what the Wilderness is:
Is that how you define the Wilderness? All the areas above ground that the players have not explored? Even Cities? IME most people have a much more narrow definition of Wilderness.
One of the few tidbits we get about "Blackmoor" and "Gray hawk." Arneson seems to have exemplified the "less is more" principle as he got a lot of mileage from a small area.
Outdoor Survival served as an easy playing surface for those that had it, I did not. However, I had no trouble generating terrain.
Handy if you had it, but IMO not really required.
I really did not like the disposition of Castle Inhabitants, aside from Patriarchs,as being hostile or neutral, but never favorable. So I revised this to three equal categories.
A fair amount of variety; however, I recommend that you tailor these tables to suit the flavor of your own campaign. These days with computers is easy and quick to generate your own variant tables and you should. I highly advocate reworking any number of things to give your world its own unique flavor.
Have you ever run a jousting match? Just one of many things you can have a lot of fun with. The forfeit the castle owner pays can be modified in any number of ways as long as it remains of similar severity.
Back at the beginning of Men & Magic - Volume 1 we are given information for Fighting-Men and Clerics gaining Castles/Strongholds, but nothing for Magic-Users. Now we see that Magic-Users may also have Castles and filling in the blanks with the particulars of that is trivial.
Note that Magic-Users will use a Geas and Clerics a Quest spell , both of which will result in a considerable time commitment. I suggest that you devise other things similar to Fighting-Men so that you can lose or gain something more directly. as one of the options.
Instead of rolling for 30-180 guards (30d6), I prefer to roll 3d6 X 10.
In the final column, I added that a Cleric has a 50% chance of having a Fighting-Man of Level 3-6.
Generally I determine where the players are from and they know the hex they grew up in and possibly bits and pieces of some of the surrounding hexes from stories or travel to a market, beyond that they may know a little form stories they have heard from travelers. The further from where they grew up the more vague, fragmentary and inaccurate will be their knowledge. When they have traveled to a dungeon, they will only know the path they took to reach that area. From their they must explore to gain knowledge. Of course recruiting a local into a party brings knowledge of at least some areas with it.
Tomorrow we will continue with movement in the Wilderness.
Today is Part 65 of my series on OD&D, with The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures Vol. 3.
**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.**
Now we will take a look at the Wilderness and it is always good to be reminded of what the Wilderness is:
Is that how you define the Wilderness? All the areas above ground that the players have not explored? Even Cities? IME most people have a much more narrow definition of Wilderness.
One of the few tidbits we get about "Blackmoor" and "Gray hawk." Arneson seems to have exemplified the "less is more" principle as he got a lot of mileage from a small area.
Outdoor Survival served as an easy playing surface for those that had it, I did not. However, I had no trouble generating terrain.
Handy if you had it, but IMO not really required.
I really did not like the disposition of Castle Inhabitants, aside from Patriarchs,as being hostile or neutral, but never favorable. So I revised this to three equal categories.
A fair amount of variety; however, I recommend that you tailor these tables to suit the flavor of your own campaign. These days with computers is easy and quick to generate your own variant tables and you should. I highly advocate reworking any number of things to give your world its own unique flavor.
Have you ever run a jousting match? Just one of many things you can have a lot of fun with. The forfeit the castle owner pays can be modified in any number of ways as long as it remains of similar severity.
Back at the beginning of Men & Magic - Volume 1 we are given information for Fighting-Men and Clerics gaining Castles/Strongholds, but nothing for Magic-Users. Now we see that Magic-Users may also have Castles and filling in the blanks with the particulars of that is trivial.
Note that Magic-Users will use a Geas and Clerics a Quest spell , both of which will result in a considerable time commitment. I suggest that you devise other things similar to Fighting-Men so that you can lose or gain something more directly. as one of the options.
Instead of rolling for 30-180 guards (30d6), I prefer to roll 3d6 X 10.
In the final column, I added that a Cleric has a 50% chance of having a Fighting-Man of Level 3-6.
Generally I determine where the players are from and they know the hex they grew up in and possibly bits and pieces of some of the surrounding hexes from stories or travel to a market, beyond that they may know a little form stories they have heard from travelers. The further from where they grew up the more vague, fragmentary and inaccurate will be their knowledge. When they have traveled to a dungeon, they will only know the path they took to reach that area. From their they must explore to gain knowledge. Of course recruiting a local into a party brings knowledge of at least some areas with it.
Tomorrow we will continue with movement in the Wilderness.
Outdoor Survival was way out of print by the time I made my round-and-about journey to OD&D, but thankfully I had some really nice digital hex maps of the area and was inspired by Bat In The Attic's classic writeup about OD&D's implied setting, and now I always use that map as my sand box, although the scope of my campaigns are generally quite small, with the dungeon being located near whatever village the party starts at. Usually a small river town on the interior I've named Lorport. Hex 18 horizontal, 16 vertical, specifically. Of course, having the wider world map and in-game treasure maps that lead to other locations on it is a good way to allow adventurers the sense of freedom that they really can go anywhere and do anything they wish, which is part of what appealed to all of us about this game in the first place!
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