Hi all - this is my first post here, but I've been lurking around for some time and enjoying various threads. You've developed a really positive community here, and I'm glad to see a forum that's receptive to D&D in all of its incarnations.
But basic introductions aren't what I'm here for. There's a little project I've been working on that I thought would be interesting to post about as I go through it. I'm currently reading through all the D&D books and magazines in some semblance of chronological order, and making notes on how to piece absolutely all of it together into a single campaign setting. Ridiculous? Absolutely. Impossible? That too. But it is fun, and by god I enjoy a fruitless endeavor as much as the next man.
So here's what I'm envisioning as the broad outline of the campaign (in terms of the rules). I plan to start things with Original D&D and Chainmail, and then gradually add new stuff as the campaign progresses. So after a few months, for example, Thieves will become available, and many of the changes from the Greyhawk supplement will trickle into the game. Eventually it will morph into AD&D, then AD&D 2nd Edition, then 3e, then 4e, and so on into the unknown future. I realise it's going to be impossible to mesh everything, but I have a bit of a heirarchical system going where the rulebooks trump the magazines, and rules used by certain authors only apply when in their campaign settings (Gygax = Greyhawk, Greenwood = Realms, Arneson = Blackmoor, Lakofka = Lendore Isles, etc.)
In terms of the campaign setting itself, I'm planning to start things in the City of Greyhawk with a focus on delving into the nearby Castle (bring on Castle Zagyg, Troll Lords!) and surrounding areas. I'm going to need a mechanism whereby new rules get introduced and arbitrary restrictions explained, so adventuring in the area will be strictly run by an Adventurer's Guild. So when I introduce, say, variable weapon damage, I can explain it as the Guild's trainers developing new techniques and such. I'll definitely be making said Guild a touch prejudiced against demihumans - I need a rationale for demihuman level and class limits, and also the lifting of them come 3e. It's a vast and futile mental exercise!
Here's how I envision breaking up the various eras of D&D:
Original D&D: Focussed around Greyhawk, Blackmoor, and various extraordinary locales like Mars. I'll also be trying to incorporate the third party materials such as from Judges Guild. To this end I'm envisioning a strange unexplained stone portal in the Adventurers' Guild's basement, surrounded by hundreds of keyholes. Find the right key, and the portal can take you to to that place. In terms of official TSR modules, as a general rule I'll be using the monochrome covered ones in this era, with a few exceptions (notably Village of Hommlett, which just screams AD&D to me).
AD&D/Classic D&D: I'll be running these two systems in tandem, and the rules used will be dependent upon what world you are in. If you're in Greyhawk, AD&D rules will be in use. Travel to Karameikos/The Known World, though, and all of a sudden things will work like Classic. Modules will be those ones with the windows on the front, with the redesigned cover style mods to come in after Unearthed Arcana, probably.
AD&D 2e: 1e will segue pretty seamlessly into 2e I feel, just with a few tweaks going on here and there. The big difference will be that by this time a lot of different campaign settings will have been discovered, and it's probable that the centre of the campaign will move away from Greyhawk. I'll no doubt need to explain the disappearance of Assassins and the like, but all things in due time.
D&D 3e: At this point some drastic campaign-altering event needs to take place, resulting in a big reshuffle of the laws of the universe. Otherwise, business as usual, with an attempt to incorporate every 3e-compatible professional product. Seems impossible, but I'm not worried - I'll never get this far!
D&D 4e: And now something even MORE drastically campaign-altering needs to occur. I'm envisioning a collapse of reality, resulting in everything being destroyed and recreated in differing ways.
So that's the plan. What I'll be doing here is tackling the books chronologically, section by section, and ruminating on how I plan to fit them in. Input and feedback is of course welcome - I wouldn't be posting here if that weren't the case. So, onward, excelsior, and all that jazz. First up? CHAINMAIL!
Welcome to the forums. That's a pretty wild idea alright. Seem to me the hardest part is going to be getting players who are open to playing through all the editions for an extended period of time. I haven't been able to start or join a pre-3e game for several years.
I was in a con game (run by a user here, actually) where we changed editions of Original D&D throughout the course of the section, causing stats to start to give bonuses and the like. It was deeply surreal, but quite fun.
As a campaign? Ambitious. Very ambitious.
Bear in mind that starting characters are only going to have three character classes to pick from at most, for example. Will you let people change their abilities retroactively, or change characters, or what?
AD&D 2e: 1e will segue pretty seamlessly into 2e I feel, just with a few tweaks going on here and there. The big difference will be that by this time a lot of different campaign settings will have been discovered, and it's probable that the centre of the campaign will move away from Greyhawk. I'll no doubt need to explain the disappearance of Assassins and the like, but all things in due time.
If it helps there's a 2e Greyhawk book that covers Monks and Assassins: The Scarlet Brotherhood.
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"Brothers, in this war against the darkness we have but two weapons: the Sword and the Cross.
The Cross represents our faith, it protects us from the corruption of these monsters and gives us hope in desperate times.
The Sword [Ka-chak!] has been updated..."
Gumbercules: Getting players won't be the problem. My current group will be up for it - they know how keen I am to delve into the earliest era of the game, and not one of us is interested in the prospect of converting to 4e. The biggest problem will be finding the time to play.
Unka Josh: Yes, I'm aware of the class limitations for beginning players. Retraining already exists in the form of dual-classing, which I believe is in OD&D. Demihumans will be hosed, of course, but that's not my problem. I'll be letting anyone start a new character at any time, and I'll also be encouraging the use of henchmen and hirelings for ready made replacement characters.
Gunhex: That's handy to know. I'll still probably go the route of disallowing the creation of monk and assassin PC classes once the 2e core books come in. When I get to the point of introducing that Greyhawk supplement, then they'll be back.
And so we begin at the beginning. When Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren released their rules for medieval miniatures, there was an interesting little section up the back - The Fantasy Supplement. This was the first inkling of what would eventually become Dungeons & Dragons, and so that makes Chainmail my first stop on this epic journey. But alas, I'm not covering the Fantasy Supplement just yet. Today it's the Mass Combat rules, and more specifically what needs to be taken from them to make regular OD&D combat a bit more robust.
(As an aside, does anyone know what Jeff Perren's contribution to Chainmail was? Did he have any hand in the Fantasy Supplement, or was that pure Gygax? I'd be interested to find out if Perren is a sort of lost originator of the game.)
As far as Chainmail goes, it looks to work very well for mass combat. The applicability to my campaign is simple - if the PCs get themselves into a mass combat, these are the rules I will use. The only thing that has to be ignored are the references to real-world armies, aside from mapping them to their closest Greyhawk/D&D equivalents.
But as anyone who has read the original D&D booklets will know, the rules for combat there are pretty sparse, and Chainmail is recommended to fill the gaps. Most of those are done in the Man-to-Man section that I'll cover tomorrow, but there are few things in Mass Combat that are als0 needed.
The Turn Sequence: Chainmail has two combat sequences - move/countermove and simultaneous. They run in basically the same order - Movement and initial missile fire, artillery fire, the rest of the missile fire, then melee.
It seems that both are intended to be mutually exclusive, but the Move/Countermove system determines initiative with a contested die roll. If the results come up the same, I plan to switch to the Simultaneous one. That could have been the intention, but it's not stated anywhere.
The main problem here is meshing things with D&D magic, but I'm thinking of having most of the spells go off during the artillery phase.
Terrain Effects Upon Movement: These are pretty self-explanatory. Chainmail gives a few sample terrains, and how they affect troop movement, and they seem workable for D&D as well.
Movement rules: OD&D is once again ambiguous as far as movement rules go, but Chainmail gives the following: Armored Foot = 6", Heavy Foot = 9", and the unarmored guys such as archers move at 12". This all matches with AD&D, which makes me happy. And yes, all movement and ranges here are given as inches, but one inch equals ten yards.
Fatigue: So here we have rules to simulate battle weariness - if you fight or move for too long, you take penalties. It's an interesting addition to D&D, but I'm tempted to leave it out and just use it for mass battles. It's yet another layer of complication added to the game, and not one that was used in later editions. But in the interests of including everything, I will probably use it for a few sessions, before ruling that the PCs have become inured to combat and no longer suffer from battle fatigue.
Missile Fire: Again, there are a lot of things covered here that don't make it into OD&D proper. Rate of fire, cover, firing over the heads of your buddies. Split-Move and Fire is a useful ability which lets you move and fire a missile during the movement phase of combat. The only PCs that will probably have this ability are elves, as we shall see later, and it gives them yet another advantage over everyone else. Pass-Through Fire is similar, as it lets stationary characters fire during the movement phase, but anyone can do it.
The book then gets into rules for catapults and cannons and such, which aren't going to get used much. The most likely place it is going to crop up is with Giants, who use the catapult rules for their rock-throwing.
Morale is covered next, but I'll be going into that tomorrow, as the system for man-to-man combat is a little less complex than that used for mass battles.
The last relevant section, mostly unrelated to combat, is a random weather chart. I'm the sort of DM who likes to use these things. I'll have the weather charted ahead fpor about amonth or so, so I'll know whether it's likely to rain or snow or what have you. I like having that extra bit of randomness in the game - you never know when the PCs might get ambushed by trolls in the middle of a raging storm that keeps blowing their torches out...
So that's it for Chainmail Mass Combat, and it proves one thing: if you're willing to do the work to mesh OD&D and Chainmail together it really is a system that has everything you need to run tactical combat. There's a lot more stuff in the Man-to-man section, but that's for next time.
Location: Walking down the road to death, trying to find a way off.
Posts: 4,117
Re: Putting It All Together
Cool. Good luck with that. This may be of some helpin your setting building as it goes a long way towards integrating the various D&D settings into a large whole, as well as being rather amusing.
Man, that map was super-cool. I'm not planning on jamming the settings together into one planet like that, however. What is separate in canon will remain so, accessible only via Spelljammer, Sigil, or whatever other weird means I can devise.
Sorry, still no fantasy content today - I'm delving into the man-to-Man combat system from Chainmail. This is relevant because of the undetailed bits in the first D&D books, and also one other tidbit: the regular D&D combat system of rolling a d20 and trying to hit a certain Armor Class was then listed as an Alternate System. In other words, by the book the Chainmail Man-To-Man combat is the real one. I'm only going to use it for the first session of the campaign before switching to the version we all know and love - the Adventurers' Guild trainers will have developed an 'alternate mind-set' for combat to make their charges more efficient in battle (or possibly it makes their training easier, or less expensive on the Guild).
So, to the system itself. Firstly, it should be noted that it only works with ergular-sized humanoid opponents - if you're fighting a dragon or a giant or something, the Fantasy Supplement has rules for that.
But it's pretty simple. There's a reference table with the weapons listed down the left-hand side, and the armor types listed along the type. Cross-referencing them gets a target number, and the attacker has to equal it on a roll of 2d6. In regular Chainmail a hit here kills instantly, but for D&D purposes you roll damage and subtract from hit points as usual. Now this works very well when you have 1st level characters and 1 hit die monsters fighting, but I'm not sure yet how it functions when you get stronger guys in there.
That's the basics out of the way, but there are a few other fiddly bits that can enhance (or slow down, I guess) regular D&D combat.
Missile Fire: There's not much to add here, except that we now get modifiers for firing at short, medium and long range.
First Strike: Chainmail has a very nifty way of determining who gets to go first in a melee. In very general terms, on the first round the guy with the longer weapon goes first. On every round thereafter, the guy with the shorter weapon goes first, having gotten inside his opponent's guard. There are some other exceptions, and some rules for rear and side attacks, but that's the gist of it.
Parrying: Yes, it exists this far back! You can parry a blow, but not if you're weapon is too much bigger than your opponent's. If it's too much smaller you can still try, but there's a chance your weapon might get broken - but you can also make a counter-blow. If your weapon is very much smaller, you always get the first blow, and may parry or strike again (but that chance of your dagger breaking is still there). It's a convoluted read, but once I wrapped my head around it sounds workable. So long as my players don't go around parrying everything in sight I'll leave it in.
Multiple Attacks: This is another rule I'm not so sure about. It says that if your weapon is 4 classes smaller than your opponent's you will get two attacks a round, and if it's eight smaller you get three! This really isn't in the spirit of OD&D as I envision it, and I'm still puzzling out how it will work when there are more than two combatants involved. It also gives no real reason for PCs not to all use daggers, given that in OD&D everything does 1d6 damage. But, in the interests of the project, I'm going to leave it in for one-on-one duels. I'll need to give it a bit more thought, though.
Morale: Again, nice and simple. You roll for morale when a third of a force has been killed, by rolling 2d6 and comparing it to a number based on the type of troop, i.e. Heavy Foot, peasants, etc. There's nothing concrete that I know of to assign values to certain monsters, but it shouldn't be too hard to do on the fly.
Morale is also checked when troops are subjected to a cavalry charge, but that's not going to come up too often, I don't think.
Mounted Combat: Mounted men get a bonus when fighting footmen, but footmen can try to unhorse riders, which might result in stunning them for 3 rounds. Love it.
Leaders and Berserkers then get a mention, and aa few bonuses. These berserkers are the awesome type who won't stop fighting until killed, but not the super-awesome type who might attack their buddies. Ah well, there's always later.
JOUSTING!
To finish up the Man-to-Man section, there are rules for conducting a joust. Once again Gary has provided us with a fun little sub-system which bears little resemblance to the rest of the rules. Each player selects an attack and defensive position, and these get compared on a chart - riders can be unhorsed or get their helms knocked off, or break their lances. It's pretty cool.
As far as relevance to a D&D campaign goes, in the OD&D set there's a section on finding random castles in the wilderness, and often if you find one ruled over by a high-level Fighter he'll challenge you to a joust. That's where these rules will come in. My only concern is that it's not a system that takes into account the skill of the character - but that's ok. I'll just say that jousting is a discipline set apart from any of the D&D core classes, and can only be mastered through experience (i.e. studying the tables in the booklet or actually jousting a bit to learn the system well).
Ah, now we hit the interesting stuff. Released well before D&D, this set of rules for integrating fantasy elements into medieval wargames is an obvious prototype. There are so many things here that are recognizably D&D that it makes you realize that Gary had all the important stuff worked out from the beginning.
After a brief intro discussing the importance of scale between figures in fantasy combat, we dive right into the meat of it: Monsters, baby
The entries are pretty sparse, focusing almost solely on how the monsters function in battle. It's pretty much assumed that the reader will be well-versed in fantasy lit, and for such a product that's fair.
Hobbit: Hobbits here can hide really well, fire sling stones with the range of a bow, and are more accurate to boot. I love the little aside that they don't really belong in a wargame. Gary often lets slip a little contempt for our midgety friends, and it's more pronounced in D&D.
Sprites (and Pixies): Good old irritating fey folk, where would D&D be without them? They're annoying right off the bat, with the power to stay invisible permanently - though after a while shadows and air distortion give them away. They can fly too, but not for long.
Dwarves (and Gnomes): Stout folk that live underground and can see in the dark, what more fluff do you need? Giants, Trolls and Ogres find the little buggers hard to catch, which is an ability that ports over to D&D. Also, Dwarves hate Goblins and Gnomes hate Kobolds, and either will attack on sight - more stuff that gets brought forward.
Also, Dwarves and Gnomes equated as pretty much the same thing? Yeah, this is why we don't have Gnome PCs anymore.
Goblins (and Kobolds): It's interesting that Goblins and Kobolds are lumped in the same entry - Kobolds weren't conceived of as little dog-men just yet. They can see in the dark, but hate bright light. The hatred given them by Dwarves and Gnomes is also reciprocated. AND! There's a small mention of Hobgoblins as slightly tougher versions. Gary had a master plan, I tell you!
Elves (and Fairies): Elves are seemingly armed with bows and magical swords more often than not, which fits reasonably with later stuff. They can split-move and fire, which means they get arrows off during the first phase of a combat round, pretty much before anyone else. That's killer, and goes a long way to cementing these guys as radical archers. They can turn invisible as well, which I find a little problematical - it's not something that elves do innately in later editions of the game. It's explainable, though - either they're all wearing Elven Cloaks, or they're all high enough level Magic-Users to cast Invisibility. Sorted.
On top of that, elves are pretty uber when they get a Magic Sword in their hands. These bonuses are brought forward to D&D (as an oblique reference back to Chainmail, alas...) but they don't make it into later editions so far as I am aware. I'll tie this in with my conception of Elves as a race on the wane - as time goes on, their powers diminish.
Also, Fairies. They don't get anything here to distinguish them from Elves, so right here I'm going to say that these guys are the equivalent of 4e Eladrin - the elves of the Fairy Realm. There won't be many of these guys around early on, and they won't become genuinely well-known until the 4e era.
Orcs: Orcs, how I luvs them! And look what it says right here - Orcs are nothing more than over-grown Goblins! This may be true, or later facts may come to light to discredit this theory - inept Sages will cover up a lot of discrepencies before this project is through!
It also sets up here that Orcs are quarrelsome, and those from different tribes are likely to fight each other. I've never seen this tidbit used in an rpg session, but it's a great rule for wargames.
There's also a mention of giant Orcs that fight better. Orogs? That is a surprise to see so early on, even though they aren't yet named.
Heroes (and Anti-Heroes): The genesis of the D&D level system begins here. They're the equivalent of 4 men in battle, and if you look at the XP table for Fighters in later editions, Hero is their title once they hit 4th level.
Heroes can also insta-kill flying dragons if they have a bow! You know, like Bard from the Hobbit. Nice genre emulation, but it turns dragons into something of a glass cannon, and makes them less effective than other flyers, in my opinion. I'm going to leave it in D&D though - as a special ability for the first group of Fighting Men created in the campaign once they hit 4th level, a technique handed down from the days when dragons were a scourge on the lands. Later character won't be getting it - the blood of Men grows weak and all that jazz.
Rangers get a brief mention as being Heroes with an extra +1 to everything. Nice.
Super-Heroes: These guys are the same as Heroes, except they fight as 8 men, and enemies approached instantly have to check morale. And yep, 8th level fighters in D&D are called Super-Heroes. I love it when a plan comes together.
Wizards: As well as wizards there are less powerful versions, named (from hight to low) Sorcerers, Warlocks, Magicians, and Seers. In D&D terms, Wizards are 11th level, and the others are 9th, 8th, 6th, and 2nd respectively. They don't quite match up with the penalties assigned as compared to Wizards, but it's close enough that I don't have to rationalise anything. Huzzah!
They have a number of other abilities that can be explained away with M-U spells: invisibility = invisibility (natch), see in darkness = infravision, immunity to missile fire = protection from normal missiles, and they can also dish out perennial faves like fire ball and lightning bolt. The fire ball is a little smaller than that in D&D, but magic spells will advance like that frequently as wizards find new innovations. Lightning bolt remains the same. But if you think these abilities are impressive, we haven't even gotten into the actual spells yet! (I'm saving them for after I'm done with the various monsters...)
There are several things that these wizards can do that D&D magic-users can't. Stronger wizards can counterspell against weaker, and that's something that never entered the core of D&D until 3e. Also, spell ranges are determined by the wizard's power rather than the specific spell. And though each spell has a complexity that roughly matches its D&D level, wizard's of lesser power can attempt to cast them with varying levels of difficulty. Finally, wizard's can use magic weapons, which in CHAINMAIL generally means swords. I'm left with the conclusion that these are specialised Battle Wizards, and have received the necessary training to accomplish these feats. They will be separate from the Adventurer's Guild, but I'll allow PCs to gain these powers at some cost.
Wraiths: Wraiths fly about the battlefield and paralyse any normal men they touch. An Elf, Hero or Wizard can revive paralysed troops, so it is seemingly just a loss of morale or heart rather than a genuine drain of energy. Perhaps battlefield wraiths are weaker than their dungeon-dwelling cousins? They can also see in the dark, and raise the morale of their allies while lowering their foes'. They are also immune to normal weapons.
Lycanthropes: Werebears and Werewolves get introduced, and each one enters battle with some animal companions of their type. They are hit only by magical and silver weapons, so they tick all the were-boxes.
Aaaand that's a wrap for today. I guess I'm about half-way through the monster section, and nothing has stumped me so far. I'll be back on Monday to continue, starting again with TROLLS.
Last edited by Nathan P. Mahney; 08-01-2008 at 12:28 AM..
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