Mentzer Basic Cover to Cover: Solo Adventure Part 3: Into the Caves

The next eight pages of the Mentzer Basic Players Manual are the actual solo adventure.  It's arranged into lots of short numbered sections, with choices at the end of each about what you'd like to do, and which section to read next for the results of that choice.

The same nameless Fighter from the tutorial is your character, and you're returning to the caves near town to explore them further, only without any help.  It's a lot more deadly than before, with a good chance that your Fighter will die in any of the combat encounters with the exception of the rust monster, which may set you back all your earnings if you let it turn your weapons and armor to rust.

Back in the mid-80's, I remember playing through this thing multiple times until I'd finally gotten it all explored and came out with a "win."  Of course, it's possible to cheat - especially with the riddle room.  Metagaming can arise even in this aid to play.  If you don't know what I'm talking about, well, there's a riddle that will double all of your treasure if you answer it correctly, and well, there's nothing but the honor system to prevent you from not abusing it if you already know the answer but die and start again - hit the riddle room last.

There are a few things I take away from this now that I didn't think about 30 years ago, but notice that I did pick up on subtly.

• It's no use to talk to monsters, unless they're hot human women like Aleena.  Any time you try to talk, it stalls for time at best, and often leads to you getting auto-hit by the monster.  In this tutorial, kicking in the door and smashing heads is the optimal way to play it.
• There are no choices to trick. evade (other than running away, usually again leading to an auto-hit by the monster), or bamboozle the monsters and get the treasure without a fight.  Endless Quest taught me to do that, this learning tool teaches me to just go in with swords swinging.  Yet Frank even earlier in the book stated that it's better to try to get the treasure without a fight.  
• There's not much rhyme or reason to these caves.  Not that I've even been a big stickler for "dungeon ecology."  It's just a bunch of tunnels and rooms with monsters and treasure.  

Anyway, we're through the tutorial/learning to play section (well, there's a lot more learning to play advice scattered throughout the rest of the book, but from here on it it's actual game rules and stuff).

Are the first 22 pages of this 64 page rulebook well spent?  All in all, I'd say yes.  It sure worked for me when I was 11 years old with no one to teach me.  And the remaining 42 pages have plenty of room for the "meat" of the game from a player's perspective, not to mention the 64 page Dungeon Master's Book.  This last section did lead to my friends and I playing it a bit too hack and slash in the earliest years, but we soon got over that, although we never did shy away from a good combat!

Thoughts on The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

This is not a review, really, although it sort of could substitute for one.  And it could get spoilery, since I'm planning to discuss the movie vs. the novel.  Go ahead and click away if you don't want the movie spoiled.

So, I saw the movie on Thursday, when it opened here in Korea.  I've got a bad head cold, and called in sick to work.  After laying around for a bit, I remembered that the movie opened, and we checked the times and there was a showing my wife and I could make, so we went to see it.

Visually, we get the same beautifully rendered world of Middle Earth that we know and love from the LotR movies and An Unexpected Journey.  The special effects were well done, the locations, sets, CGI backgrounds, props and costumes, all of that really continue to bring Middle Earth alive. 

Martin Freeman really brought Bilbo to life, showing his growing courage, the beginnings of the pull of The One Ring, and cleverness in the face of adversity.  Ian McKellan was also great as Gandalf.  A few of the dwarves besides Thorin and Balin also began to stick out as actual characters, but it would be hard to do that with all of them.

As far as the story goes, though, there were (IMO, of course) way too many derivations from the novel.  In the LotR movies, there were abridgements, additions, and substitutions, but I always felt like they were done to help translate the novels to film.  Not so here.  Most of the stuff that actually came from the book was over in a flash, while stuff that PJ and company made up seemed to take up the lion's share of the film.  And I'm not just talking about the Necromancer/Dol Guldur stuff.

OK, here are the spoilers:

Beorn got less screen time than Radagast did in AUJ (and Radagast gets a fair amount here in DoS as well).  Bilbo does a little bit of spider fighting, but no taunting.  Then the dwarves all get their weapons and chop away until Legolas and Tauriel (the female elf character they added - who was fairly well done by the standards of action movie kickass babes/love interests) take out the rest.  Barrels out of Bond turns into, as someone I read on either G+ or Facebook put it, a video game platformer.  The fairly unnecessary Azog the Defiler gets pulled away from his chase of Thorin, only to be replaced by Bolg (who's in the book), but who looks almost the same and acts fairly similarly as well.  Laketown is a seeming cauldron of near revolution led by Bard against the Master (IIRC in the book they have no love for each other, but it's not like a daytime soap opera)  The dwarves try to fight Smaug, leading to a big set piece battle in the forges of Erebor. Oh, and worst of all was the unnecessary elf-dwarf-elf love triangle.  But then if you cast a young handsome dude as Kili, I guess as a filmmaker you feel the need to give him some romance in the movie.

When the Momoa Conan movie came out two years ago (or was it three?) lots of people said it was a good enough fantasy action movie, it just wasn't Conan.  I feel sorta the same way about Desolation of Smaug.  It's got "The Hobbit" in it, but there's so much other stuff bloating it and taking away from the style and feel of the book that it's not really the same story at all. 

Still, I will be there next December to see the Battle of Five Armies and the cleansing of Dol Goldur.  It's a fun movie, don't let my complaints give you the wrong idea.  I just wish there were more The Hobbit in The Hobbit.

Mentzer Basic Cover to Cover: Solo Adventure Part 2: Battles

I've been busy, but don't despair, I'm still continuing with this series.  Who knows, eventually it may even get me to finally read the Immortals Set (which I only have on .pdf, so I haven't given it a full reading before).

Our next section, before the CYOA style solo adventure itself, is a one page section detailing battles.  It's still not the full D&D combat system, but it's getting closer.  The tutorial already showed how to make attack rolls and saving throws.  In this section, we're introduced to the idea of rolling for damage, and how both your own attacks and the monster attacks are now more deadly.

One interesting note is that for the CYOA solo adventure, all weapons do 1d6 damage.  I'll find out later if variable weapon damage is listed as optional or not (yeah, I could just flip ahead...).  When we were kids, we latched onto that chart showing what dice to roll for what weapons, and stuck with it, if it was presented as optional.  In our most recent Vaults of Ur games, we were experimenting with an all weapons do d6 rule, but I think we'll go back to regular variable damage by weapon from the next session.  As a DM, though, I often default to any weapon-using enemy only using a d6 for damage for simplicity, rather than figure out how many orcs are packing swords, how many have hand axes, and how many have daggers.  I tend to discourage the low level "salvage all the weapons and armor from the goblins" style play, so it's usually not a big deal exactly what weapons they are carrying, at least for melee purposes.

Because this is a training module, it tells us that if we die, just start over again.  Having played enough Atari (the Nintendo hadn't made it out yet) and arcade games, that wasn't weird for me.  This was a game, after all.  And I do remember that it took me multiple tries before I'd explored all of the areas, as I did die fairly often.  I think this is a good thing.  In the initial tutorial, you almost can't fail (only against Bargle's goblin do you have a chance to drop to 0 hp).  Here, you can and likely WILL die often.  It's a good lesson to be learned by new folks.  It's also something video game designers might want to think about, as most in-game tutorials I've played through have had the kid gloves on.  And they feel like a waste of time to me.  I'd rather just jump in and learn while playing.  But maybe that's just me.

One issue I have with the style of these introductory adventures is the lack of RP or options to outwit the enemies.  This page gives you fairly standard advice about how D&D combat works mechanically, but it limits the perspective to the "roll to hit, roll damage, rinse and repeat" mindset that we often fall into.  In this respect, some of the Endless Quest books, like Dungeon of Dread and Light on Quest's Mountain did a better job of preparing me for D&D play, as they included talking/negotiating with monsters, tricking them, or coming up with clever plans to tip the combat odds in my favor. 

The page ends with the advice to keep notes of combat details, treasure earned, and monsters defeated on scrap paper, so there is a record after the adventure.  For a while as a kid, I did try keeping it all in my head, and sometimes it worked, other times we just gave out treasure and XP after each encounter.  These days, I do as advised and keep a page of scrap paper nearby when I play or DM.  The page also gives us some advice about mapping the dungeon, both to avoid getting lost, and to note where dangerous creatures are so you can return to them later when you feel confident about facing them - subtle advice on old school play that gets lost on many, I think.  Not only mapping, but the idea that you would scout out where monsters are, and only battle them when you're ready for them, rather than kicking in all the doors and rolling initiative regardless of what's there.

Mid-World Adventures

My birthday present arrived a week early, so I've been reading Stephen King's addition to his Dark Tower series, The Wind Through the Keyhole the past few evenings.  The DT series is one of my favs, and really the only stuff by King I've read in the past decade has been those books and a few related works.

And since I'd always wanted to run a game set in the DT universe, my mental gears have been churning away at ideas. 

Many years ago, I thought of using d20Modern/Future/Past/Apocalypse to make it work.

Now, I think Labyrinth Lord as the base set, Go Fer Yer Gun for PC classes, and Mutant Future for additional monsters and artifacts.  It could work.

A lucky find

I was searching Google for public domain Western/cowboy pictures.

I found this:

http://io9.com/5945916/read-the-lost-adventures-of-six+gun-gorilla-the-greatest-cowboy-gorilla-in-fiction

Thoughts on Spells Inspired by my Son

My son actually asked to play Dungeons & Dragons with me today.  He's still 4 months shy of his 6th birthday, so of course I had to do a fair amount of simplifying for him, but I ran him through the CYOA dungeon from the Mentzer Basic Players Manual (killing two birds with one stone, as that helps me prepare for the Cover to Cover post).

At first, he wanted to play a "wizard" so we rolled him up a Magic-User.  I briefly explained spells, and gave him Read Magic plus let him choose three more (one more standard, plus one for each point of Int bonus he had).  He chose Hold Portal, Light/Darkness and Ventriloquism.

Rather than explain the intricacies of Vancian spellcasting to him, I figured I'd just let him cast each spell once during the adventure, and let him return to town and rest up if he wanted to refresh them.  Turns out he died before he had a chance to cast a single spell, although he did take out a rust monster with the help of my wife's old Halfling PC from our gaming attempts from before our son was born (her Halfling is level 4 with a displacer cloak, +1 short sword, and a few other nice things).  Anyway, goblins then made short work of our wizard, who had a 6 Constitution so only 2 hit points. 

My son rolled up a Fighter and, with the help of Blossom the Halfling for combats (my wife was reading a book at the time, taking breaks to roll some dice when necessary), went on to trounce the dungeon, getting all the loot, dividing it with Blossom, then getting it all doubled by the magic mouth. 

Back to the idea that hit me.  Since I was going to let him use each of the 4 spells in his spellbook once each, I got to thinking.  What if, instead of preparing spells, a Magic-User, Elf or Cleric (Clerics will need spellbooks or prayer books or something in this version to make it work rather than access to all their spells) can cast each spell in their spellbook a number of times per day equal to their Vancian spell limits?

So a 1st level M-U can cast each spell in his/her book once per day (as above).  At 3rd level, with two 1st level and one 2nd level spells per day, each 1st level spell in the book could be cast twice, while each 2nd level spell could only be cast once.

Of course, 3E style limits of up to 4 per level per day might be a good idea, and my Level 15 cap instead of the BECMI level 36 cap would be necessary to prevent abuse.

What are the benefits?  Well, first of all a lot of the utility spells that rarely see play would see play.  Spell-casters move away from the tactical nuke/heal-bot mentality they engender.  Yes, as they gain lots of levels they can do that, but they would still have lots of utility magic to go around as well.  Gets rid of the "I cast one spell and am then useless" complaints of low level play.  Makes caster characters' main motivation to seek out magical books, libraries, or other casters in order to expand their repertoire. 

Drawbacks?  All those arguments about casters replacing Thieves become more tenable.  If you can cast Knock or Locate Traps several times a day without having to give up other (attack/heal) spells, might as well magic your way through such things than rely on a Thief's percentage chances.  Maybe in an OD&D/S&W game without the Thief this variant would work better. 

This is not an idea I'd want to use all the time, but for certain campaigns (or maybe as a replacement of the caster roll mechanic I'm using in Chanbara?) it could be fun.

Mentzer Basic Cover to Cover: Solo Adventure Part 1 Town Business

Continuing our read-through of the Mentzer Basic red box books, we get the beginning of the "choose your own adventure" style second adventure for the nameless Fighter.  Thinking about it now, I can see how well Frank is transitioning readers new to D&D into actual game play.  First we get a few snippets of evocative text in the Preface.  The First Adventure is all canned text with everything more or less predetermined. (I forgot to mention that you can actually die fighting the goblin in the Bargle encounter before Bargle charms you...otherwise all the fights are predetermined and after you take a certain amount of damage the monsters never hit again.)

This section of town business is like a cut scene, you've got no interaction at all, just a page to read.  But the solo adventure to come, being more like a CYOA book, gives you some real choice in the adventure, although it's more limited than a real game.  The "group adventure" in the DM's book is again CYOA style to a point, but the players have a lot of freedom to move around the ruins.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Needless to say, while these introductory/tutorial pages have little "replay value" in them, they do build nicely upon each other to ease people into the concepts and expectations of the game.

So, getting back to the text itself, we have a little story where "you" use the treasure from the first adventure to buy better armor.  You banter with the armorer, try on some plate mail, bargain down the price, then pick it up a few days later.  After failing to find any companions for your next adventure, you set off to the caves again, once more on your own.

And what can the new player learn from this?  Well, first is that being well equipped for an adventure is part of the game, and that town business can involve role-playing, which can be fun.  Good armor is a trade-off of protection for speed/carrying capacity.  Your new plate armor is heavier than the chain, so you can carry less treasure, but you're more likely to survive with it. 

The usefulness of Charisma is shown again - but of course when we were kids, that lesson went somewhat over our heads and like many D&Ders we thought of Charisma as a "dump stat."  Of course, we used to roll ability scores in order like the book says, but we didn't worry too much about Charisma unless it was unusually high or unusually low. 

The idea of safety in numbers is again shown, as at the end of the vignette you try (unsuccessfully, of course) to find some other adventurers to accompany you. 

Yes, all of this is old hat to us veteran gamers.  It was new to me 30 years ago, and definitely helped me out in getting the tropes and expectations of the game [yes, I'm repeating myself].