Let Slip The Dogs Of War (Part I)

In which I discuss in detail the games I ran at Cauldron 2025, spoiling secrets and providing insights into the cracked mind of a geezer DM....

FRIDAY BLOCK I: Silver Temple of Transcendent Flame

Friday Block I was billed as a “Temple of Doom/Sidekick:” a short gaming session (only three hours in length compared to the other, four-hour time slots) designed to ease people in as they arrived for the con. People were given time to check in, find their rooms, gather their bedding (we made our own beds), and snack and coffee-up prior to the session, which ran from 4pm to 7pm (at which time dinner would be served). Quickly dressing my bed (deducing…correctly…that I’d be in no shape to do so at the end of the night), I discovered that my room had been stuffed full of Americans, many of whom I knew by reputation (and voice) from the internet, but whom I’d never met. Great guys, all around. Gus has a tremendous mustache of which I am tremendously jealous.

Silver Temple of Transcendent Flame is not a “Becker” original; it is, rather, a tactical exercise Anthony Huso designed and wrote as an introduction to his players when he first re-booted his AD&D campaign some ten or so years ago. He details this on his blog: as a campaign starter, he had his players create new, 1st level PCs, but then RAN them through a high mid-level adventure using EVIL pre-gens of his own design, sacking a temple of goodness. Following the scenario, he returned the players their original character sheets and kicked off the campaign proper with the PCs dealing with the aftermath of the destructive raid.

It's a fine idea; quite clever, in my opinion. The adventure itself (the map and his game notes) are freely available on his blog, and I decided to run the thing at Cauldron…something different, something fast, something that I knew had already been play-tested by one of the modern masters of the AD&D craft. Easy-peasy.

Unfortunately, Huso long ago lost the character sheets for the pre-gens, and I was forced to recreate them (best as I could) from the notes he provided. This was the bulk of my prep, made more than a bit challenging by his use of three evil NPC classes (the anti-paladin, the necromancer, and the witch) from Dragon Magazine. I am familiar with these, but I’m not particularly enthused by their implementation or execution in the mag. As such, I altered the classes rather drastically from how they appear. Here’s what I brought to the tournament:

• Caul, Flayer of Men: 8th level “Anti-Paladin:” abilities taken from Hackmaster…basically as a paladin except with reversed abilities (cause wounds instead of heal, befriend undead instead of turning, protection from good instead of evil, etc.).
• Vessvka Vith, Drow “Witch:” female Dark Elf cleric/magic-user of 6th/6th level.
• Tergomant Glim: 7th level cleric and a monster of a man (18 STR, 6’1”, 270#; wields a footman’s mace with one hand).
• Ergonin Hews: 6th level half-orc fighter, wielding double-fisted hand axes. Agile for an orc (Dex 17).
• Nicodemus Plath: 7th level half-elf assassin, based loosely on my son’s main PC of the same type.
• Sable Croft: 7th level human fighter; exceptional strength (though less than Caul) with a magic bardiche. More beef.
• Vlaimir Sush: 5th level Necromancer; totally unchanged from the Dragon mag entry and given a scythe for a weapon because evil necromancers with two-handed scythes are the height of coolness, even if the class kind of sucks.
• Barthax Brunst: 6th level dwarven fighter/thief. NOT one of Huso’s originals (he only lists seven characters, probably because he only had seven players). I wanted more PCs in the party because Huso throws psionic couatls, silver dragons, clay golems, and magic-user/monks at people (he’s a bad, bad man). Also, the fighter/thief built in some skill redundancy for the party.

For the adventure itself, I reformatted and (partially) rewrote what Huso had done. Anthony, God love him, has a penchant for writing the purplest of prose…he is an actual author, after all…but I needed things terse and punchy, both to match my personal style as well as the three hour widow with which I was working.

Likewise, I had to remove the various “Huso-isms” throughout the text: monks getting DEX bonuses to AC, or bonuses from wearing “silk armor,” anything that appeared to come from the UA, nutty magical “eye traps” that had multiple effects and would be a bear to adjudicate without a battle map (something I don’t use). Huso loves nothing better than a protracted siege battle a la The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun, but I didn’t plan on forcing the PCs to charge in guns ablaze. Why would they, when so many of their party members were more powerful in subtler ways? 

Besides, the adventure was plenty deadly as is.

Oh, yes…I also removed encounters #29-#33 and their associated sections of the map (too long, mostly empty, and redundant) and axed some of the other weird, none-too-normal weirdness (room #27 is simply empty and I switched the "Starfire Neonate" for a more Golden Child-like "Celestial Being").

[everyone knows the old Eddie Murphy “Golden Child” movie, right? The adventure gives off quite a bit of that vibe anyway]

Thing is, Huso made a divine being in need of slaying, but then gave it immunity to weapons of less than +3 while only arming his pre-gens with +2 weapons (come on, Anthony!); as such, capture/kidnapping had to be on the table, unless I really wanted to spend time re-stocking the dungeon (but, then, that would have made the adventure more drawn out as PCs would have to search for items to use to destroy the child and yadda-yadda-yadda. No).

Interested people who want my pre-gens and the re-tooled/formatted adventure I used at Cauldron can download them HERE and HERE, respectively. In play, I changed/improvised the last paragraph of the “START” to explain their mission: find and destroy…or capture…the “Celestial Child” (with no more information given as to what exactly a “Celestial Child” is).

So how did it actually go? Great! The players decided NOT to charge into the dungeon, but scouted ahead with their assassin instead, who was able to completely surprise and recon the couatl and monks in room #1 and report back without sounding the alarm. Using silence to first neutralize the spell-casting ability of all within the chamber, the PCs then charged into battle and put paid to the initial guardians without sounding the alarm. Pretty good start.

In the great hall, however, they were forced to decide on a course of action…and had trouble doing so. Eventually they decided to just start “opening doors” and seeing what was behind them, which led to them alerting the four clerics in room #7, the bulk of whom would sell their lives while the other two retreated through the many redoubts of the map to alert the temple proper. The players pursued, but the need to unlock doors (and getting hit by fire glyphs, etc.) slowed them down. They managed to NOT activate the clay golems in chamber 14, found the secret door, and the corridor that led to the trapdoor in area #6 (wherein resides a silver dragon). However, before going through that they waited for Chomy (playing the necromancer), who had been gathering dead monks and clerics to make maximum use of his one animate zombie spell. The party waited below while they sent a pair of their “undead soldiers” up the ladder to scout around.

And then watched as the zombies were vaporized with fire.

By this time (of course) the bell had started sounding in the grand hall, the temple was on alert, and minions were rallying to their battle positions, as they had been trained to do. The party knew that time was of the essence, but they were still trying to compose a battle plan of their own, arguing the virtues of one form of action or another.

While they were doing that, the trapdoor opened above and the magic-user launched a fireball into the narrow corridor below. So much for the necromancer and his zombies.

The PCs returned fire…perhaps Nicodemus with his poisoned darts and/or Barthax with his crossbow…slaying the magic-user. The group then decided to posse to head up the ladder and not wait around anymore. Of course, they saw the dragon, as well as the other magic-user (with a wand of lightning). Much hilarity ensued as more PCs were cooked but, in the end, they slew both and made their way to the battle royale with THE TWILIGHT PRINCESS herself. Much fun, but the forces of evil eventually triumphed (I think Marcellia was felled with a hold person spell, a common theme of the con...), and the remaining survivors (which I believe only included Caul, Tergomant, and Vessvka), made their way to the Child, who was fairly obvious considering the lilac skin, single blue eye, and enormous halo of light. All good: they removed the child, the temple started to shudder, and everyone headed for the exits (including the surviving defenders of the temple).

A good, solid game and just a few minutes over our three-hour time slot…we still made it to dinner with plenty of time to spare. 

*****

FRIDAY BLOCK II (Friday Night): the Battle Emridy Meadows. 

As I described in my prior post, I played in Settembrini's Chainmail game…at least until I could no longer physically stand without the risk of collapse. I bowed out around midnight and hit the hay at roughly 12:30am. I was then awakened at 6:45am by several successive members of the American contingent marching through my room to use the shower (the one bathroom being located nearest to my bed). The person occupying the cot next to me slept like the dead and snored like a chainsaw (so loudly that individuals from two doors down commented on it)…fortunately, for me he was a bit of a “white noise generator” and actually led to a fairly restful repose.

I finally dragged myself out of bed around 7:30, as much to use the bathroom myself (which I had to go down four flights and leave the building to do, given the person occupying the shower), and headed for breakfast.

*****

SATURDAY BLOCK I: Rivers of Blood, Death, and Glory. 

I will talk about this in a separate post.

*****

SATURDAY BLOCK II: Caul’s Dark Citadel

The afternoon session, after lunch, and this time I would be doing a “Becker Original.” Ever since seeing WotC’s use of “the D&D kids” (from the 1981 D&D cartoon) as “content” for their new 5E 2024 books (and on the cover of their Stormwreck Isle starter set), I’ve wanted to write my own adventure that featured these characters. And for Cauldron, I decided that I would use them in a sequel adventure to Huso’s Silver Temple of Transcendent Flame.

My plan was to make the adventure more of a stealth/infiltration in contrast to the Caul's destructive raid to showcase different styles of play. The PCs would be tasked with the recovery of the Celestial Child’s remains: a mercy mission fitting their 'good guy' ethos, as opposed to a task of vengeance. I figured the PCs could return the ashes (or whatever) to the Silver Temple, where the surviving monks would use the power of "transcendent flame" (or whatever) to raise it from the dead. This was my idea for quite a while, even after I realized it was a long shot that Caul and his buddies would actually figure out a way to kill the Child.

And yet, that wasn’t my main problem. The main problem was the actual adventure site, i.e. the map. I needed a stronghold for Caul...and while it couldn’t be too large, it still had to feel like an “epic evil fortress.” Or, at least, weird. Or both. But with a capped number of encounters.

*sigh*  Let me explain.

In a convention time block...even a four hour one (which is long enough that you need to give the players at least a break, in my opinion)...there’s a limit to how many encounters they can get through. An excellent example is the tournament scenario found in Dave “Zeb” Cook’s module I1: Dwellers of the Forbidden City. The scenario is a linear gauntlet: each encounter area needs to be bypassed, one after another. There are no branching decision points, no side treks, no work arounds. You have ten encounter areas…TEN…and that’s it. I’ve run this scenario countless times over the years, but the last two times were for Cauldron 2023, one in playtest (at home) and once at the convention itself, and both times with strict attention paid to the time limit. And in BOTH instances, I found it impossible for the players involved to navigate the entire length within the time frame…NINE encounters was the most anyone ever got through in four hours.

Dwellers is pretty dastardly, and it’s a good example for study: you have two large, “set piece” encounters. You have two “tricky” encounters that can be avoided through cleverness. You have one “trick/trap” room, you have two “small” encounters that should be resolved quickly, and you have one “medium” encounter that would normally be okay, but due to its position (at the end of the adventure), the party will be low on resources like hit points and spells and so it will PLAY harder than it might otherwise play. The last two encounters are (effectively) “empty” locations with nothing there except possible time wasting by the party. Generally speaking, a good overall formula…but, again, still too long for the time slot (it runs about 15-20 minutes over four hours, and I run the thing like a machine).

And anyway, this is supposed to be a fortress…a CASTLE, not a linear gauntlet. Dwellers works because of the scenario itself…you are burrowing through a mountain following a tunnel into the heart of the forbidden city. But I wanted something that could be explored with branches and loops and whatnot…an environment for exploration in other words. Where and how to even begin. So, I started thinking about what Caul’s castle would like like…something gifted to him by Dark Patrons (of course) since he was only 8th level and not stout enough to build his own. As such, it could be as twisted and fantastic as I wanted. And, of course, it would need ways to sneak in (because, duh, stealth mission, not “Avengers Assemble” frontal assault). So probably through a cistern or catacomb or something.

IN FACT, my original idea was to simply re-purpose the Pax Tharkas mission from DL1…even using the map from that module. How easy! (mmm…now that I’m remembering I was ALSO planning on using warped version of the DL heroes as the pre-gens before I finally decided on the D&D Kids). But after looking over Pax Tharkas, I realized that it was really, really crappy. I needed something else.

Eventually, after bouncing off several different ideas (including a Harold Lamb description of the Hashashin's lair..and having my daughter draw me a castle map), I finally decided on something I could live with: the castle from the Jim Henson film, The Dark Crystal. It had everything I needed…a way in through the tunnels beneath (in addition to a front gate), a crazy-ass interior, vivid rooms/chambers (from the film), verticality, etc., etc. A place for Caul to set his throne, a lab for Caul’s evil wizard to do apothecary stuff, a “temple room” (the crystal chamber) for the witch to perform her dark rites, etc. Now all I needed was a MAP of the place…and I found THIS on-line:

Look at that thing, ain’t it a beauty? Except of course, it’s got the cutaway floor plan that doesn’t work for me and actually making the thing make sense was going to require a whole bunch of scribbling and erasing and scribbling on my part.

SO…I procrastinated. I detailed the actual encounter areas, numbered at 15. 'Hey! 15 is more than nine,' you say…heck, it’s more than ten! Yes, but this is not a "linear gauntlet." I wrote the thing in such a way that there were some nine-ish encounter areas for the PCs to surpass to both A) reach the Child’s destination (which would be determined by the results in the earlier “Silver Temple” adventure), and B) escape the dungeon. Because…stealth, right? We don’t need to confront Caul and his minions (though, if you do, it's frosting…). In addition, I threw in a bunch of slave areas (people for 'good guys' to rescue) because, of course there are slaves (like the podlings in the movie) AND...because I wanted to go “full Henson”...I also stocked in all the DC’s “Garthim” (giant black crabs…same stats as the MM) as Caul’s mutated guardian minions. Chef’s kiss.

HOW’D IT GO? Well, I'd hoped to get some of the same players from my Friday, Silver Temple adventure (continuity), but no such luck. Sign-up sheets filled FAST. And "Best DM" winner Grutzi…who had contacted me before the con and left this session open specifically to play this adventure at my table was unable to get a spot! Crap. I had only seven pre-gens (my other games were all 8+) because, of course, there aren’t all that many “D&D kids.”

[no, there was no “Uni the Unicorn;” my characters are a decade older and Uni has long since left ‘em to join a herd or something. The seventh pre-gen PC was a grown up version of Varla the Illusionist, a minor character introduced as a love interest for Presto in an episode I believe is called The Last Illusion. Yeah…an illusionist girlfriend. Suck it, Hank!]

Adult Varla

But at the last second, I decided that I was being stupid and I just went and grabbed Grutz and told him: get one of his own pre-gens and join the party. We went with eight and he brought a cleric, which was a welcome addition...although I had converted the older “Sheila” into a (dual-classed) thief/cleric to ensure the party sported some divine power. Now they had more.

ANYway...despite finishing the maps only two days before I hopped a plane and not getting a chance to play-test the thing…it played surprisingly well! The players decided to climb the castle (forgot to put rope on their equipment list…whoops!) and enter through the highest tower, working their way DOWN rather than UP. Which was fine…that, too, was a way I'd coded my encounters for the con. Their first encounter was with the assassin Nicodemus Plath, contemplating his life choices in the lookout. They got into a scrap with him and should have been poisoned five ways to Sunday, but my die rolls were pretty horrendous, and they beat the snot out of him. I had him surrender and then they got to tie him up and do some "role-playing" as they interrogated him about the layout of the place. “Well, it’s kind of hard to describe...”

Thing is, my map was all wonky with “non-Euclidean geometry:” due to me trying to crib together a vertical map into something horizontal I just ended up using no corners (nor even many straight lines), just a lot of “bendy,” wrap-around tunnels and a great many stairwells and changes of elevation. It worked well to make the whole expedition confusing, frustrating, and painful for the characters, as the slaves they encountered had only partial information and even then could only say, “Well, it’s kind of hard to describe…” Much hilarity.

However, the players were determined to kill Caul, Divine Child or not. One of the players, Dillon, was a self-professed Huso fan and knew all about Caul and really wanted to off the guy (Dillon was very enthusiastic about everything, actually…I think he was having a pretty good time as his first Cauldron…). They figured out where Caul’s throne room was and hatched some cockamamie plan to disguise themselves as a Drow (Diana wearing the witch’s clothes from a ransacked bedroom) and a slave (Varla using change self) with an invisible Sheila in tow to backstab the guy or some such. Caul wasn’t buying it of course…everyone in his castle was cleared by him and he knew there wasn’t any other Drows or “new cultists,” and also knew that slaves weren’t allowed in the throne room (other than his chained up scribe), so he dispatched his cadre of gnolls to round up the obvious imposters.

Fighting ensued; damage was done, Bobby stunned the hell out of everyone with a thunderclap (including his own people), but Sheila got off a hold person on Caul and the party carried the day to much fanfare. They found Caul’s hidden treasure vault, trapped with a necrophidius (credit to ChatGPT for that idea), but still: no Divine Child.

“We’ve got to find that temple with the witch…maybe we need to keep going lower.” But the party really did not want to end up in the catacombs…they had a sneaking suspicion that would be a BAD IDEA (and they were right because...you know...Garthim). But a little lower they went and ended up in the slave pens and fought and killed an ogre with a big old whip (not as dangerous as it could have been) and then said “AHA! Let’s cast speak with dead on the ogre and see if he can tell us where we find the Child!” Okay, cleric, you get two questions:

“Where’s the Divine Child, dead guy?” With the witch…

“How do we get to the temple?” Well, it’s kind of hard to describe…

Hahaha…no, just kidding. He told them go up the stairs to the main hall and take a right. How hard is that?!

They found the temple, the child, and the her cultist acolytes worshipping a stone obelisk, roughly shaped like a spider, that floated above a red glowing pit (Dark Crystal, right?). Eric was dressed in Caul’s armor, Varla was doing her illusion thing and they got close enough to the witch to trap her INSIDE Erik’s “dome of force” (that his magic shield could project 1/day), while the others blasted the cultists and Diana grabbed the Child and ran like hell (as a 6th level monk she was uber-fast) up to the top tower where she could feather fall off. Pretty sure Shiela ran behind her as backup.

Well, that wasn’t so hard…what the--?! As the GIANT MUTANT CRABS in the shadowed alcoves came out to attack. More combat but they won the day, the witch surrendered, and the party made her divest herself of all her gear and commanded her to return to the UnderDark, never to return.

All with minutes to spare before the dinner bell. Good stuff.

[to be continued...]

A moment of unbridled joy...

M is for Modules

I missed the April A-Z Blog Challenge this year, so I'm doing my own...in June. This year, I will be posting one post per day discussing my AD&D campaign, for the curious. Since 2020, this is the ONLY campaign I run. Enjoy!

M is for Modules...not Magic. I considered writing about magic in my campaign setting, but I've already written extensive blog posts on the way I run magic in my game here and here and here. If you missed those earlier (or just want to refresh your memory), they're still there and I'm still handling magic the same.

Nope, instead I'm going to talk about modules. "Module" is the term given and used by TSR to describe their published adventure scenarios. I assume their choice is because these adventures were meant to be "modular:" easily slipped into any Dungeon Master's home brew campaign setting. Portable, in other words.

I own a lot of these old modules...something in the number of 75+, not counting compilation "super modules." Only one or two are from the 2E era; most (close to 60) were written for 1E AD&D. That is a ton of adventure modules...enough for YEARS of play, even if I was running a weekly game. Which I'm not.

I received an email a couple weeks ago from a rank novice D&Der, asking me about the general purpose of adventure modules: how important are they, what are their purpose, what makes a module "good" or "bad," and some specifics about the DragonLance modules. Here's (some of) what I told him:

There are three types of people who play D&D: DMs, players, and folks who alternate between the two roles. Only DMs have any concern for modules. A module is a modular advenure: a scenario designed to slot into a DM's campaign; in my experience, the term ALWAYS refers to a pre-written, published adventure (i.e. something you buy or download).

In my opinion, modules serve TWO purposes: 1) they provide an adventure scenario/situation for the convenience of the DM (i.e. so the DM doesn't have to come up with something themselves), and 2) for NEW DMs, it provides a 'blueprint' of sorts to show how to create adventure situations/scenarios for their home campaign. The Moldvay Basic set is (IMO) the best introduction to D&D concepts one can get...that the module B2 Keep on the Borderlands was included in the box is MAINLY additional educational material for the starting DM.

The DragonLance modules were published during the age of 1E...yes, 1E...and were a grand experiment for TSR. In my estimation, their popularity was due mainly to the bestselling novels that accompanied them. They allowed players to game the events in novels, using the characters of the novels, i.e. follow the Weiss/Hickman plot/storyline (without actual agency and thus sans what makes the D&D game great).

Many early modules, including the Slaver series you reference, were written as tournament scenarios for conventions. As such, they had 'win' conditions (because parties competed against each other). The only thing they "test" is players' ability to meet the objectives the module sets. I wrote a tournament adventure for last year's Cauldron con (Europe's only OSR con) and the only thing it measured was how much treasure one group could find over another. That is, it measured players' adventuring skill.

The reason to use modules is to reduce the amount of work the DM has to do; your DM can write all his/her own adventures, OR he/she can just use modules, OR they can do a little bit of both. Most DMs choose to do both. They are a labor-saving device, although (for the new DM) they can also show what is possible in adventure design (that is, they can be a teaching tool). But a bad DM running a good module can still result in a poor experience for the players. Such is always the case with a "bad DM" (that term requires a lot of unpacking).

A campaign setting is a WORLD; understand that. It doesn't need ANY dungeons (though we are playing "D&D," right?), nor pre-published modules. What it does needs is a DM to run it, who's willing to create and/or provide SCENARIOS that will lead to adventures...THAT is what adventure gaming is all about.

I post this transcription because I liked my answer to his questions and I felt it outlined my attitude towards adventure modules.

For me, I'm not so much interested in "learning how to write adventures;" at this point in my DMing career, I've got a fairly good handle on that. But I still use modules...many modules!...because they are, as I wrote, a labor-saving device.  None of them are "perfect," but they all provide ideas and concepts (scenarios), maps stocked with dangers and rewards...all things that are welcome for a night of D&D adventure. 

To date, I've repurposed some dozen pre-published adventures for use in my campaign (since going back to AD&D); that's around two to three per year. At that rate, it'd take me a couple decades to use up all the material sitting on my shelves...which isn't my goal, just by the way. When I pull out an adventure module, I'm not looking to "complete" its "story;" all I am looking for is an enticing scenario that players will be interested in tackling (for fun and profit). My world is one that is FULL of such scenarios (many of which I've written myself), but their existence doesn't constitute any sort of "story arc" for the campaign. 

My campaign has no 'arc;' it just IS.

I let the players tell the stories..."war stories," that is...of what happened during a particular session or series of sessions. But the modules aren't there to lend any sort of "coherence" or "narrative framework" to the adventures we're playing. I've used both DL1 and DL14 of the DragonLance series in my campaign, without any of the DL characters, drama, or storyline...just simple (if heavily modified) adventure scenarios. And they were delightful...that is to say, they delighted my players. Without any need for a heroic or epic "plot." D&D doesn't need anything like that to be successful as entertainment. 

My campaign is a world of "dungeons;" modules provide me with more dungeons. That makes them useful to me.

[Happy Father's Day, folks!]

"Dragon Wrack"

Hope folks had an enjoyable Father's Day this last weekend, whatever your relationship to "fatherhood" might be. Speaking for myself, it was delightful, due in large part to my family bending over backwards to make Sunday a special day for Yours Truly.

Doesn't mean it was perfect, of course. I wasn't able to get the dinner I wanted (not for lack of trying...we won't go into that), and I did still have to do some dishes (though not nearly as many as usual), and I would have preferred a different pie than "Key lime" (it's not bad, just not my favorite). And then there was the gaming....

SO, one thing I forgot to mention the other day: the latest installment of Prince's No ArtPunk contest has been published. NAP 3 is available as an absolutely enormous, 'pay what you want' PDF file. 

How enormous? 694 pages. Yeah. Granted, it contains 14 high level adventures (including maps) interspersed with some half dozen essays relating to "high level play" (the theme of this year's NAP competition) and a few pages of art, but still...it's big. The adventures are big. Prince included his own most recent module (Slyth Hive) in the compilation, and that's damn near 100 pages itself.

[yes, all my ranting from the other day about large page counts still applies]

But laptop memory eater or not, slog or not, it's a pretty amazing compilation. A lot of creativity on display, a lot of enthusiasm. Folks really attacked the NAP challenge with gusto, and the sheer volume and variety of submissions is...well, as I already wrote, "amazing." I plan on doing a read through over the next couple months (slog, remember?) and will probably pen some 'capsule reviews.' At least for the AD&D modules.

Now, about that gaming...

The last couple-three years, my kids have been really good about making sure I get some serious D&D play in when Father's Day rolls around. That's just what Nerd Dad likes doing: I'm not (much of) a golfer, so I don't want to hit the course or (even) sit on my couch watching the U.S. Open. D&D (or other games) is the main event on the docket and, what with being a weekend (and usually one that's OFF from other activities), we can carve out a nice large chunk of time for ourselves, rather than the couple hours snatched here and there during the week. Often, my kids will run a game for me, but this year I wanted to DM because I had something specific I wanted to run: Dragon Wrack, my high-level entry for NAP3.

If you pick up the NAP3 book, you'll see the adventure, as it made the cut as one of the finalists. In brief: it's a re-writing/re-working of the old TSR module DL14: Dragons of Triumph. Yep, I'm still on that whole 'rehabilitating DragonLance" kick, though in this case I redrew all the maps and chucked pretty much everything from the original module save for the general concept (Tiamat's temple-fortress, surrounded by her armies, PCs doing an infiltration gig, while the Forces of Good are marching on the place). I mean, I even wrote the thing for use with CHAINMAIL, including an appendix of new AD&D specific adaptations, since I never was into "BattleSystem."  Sure, it includes pre-gens bearing a passing resemblance to certain "heroes" of the DL novels and, yeah, it has some Dragon Lords...but it's not really the same adventure. It's not set in Krynn, but in my own PNW world (Moscow, Idaho taking the place of "Neraka"), and you certainly won't find any "draconians" or "kender" or any bars of gold that have been completely devalued by the setting. Au contraire, what you WILL find are heaping piles of treasure, as well as Tiamat who never makes an appearance in the original module, despite featuring prominently on the cover. 

Illo by Clyde Caldwell

Why did I want to play Dragon Wrack? A couple reasons. First, I never had the chance to play-test the thing when I first wrote it (I was under serious time pressure just to get the thing out by the submission deadline). Second, I wanted to take a break from our current campaign...as a test for a future publication, that adventure is requiring a bit more work and attention then I really have time for at the moment. But mainly, it's just that...now that NAP3 has been made available to the general public...I figured I should at least say I've given the thing a spin myself.  And this was as good a time as any.

Hoo-boy.

Problems, problems, problems...abounding, right from the get-go. 

First, there's the premise. Unlike a normal "explore and loot" scenario, DW has a fairly specific objective: find a way to disrupt the Queen and/or her forces so that the Allied army can win the day. Okay, but how? The party is basically the equivalent of a high level task force / commando squad (or the generals of the Allied host...if you want to play it that way)...but this needs to be spelled out a bit. "Intel" could be better: what the players know (and don't know) needs to be very specific, because the time crunch, the time pressure of the thing, is very real once you sit down to play the scenario. My players have been trying to get intel AND formulate plans at the same time, all on the fly, with very mixed results.

The whole intro/background section of the adventure needs rewriting, in other words.

Then there's the town of Moscow: my original idea for the adventure was to include at least a rough sketch / layout of the place, based on actual city maps of the town circa 1890. Unfortunately time constraints caught up with me (I had less than a month to write the whole thing, start to finish), and this got 'cut' from the final. But without something to show the players, keyed or not, it's hard for them to really visualize the situation they're in. Besides which, I hadn't even bothered to decide the answers to questions like 'how open is the town?' 'What are the streets like?' 'Are there dragon army patrols / town militia / etc. and what is their composition?' Once again (as many times before) I was struck by the inadequacy of the game to provide procedures for running a town or urban environment.

The adventure has a decent timeline of events that is based on the specific pre-gens the players choose to use on the adventure. For my players, they wanted to bring their own characters as well (a provision accounted for in the adventure) despite being a little under-leveled (8th and 7th) for the scenario. Because of the particular party composition chosen, the players found themselves just a few hours ahead of the Black Wing of the Dragon Army. However, rather than try to get into the temple first, the players decided to sit and wait, giving the army a chance to enter and occupy the fortress. 

Why? Because they decided to scale the temple/fortress from the outside and wanted to wait till the dead of night to do so. And here again I see things missing from my scenario that would have been useful: pieces about foot traffic in and around the temple, patrols in the grounds, locations of guardsmen, numbers and weapons. Yes, some of this is there...in the form of wandering monster tables and percentage chances for room occupants depending on whether or not the army is present. But, as written, it needs more. And probably needs greater specificity. Also, how long a Wing takes to enter the place and in what order (as well as where they go from there)...all things I ended up needing to work out at the table during play.

Because, at the last minute, the players decided it would be easier to simply infiltrate the place as part of the army; Diego's assassin disguised himself as an orc soldier, the magic-user cast invisibility on Sofia's fighter, and the two joined the back file of grunts marching through the Black Wing's gate.

At this point, we've been playing for two days now (I'm typing this Tuesday morning; while we started the game on Sunday, it ended up continuing to Monday). The lack of clear objectives has meant the players are kind of running around like chickens with their heads cut off. They're divided on whether or not they want to find a way to the roof (to let down their ropes to the others), or find their imprisoned companions (also part of the scenario), or find Tiamat herself (though I'm not sure what they'd do if they did!). They've been wandering about, blundering into places, and then having to explain why they're in the wrong areas/sections (again, notes on how the temple's inhabitants react to such blunders should have been included in the adventure). 

All in all, I'm rather disappointed in how the thing is playing out...so much so that the original title of this post was "Dragon Crap." It IS tense and pressurized, but as written the adventure lacks focus or a clear path of action for the players...and that has meant the pace of the thing has been slow. I'm used to a brisker adventuring style, not this cautious, tentativeness (caused by the lack of direction). It's frustrating; I wish I'd had a chance to play-test before submitting the thing for publication. 

Ah, well.

We'll see how it goes today: last week the kids finished up school for the year, and we ain't got shit to do (at least, not till soccer practice this evening), so I'm sure it will be "game on" after breakfast. The players finally stumbled into a fight (right at the end of yesterday's session) and it seems pretty clear they've managed to alert the section they've been poking around.  I'm going to try spending a little time organizing the pages this morning, to see if I can get some semblance of what organized resistance to the PCs' intrusion. Hopefully, things will go smoother.

Later gators.

: )

Something Dragon-y

AKA Why let the rules bother us?

Don't believe I've shared this pic on Ye Old Blog yet:

So that, my friends, is a culmination of both my obsession with DragonLance, and my completist collection habits: the fourteen original TSR-published adventure modules, DL1 through DL14. DL11: Dragons of Glory is, unfortunately, missing the counters...but since I've never owned, read, or played the BattleSystem rules, that's not much skin off my nose.

Why O Why would I put out the money for such a spread? Nostalgia? Some unfulfilled desire from my childhood of wanting to own and/or run DragonLance? Morbid curiosity? My natural hoarding instinct?

Nah. I actually wanted the maps (most of these have good maps and not-too-terrible ideas for dungeons), and..(yes, this part is insane)...and some Quixotic notion that I might rehabilitate the series for my own, and others, enjoyment. 

[yeah, I admit that bit IS crazy]

But MORE than either of those things, I wanted to see how this...the first, really large scale themed D&D campaign...was designed. What went into the series? How was it written to take characters from relatively low level (all apologies to the OSE crowd, but 4th - 6th is LOW level for AD&D), to a respectably HIGH level (10th-14th for the final module of the series).

I haven't finished reading them all, nor am I reading them in chronological order. The majority of the modules are new to me (though I've owned DL1 for a while, and the first four in a later compilation book) and, for the most part, I've been reading them in order of what interests me: DL6 (blood and snow), DL10 (freaky dream-stuff), DL14 (showdown with Tiamat!), and DL13 (do the PCs fight Bahamut, er, Paladine?). The original concept for DragonLance was an attempt to write a series of modules, each of which would feature ONE of the 12 dragons (metallic and chromatic) in the original Monster Manual. That there are 14 modules in the series does not mean the designers over-stepped; DL5 is a setting book (providing info on the campaign world of DragonLance) and DL11 is a boardgame/wargame with its own rules used to simulate the Dragon War (I think...haven't actually gotten around to perusing that one yet, but it seems to be a different animal from BattleSystem). 

SO...setting aside those "supplemental" entries into the DL saga, we have the following adventures:

DL1: Dragons of Despair (for PCs levels 4th-6th)

DL2: Dragons of Flame (5th-7th)

DL3: Dragons of Hope (6th-8th)

DL4: Dragons of Desolation (6th-8th)

DL6: Dragons of Ice (6th-9th)

DL7: Dragons of Light (7th-9th)

DL8: Dragons of War (8th-10th)

DL9: Dragons of Deceit (8th-10th)

DL10: Dragons of Dreams (8th-10th)

DL12: Dragons of Faith (9th-10th)

DL13: Dragons of Truth (10th-13th)

DL14: Dragons of Triumph (10th-14th)

Of course, even though they're written for a particular level range, none of the adventures appear to provide enough experience points to advance the characters at the rates listed. Not that THAT matters: each module opens with a strong suggestion that the adventure be played with the pregenerated PCs provided. And those simply seem to advance "as needed," perhaps in order to fulfill the needs of "the epic story" that is DragonLance.

Rules don't really seem to be the Hickmans' strong suit...as I pointed out in prior reviews of Ravenloft, it's fairly clear that their knowledge of the actual game for which they're writing (i.e. 1st edition AD&D) has a lot of holes in it. You find it in the DL modules as well: demihumans exceeding racial limits (Tanis, Flint), characters in classes they don't qualify for (Riverwind), dual-class characters that don't qualify as such (Tika), advancement that just seems waaaay off (Caramon advances to 12th level fighter by the end of the series...1,000,001 x.p. needed...while his magic-user brother only achieves level 11...350,000-750,000 x.p....and trails 2-3 levels behind him for most of the series. What?).

But, whatever. The series has worse malfeasances...plenty of them, from "obscure death" rules, to inconsistent economies, to lack of value (in g.p. or x.p.) of new magic items, to forcing players to recite bad poetry.  *sigh*  Just...a lot of stuff that's not "good D&D."

[the capper, of course, is that the characters do NOT fight Tiamat...er, Takhisis...in the final adventure. Instead, in a nod to the success of Ravenloft, they make you pick from a random of selection of six possible ways of achieving victory, four of which involve an NPC doing the actual work of "defeating" the Dark Queen, and none of which involve facing her directly. What a gyp]

Even so, the IDEA of DragonLance is pretty "epic." Dragon-riding warlords leading armies of humanoids in a world-conquering jihad, spurred on by their theocrat-emperor...and all the vanilla fantasy goody-goodies forced to grow a pair or end up enslaved in an iron mine somewhere. All it needs is some human sacrifice stuff to be a bit more sword & sorcery...it's really not that far off (although I kind of hate draconians. 

[also...why does Takhisis reside in the Abyss? She's still Lawful Evil (as are the dragon army officers)...what's the matter with keeping her on her rightful plane in Hell? My theory that the Hickmans never bothered to learn more than OD&D (and still use a Law vs. Chaos alignment axis) remains viable]

The rather interesting thing to do here...and, I think, the proper tactic to take...is to work BACKWARDS through these adventures in formulating the basis for a campaign. I've never written "detective fiction," but my understanding is that one must first conceive of the crime (the murder, the killer, the motives, etc.) and THEN obfuscate it such that the protagonist must follow the clues needed to unravel the thing. In this case, I must conceive of the whole Dragon War: how the armies gather, how they invade, how the nations of the world fall (and when they fall)...all BEFORE setting the PCs loose in some town or other. "Steel pieces" and "kender" are, of course, right out the window (for reasons I've written about extensively in past posts...here, for example). 

[I *do* kind of like the idea of "false clerics," however]

Working backwards, using DL14 and its source material (as well as DL11's "mini-wargame") I can set up the entirety of the setting, throw down all the various "dungeons" (from the published modules) and construct my own timeline of war events, that will be going on in the background while the PCs adventure and investigate. This is something I first had a mind to do a couple years back, but was stymied by my lack of the source material...said source material now having been acquired, I could set things in motion if I really wanted.

The PROBLEM is...I really kind of love my current campaign world. And I'm not sure I want to blow it up with cataclysmic events (no pun intended). And I don't think it would just "work" to throw the DL scenario on top of the existing polities...my Red Empire is no "knights of Solamnia," and would probably rough up any dragon highlords that sought to overthrow the emperor. 

Mm...

I could put my own game on hold for a bit, and just run Krynn. That's not a terrible idea, though there's a lot about the world I dislike (friendly minotaurs, walrus men, tinker gnomes, etc.). No, Krynn kind of sucks. Plus, I don't particularly like the lay of its land(mass).

Mmm...

Okay, it's late and I need to sleep (a reason, perhaps, for some of the grouchiness on display). I'll post this in the morning. Later, gators!

; )

Just Spitballing

The other evening my son was complaining that he "didn't have anything to read;" a blatant lie since there are book shelves throughout our home (Six in the office alone! Two in my kids' bedroom) literally overflowing with books. Really...we have about (hold on, I'm counting)....eleven-ish book shelves PLUS piles of books on bedside tables, side tables, coffee tables, etc.

Why don't you read one of the three books you just got from the library the other day? "They're BORING. I want something that's like D&D...like with D&D characters, doing D&D stuff." Oh. 

I picked up a copy of Dragons of an Autumn Twilight off the shelf I have designated for nostalgic-crap-paperbacks and handed it to him. Yes: I am a terrible parent.

"Hickman? Didn't he write Ravenloft?" Yep. "What's this?" It's a D&D book about D&D characters doing D&D things. "Really?" Yeah. It's crap, but when I was your age, I thought it was great.

*sigh*

My own Dragonlance journey is evolving in a different fashion. My research has been more focused on The Atlas of the Dragonlance World, DL11: Dragons of Glory, DL14: Dragons of Triumph, and (to lesser extents) the Players Guide to the Dragonlance Campaign and the 2nd Edition Tales of the Lance. What might be surprising, though, is HOW I'm using them...see, I don't really give a rip about rules for kender or minotaurs or the various knightly (proto-)prestige class mechanics: that's all stuff I can do myself (and probably in an easier, if not more eloquent, fashion).

Likewise, I'm not overly concerned with the creation myths and pseudo-history of Krynn (or their particular cosmology which is mostly silly and generally ignored in the fiction and published adventures)...who cares with how gully dwarves came into being?  Instead, I'm mining the thing for information that IS useful for a campaign set in the DL world: nations and states, population demographics, climate conditions, geography (pre- and post-Cataclysm), trade goods. All that is ALSO stuff I could weave from whole cloth myself...but it's a lot less work for me if I just use their stuff and worry about how it all factors into their economy and the economic war machine.

Dragons of Glory is also an interesting book...probably more interesting than most people give it credit for. "Timelines of the universe" (when the gods were created; when the gods created humans, elves, etc.) are NOT interesting (and anyway, shouldn't that all be confined to the realms of myth and creation story, i.e. like our "real world?"). Timelines of war and the movements of armies ARE...so long as they can be grounded in some semblance of reality. DL11 is one of the first places I've seen that shows another great justification for the "no cleric" world of Krynn: armies are forced to carry their own provisions, rather than rely on create food spells (ridiculously low level in AD&D). And how much food does a dragon eat, anyway? Sure, dragons are the fantasy equivalent of "air support" but are they troop transports, resupply vessels, or strafing/bombing vehicles? Remember: dragons are lazy (chromatic dragons, especially, have high "sleeping" percentages)...they are not uber-monsters that can go-go-go, indefinitely.

I know, I know..."Who cares, JB? We're not running a wargame here!" No, you're not...and neither am I. But it's important for world building. I keep coming back to that term; one of these days, I'll spend 10,000+ words defining exactly what I mean. Here's the TL;DR version: it's the OPPOSITE of half-assing one's scenario creation for your D&D campaign. Lookie here:

Say you're a DM that wants to run an adventure for a group of friends. You've got this great "tomb" adventure or...hell...how about a module? Let's say I3: Pharaoh (I remember that one being pretty good). You set a weekend aside and run it for your buddies. They have a great time. "Can we do it again next week?" Do what? "Play D&D!" Um...sure. What do you want, another tomb?

Set aside (for the purpose of this post) all thought of the "mega-dungeon," a relic from the most primordial days but bearing as little resemblance to the glory of the "true" D&D game as a board game (board games are more succinct and satisfying than mega-dungeons, in my Not So Humble opinion). As I said: set it aside for the moment. What do YOU, Mr./Ms. DM plan on doing next? You, Dancing Monkey, how are you going to entertain these individuals, week-after-week, month-after-month, year-after-year? You going to keep buying PDFs off of DriveThruRPG for the requisite levels of your players?

How empty.

You need a world; you need context for your players. NOT background (and certainly not "backstory!")...just a world for exploration. Dungeons? Sure...you can shoehorn dungeons into most any world. Krynn's got a dozen plus (the DL series). Greyhawk's got a bunch. I know Mystara does. And I'm sure Ye Old Forgotten Realms has a plethora, even before the advent of 2E (wasn't the "H" series of Bloodstone set in FR?). I've had no problem slotting pre-published modules of all stripes into MY campaign world (a fantasy Washington State). "Insert dungeon" is standard operating practice. 

But the world...you need the world. Without the world, it's all hollow. 

Ugh. Okay. I'm going to try to write about this tomorrow (though it's my kids' short school day; maybe Thursday?). Just too many distractions today. School shooting down the street. Wife freaking out. Kids coming home early. Mid-term voting. And ALSO the start of basketball season (for the boy...kids plays all the sports). Jeez. Busy day. Currently finishing this post at a bar while drinking a beer...but I've got to go.

More later. 

Confessing Dragonlance

I have a love-hate relationship with Dragonlance. I can beat it up all day, but it continues to draw me to it, like a moth to a flame.

I once heard it said that "whatever you're into circa age 12 will be the things that continue to fascinate you the rest of your life" (they may have been speaking only of boys/men). For myself, there's certainly an element of truth to that. The Seattle Seahawks. Dungeons & Dragons. And, sure, the Dragonlance saga.

One of the NAP2 adventure entries in Prince's contest was a little entry called Keep the Pace, a fairly creative submission that took some shit from me for being something that occurs entirely within a dream. *sigh* As I commented at the time: not my cup of tea. "Dream adventures" is something I associate with the old World of Darkness (games like Vampire, Mage, 3rd edition Ars Magica, etc.)...games written for the "Storyteller" system (yes, that's the actual name WoD gives their proprietary mechanics) which I played extensively back in the 1990s. 

But there have, of course, been the occasional D&D forays into dreams (and, heck, back in my youth I remember running some dream shenanigans in my own AD&D campaign...embarrassing to admit). Combing my memory for some of these, the one that sprang foremost to mind was adventure module DL10: Dragons of Dreams. Written by Tracy Raye Hickman and featuring one of my absolute favorite covers (Caldwell), this is an adventure I've never owned nor read, though having read Spring Dawning multiple times (told you I was a fan) I am aware of the whole Silvanesti/Cyan Bloodbane/forest-locked-in-dream-thrall scenario. 

All green dragons
should be so cool.

SO...decided the other day to grab a PDF copy of the thing and check it out. And was...um...confounded? by the adventure. It's a little...mm...crazy-nuts how the whole "dream thing" is handled. 

So THEN I spent more than a bit of time looking for an in-depth review of the module...preferably one that included an actual play report that didn't come from someone hacking the mechanics and just doing some heavy-handed "narrative driven" drivel with their players. Couldn't find a single one (there's a four part YouTube video of actual play that I started listening to, but they're not using the original characters and include...for example...a "draconian paladin" as a PC, which makes me wince more than a little). What I did find was an extensive deep dive of every Dragonlance module published for AD&D (and many of their 3E adaptations). Ended up spending a couple-few days going through that.

The writing of the author ("Purple XVI") is caustic and profanity laden, in the style of Bryce or Prince, but there's an obvious affection for the source material. No one "hates" a topic, setting, or product line so much as to spend THAT much effort dissecting it. I know I write long, rambling screeds and rants about how beloved "classic" adventures are crap...but this is tens of thousands of words (99,819 words per my laptop). Without an actual fondness for the material no one's going to martyr themselves simply to lampoon an entire series...a series that MANY folks agree (at this point in time) Weren't Well Done.

So what does that say about me? Well, as I said, I was a fan of the novels in my youth, but I never owned, ran, or played any of the DL adventure modules. My co-DM owned a couple, but said they were awful (remember: at the time she was 14 and a fan of the novels, too, but even then we could recognize they were crap D&D). But, while I have absolutely no desire to run an epic heroic railroad (hey, man, I said I ran a lot of WoD back in the day...) and unequivocally loathe many of the design choices made by the Hickmans and their co-authors, STILL the series, the world of Krynn, and the potentiality of the setting holds an immense fascination for me.

Reading Purple's reviews was a way of assuaging my curiosity without going out, buying, and reading the whole shebang myself.

There's just so much material there! Multi-level dungeons! And DRAGONS! Did you know: the original impetus/idea of the DL series was to create a 12 module series with each featuring one of the cannonical MM dragons? Yes, that includes both Bahamut and Tiamat (those were modules DL13 and DL14, respectively). Why, then, were there 14 modules (originally) published? Because DL5 was a mini "setting sourcebook" (an overview of the Krynn world) and DL11: Dragons of Glory was a chit-and-hex wargame for running battles during the War of the Lance. SO...remove DL5 and DL11 and you get 12 adventure modules, each corresponding with one of the month/paintings of the original Dragonlance calendar from 1985 (the cover of the calendar was used for the cover of DL5). 

It was a DELIGHTFUL attempt at creating a succinct, 12-issue campaign series. With extensive, multi-level dungeons, such a project could occupy at least a year of game play...and probably years if the thing was run as a sandbox campaign instead of a story oriented railroad. While I'm not as enamored with the Dirtbag Dragonlance concept as some folks, I do like the idea of running the world as a war-torn, post-apocalyptic fantasy setting where players must find a way to survive and thrive.

It's Twilight 2000 for AD&D.  Hell, the size of the setting isn't much different from Eastern Europe (the continent of Ansalon, as mapped, is only about half the size of Australia, and has a lot more water in its interior). My own campaign world is smaller in terms of area, but not so much in terms of land mass, considering all the inland seas.. Which is to say: the thing is TINY.  And that's fine for a pseudo-medieval fantasy campaign that doesn't provide jet airliners for commercial intercontinental travel. The Cataclysmic changes the world's undergone from being hit by a divine meteor strike has resulted in plenty of dungeons and monster-infested wilderness, even as it's left some city states with better-than-usual technology remaining. In many ways, Krynn/Ansalon is a perfect world setting for D&D...even before you add in the dragon war.

And so we come to this: even though I really, REALLY don't care about the DL fiction that's been penned over the years (despite my absurd fondness for the original two trilogies), the setting/situation created by the Hickmans remains appealing as a very game-worthy environment in which to set a Dungeons & Dragons campaign. And while I have no wish (zero! zilch!) to play through the modules as written (they are, in fact, terrible), I find myself really loving the idea of possibly running a campaign set in the World of Krynn...of, in fact, taking those first 12-14 modules and mining them for stones from which to build a most excellent imaginary environment worth exploring.

A fool's errand. That's a statement, not a rhetorical question. It is madness to conceive of this as a project...especially as a commercial project (which, indeed, is what I've been considering over the last few days). And, yet, the idea...and ideas related to it...simply won't let go of my brain. 

Now, I'll tell you folks, a lot of times when I breathe out something like this into the internet it cures me of that buzzing bee in my bonnet. Just typing out the words and phrases of what's rambling in my head helps settle my firing synapses and bring me back to a more "neutral" frame of mind. But not always...and, perhaps, not this time.  If that turns out to be the case...if just writing about this subject begins to stoke the fire in my mind rather than douse its flames...and if I actually begin writing this thing that looms in my imagination...well, I'll post a few more missives on the subject. 

It's a completely idiotic idea for a project. But, right now, it's one that's got some "grab" to it. 

Fantasy Economics (p. 2)

Apologies for the lack of writing the last few days...was a busy week, PLUS had a sick kid at home (sick wife, too, which didn't make things any easier). Thankfully everyone is on the mend and life is settling down.

Back to fantasy economics.

In my last post on this subject, I made note of the fact that Washington State (the basis for my campaign world) contains an estimated 519 metric tons of gold. So, just how many coins are we talking about? Well, one metric ton weighs a smidge less than 2,205# which (more importantly) converts to 32,150.7 troy ounces. As there are 400 troy ounces to the gold ingot (bar), that means about 80 ingots per metric ton...a bit more than 41,715 bars in total if ALL the gold in Washington was mined and smelted.

Now how many coins per bar requires one to figure out how many coins can be struck from a single ingot. However, we've already established that in DragonLance (well, in DL2) each ingot of gold found in Pax Tharkas is worth 1,000 gold pieces, giving us 36 coins per pound of metal (about twice the thickness of the old Spanish gold doubloon, a coin with a diameter of about 1.5"). So, if using DL has a base (which is fine...for now) one can say there's enough gold in "fantasy Washington" to cast 41.7 million gold pieces.

Except, of course, it doesn't. Gold mining and smelting isn't solely concerned with the minting of coins. Gold is used for everything from decoration (gold leaf, gold plating) to...well, decoration (gold jewelry). But it's still mainly used for currency (for a medium of exchange) while wearing gold is a sign/show of wealth and ostentation. It's saying, I can afford to decorate my home with money.

The original D&D game only had three types of coin as "standard:" the gold piece, the silver piece, and the copper piece. Pretty solid reasoning considering all of these were used as currency at various points in history (the "gold standard" only really ended in the 20th century). Washington State has plenty of silver and copper in its mountains: roughly 4,040 metric tons of silver and 13,200 metric tons of copper. That's plenty of precious metal for coinage of lesser value. Proportionately these aren't quite the 1/20th and 1/200th you might assume would be laying around (given the relative value of gold to silver to copper in the AD&D game)...however, "value" can be based on a LOT of factors, besides just weight of metal. Ease of acquisition for example (how hard is it to mine silver or copper compared to gold), or the amount of coinage already in circulation. Just because there's only 7-8 times the amount of silver as gold, doesn't mean you can pick up a gold piece with 8 silver coins. Silver does tarnish after all.

Anyway: if we assign the same number of troy ounces to a silver/gold coin as for a piece of gold (which we needn't do, especially given the density of gold in comparison, and the necessity of smaller, more portable coinage for lesser "everyday" transactions)...*ahem* IF we were to assign the same figures (400 troy ounces to a bar of metal, each ingot being worth 1,000 coins of its type), then we could come up with finite figures for the amount of monetary treasure that can be pulled from the campaign world:

• 41.7 million gold pieces
• 324.7 million silver pieces (16.2 million g.p.)
• 1.061 billion copper pieces (5.3 million g.p.)

For a total value far, far north of 63 million gold pieces. That's a lot of experience points to be acquired...a campaign that features 20 characters could each end up taking home 3M (or more). Even cut down to one-tenth (call it "available adventuring treasure") we've got something in the 6.3M range...for coinage alone...which is enough to get eight well-played (surviving) PCs nearly 800K in x.p. apiece, leveling even paladins and rangers up to 10th level.

Pretty respectable gains for a finite money supply? Thing is, it's really only the tip of the iceberg. While valuable metals stripped from the Earth may have an absolute limit, money in circulation circulates. Here...let me paint folks a picture:

PCs spend their starting wealth to acquire supplies from the local merchant. Merchant puts together a caravan of goods for a trip "over yonder" (including a supply of coins for expenses/purchases). Caravan is waylaid by bandits (orcs, humans, whoever). PCs raid bandit hideout and acquire treasure (including coins from merchant). Back in town, PCs spend coinage to acquire henchmen, armor upgrades, fresh supplies, etc. Coins make their way from various vendors into collection box at local church. Apostate devil-worshipper steals temple treasury to help finance secret cult. PCs break into cultists' lair, kill cultists, take treasure. More wealth is spent or paid in taxes to the local ruler. Ruler distributes largesse, pays hefty salaries to staff, including his chief vizier. Vizier's daughter goes missing in the town's sewers/catacombs whatever...vizier hires PCs to bring her back alive using the same treasure they've already recovered twice already. PCs spend money for local spell-caster to remove curse of lycanthropy inflicted on party member by the wererats in the sewer, Spell-caster pays off debt to local merchant owed for supplies and spell components. Merchant puts together a heavily armed caravan to make it to next town (no chances this time) and hires PC adventurers as escorts using the same money as salary (though much of it has also been used to pay for horses, tack, feed, new wagons, etc.). 

The same hundreds or thousands of coins can easily end up being the same "loot" over and over again, allowing players to level far beyond what one might assume possible given the supply of coin currency in the region. No, money may not grow on trees...but there are things that do (I'm sure farmers in eastern Washington looks at the fruit in their orchards and see dollar signs), things that money acquires. And, as I've written before, adventurers have costs, and the proper running of a campaign requires enough world building to ensure enough costs to eat into all that treasure the PCs find along the way. It's the steady diet of want and need that drives a campaign onwards.

Okay, more later. 

Fantasy Economics (p.1)

Let's get right to it:

36. Tharkadan Treasure Vault

Having detected the secret door, locating the concealed latch is a simple matter. It releases with a soft click, and a section of the stone wall swings silently inward. The room beyond is fairly large, and nearly filled with yellow, brick-like objects that glitter through a layer of dust.

Stacked 25 high, 25,000 gold ingots line the walls around the room. Each contains the equivalent of 1,000 gp of the metal. Gold was valued highly by the dwarves of Pax Tharkas in the Age of Dreams, but it is of little use to the current adventurers.

[from DL2: Dragons of Flame by Douglas Niles]

25,000 gold ingots, each containing 1,000 gold pieces worth of gold. A total value of 25 million gold pieces, and absolutely worthless (by DL campaign rules) in the Seeker Lands.

NOT, however, in the case of lands conquered by the dragon armies. From Appendix I ("Rates of Exchange") in DL1: Dragons of Despair:

In the lands conquered by the Dragonlords, no coinage is used; the gpw [gold piece weight] of the metal is used for exchanges. Steel is the basic metal, but gold does have some value...  

1 gpw of steel equals 10 gp. 

[emphasis added]

So...25 million gold coins are worth 2.5 million steel pieces (and thus 2.5 million experience points) in the lands occupied by the dragon highlords. Places like, for example, Tarsis on the southern continent (encountered in DL5 I believe)...or even Haven and Solace after the events of DL2.

Of course, that's not how the hoard in the secret treasure vault is supposed to be handled. Presumably, the players are supposed to discover a pile of gold bars, stand in awe and wistful sadness for a few moments, and then leave to get on with the "glorious adventure story," rescuing an elven princess from durance vile.

Such trash.

In my estimation, elven princesses are much more conducive to rescue by wealthy, well-dressed heroes who can afford a bevy of servants to wait on her every need and provide fine meals prepared by expensive chefs. You know...the kind of hero that lives in a palace? Does the princess really want to be returned to her soon-to-be-ashes forest home, just to become a hunted refugee with the rest of her people?

[yes, yes, I've read DragonLance...I realize Laurana is made of sterner stuff than that, going on to be the Golden General and all. I'm just saying: this is what the adventure is telling you to do. The novels are a different deal]

Anyway, since my campaign world is a bit more...mm..."pragmatic," these gold bars mean a bit more to me. Time to do some math.

How much does a "gold ingot" weigh? Well, it doesn't say, so one might simplistically figure that having "1,000 gp of [gold]" means it weighs 100 pounds, since in AD&D 10 "coins" of weight is the equivalent of 1 pound. 

However, while I know gold is heavy and all, 100# gold bricks do seem rather excessive. Per Ye Old Internets, a standard gold bar (as used by central banks and traded by bullion dealers) contains 400 troy ounces of gold. A "troy ounce" is a bit heavier than a standard ounce, there being only 14.58 to the imperial pound. Thus, a standard gold bar weighs about 27.5 pounds...heavy, but each freed slave from Pax Tharkas could probably shlep one or two on their way out the door to freedom. 

"But wait...if the bar only weighs 27.5 pounds, than how can each have a value of 1,000 gold pieces?" Simple enough: because a gold "piece" (aka "coin") need not be composed of 0.1# of pure metal. Let me give a few examples:

• The gold sovereign (worth 1 British Pound) has 7.32 grams of fine gold...less than one-quarter of a troy ounce. A standard gold brick thus has enough gold to make almost 1,700 gold sovereigns.
• The Spanish gold doubloon ("double shield", worth 4 Spanish dollars or 32 reales at the time) contained .218 troy ounces (about 6.8g) of fine gold. One gold brick could thus make more than 1,800 such coins.
• The American gold eagle (largest size) has 31.1g of pure gold...1 troy ounce. Only 400 such coins could be minted from a standard bar, although the half ounce size could (obviously) increase that number to 800 coins; that's pretty close to 1,000, no?

"But, JB! We are talking about D&D here! The rules are explicit that 10 gold coins weigh one pound! Clearly one gold coin (value: 1 g.p.) must weigh 1/10th of a pound (1.46 troy ounces) with a pretty close amount of fine gold being the base of its substance. These bars MUST weigh 100# each."

Okay, first off let's all remember that the AD&D encumbrance system is an abstract game system, measuring not only weight but bulk. Why does a folded robe have an encumbrance value of 50 while a worn robe has a value of 25? Did the thing lose 2.5# of lint when you shook it out from being at the bottom of your armoire? No.

Presumably, this is why a long sword...a weapon whose average weight is 2.5 to 4 pounds...is given an encumbrance value of 60 to 100 (the latter being the given value of a bastard sword which - surprise! - is usually just another name for a long sword). This doesn't mean the weapon weighs 2.5 times the weight of a real world equivalent, but the thing has bulk...and a cumbersome scabbard sloshing around as well!

This same abstraction can apply to the gold coins in one's treasure vault. Coins may be in lined boxes, neatly tied bags, sturdy wooden coffers...whatever!...and take organization and attention in one's backpack to make sure they're not getting loose and lost in various nooks and crannies. 1,000 g.p. may require 1000 coins of encumbrance...the equivalent of 100# of weight...but the actual weight of such a sum might be considerably less. 

SO...let's just call these ingots standard, shall we? 400 troy ounces a piece, which (by the way) we can then use to work out the math of just how much gold is in the Krynn-ish gold piece...about 12.4g of fine gold...making the DL gold piece about twice the size of a doubloon, giving you something like 36 coins to the (actual) pound.

Good to know. Now back to that vault: 25,000 ingots is a LOT of gold. At 27.5 pounds per, that works out to 687,500 pounds of gold...nearly 312 metric tons. 

Now here's something you might not know...there are a lot of gold mines in Washington State. A lot. Per U.S. Geological surveys, there's about 519 metric tons of gold in the Evergreen state. That's quite a bit...and many of those mines are in Kittitas County, which happens to be the location for the ancient ruined elven fortress that is Pax Tharkas. 

Thing is...many of them aren't. Not 60%. That 519 figure is for the entire state...and Washington has an area of 71,300 square miles. Kittitas is only 2,333 square miles in area...barely more than 3%.  Now, as said, Kittitas has quite a bit of gold...historically, there are records of nearly 50,000 ounces being pulled out of the Swauk district alone. 

50,000 ounces would make 125 gold bars.

So, methinks that this veritable Fort Knox fantasy vault is probably a wee tad bit overstocked, especially for my campaign world. Probably by a factor of 2,000. Especially considering it's only really guarded by a single wraith, a giant slug, and a few dozen zombies. Sheesh.

Of course, we don't know how long the gold mines at and around Pax Tharkas were in operation. My Pax Tharkas is a ruined, elven fortress (elves are still an "elder race" in my world, having a cultural history stretching back 10,000 years despite only human length lifespans). The ancient Egyptians are thought to have mined 6.7 million ounces (just shy of 209 metric tons) of gold from the Eastern Desert over their many-century history, with 120 ancient mining sites known. Although the desert dwarfs Washington State with its 86 thousand square mile expanse, Kittitas County still has more than double that number of mining sites.

[that's not to say they're on the same scale, or have the same ratio of gold to ore, or same quality of deposit or...well, you get the point]

Unfortunately, I could not find a county-by-county breakdown of mining information to find the proportion of gold that might be natural to the area...the closest I could get was this map showing density of placer mines in the state. Using the average numbers for yellow (30) and blue (5.5) squares, I can see that there's some 440 mines in the whole of the state...and 136.5 of them right in the region where I wanted to place Pax Tharkas (in the mountains just north of Lake Cle Elum). Proportioned out based on averages, I might thus say that the area could account for 161 metric tons of the Washington's 519 Mg gold total, which would amount to nearly 12,910 ingots worth of gold...which assumes every scrap of gold in the region had been dug up, smelted down into bars, and then stored in the dusty vaults beneath the crumbling fortress. Not likely.

How about 2%? That would be 258 bars. Still an incredible amount of wealth...more than seven thousand pounds (3.5 tons) of pure gold, a quarter million gold piece value to the adventurers that find it. Of course, getting out more than a handful of bars will necessitate doing away with the stronghold's patriarch and his pet dragon(s). And there's always the possibility some ancient curse has been laid on the gold by long-dead sorcerer elves...

Now, I'm sure there are Dungeon Masters reading this who quail at the thought of releasing so much wealth into their fantasy economy in one shot. Why? What's 258,000 g.p. split six or seven ways? 40K apiece? That spends pretty fast, assuming you're in a city large enough to exchange gold bars for cash. My world has three such major cities (pop. 15K+): Seattle (natch), Spokane (seat of the Red Empire), and Tacoma. The smallest (the city-state of Tacoma) has a population of 18,000 and a median per capita income of 1,447 g.p. annually. Median income is not, of course, the same as average income...but regardless an extra 14 g.p. per person added to the economy doesn't suddenly drive up the stock price of normal goods and services. It's not even a month's income!

[for the sake of the curious: I've got Seattle's population pencilled in at 24,000 at the moment, and Spokane at 21,000. Annual median per capita income for these rival city-states is 1,955 g.p. and 1,246 g.p. respectively]

All right, that's enough fantasy economics for now. Later, gators!