T is for Threshold

[over the course of the month of April, I shall be posting a topic for each letter of the alphabet, sequentially, for every day of the week except Sunday. Our topic for this year's #AtoZchallenge? Revamping the Grand Duchy of Karameikos in a way that doesn't disregard its B/X roots. I got behind by a couple days because of the Easter weekend, but I'm trying to catch up as quickly as possible]

T is for Threshold, the "sample home town" found in Mentzer's 1983 (BECMI) Expert set. I'll be including Patriarch Sherlane (Baron Halaran) and his niece Aleena in the discussion.

Before I start "getting into it" I'd like to clear up something that may be less than clear. I've got quite a bit of positive feedback on this series (which is good, thanks) but I know some folks may have a very different view of what I'm doing. I know there's a LOT of love for the BECMI game and the Mystara campaign setting as written...and not just because of the "nostalgia of youth;" plenty of folks still keep BECMI (and the RC) as their edition of choice and continue to use Mystara as their home campaign. I understand that my critique and criticism (often expressed in a harsh or inflammatory way) can seem like a rather personal attack on something certain people hold dear and valuable. Hell, Aaron Alston is dead...I can see how criticizing his work now can be viewed as unkind (to say the least).

So, although I believe I've said this in the past, allow me to once again reiterate that I have great respect for the sheer amount of work and care that went into the creation of this material by Allston, Mentzer, and others (Jeff Grubb did a lot with the later Karameikos: Kingdom of Adventure). More than that I have admiration for both the authors and their work, and not a little bit of love and nostalgia of my own. The fact of the matter is, if I didn't care about Karameikos, I would not put in the time and effort to do a series like this. I don't write about things I don't care about (and I generally refuse to write about things I want to leave dead and buried...there's no such thing as "bad publicity," after all). The Grand Duchy of Karameikos, as presented in the B/X Expert set, had very little to it...hardly enough to inspire much admiration, respect, or thought. It's the later works: Mentzer's BECMI, Allston's Gazetteers, modules like B6 and B10-12 (by Cook, Sargent, and others) that have contributed to the lore of the setting material, providing the grist that fires up my "think-box."

No matter how harsh I may appear, I write about this stuff because I care. I could write about other things that are important to me: my daughter starting piano lessons last week, my boy getting three hits on four swings of the bat (don't know where he gets it), or my 18th wedding anniversary with my wife. But my readers are coming here for the "game stuff." And what's more, I like writing about the game stuff...this is my place to do so. I can throw all that other stuff on Facebook, if I want.

SO...Threshold. Threshold first appears as a sample home town in Mentzer's Expert set, a replacement of the dirty, lawless town of Luln that is much more conducive to the "family friendly" style of fantasy that TSR began to produce in the mid-80s (Mentzer's Basic set contains no "inspirational reading list" packed with Thieves World authors and pulp sword & sorcery). And let me here and for the permanent record admit I really like the Expert set, AND Threshold...despite its BECMI-isms (like godless Clerics) it's my favorite book of the BECMI series, and I find it pretty darn good. Yes, a good part of this is Larry Elmore's illustrations which, I feel, really conveys what "expert level" characters should look like (I'm less fond of his monsters illos). But the layout and information conveyed is a great rehash of the Cook/Marsh books, and the setting building material is quite a bit better...and I LIKE the Threshold write-up immensely; it is space much-better-used than the terse gnome warren write-up in the original (B/X) Expert book.

Mentzer describes Threshold as "a thriving frontier village of 400 permanent residents plus over 100 other regular visitors. The main business of Threshold is to supply timber to the Capital." Later, he adds that the town contains about 50 demihumans in addition to the 500 human residents, the whole being ruled from nearby Tarnskeep by the Baron Sherlane Halaran. Patriarch Sherlane is a Lawful cleric, and a no-nonsense, incorruptible good guy leader-type, who looks over his barony as close as a priest would care for his "flock," yet still finds the time to go on serious and secret missions for the Duke (see adventures like B12: Queen's Harvest as an example). Per GAZ1 he is helped in his administration (really just running errands and messages to the town master, guard houses) is his niece/adopted daughter Aleena Halaran...the same cleric slain by Bargle with a magic missile back in the BECMI solo adventure of the 1983 Basic set. Apparently, her uncle brought her back to life (not surprising given that he's 14th level) and she has since managed to thrive, achieving 12th (!!) level and becoming part of the Order of the Griffon despite being only 22 years old and not seeming all that interested in adventuring (per the GAZ1 description). WTF.

Allston increases the size of Threshold to 5000 and paints an idyllic picture of the waterfront logging town:

"...it's not a tight-packed, dirty, squalid town; by Baron Halaran's decree, no house may be built within 50 feet of another, and so Threshold is spread over a large area, filled with nice homes usually surrounded by vegetable gardens and livestock pens." (GAZ1, page 39)

Where's my baguette?

Considering Threshold in light of its description, and the rather quaint/pastoral adventure scenarios presented in Mentzer's Expert set (stuff with rafting, gardeners, damsels in distress, gold dragons in disguise, etc.) one might gather this is a nice little fairytale town...something like the "poor provincial town" depicted in Disney's (animated) film, Beauty and the Beast. That is, in fact, the kind of thing I tend to picture.

However, looking at the map Mentzer has drawn for Threshold, one sees a set-up more typical of the medieval town, complete with a double wall (probably guarding the inner "old town" and later "new town"), one of the main reasons for the rather cramped and squalid nature of such places. When walls offer the main protection for a community of people, SPACE for building is at a premium...no one wants to live outside the wall (unprotected!) and buildings are by necessity built so close as to be right on top of each other, leading to all the usual unpleasantness: filth, disease, and fire hazard.  Interestingly, this is exactly how Threshold is portrayed in the (British written) adventure module B10: Night's Dark Terror. Published a year before  Allston's GAZ1, B10 has a substantial section on Threshold and describes it as:

"...a typical town: crowded, smelly and dirty. Except for the buildings by the river, all waste is emptied into the streets, and pigs and dogs can often be seen scavenging through it."

[two of the three designers of B10...Jim Bambra and Phil Gallagher...have credits with the gritty Warhammer Fantasy game and that particular aesthetic is on display in several parts of the module]

And B10 was still working with an assumed population of 500. Imagine increasing it by ten fold...more crowd, more smell, more filth. And that's not even counting the attached Fogor Island, which is "unofficially" under the control of the local thieves' guild, and shunned by law-abiding citizens (per B10). While Allston took Mentzer's work and ran with it in one direction, Gallagher and company did the complete opposite as far as tone, theme, and color. It ends up being a weird and strange mixture...a place less of a hometown, and (perhaps) not even one you'd like to visit. Sherlane's edict forbidding magic-user magic seems somewhat silly in Mentzer (though understandable considering an "expert level" spell-caster will have access to destructive spells like fireball)...in B10, the designers provide a Clerical Court of five clerics (appointed by Sherlane) who put convicted spell-casters on trial and bestow curses like insomnia (no ability to regain spells) and dumbness (no ability to cast spells without words), effectively crippling wizards completely. It's vicious and mean and says quite a bit about how the Patriarch runs his town. There's no shortage of inns (most streets having "at least one") serving wine, and no prohibition on characters carrying swords (unlike Specularum where any weapon larger than a dagger must be tied/bound), so I can see a lot of back alley duels being fought and general bloodletting (while B10 states townsfolk attempt to avoid combat, they're also quick to defend themselves with daggers, chairs, bottles, etc.).

It's an "interesting" place for the Duke to choose as a place for a secret coin mint, especially considering Kelvin is closer to both Specularum and High Forge, and is likewise located on the river. Perhaps the Duke has more trust in the good Patriarch Sherlane whom he knew from his days in Thyatis (Halaran was originally a priest of the Church of Thyatis). Or perhaps it's just that Kelvin was never established as anything more than a name on a map, prior to GAZ1.

All right it's late, and I'm still two days behind on this thing; best get to my thoughts on how I'd alter this thing. First off, I'd probably ignore the quaint little English village thing going on in GAZ1, and stick to the squalid medieval town found in B10, while still upping the population. While Luln is a fairly nasty little hole of a town to come from, I'd like players visiting Threshold to come away with a greater appreciation for their home of origin...far better to grow up there than under the rigid, religious patriarchy of Baron Halaran.

"Bow down,
ye of little faith!"

Halaran, to me, sounds like a fanatic with a bit of a god complex. I mean, he can raise the dead, cure the sick, etc...why shouldn't he have an ego the size of Texas? He has the power to keep the cholera epidemics under control! His people love him! Or they fear him...but better to live inside his walls (no doubt decorated with holy texts and religious screeds and sermons) than in the wilds of Karameikos where one might be attacked by goblin slavers or a vengeful chevall!

Allston writes (in GAZ1) that "the idea of the clerical stronghold is a strange one to most Karameikans. In the Grand Duchy, clerics don't generally band together and build mighty fortresses just so they can be jolly armed clerics together." However, that is just what Hallaran has done! In making Threshold "more B/X" I would certainly have be Tarnskeep a typical cleric castle, garrisoned with a small army of fanatically loyal troops, just as any Name level cleric would have.  These "faithful" militants would not only patrol the barony (keeping the peasants in line, repelling marauding humanoids) but would reinforce the town militia, ensuring all clerical edicts were obeyed without question, and enforcing "justice" as necessary.

"I have a message
to deliver."

Hallaran's niece, the lovely Aleena, would be the patriarch's personal protege, equivalent to a loyal retainer, and probably no higher than 3rd or 4th level. Being young and inexperienced, Hallaran would certainly encourage her to adventure in the wilds, albeit always with a small cadre of bodyguard zealots to ensure her safety. I'd probably keep the Cleric Council, making them a group of 6th and 7th level clerics, each dedicated to a particular god/goddess of the Imperial pantheon, all bent on converting the indigenous Traladarans to a more "civilized," pliable people. Sherlane himself I'd drop to 12th level or so, making him powerful but still beholden to his superior counterpart in the capital.

I'd probably ignore the entire "secret mint" subplot, moving the thing to Kelvin instead (and giving another reason for that city's importance). Threshold's strategic value as a loyal (if fanatical/crazy) military stronghold on the Duchy's northern border offers reason enough to allow the Patriarch the autonomy he craves to form a minor theocracy on the edge of the wilds.

Oh, yeah...and I'd axe Cardia's Carpet Service completely.

Talking 'Bout My Generation

Received an email (early) this morning from one of my Baranof players, Josh (he plays the dwarf, Bognine…is it just me or does anyone else picture the lovable drunk from Airwolf when I say that name?).

[wasn’t that character’s name Corky? Or was that the kid with down syndrome from Party of Five? I don’t know…I didn’t watch much TV in the mid-late 80s except The Cosby show. Too busy playing Dungeons & Dragons, I guess]

Anyway, he was just dropping me a line to say he enjoyed the blog (hi, if you’re reading!) and provide me with some background on his past gaming experience, including a similar pattern as myself (played Dungeon! for awhile then started in on Basic D&D). Of course, he first picked up the Mentzer red box, not the Moldvay version, circa 1983.

Now if I’m remembering correctly, Josh is the same age as myself (though he does have the look of one of those Year of the Tiger guys, i.e. born in ’74) but due in part to this small difference, our ideas of role-playing may be built on completely different foundations.

And it’s not even that big a difference! To me, that’s pretty amazing…I probably got my copy of Moldvay in ’82…I know I was reading those Endless Quest books around the same time (they were published in 1982), which I believe were illustrated by Elmore (indicating he was already in TSR’s stable of artists by that time).

Remember when 1 or 2 years made a huge difference in your relationship with other people? Nowadays it has almost no effect of course…many of us are married to folks older or younger than ourselves, and I’d guess all of us have friends or game with people of a wide age range (I know I do).

As a kid, this was never the case. Age…and class year…can seem so darn important for so long. Elementary school to middle school, middle school to high school…even upper classman to lower classman within schools, the gulf can feel enormous. Thank God we grow out of it!

[for me, I think I finally came around to ignoring age circa my second year in college…for the next three years I continued to get in relationships with different women who all remained the same age (19) even as I kept getting older. Like that line from Dazed and Confused, I guess. Plus “drinking age” is a great equalizer as well…]

These days, it doesn’t matter whether someone’s 28 or 42, equalizing factors come instead from mutual life experiences. “Can I relate to you?” is no longer a question of whether we are in the same level math class, but rather if we share the same interests. Do you game? Are you married? Do you have a dog? Did you see last Sunday’s Seahawks game?

And yet…despite that, this small difference from our distant childhoods can completely color our gaming hobby. A guy who started playing D&D in 1979 with the Holmes edition is going to have a pretty different take on the game than someone who started in 1983 with Mentzer…even though their age difference is only 5 years apart. It’s kind of mind-blowing, don’t you think?

Or maybe not to some…personally, I’ve been so steeped in the OSR blog-o-sphere the last 18 months, that I may have lost some much needed perspective. But to ME, it seems like these little differences are like life and death to folks…look at MY blog, for goodness sake! A ton of it seems to be devoted to passionately expounding on the virtues of Moldvay/Cook/Holmes, and with good reason: it’s the best dammit!
; )

But a person just a year or two younger than me might feel the same about Mentzer. And a person a year or two older might feel the same about Holmes. And even though, I’d be willing to play a game with someone age 25 (that would mean he or she was born in 1985, long after the release of ANY of these “basic sets”) I have a feeling that it might be a challenge to introduce my style of play to someone who grew up with D20 as the baseline of Dungeons & Dragons.

3rd Edition just celebrated its 10th anniversary! Kids who started playing when they were 10 or 11 are now hitting the bars! Kids that started playing in high school might be starting families…or may be unemployed and looking for work in this economy…but otherwise are probably not much different from me. Besides fuller heads of hair.

Mmm…I guess what I’m getting at here is MAYBE some of us crazy-ass pundit-types (like moi) have lost sight of what the game is all about in our denigration of un-favored editions (like I have with 2nd and 3rd edition or most RPGs with “skill systems”).

MAYBE, I said…and I certainly feel there’s still plenty of scorn to be heaped on that shit-pile called 4th edition that dares to call itself a “role-playing game.” That’s like feeding poison to children and someone at Hasbro/WotC needs to be bitch-slapped.

BUT…with regard to other RPGs, even the grossly over-blown ones like Champions and GURPS...well, it may be that only the span of a few short years (or months) prevented those from being MY “game of choice.” If it’s still role-playing AND if it continues to create interest/enthusiasm in keeping the game alive, then have at it. Folks should take things I say with a grain of salt anyway. After all, I’m still intrigued at the thought of playing a game like Terra Primate.
: )

Stop Buying Their F***ing Product

Man, I just got back from gaming at the Baranof (again) and had a blast of a good time. I tell you...I limit myself to a single pitcher and a couple hours (7:45 to 10ish) and I get more gaming accomplished than your average 4E players do in four hours:

- new character creation - check

- challenged player ingenuity, rather than stats? - check

- fought five different monster encounters - check

- hauled out close to 8500gp worth of treasure - check

- party members dying (only one tonight) - check

- purchasing real estate in town - check

- internal party conflict leading to actual combat (no deaths) - check

And my brother wanted to KEEP playing (had to cut him off)...and Steve-O REALLY wants to join us (he just had friends in town from California and was already at a book reading with 'em).

Fun, right? You're damn skippy it was fun. And then I read shit like this.

Which would not bother me so much if I had not checked out the new D&D Essentials at Gary's tonight (well, the exterior anyway, which was bad enough...I couldn't bring myself to look inside the box). My brother's was like, "hey, are they re-issuing the old game?"

No they're turning it into a Goddamn board game. (*turned over the box to see what was included*) See...it comes with two boards even...and some counters to move around.

Fuck that shit.

People, if you don't like what WotC/Hasbro is doing to your game, then STOP BUYING THEIR GODDAMN PRODUCT. I just don't get it. It's not hard. Put your money into something useful. Stocks. Bonds. A savings account. The campaign coffers of your favorite (hopefully Democratic) politician. An indie game. Hell, a nice little card game or beautifully inked board game.

Want pretty pictures? Buy a book of good art. Hell, want fantasy pictures? Get a book of good fantasy art like I did recently.

But don't buy product and complain about it. Hasbro is in the business to make money. Period. The only way they're going to stop shitting on you is if you stop giving them your money. Really. They don't give a rats ass what people complain about if those same complainers just buy the next pile of dog shit they publish. If you're a fan boy/girl that holds out this great hope that the next D&D is going to be great or that a particular module/supplement looks totally sweet, and you pony up your dough on some Great White Hope...well, as they say "fool me once shame on you; fool me twice shame on me." And fool me more than that? You're a big, fat, fucking idiot.

Vote with your wallet: put it back in your pocket and save your money. Go to their free game seminars and check it out once or twice if you want...they provide all the fixin's, free of charge. After you get tired of it...IF you get tired of it, I'm sure there are some folks who find this mindless kewl power skirmish/board game just their cup o' tea...once you get tired of it, if you get tired of it, go back to playing real role-playing games totally free of regret.

I'm sorry...I know what I'm writing is going to offend some of my readers and I apologize, truly. But can you understand how sick and wrong it is to say, "well I knew something was wrong with 3rd edition, and then it seemed worse in 3.5, and got REALLY bad with 4E and now I've got D&D Essentials and enough is enough..."

Why the hell did you get to that point at all?!

Yes, yes, yes...I am an anachronistic old fuddy-duddy. I like music from the 70s and 80s. I prefer to fence without "flicking." I play D&D from 1981. I don't tweet or do anything fancy with my cell phone...the first one I ever purchased and that was in December of 2008.

I am old. And cranky. And I admit, I have been drinking (I was at the Baranof, after all, and it's walking distance from my house).

But damn it...it's not hard! Jesus H...these books are not holding guns to your head and saying "buy me or else." Are you going to let a pile of bound paper (even a large, 300 page pile) dictate what you're going to do? Are you?

Stop. Just stop the madness.

Continue to play D&D and any other role-playing game that strikes your fancy. Please, please do so...the hobby, the industry needs you. But stop buying shit and eating it. And please O please, stop buying shit and eating it and then complaining it tastes bad. Because you knew it was shit...how could you not?

What...because of the pretty pictures? You can get pretty pictures off the internet.

Because of the nostalgia of a Larry Elmore cover? Any one who remembers this is old enough to know better. You're not a dumb kid anymore.

Ugh. It's just dollars and cents, folks. Really. I know the economy is down, and artists and writers and designers need to make a buck, too. But I can't feel sorry for them when they're contributing to the death of the damn hobby.

Give your money to someone else. Vote with your wallet, NOT with your mouth/blog/strongly-worded-letter-or-email. The publishers of D&D are a business enterprise...in the end, the only thing that will make a difference to them is a decline in revenue.

Sad but true.

Did You Ever Wonder...

...if George Lucas had to come to some sort of settlement agreement with Larry Elmore for completely ripping off the clumsy, humorous zeetvah race when creating his "gungan" species for Star Wars (that's Jar-Jar Binks, folks...you know, the most hated CGI creation of all time?).

I love SnarfQuest. I used to have the graphic novel compiling the first couple years' comic strips from Dragon. I don't know whatever happened to it. It sure did make me laugh a lot.

Ahh...gagglezoomers.

: )

[BTW: I refuse to post a picture of Jar-Jar on this web site]

This Game Sucks

[man…just a side note before I begin: just looking at that Roslov cover art on my post about D1-2 give me the chills in a good way. It almost, ALMOST, makes me want to start up an AD&D game so I can run some players through it. Maybe a B/X conversion is needed…?]


Chgowiz posted something in his death of Targa article that got me thinking (no, not about Targa…ain’t interested, thanks). He wrote (regarding the OSR):

“I don’t think we’re re-inventing something new – we’re expressing a love for a game in a style and way that we like and prefer. 30 years from now, people who love 3E and 4E are going to be doing the same thing. We're just doing it with the first iterations of this game and we're in the moment now with what we
love.”

As I commented on his blog, maybe I’m just a short-sighted person, but I don’t see that happening.

Sure there will be cranky old folks that NEVER STOP playing 3E and 4E that will continue their crazy ways far into the future (probably, I’m guessing). But I just can’t see people returning to those particular editions. It’s just not that great a game.

I’m going to compare this to Star Frontiers, even though the better equivalent might be to use my feelings on AD&D. Every time I come across my old SF books, I pick them up and lovingly flip through them. And then I put them back again. Just seeing their beautiful Elmore covers conjures loads of nostalgia for me…I played A LOT of Star Frontiers back in the day, both on the playground and around the gaming table.

But that way lies disappointment.

I know this because I’ve experienced it before…more than once. The game system was always vaguely disappointing even when I was younger. Advancement is too slow. Character gen is slow with little pay-off. Combat is too complex for what it accomplishes and fails to model well. And yet the game isn’t “gonzo” space opera enough, for my tastes. Oh…and Yazirians are just stupid.

I think the last time I got excited about Star Frontiers was when I found all those Voluntas adventure modules available for download…hmm, or maybe another time when I found a copy of the Knight Hawks starship supplement. Doesn’t really matter…every time something inspires me take a look at SF, I pull it out give it a quick once over and remind myself that the game blows. For my purposes anyway, I just can’t stand it.

Some games just have game breakers for me. Cyberpunk 2020, for example has Solo’s special ability bonus to initiative which makes it retarded to play any character NOT a solo (at least if you intend to run intensive Friday Night Firefight games). 2nd edition AD&D fails as soon as you hit the XP system…oh, and the conspicuous absence of assassins and decent bards.

But I LOVE the idea of Star Frontiers. I find the Elmore artwork inspiring. The solo adventure in the Basic book is pretty darn cool, and the Advanced book seems (at first) to simply expand on its goodness. Working for the Pan Galactic Corporation is MY kind of non-gritty space game (if I want gritty, I’ll go with Traveler). Needler pistols are cool. Vrusks and Dralasites are cool. Saathar are pretty contrived, as are “space pirates” but oh, well. I dig all the cool miscellaneous gadgets in the equipment section.

It would be hip to run a game similar to the scenario in the Basic book…basically, your players are corporate shills/troubleshooters preventing interstellar industrial espionage. In the past, I’ve usually had players’ hook be some kind of token affiliation with Star Law. But you know what? It ain’t gonna’ happen. And the reason is, the game system is not to my liking.

Skills suck. Keeping track of SEUs suck. Inertia screens in theory are cool but in practice, suck. Percentage dice for attributes suck. Long, flowing lists of modifiers for combat suck. Yazirians suck (with the exception of the one on the cover…woo-hoo! Light ‘em up cowboy!).

I really wish there WAS more “wa-hoo” in Star Frontiers. Certainly we always played it up as such on the playground (playground play being: “make shit up since you don’t have your rules/dice with you”). On the playground, there were a lot more gyrojet weapons than lasers or even sonic devastators because rockets make “whooshing” noises and have big explosions. Oh…and projectile automatic weapon fire (heavy machine guns, anyone?) are good, too, for similar reasons.

Being a member of the PGC on special assignment to Star Law for the tracking of “the Macaroni Maniac” (our equivalent of the Pink Panther thief) across half a dozen galaxies can be a lot of fun…as long as you don’t have to sit down and work with the rules as written. The system itself cripples the fun factor of the game…and that blows.

Which is why, while I hang on to my SF books, am nostalgic for them, and dote lovingly on them, I don’t ever intend to play them again. 25 years have gone by and I am fully immersed in my B/X game system, a system that is truly excellent and immensely playable. Similarly, I COULD play OD&D (the Little Brown Books) with some minimal house-rulings…though, the house rulings would simply convert it into something close enough to B/X that…um…why bother?

Hell, even Top Secret is playable (despite the immensely clunky hand-to-hand system). But Star Frontiers? No. The frustration is too great.

Not every game is worth a re-play, no matter how much supplemental material is available, and no matter how “nostalgic” one gets over it. I sincerely doubt I will ever play 3rd edition D&D again. I keep the books for two reasons: 1) they’re beautiful, artistic, works of art (the writing as well), 2) if I ever forget how much I loathe them, I have only to pick them up and look at the system. Ugh! If I got rid of ‘em, my nostalgia might lead me to a rose-colored memory which might lead me to re-purchase these stinking piles, see? Better to keep them as a doorstop.

And 4E…well, in addition to driving folks away from WotC, I’m pretty sure that the folks who enjoy 4E now are going to be enjoying “8E” or “Virtual World of Warcraft” or whatever it is that’s the latest, greatest cheap thrill 30 years from now. I don’t think any of ‘em are going to be saying, “hey remember those heroic surges? Remember how D&D used to be like a table-top version of an on-line MMORPG? Maybe we should play that again!” Come on, you really think that’s going to happen?

Original Dungeons & Dragons AS A GAME is pure gold. B/X is, as far as I can tell, simply a refinement of that gold. AD&D muddies the gold a bit (in my opinion), but it’s still gold under the dross.

Yeah, nostalgia draws us back, but that's not what keeps us here. If it was, I’d be playing Star Frontiers ‘cause that game makes me REAL nostalgic. Unfortunately, it sucks…kind of like the recent iterations of D&D.

In Praise of Mentzer's Expert Set

This is a particular post I've been wanting to add for awhile.  Of course, I needed to upload the image so folks would know what I'm talking about, which means waiting till I had access to my own computer.

I think Mentzer's Expert set is great.  Quite frankly, I believe I actually enjoy it more than the Companion rules, which were fairly indispensable to my original gaming group (though we were using them with AD&D...hey, it's not our fault AD&D blew off dominion and mass combat rules!).

As already stated in earlier posts, my first exposure to D&D was through the Moldvay/Cook Basic and Expert sets, subsequently followed by AD&D, subsequently followed by a decade+ hiatus from D&D in any form.  However, I did go out of my way to collect all the BECMI books somewhere down the road...around my mid-20's actually. I did this for a specific reason: I wanted to complete the promise that was begun in Moldvay/Cook's B/X rules. 

So I purchased the Companion set, I got my hands on the Master set, and eventually I found the Immortal rules.  I figured I didn't need the Red and Blue boxes, 'cause I already had B/X, right?

Wrong.

Mentzer's Expert rules is pretty much the exact same as Cook's Expert set with only a few exceptions.  One of those exceptions are more clerical spells (up through 6th level, I believe where the Cook set only goes through 5th).  The additional spells presented in the Mentzer Expert set are present nowhere else (well, except the Rules Cyclopedia, of course).  Once I discovered this, I made the decision to acquire both Mentzer's blue set and red set.  Heck, I even got a second copy of the Expert book (total of two) as back-up.

I've never been disappointed.

Mentzer's Expert set is only 64 pages long, the same length as the original, and nicely layed out.  Threshold and its sample adventures are greatly appreciated, and I can say (from a player's point of view) that it makes an excellent base of operations for a starting adventuring party...my old AD&D DM made plenty of use of Threshold, and I never realized she was getting it from her Expert set.  

In 64 pages, Mentzer manages to include everything from the Cook edition (with the exception of the crowbar...dammit, why not, Frank?) plus adds extras like Threshhold and the additional spells.

It also has killer artwork.  I like Elmore's artwork anyway (I was a big fan of SnarfQuest), but it can be grating and cheesy at times, especially the some of the stuff in the Red box set (a little too Dragon Lance if you ask me).  The stuff in the Expert set, though, is pure gold in my opinion.  The cover is my favorite of the BECMI series (possibly tied with the Companion cover).  The character classes (especially the cleric pictures) look like "experts," not novices, and not high level master-types.  For me, they really capture the mid-level adventurer...and make me want to play any of the classes.

Well, with one caveat...the pictures of the demi-humans. There really aren't any, at least none that are prominent.  The one visible elf in the entire book is the girl on page 58...and she's not wearing armor?  Excuse me, this is D&D, not AD&D...elves (especially mid-level ones) are going to be wearing at least leather or chain mail, don't you think?  Why else are they splitting half their XP?  What's with the Peter Pan outfit, missy?  The dwarves are a little better, while the only halfling I could find (in the crowd on page 37) is...well, he doesn't inspire ME to play a halfling!

I don't know if the decision to concentrate the illustrations on "cool pictures of humans" was deliberate or not, but if the intention was to draw focus to the humans (for the high level play described in the Companion and Master sets), then mission accomplished.  By the time I get to the fat midgets and leafy tights of the Companion set, I'm probably NOT going to be playing a demi-human.  Thanks, guys.

But back to the praise...with regard to everything EXCEPT the demi-human artwork and the missing crowbar (and some blatant typos...yes, I'm looking at you page 23), I find Mentzer to be at least equal to the Cook set.  Erol Otis and those other OS artists rock, but Mentzer's Expert book is the one I use as my "working" rule book when I'm playing B/X these days.  It's great.