What We Are Really Nostalgic For When We Talk About BECMI

With the recent release of a POD copy of the Rules Cyclopedia, there's been a lot of looking back at the Basic D&D rule set(s) that spawned that early 90s compendium. Retroactively referred to as BECMI (for Basic/Expert/Companion/Master/Immortal) these were the Basic D&D rules released as five boxed sets in the mid-80s by TSR, and written by Frank Mentzer. An army of kids grew up with this version of the game, myself included. Although I owned Moldvay's box for less than a day, this was the boxed set that taught me how to play the game. Many of us transitioned to AD&D, but in name only. We may have pulled monsters from Fiend Folio and magic items from the AD&D DMG, but the engine we ran the game on was Basic.

I never bought the RC when it was initially released, and I don't think I'd buy it now. That book, its layout, and its art hold no nostalgia for me. The OSR clones I have now do all the things I want, generally with better organization. I revisited my old BECMI books a few weeks ago and tried to see if they still held the same magic for me. What I found was surprising.

Taken as a whole the BECMI, or RC, rules system is pretty crunchy. There are a lot of rules in this game which increase as characters progress to higher levels, more than I am currently interested in running. It's not just the number of rules either; it's what the rules cover that leaves me cold. Details about hirelings, strongholds, jousting tournaments, weapons mastery - some these are holdovers from 1974, but they have absolutely nothing to do with the reasons I play the game. Also, the packed, three-column layout of these books isn't very reader-friendly and much of the Elmore/Easley artwork hasn't aged well for me.

I can't imagine going back to descending AC, alignment languages, race-as-class, demi-human level limits, pre-AD&D PHB thieves skills, etc. I mean I could go back and it would be fine, but I don't have to, so why would I? Like most nostalgia, what we remember is a freshness that has long since faded, and one we desperately wish to recapture. Looking through these books now makes my remember the childhood bedroom I shared with my brother where I first read them and had my mind blown wide as to the possibilities of the game. As artifacts of my childhood they still hold some charm, but as gaming materials they are of little use to me.

There is one exception. One book among all the sets that transcends nostalgia and still feels like it has relevancy. The Players Manual of Set 1, otherwise known as The Red Box, is perhaps the best introduction to fantasy role playing ever written. It's my belief that when people wax nostalgic about BECMI, Mentzer Basic, or The Red Box, what they're really talking about is this first booklet. The Dungeon Masters Rulebook from the first box, by comparison, is fairly dry, flavorless, and contains little art. The Players Manual, on the other hand, is gold.

The first thing the PM does right is get the new player right into the action. It puts a sword in the reader's hand and has them step into a dungeon. This opening adventure could cynically be called a choose-your-own-adventure railroad, but for people who have never played the game before, this kind of rigid structure is exactly what they need. It also manages to introduce a number of important concepts of the game in along the way in a naturalistic way. By the end of the adventure, you have a pretty good idea of what D&D is about.

The rest of the book fleshes out the rest of the rules need to play. Mentzer's tone is open and familiar. There's no trace of Gygaxian pretension (which I can enjoy as well). You get the sense that Frank is excited for you to play. The organization is genius, and if I'm not mistaken, it marks the first time in a D&D book where each character class is given a spotlight section each complete with an illustration that conveys as much information as the text. The very D&D concept of a Cleric is initially pretty foreign, but Elmore and Easley's illustrations of the mace-wielding holy warrior and the stern, pageboy-cut priest tell you exactly who these people are.

This version of the Basic game doesn't have hieroglyphic mystery of the Holmes edition or the space-disco vibe of Moldvay/Cook/Marsh's B/X (think of Otus' alien dungeonscapes and Willingham's and Dee's flared cuffs). Instead, a very hair metal/chainmail bikini (hello, Clyde Caldwell) atmosphere starts to present itself. Dragonlance's art killed Elmore's work for me, but his art for the Red Box still gets me. The cover painting, of course, is one of the top 10 iconic pieces in the game's history. When we talk of our fondness for Mentzer Red Box, I firmly believe it's that red dragon and the opening excursion into Bargle's hideout that holds sway. Sometimes that's all your looking for.

GM Notes - Morgansfort Session 6

The group starts in the cottage basement of Grelda’s confronting the two tied-up robed men. Nyphus attempts to interrogate the men threatening to kill them, but they are not forthcoming. One of them laughs at the threats, his open mouth revealing a blackened nub where a tongue should be. “Brother Malachi has taken a vow of silence. Permanently,” his partner says. Grelda becomes impatient and disrobes. Now skyclad, she grabs a dagger tied to her waist, cuts her left palm open, makes a few incantations, and thrusts her palm against the forehead of the mute cultist. A gruff, bass voice comes out of Grelda’s mouth. The voice tells the cultists’ story.

They are brothers of The Green Mark. An order devoted in the worship of the demon lord, Shah Gzerohn, intent on bringing him back to this plane of existence. The cult has been making inroads in the old Urdish empire, looking for clues and artifacts to help towards this aim. Over the years the cult discovered the location of their lost temple, obscured within the ruins of the Olde Island Fortress. They were sent by their master, Bishop Nemesine, to the Fortress to retrieve the journal of Mordoch the Mage. The book contains a prophecy in an ancient tongue, unlocking the rites to bring about the demon lord’s return. They have failed in their mission.

During this narration, the other cultist, Brother Karnoff, is praying to himself:

There is no dark – only the light of life – light of the newborn god – his path is paved with the blood of the word – through the blood of the lamb the way is laid open – let the faithful rejoice and prepare for his passing.

Grelda gasps and breaks the connection between herself and Malachi. He collapses. Grelda covers herself and reaches over and opens the cultist’s robe to reveal a tattoo of a green hand on the cultist’s chest. She asks the party if they have the book and they produce it. Karnoff curses. They explain that Thelan, the wizard in Morgansfort, hired them to retrieve it for him. Grelda calls him a fool and says the book would corrupt him and drive him insane. Grelda tells the group that whatever they had planned for the book, they would be best off destroying it.

Just as the group is deciding what to do, the young girl from town, Jyni, descends the stairs. Karnoff hisses in disgust. The party are told that Jyni can commune with the spirits of the dead children in the Fortress and has the makings of a great witch. Karnoff accuses her of harvesting the spirits energies for her own magic. Jyni tells her aunt that are packed and ready. Grelda is leaving the area immediately with her sister, Maien the herbalist, and Jyni. They discovered the Baronette Halden Rathwynn and his men are planning to camp in the boathouse that night and storm the kobolds and goblins in the Fortress early the next morning.

Jyni leaves and one of the barbarians, the woman who seemed to be somewhat in charge, comes down to tell the party that the tribe will head south where it is warmer. They are warned to watch out for slavers. They take the three boats south down the river.

Nyphus takes the book and decides to burn it, taking it outside. It crinkles and smokes oddly as it burns. The witches leave, flying off on the plow, this time with a sled attached to it. The barbarians head south on foot. The group decides to wait in the trees behind the boathouse and watch for the garrison to approach to see what happens.

The group hides in the brush and wait. Within the hour the sun goes down and the garrisons of Morgansfort arrive and begin to quietly (as possible) set up camp for the night. The officers (in silhouettes) enter the cottage to set up a base of command. Perhaps 20 minutes later, two robed silhouettes exit the cottage shake hands with officer shadows. They get into a horse-drawn cart which leaves, heading back up the road to the Fort.

Pater follows the wagon on foot in the shadows ahead of the group who stay clear of the road. Pater follows the cart in, talking his way past the gate who seem suspicious. He catches up and sees the cart heading in to the inner-courtyard of the Fort. While trying to move silently, he slips in the left-behind road apples with a loud splat. He isn’t able to talk his way into the courtyard.

The party regroup at Thelan’s who is in the process of leaving. He seems unconcerned about their failure to bring him the book and their apology of burning it. They go to the Inn and gather their things. Nyphus and Mel go into the chapel by the front. Pater and Renic go up top. Nyphus and Mel confront Fr. Thelbain. He confesses that he has been blackmailed for years by the leader of the Green Mark, the Archbishop Nemesine. Nemesine runs the cult from the Northern city of Ravenstone and keeps his former mistress and child as ransom.

Meanwhile Pater and Renic had crept down the back stairs across the altar waiting at the back door where Mel and Nyphus followed Thelbain. The cultists enter the church. Pater and Renic try to hide, but failing that (Renic), they kill the mute cultist and subdue the other. The group discuss going north to Ravenstone, the seat of power of the cult.

Over Under Sideways Down: My Thoughts on Roll Under Systems

I've recently been looking-at/reading-about a number of games that use a roll under mechanic, specifically Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells, Beyond the Wall, Whitehack, Troika!, Symbaroum, Into the Odd, and the Black Hack. These systems employ a simple core mechanic of rolling a d20 with success found on any number matching the character's relevant ability score or less. Although the simplicity of the mechanic is itself very elegant, I have a couple main issues with using something like this in my games.

First of all, I think these kinds of systems make tasks, whether combat-related or not, too easy. With an average ability score of "10" (on a traditional 3-18 range), this means that PCs are going to be successful 50% of the time on average. You could argue that the current edition of D&D employs mechanics which support an overall 70% success rate, but those feel, to me, to be inflated as well. There is too little chance of failure for my liking. Sure, there are going to be characters with low scores that only give a 30% chance of success (a score of "6"), but there are also going to be plenty of characters who have a 75% chance (a score of "15") at the same thing.

My other main issue with this kind of task resolution is that it stays static throughout the life of that character, regardless of the level of difficulty or PC experience. For those systems which simultaneously use an ability score advancement as characters level up, this can help PCs with low initial scores, but it also opens up the possibility for blessed characters to become unstoppable. Even though I've never been a fan of challenge ratings or difficulty class, the idea that attacking a dragon has the same chance for success as a kobold based on a Strength score is ludicrous.

If I'm not mistaken, this all traces back to (at least) B/X D&D's roll under ability score mechanic for any skill check or task not explicitly covered in the rules. Strangely enough, B/X uses OD&D's 1 on a d6, plus Strength mod to open stuck doors. With mods swinging from -3 to +3 this can give extremely strong characters a likely chance (4 in 6, or 66.6%) of success, yet still giving a 33% chance of failure. Chris Gonnerman (BFRPG author) uses a dice chain escalation of this Strength test mechanic as the challenge increases. Forcing a locked door is a 1 in d10 (plus Strength mod); bending iron bars a 1 in d20 (again, plus mod). This gives the GM more recourse when the player asks to attempt something nearly impossible.

Basic Fantasy also includes an Ability Roll mechanic which I've tested in play. Although initially skeptical, it works pretty well. PCs start with a standard DC target of 17 (on a d20 roll) to accomplish anything non-combat related, applying any relevant ability or situational modifiers. This target number goes down as the characters level up, representing a character's experience at work. I've heard people complain that a DC of 17 is too hard for level 1 characters and that they won't feel that they are even baseline competent. What's interesting is that a DC of 17 in 20 is a 20% chance of success whereas OD&D's 1 in 6 chance is a only 16.67% chance.

The key difference between these two ability test methods is that although the old d6 test has a tougher base chance of success, the ability mods themselves are more significant with each bonus equaling another 16.67%. By contrast, BF's Ability Roll mechanic only gives an extra 5% for each mod. This is the reason Gonnerman still used the d6 mechanic for Open Door/Feats of Strength tests - so that those bonuses would give more differentiation. One downside to the d20 roll is that everything is scaled in 5% increments. For those times you want more nuance, a dice chain of d6, d8, d10, d12, d20, and d100, etc. gives you that flexibility.

Conclusion: I understand why this is such a popular success/failure mechanic. I really do. It's simple to grasp and employ. However, in actual practice, I think it breaks verisimilitude beyond a point I can accept. The d6 (and its dice chain variants) are where I think I'm going to go for any skill or ability check in the future.

In the Cradle of the Reborn God: My One Page Dungeon Submission

Here is my submission for this year's One Page Dungeon contest. It's my first time making a one-page dungeon at all let alone submitting to this contest which is in its 10th year. It's a great exercise for any GM to do, to try to get a couple hours of play onto one sheet of paper. It should be something that gives the GM running it everything they need to know, nothing they don't, and still provide a spark of mystery and magic to draw everyone into the story.

I think the less writers talk about their own work, the better. The piece either stands on its own or it fails. If I have to explain it or tell you what I was going for, then it's already too late. If anything, I think I may have bit off more than I could chew given the restrictions of the medium. I'd like to flesh it out into an 8-16 page module with specific stats geared towards old school D&D systems, but you could technically run a lot of different genres through it as is. Maybe I'll even throw it up on Lulu at cost. We'll see. For now, here it is as a one-pager for free.

In the Cradle of the Reborn God

GM Notes - Morgansfort Session 5

The party stops outside Mordoch’s lab and decide to take the passage south – the one passage in this area they had yet to explore. They oil the door to keep it from squeaking. They move into a room where they find a roomful of discarded weapons in poor condition. After breaking into a cabinet and chest, once Pater failed at picking the lock, the group finds a small arsenal of weapons in good condition, including a nice suit of chainmail and a sword which are obviously of special make. In opening the chest and cabinets, they attract a group of three ghouls with the noise they make. The battle is over quickly, but Nyphus is struck and paralyzed for a couple of turns. While he recovers the others hide the usable weapons and take the exceptional chainmail and sword with them.

They move through the passage west until they reach another room of similar size and shape. This room contains a pedestal with an offering basin on top. Pater discovers small cones of incense inside a compartment in the pedestal. The walls are covered with ancient-looking murals, fresco-style of a primitive tribe of people kneeing and genuflecting towards the passage west. The group continues onward.

Further on, the passage ends with two huge, bronze doors. Pater attempts to pick the lock, and succeeds. The lock gives with a loud clunk, but the door does not open. They then try to force them open through brute strength, but to no avail. Mel casts Detect Magic both on the door as well as the armor and sword. All three show a magical enchantment. Nyphus dons the new armor and Renic chooses the sword. Pater goes back to light the incense to see if that helps open the door. He returns and further attempts are made, but with no affect.

The group then hears human voices coming from the mural room. Wary, they go back to find the room filled with close to a dozen men and women in ragged clothing. The incense freed them from their prison within the walls’ mural. They speak a crude and archaic dialectic of the common tongue. They were members of the barbarian tribe who lived in the fortress two centuries ago. As the fog clears in their heads they can remember their complicity in the awful crimes against their own children. Mel makes an attempt to comfort them and gently tells them where they are at. They tell the party they do not wish to stay in the fortress.

The party begins to lead the newly-awakened tribe members out of the dungeon. Reaching the second floor, they can see the kobolds moving things through the entry chamber down the hall. They creep past the creatures undetected. As they head up the north passage, they hear, then see the two, unfriendly black-robed men they met a couple weeks earlier entering a room to the west. They follow them into the room which is empty. Mel finds a secret door in the corner and they continue down a back passage west out of the dungeon. The dungeon opens out into a cave where a small pack of wolves have been slain.

They come out of the cave onto the western slope of island outside of the fortress close to where they hid their boat. They notice their boat is gone. Coming out from the trees and underbrush they saw the two figures crossing the river with two boats (their own and the party’s). Waiting until they are out of site, the group follows down to the river. Nyphus strips down and swims the channel to retrieve a boat. It takes some time to get the entire group including the dozen barbarians to the other side.

Grelda confronts them in her front yard and asks them to come inside her home. They leave the barbarians upstairs while Grelda leads the PCs to the basement where she presents the two robed men, tied up.

Anticipating Into the Borderlands: Revisiting B1 and B2

I saw Erik Tenkar from Tenkar's Tavern post a pic of Goodman Games new book, Into the Borderlands (check it out), from Gary Con the other day. I heard a couple of months ago about this coming out and it made me really happy, but not out of any sense of nostalgia. I never actually owned a copy of B1 back in the day and the only version of B2 I currently have is the one in the 25th Anniversary TSR box (my original is long gone). I recently picked up the print-on-demand scanned versions of both modules from DriveThruRPG (pictured left) as a way to have disposable play copies. They're a little blurry, but they're serviceable.

Into the Borderlands is a compilation of both the original modules along with 5e updates of the adventures. Even though I don't play 5e D&D, I still may get this just for the new format and to have nice, clear copies of each (hopefully the Otus Minotaur is in there). My happiness about this release is really not about me owning a copy though. I'm happy that newer DMs will get to experience these modules because they fill a gap that I've noticed in modern editions. B1 In Search of the Unknown and B2 The Keep on the Borderlands are two of the best training adventures for both players and DMs ever made, and they prepare gamers to create their own worlds in a way that perhaps modern RPG products don't.

Although I've played in very few modern D&D games, I've noticed a lot of current DMs rely on published adventures and campaign content for their games, much more than I remember doing in the 80s. Sure, everyone liked having the rite of passage of playing through classic adventures like Isle of Dread, Tomb of Horrors, and of course, B1 and B2; but the adventures I remember playing as kids were mostly of our own design. Coming back to gaming in the past year, I don't hear as much talk about people creating their own campaign worlds, at least outside of the OSR community. I see videos about how to run Curse of Strahd or Tomb of Annihilation, but not so much about how to come up with your own stuff. The OSR, by comparison, is all about sharing random tables, one-page dungeon advice, and sandbox toolkits. Meanwhile, the mainstream D&D community seem to view home-brewing as an eccentric option for fringe DMs who choose to miss out on the brilliance of the Forgotten Realms (not that there's anything wrong with FR).

It's possible that this is just my warped perception and foggy memory. However, I see a lot of new DMs asking questions on Facebook, G+, and other forums that I learned the answer to by playing Borderlands. Looking through my new POD copies of B1 and B2, I've started to understand their genius through a new lens of experience and perspective. These two early modules intentionally left a lot of space for the DM to fill in. B1 is completely un-keyed in terms of monsters and treasure. The DM is given lists to choose from and some advice to not use everything and leave some rooms empty. The inhabitants of The Keep in B2 are unnamed beyond their profession, leaving it up to the DM to provide their motives and backstory. B2 also doesn't direct you very much on how to get the players to the Caves of Chaos or give you some overarching plot to move the action. It keys the locations, but you need to make sense of it.

By modern players' and DMs' standards these two modules might seem incomplete, possibly not even suitable for publication compared to newer tomes filled with lore and legend in every hex. B1 and B2 don't do all the work for you. DMs have to do some heavy lifting and players need to ask questions and be curious. These modules don't lead anyone around by the nose to high adventure.

I'm curious to see how this new release plays to modern, 5e D&D gamers. My hopes are two-fold. First, I'd love for this book to teach newer generations of gamers how to think for themselves and come up with their own content, and how to be confident enough in their own ideas to fill in the details on-the-fly. Second, I'd love to introduce or re-acquaint the 5e crowd to the old school way of doing things, where you don't have to rely on official product to tell you how to D&D. We all love fancy new books, but in the end our own imaginations are the best engines of fantasy. I realize it's absurd to expect a complete sea change to happen, but a little bit of old school wisdom wouldn't hurt at all. It would also help to bridge the gap between editions a bit, and that's always a good thing.

One final note: While perusing the Monster stats at the back of B1, I noticed dual Descending/Ascending AC numbers. As the pic to the right shows, the explanation of AC gives the descending AC rank, followed by the to-hit number. Did Mike Carr invent ascending AC in 1979?

Challenge Ratings: Why To For Make So Hard?

Erol Otus is the best.

I had a conversation with my office mate this morning who happens to also be a player in my Basic Fantasy game. I was telling him about my idea for a different kind of bestiary that wasn't based around stat blocks (like Fire on the Velvet Horizon, but different). He listened and told me, "I hate coming up with stat blocks. It's too hard."

What's strange is that I find stat blocks to be the easiest part of designing a creature. It's literally a handful of numbers. The difficult part is coming up with something that looks and behaves in a new and mysterious way. It's tough to come up with something the players haven't encountered before, yet sounds plausible, not something that feels like a bunch of monster parts Frankensteined together from random tables, like a dwarfs head with a unicorn horn, a Displacer Beast's tentacles, and the trunk of a Roper.

The main issue for him was being uncertain of whether he was creating something too hard or too easy, and he found the whole 5e challenge rating system confusing and difficult to wrap his head around. I asked him why worry about it. If you make it too tough, you're players can run away and figure out a way to defeat it tactically. If it's too easy, have two or three more come around the corner.

Challenge Ratings are something I don't really understand the need for in D&D. Perhaps it's just because I have enough confidence and experience to feel what the right difficulty is. I don't really need to think about it anymore (if I ever did), and I certainly don't need to consult a set of rules for encounter balance. And if the first-level players don't do enough information gathering, ignore the blatant warnings, and go traipsing into the temple of a slumbering chaos demon, well, they get what's coming to them.

Say you have a standard D&D adventuring party of a couple fighters, a cleric, a magic-user, and a thief - all around 4-6 level.  How many ogres would you pit against them. If the setting and environment would support it, I would probably throw six at them. I would expect the party to (mostly) survive the encounter, but it might get a little hairy there depending on how the dice go. If the same PCs were 1-3 level I'd probably cut it down to two, maybe three. What's more important to me is picking a Number Appearing that makes sense for the environment that the players are exploring. In the above example, if six ogres would seem overcrowded in the area encountered, then I'd only have there be three, but just make them tougher.

That's just off the top of head. I'm sure someone would consult some official WotC oracle and tell me all the ways that encounter isn't balanced. Here's the thing: I don't care. If it proves too deadly, the worst that will happen is one of the players (or maybe more) will be making a new character. If you already have a predetermined outcome for the adventure, why play through it? Let things go wrong. That's part of the game. What do you think?