Poor Aleena, We Hardly Knew Ye

Poor Aleena, We Hardly Knew Ye

This is an old blog post from a defunct blog I had

In the highly successful Basic Dungeons & Dragons rule book, edited by Frank Menter, there's an interesting story. Frank hit upon an idea when he did those two red rulebooks. He wanted to teach the new player how to play D&D while they learned the rules with a solo adventure.

It seemed like a crazy idea at the time. D&D is a group game, after all. Frank took you through the steps that had you creating your character and taught you what you used those crazy dice for. Soon, you were reading about a dungeon adventure and making the decisions on what to do.

Along the way, there is a treasure room. You can see it, but the door is locked. I've often wondered what was in there. You also meet a lovely female healer named Aleena, who casts her healing spell on you. Frank gets you to care about her.

Unfortunately, she gets killed by the infamous Bargle the wizard. Just like that, you learn how quickly a character can die in the game. Aleena actually built up a cult following among fans, which led to the creation of the Kill Bargle movement. I don't know if he ever paid for his crimes.

It was a clever idea to have people playing the game as they learned. Frank's Basic D&D rule books may have been the best ever, though I'm also partial to Tom Moldvay's Basic D&D book from a couple years earlier. Tom created a lot of fun adventures for the game in his day.

In the back of Tom's version of D&D, there's an example of how the game is played, and you see a fine example of one of the things that goes on at the gaming table. Black Dougal, the thief, misses the poison needle on a treasure chest and dies of poisoning. Moments later, the party is dividing his stuff amongst themselves.

Aleena's plight wasn't quite as cold hearted as that. You take her body back to her temple so she can be laid to rest and honored as the hero she was. I think it's a testament to Frank's writing that even three decades later, players still remember her and the way she died.

Blog Article About Aleena: https://web.archive.org/web/20150612213413/http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.com/2013/10/on-iconic-characters-in-dungeons.html

Dragons At Dawn Offered A Glimpse At Early RPG History

Dragons At Dawn Offered A Glimpse At Early RPG History

This is from an old, defunct blog I had...

D.H. Boggs happens to be a big fan of Dave Arneson, the man who created many of the concepts that became a part of Dungeons & Dragons. So, about five years ago, he started working on recreating the game that Dave played with his friends in Minnesota back in the early 1970's.

The story goes something like this. Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren created a rules set for a war miniatures game called Chainmail. In it, fantasy creatures were added along with spells and concepts new to miniatures gaming.

Gygax and Arneson had worked on a game called Don't Give Up The Ship, which would offer the inspiration for armor class to role playing games. Actually, there wasn't really a role playing game back then. Arneson and others played a game called Braunstein with Dave Wesley as game master in the late 1960's.

Wesley had introduced the concept of role playing the characters in the game, and it produced some interesting results. Fast forward to Wesley joining the military and Arneson taking over the game. Arneson had seen the Chainmail rules, but they didn't quite match what he was looking for in a game.

As Dave explains it, after a day of eating junk food and watching creature features on TV, he was inspired to create a whole fantasy world setting that he would take his players through. The land was called Blackmoor, and the castle became one of the main attractions.

Dave introduced the concept of each player running one character, hit points and armor class, experience points and gaining levels. He also had a desire to get the characters to explore the mysterious dungeons underneath the castle. Once they did, the first "dungeon crawl" was born.

We know some of the history from there. Gygax sat in on one of Dave's popular games. Dave had been scribbling rules in a note pad. Sometimes these rules were written in the moment when a decision was needed. He wanted to be fair and consistent with all of his players. Gary took those rules back home with him, and eventually, Dungeons & Dragons was born.

What Boggs did was gather comments that Arneson had made about the early days in interviews. He also gathered information from players who actually played in Dave's games back them. He used this to create Dragons At Dawn, the game that is as close as anything to what Arneson was playing back before Dungeons & Dragons was born.

This took many hours of work for Boggs to put together, because his desire was to be as faithful to Arneson as possible. When he had to use his judgement on a rule that Arneson never explained, he tried to be true to what he thought Arneson would have done.

Though the rules are very primitive compared to today's standards, Dragons At Dawn is a playable game. But, it's more than that. It's also a glimpse at the past with many quotes from the man himself.

I loved this book, because I've always felt Arneson's contributions to the role playing game experience have been downplayed. It's not surprising given that Gygax ran the company and was at the forefront, and Dave was sort of left behind. It never would have happened without Arneson creating some of the key concepts of the game.

I don't know why, but I was thinking about Dragons At Dawn today. I managed to buy my copy a few years ago, and that's a good thing. Boggs has taken it off the market, but not because he was told to. Instead, he has a new project in mind and wanted to devote his time to that.

It's called Champions Of Zed, which he calls a complete rewrite of the original Dungeons & Dragons rules. Gygax and Arneson have gone on record saying the rules back then were not done to their satisfaction, which eventually led to Gygax creating Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

Boggs has taken comments made by both men through the years on what they wanted to do with the rules, and it gets better. He has a copy of the original manuscript of revisions Arneson wanted for the original game,. Of course, those were rejected back then.

It's a rather interesting project that is much like Dragons At Dawn, but in this case, he's attempting to create the version of the original Dungeons & Dragons that could have been had Gygax and Arneson had their way and also worked together on it. Boggs had a Kickstarter campaign that doubled what he was asking for, so the project has proceeded.

I think it's a good thing, but its still a shame. I think Dragons At Dawn should still be put out there for those who are interested. It is a fascinating look at some of the early history of the creation of a game that millions of people through the years have played and enjoyed.

A Gamer Reviews Dragons At Dawn: apaladinincitadel.blogspot.com/2010/04/dragons-at-dawn-rpg-review.html

Five Good Ways To Die In Old School Dungeons & Dragons

Five Good Ways To Die In Old School Dungeons & Dragons

Rescuing this fron an old defunct blog I had

In honor of the release of the new version of Dungeons & Dragons, I wanted to look back at the old school version. It was the era of 1st Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and the Tom Moldvay/David Cook Basic/Expert D&D. I played Moldvay/Cook and preferred the simplicity.

Back in those days, it was extremely easy for your characters to die in the first adventure. In fact, countless characters did, sometimes for the stupidest reasons. You sometimes didn't even bother to name your character until they proved they could survive. I felt bad for the people who gave their character a background, only to watch them die in the first room after a bad roll of the dice.

Those games were death traps, but there was a bright side. The simplicity of the rules was such that you could have a new character ready in a couple minutes. One of the reasons for the new rules coming out now is because the previous edition was so complicated that it took much longer for character creation.

So, I wanted to look at five of the easiest ways to die for a 1st level character in the old school game:

1-Poison: Better make that savings throw, or you are done. It could happen from a poison needle on a treasure chest, a spider or snake bite or whatever. One bad roll, and it's time for a new character.

2-Magic missile: If you faced a magic user, they may not have much of a melee attack. However, this spell was something a first level character could use, and it always hits. Higher level spell casters were worse, since they had spells that could do more damage, but a magic missile could eliminate that 1st level character too.

3-Traps: Poison needles on treasure chests were one thing. You could touch something that triggers darts to fire out of the wall or spray poisonous gas into the room. There's that pesky 10 foot pit in the hallway. A real vindictive DM would put spikes on the bottom just to do more damage.

4-Wights: Unlike skeletons and zombie, these undead could drain a level from you just by touching you. This is no fun at all. If you see one at 1st level, you learn to run away fast. Your sword may not be able to hit it anyway. All you have to do is watch what happened to Frodo in The Lord Of the Rings. He's lucky he lived, and he wouldn't have if not for the elves.

5-Anybody with a weapon: Fighters could sometimes absorb two hits, but seldom three. You have to be tactful in battle and lucky at the dice when you must fight. When you gained levels on old school D&D, they meant something.