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Compleat Character Creation Catalog: OD&D
On the Wandering DMs a few weeks ago, we had a neat conversation about the history of generating ability scores for D&D across the various editions. This brought to mind a post I've wanted to make...
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Compleat Character Creation Catalog: AD&D
This is Part 2 of looking at statistics for how likely various start-generation methods are to qualify you for desired classes in early D&D (partly inspired by our recent chat on Wandering DMs)....
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Compleat Character Creation Catalog: Unearthed Arcana
This is Part 3 of our exploration of different ability-generation methods in O/AD&D, and the chances for creating characters of different desired classes. The last installment was all about 1E...
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On d6 Ability Checks
One of our Wandering DMs Patrons on our Discord server made a great observation: In AD&D Module WG4, The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun, at one point Gygax calls for a roll-under-Dexterity-on-4d6 to...
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Because-Dragons Is a Bad Argument
Is this a hot take?In the D&D discourse, you'll see a common piece of rhetoric, and it goes like this. DM Alice says, "I don't want to allow X in my games; I think it's unreasonable". And DM Bob...
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The Science of Slime-Splitting
Recently on Wandering DMs we had a neat conversation about slime-type monsters in classic D&D. Now, in Original D&D, a couple of those infamous monsters are said to split into smaller slimes if...
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Advancement in Classic D&D
We frequently marvel at how sketchy the advice was in Original D&D (and other early editions) was for the number of monsters, amount of treasure, and expected rate of PC advancement in the...
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Dragon's Lair
I've gotten a chance to play the Dragon's Lair arcade game on my PC (finally in the last week or so). I can't emphasize how ground-breaking this game was when it showed up in arcades back in 1983 (40...
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Radius or Diameter?
I've been working on refining spell descriptions (again) lately -- for hopefully upcoming expanded releases of the OED Book of Spells and Book of War rules. (E.g., we started testing top-level spells...
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OED on Roll20
Hey, did you know there's an official Original Edition Delta Character Record Sheet available on Roll20? Yessiree Bob, there sure is.This a joint work between myself and Jameson Proctor (Campaign...
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Papier Und Spiele: Book of War vs. Chainmail
Blogger ahabicher at Papier Und Spiele occasionally takes a really close look at my Book of War rules for classic D&D wargaming, and I think it's really helpful to get the perspective of someone...
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The Concentration Game
The issue of "concentration" for spellcasting has come up a number of times in my OD&D games lately. For those somewhat more familiar with the current-edition of D&D, two reactions are halfway...
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Random Walks in the Dungeons of the Slave Lords
I recently had an opportunity to run AD&D module A4, In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords, for the first time. This is of course the culminating adventure in the classic A-series Slavers tournament,...
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Monsters Through the Ages -- Carrion Crawler
Last week on Wandering DMs we had a smashing chat with one of our favorite repeat guests, Matt Finch of Mythmere Games. As I write this, his Kickstarter for the new Swords & Wizards Complete...
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The Gygaxian Hallway
It's something of a common gag that in the earliest D&D dungeons, all of the hallways were composed of 10-foot cubes -- but it's not true (notwithstanding the customary backstory to the gelatinous...
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Consider Chaos
I had an experience the other day where, trying to resolve an issue, office A told me it's the job of office B, office B said to talk to office C, and C said I had to talk to A. This is not uncommon....
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Can Superheroes See Invisible?
Consider the O/AD&D Superhero -- a.k.a, the 8th-level Fighter. If you blink you'll miss it, but in multiple places in early texts it says that fighters of that level can automatically see invisible...
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Health & Damage in Swords & Spells
I'm constantly fascinated by the novel rules detail in OD&D Swords & Spells. There's a bunch of stuff in there that can be interpreted as updates or clarifications to the core D&D rules --...
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Solving Chainmail Jousting
Last year I wrote an academic paper formally solving Gary Gygax's Jousting game, as it appears in the original edition of Chainmail: Rules for medieval miniatures (1971; and prior to that in The...
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How Much Weight Can a Horse Carry in D&D?
I've vaguely known for a long time that there was some essential problem with the system for horse encumbrance in early D&D (O/AD&D). But I hadn't personally done the accounting to pinpoint...
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40 Years of the D&D Cartoon
The D&D cartoon first appeared on CBS 40 years ago this week! Man, 1983-1984 were really great years for our hobby.Here's a link to the blog and an hourlong video interview by Mark Evanier, who...
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Fearful Ends Now on Kickstarter
The long-time passion project of my Wandering DMs partner Paul Siegel is currently funding on Kickstarter!Fearful Ends is a rules-light, story-centric roleplaying system for horror themed games. It...
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Star Frontiers Miniatures Revisited
Hey, it's been quiet around here lately... too quiet. Maybe we can get some new D&D material up soon.In the meantime, hopefully you've had a chance to catch some of Dan's Olde Time Minis Show over...
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Star Frontiers: Volturnus Racial Abilities
As you'll know if you followed the spring season of Dan's Olde Time Minis Show, I've been playing the classic Star Frontiers game all this year, and enjoying it immensely. To me, running a roll-low...
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Why Did Natural 20's Become Automatic Hits?
Here's an observation I just made, that came up from a friend's question about the 1E AD&D rules for a big project they're working on. Ultimately this highlights the less-than-optimal state of...
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