Europa: the Hex Crawl

I've always loved the idea of gaming in historical Europe, and here's a cool hexmap of Europe I stumbled across online. Looks like it was made with Hexographer, which is a fun program to play around with, if you haven't before. Numbered and everything. Its pretty easy to cut up / crop, in Paint, into bite-size regions, so you can enjoy that road-trip from Brugge to Rome, or guard the pilgrimage trails of the Crusade-era Middle East:

Do this now

1. Go to any YouTube Video.

2. Pause it.

3. Click anywhere outside the video.

4. Type 1980

5. Enjoy!

Lazy Blog Post - Black Mage ( FInal Fantasy NES )

This is in honor of the inimitable Black Mage of Final Fantasy fame. I had a blast with this game (the original NES version) 20+ years ago, and was pleasantly surprised to find that, following a quick iPhone download, the game holds up surprisingly well.

The game sports several early "D&Disms", especially in the monster arena, with "Crawlers", "Sahagans", Green Slimes, and such. But the Black Mage follows an especially D&Dish path - weak and near useless at early levels (excepting a very potent Sleep spell), at high levels he becomes a Nuclear-level Terror.

Dungeon Robber

"Pablo Deathdrinker, a level 0 Dungeon Robber. Descended to level 2 of the dungeon and won 0 GP. Defeated a Fire Beetle. Poked by a poison needle in a lock on level 2! REST IN PEACE"

That was the short, sad epitaph of Pablo Deathdrinker.

If you've got a few minutes to kill, you can do a lot worse than take a spin through Dungeon Robber, a browser, text-based game that utilizes the Random Dungeon Generation charts from the 1E DMG.

Diversity Quotas and the Traditional Adventuring Party

It's interesting to me, as a Pulp Fantasy fan, that the "traditional adventuring party" of D&D (and its attendant offspring) has been so thoroughly "multi-racial". Not only does the well-balanced party contain the (hopefully) optimum range of character classes to overcome the various challenges they will traditionally face, it is also standard to have many different player races represented.

Obviously (and I'm using "obviously" here because it seems obvious to me, perhaps I'm wrong) this must be some sort of holdover from the composition of the Fellowship presented in Tolkein's Lord of the Rings. Representatives of each "good" race band together to take on the Dark Lord.

How much sense does that make, however, in the treasure hunting / mercenary role most adventuring parties play? Also, to what extent did the mechanics of the earlier systems influence the "multi-racial" party. For a long while, only demi-humans could multi-class. If you wanted to wield sword and spell at the same time, you kind of had to play an elf. Similarly, if you wanted your 1st level thief to have more than a 10 or 15% chance to pick a lock or whatever, it helped to play a halfling and soak up all those sweet bonuses. Then there are things like seeing in the dark, never growing old, etc, etc.

Without all those mechanical differences (or, to be fair, "advantages"), would the multi-racial party still be as common? What if only humans could be warrior-mages, or got much better thieving abilities than halflings? To be honest, I can't really remember anyone playing an elf or dwarf much different than they would a human, personality and mannerism-wise, aside from the usual strereotypes (arrogant elf, grumpy dwarf, mischievous halfling). Where was the real depth, the sense of playing or interacting with what should have been wholly alien personalities and mannerisms.
 

Then there is the question of human diversity - why have D&D and its offspring shied away from presenting more mechanical variety for different types of humans. This was something I thought Rolemaster did admirably, with "Rural", "Urban", "High" Men and so on. As a Pulp fan, I'd rather see a party of Mystic Easterners, Savage Southrons, Unkempt Northmen, and Sneering Imperials than yet another munchkin convention. But that's just me?

What are your thoughts on the "traditionally diverse" adventuring party?

The proper attire for your Weird Science/Fantasy character...

I see this image alot on the interwebs lately.

What more do you need for an excursion to Fomalhaut?

This is on my Halloween costume wishlist, right next to Manos.

Whence class level titles?

Here's a random encounter subtable from Hints for D&D Judges (Joe Fischer, Best of Dragon 1980):

Sub-Table 1
1 Heroes
2 Thaumaturgists
3 Swashbucklers
4 Magicians
5 Evil Priests
6 Myrmidons
7 Enchanters
8 Superheroes
9 Sorcerers
10 Lords
11 Wizards
12 Evil High Priests

Which got me wondering, whatever happened to class level titles?

None of what I would consider the "bigger" retro-clones, SW, LL, nor OSRIC, saw fit to include them. I don't believe that was a copyright omission, as I'm pretty sure no one can copyright a word like "Thaumaturgist", even in the context of a 5th level Magic User.

Original D&D didn't even number levels originally - there was no such thing as a "5th level" Magic User , according to Little Brown Book #1 pg. 16. Yet by 2nd Edition AD&D, 1989, the class level title was gone completely, all that flavor gone, reduced to a sterile number. Something that seems to have been, for a good while, as integral and iconic a part of the game as AC, hit points, and alignment was lost to the mists of time after a scant 15 years of use.

What happened?