Starstone Handout - Bertram's Manuscript

I've been working my way through Starstone, trying to grasp all the nuances (I'm retyping the module just so that I can force myself to read every word and figure out what's going on - and then I can do a layout of the module that I can actually use :) ). 

Anyway, in the process I typed up Bertram's Manuscript and then made a handout for players, with the italicized words legible and the rest of the manuscript faded (as per the module). And I figured if I could use it with my players, maybe someone else would want it as well.

Here's a link to hi-res versions:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1gu0H9HAEIF2Iznam9Nu8skK0UlEjkvPF?usp=sharing

Hit Points and Character Death

 

I'm reading a lot of posts asking, "What do hit points really measure?" or something similar. Where hit points seem to jump the shark for people is when a high level character falls 100 feet, gets up, dusts himself off and walks away - or the giant fights with one hit point as effectively as he did with fifty.

D&D seems to me to be about resource management - and hit points are just another resource to manage. Do I have enough to get through another encounter? If not, am I in a safe place to rest? If not... how do I manage my resources? 

So here's my proposal for hit points (almost certainly not original of course - but I haven't seen it exactly like this anywhere).  

NOTE that this is, of course, an untested work in progress :)

Health, Hit Points, Damage and Recovery

Health Points at 0 Level - all characters roll 1d8 for Life Points, Creatures have their Hit Dice in Life Points

Hit Points are rolled at each successive level according to class and added to the Hit Point Total, as normal. Hit Points represent exhaustion, tenacity, skill, survival instinct, and the blessing (or not!) of the fates and are easily lost and fairly quickly recovered. 

Damage in combat and adventuring (with some few exceptions, see below) reduces Hit Points until they are exhausted, then Life Points are reduced accordingly. Additionally, once Hit Points are exhausted, Life Points are drained normally (that is, a 0 level human, or a levelled character who has 0 Hit Points remaining, who is hit for 5 points loses those 5 Life Points) and each point is a wound or scar (see below). 

Each time a character takes 10 or more hit points in damage in a single round, regardless of how many total Hit Points the character has, his or her Life Points are reduced, one Life Point per 10 Hit Points of damage, rounded down (1 Life Point for 10-19 Hit Points, 2 Life for 20-29 Hit Points, etc.) with a subsequent Wound or Scar (see below).

Hit Points are recovered with Rest, while Life Points with Recuperation.

Rest: for every 10 minutes of rest, recover one Hit Dice of Hit Points.

Recuperation: for every 2 hours of recuperation, recover all Hit Points and 1 Life Point.

On Death, Dying and Dismemberment

Characters reduced to 0 Life Points are Dying. Dying Characters make a death save every round. A Death Save is a d20 rolled against the PC’s Constitution score, adjusted by his or her Constitution bonus. Two successive failed Death saves and the Character is dead. If a Dying Character is tended to by another Character (or NPC), the Death Save is rolled at Advantage.

Wounds and Scars: When a Life Point is lost, the Character receives a wound or scar appropriate to the situation. Roll on the general wounds and scars table below, adjusted by the number of Health Points lost in a single round and the Character’s Constitution Bonus (adding the Life Points lost, subtracting the Constitution Bonus).

Roll 1d12	Effect
1 or less	a surge of adrenaline returns 1d4 hit points per every other level (1d4 at 1st and 2nd, 2d4 at 3rd and 4th, etc.) At the end of the combat, the adrenaline drains away, hit points are reduced to zero, and the PC faints for 2d6 rounds.
2	No Effect
3-4	Minor Scar. It’s just a flesh wound, really. A little blood, a little pain but no lasting effect except a little scar (as determined by player and DM)
5-6	Major Scar. Out of action for remainder of combat and heal at half rate for 24 hours. Permanent scar (as determined by player and DM)
7	knocked down, disadvantage on rolls next round
8	knocked out for 2d6 rounds, unless wearing a helm. With helm, only stunned for 1 round. Disadvantage for 1d12 subsequent hours
9	broken bone (DM's choice), 2d4+9 weeks to heal.
10	severed limb (DM's choice or roll randomly) will die in 3d6 rounds unless tourniquet applied, wound cauterized with fire, or Cure Serious Wounds cast (CSW used for this will not restore lost hp).
11	fatal wound (gutted, stabbed through lung, broken back, etc.) die in 1d6 turns.
12+	instant death (decapitated or other grievous wound).

NOTE: While death is generally final, there are some rituals of the Church of the Holy Saints that can potentially resurrect a dead Character. In addition, the clerics of the old gods (Druids) can employ spells like Reincarnation to keep a Character’s Soul from traveling to the great beyond and magic users are able to trap souls in the Mortal Realm (in decaying bodies or as disembodied spirits). 

Cragrapid Keep

Back in the day... I bought ever issue of Dungeon Magazine I could get my hands on - starting with issue #9. I poured over those issues, reading and rereading the adventures. 

One of the early adventures that has stuck in memory for all these decades is from issue #11 - Wards of the Witching Ways.

Actually, it's not the plot of the adventure that has stayed with me - oh, I remember it - two mages betting on the survival of random shipwrecked strangers - plotting and cheating against each other. 

It's a tournament adventure - and as such, it's an okay plot...

But what I kept coming back to was the maps - the layout of the castle: Cragrapid Keep. It has four levels, multiple entrances and many interesting connections.

The other day I was thinking again about this keep and I decided to sketch a perspective image of the keep - not great (I'm no artist) but it helps me keep things in perspective...

 

Fiend Factory Cover Mockup

 I was reading Grognardia's random roll on the Fiend Folio this morning and I remembered that someone had put together a PDF of all the Fiend Factory monsters from White Dwarf. I found a copy of it a long time ago. It's just image scanned copies of the pages - meaning the layout is... um... variable as is the quality at times. I thought about trying to do some layout work and minor editing... but that's a deeper dive time-wise than I wanted to undertake. 

But I thought a cover would be nice :)

So I grabbed an image of a White Dwarf cover I liked (#26) and did some quick edits to make it a Fiend Factory Cover. Why? Because I could...

Free Map Friday

I'm always looking for new maps so I started drawing some. They're pretty rough - but they're free!

Available for use in any way, including commercially, with attribution:

Map by WR Beatty

If you want a larger image or a different format or just to tell me you used the map:

daenralworld AT gmail

Free Map Friday

 I'm always looking for new maps so I started drawing some. They're pretty rough - but they're free!

Part three of at least three. This is the right section.

Here's how they all fit together.

Available for use in any way, including commercially, with attribution:

Map by WR Beatty

If you want a larger image or a different format or just to tell me you used the map:

daenralworld AT gmail

When Art Works

 Art in adventures is useful for any number of reasons. I use art as reference: both visually ("oh, THAT'S what a Murrful Monster looks like!") and as a kind of shorthand bookmark in the adventure ("I know the Trash Beast encounter is after the four-armed Minotaur - that image is on page...17..."). Sometimes art really helps fill out the layout of the page. A good header or page border  can make an adventure stand out in my mind - I'm thinking particularly of some of the old D&D adventures written in the UK - UK 5-7, B10, O2. 

Mostly what I want from art is that it be evocative. I was leafing through The Gates of Firestorm Peak this morning. I've never played it - I didn't buy it back in the day. By the time it was published I was starting to get overwhelmed by the number of products TSR was putting out and I had discovered Magic: The Gathering (or, as my friend Jim used to call it, "Magic the Moneypit"). We weren't playing much D&D anymore anyway.

But I was looking through it today and several things about the art struck me:

First, the negative. I HATE watermark art on the page. There was a time when I thought it was kind of cool - but now I just find it distracting. It makes the pages just a bit harder to read - and heaven forbid you put italics over a watermark - my old eyes just aren't up to the struggle...

Second, the meh. Headers. I had forgotten how en vogue it became in second edition to use headers and page borders. The thing is, they aren't effective AT ALL. What the UK modules of the past did was a different header for each section (again, kind of a bookmark for where you are in the adventure) and had style. These are just the same two images repeated ad nauseum... I wouldn't mind if it wasn't just kind of page filler - add six more lines of text to each column, please...

Where is this?

Third, the confusing? There's a great image of a guy standing on a narrow ledge in front of a door with runes carved into it.  Thing is... I can't figure out where in the adventure this door exists... I probably missed it somehow? 

Finally, the evocative! I like a lot of the art in this adventure - it really helps set the mood for me. "Giants" staring over a gate, huge skeletons, weird tentacled things and mutated trolls.  Good stuff. In the "really helping me get it" mode, there's a creepy fountain and a crystal room with a bizarre hanging quicksilver pool (which I totally didn't understand until I saw the pic) - heck even the myconid image is evocative (huddled in a group but, to me, still defiant and aloof...).

Here's a couple images (full pagers) that help sell the scenes for me - where a picture really does say a thousand words:

There's this weird bazaar in a great hall - 

with spider-riding duergar patrolling the upper level.

The battle against the BBEG. 

Art does much more for me than just fill in white space. I really appreciate artwork that helps to build the world for me. Dragonlance did this well for me - I got a real feel for the world of Krynn by the consistency of the artwork. Say what you will about late First Edition and Second Edition adventures (oh the many WORDS...), many of them had fantastic art. 

Free Map Friday

I'm always looking for new maps so I started drawing some. They're pretty rough - but they're free!

Part two of at least three. This is the left section.

Available for use in any way, including commercially, with attribution:

Map by WR Beatty

If you want a larger image or a different format or just to tell me you used the map:

daenralworld AT gmail

Free Map Friday

I'm always looking for new maps so I started drawing some. They're pretty rough - but they're free!

Part one of at least three. This is the center section.

Available for use in any way, including commercially, with attribution:

Map by WR Beatty

If you want a larger image or a different format or just to tell me you used the map:

daenralworld AT gmail

Free Map Friday

 I'm always looking for new maps so I started drawing some. They're pretty rough - but they're free!

EDIT: I forgot to mention - this one was directly inspired by another three level dungeon I saw online somewhere - and of course I can't find the source...sigh...

Available for use in any way, including commercially, with attribution:

Map by WR Beatty

If you want a larger image or a different format or just to tell me you used the map:

daenralworld AT gmail

Monday Magazine Classics

A Bar-Room Brawl – D&D Style

Lewis Pulsipher

White Dwarf 11

February/March 1979

“For those of you who would like to stage your own D&D bar-room brawl.”

I like mini-games. I like the game within the game of things like this “adventure,” whether it’s a quick gambling mini-game or some kind of simple “climb the sheer cliff without dying” kind of mini-game. What I enjoy is the break from combat or exploration – from the “normal” rules of D&D and similar games.

What’s presented here is a bit overcomplicated by the inclusion of what we would now call a battlemat and tokens (he calls it a board and tokens so...) on which Pulsipher indicates exactly where the tokens should be placed. Okay.

It’s a one-page outline for how to run that bar fight. I haven’t used this in practice, but it LOOKS like it should work out just fine. The rules, such as they are, are pretty scant. Two paragraphs, really, and most of it is just abstract advice along the lines of “standard D&D rules and common sense are used. If an unusual event like a falling chandelier or thrown chair occurs, the result should be figured as seems logical in the circumstances.” Um... thanks?

This really isn’t a scenario or mini-adventure – it’s little more than permission to run a good Old West Saloon brawl in D&D with some stories of how it went down in playtesting.

My whining aside, there are 23 NPCs that can be used for a fun little bar brawl and the board and tokens are a neat addition.

 

Other reviews:

Not a lot out there:

https://www.enworld.org/threads/white-dwarf-the-first-100-issues-a-read-through-and-review.325009/

 

Monday Magazine Classics

 The Hall of Mystery

Don Turnbull

Dragon #21

December 1978

“A section deep in the Greenlands Dungeon.”

Don Turnbull brings another section of his Greyhawk/Blackmoor-esque Greenlands Dungeon to light. Unlike Turnbull’s previous entry on this blog (The Lair of the Demon Queen), he keeps most of the writing direct and to the point, only occasionally straying into commentary like, “Normally the main hall is guarded; in Greenlands the Guardians were two Umber Hulks.”

The monsters here are tough (Succubus, Night Hag, Mind Flayer, Flesh Golem, 4 Trappers, etc.) and the mechanism to “beat the room” will have players puzzling for some time. There’s teleporting to other rooms in this weird monster zoo – and even that mechanism is a trick of sorts... Treasure is frustratingly abstracted (again!). He suggests a monster called a Magic Absorber (From Alarums and Excursions 12...) as another “mess with the players” kind of monster... ugh...

This is another example of early dungeon design. It’s clear that this was played as a game – not as amateur theater or storytelling with dice or as roleplaying a character arc or whatever we do these days. Here’s an environment. Here are the obstacles. Your characters and your brains are the tools you use to overcome them.

So I would compare this to a less developed Tomb of Horrors or a more focused (but still less developed) White Plume Mountain. It’s clearly an artifact of its era – bringing with it all that that implies.

I don’t think I’d use The Hall of Mystery per se. Maybe drop it into something like the above mentioned adventures (because, you know, they aren’t gonzo and deadly enough by themselves...heh) or it could be a fun one shot – maybe at a convention or something.

 

 

Other reviews:

Not a lot out there:

 

https://landofnod.blog/2012/11/10/dragon-by-dragon-december-1978/

 

 

 

 

Free Map Friday - Redraw Saturday...

I'm always looking for new maps so I started drawing some. They're pretty rough - but they're free!

This is a re-draw of yesterday's map. Maybe a better style... Funny because it's a throwback to how I used to draw digital maps 15 years ago... just playing around with ideas...

Available for use in any way, including commercially, with attribution:

Map by WR Beatty

If you want a larger image or a different format or just to tell me you used the map:

daenralworld AT gmail

Free Map Friday

 I'm always looking for new maps so I started drawing some. They're pretty rough - but they're free!

Available for use in any way, including commercially, with attribution:

Map by WR Beatty

If you want a larger image or a different format or just to tell me you used the map:

daenralworld AT gmail

Monday Magazine Classics

 The Lichway

Albie Fiore

White Dwarf #9

October/November 1978

 “A mini-dungeon for a part of 6-8 1^st level adventurers.”

 One of the early full-fledged adventures, and still highly regarded in the circles in which I move.

 Fiore gives us just a brief paragraph of background, a few notes on running the adventure and four “Rumours gathered by the party in a village tavern.”

 Right away the map inspires me. It’s a conceit of mine that an interesting map elevates a boring adventure. In fact, a good map (and that’s a moving target for me – at least it should look interesting with its connections and features) raises the bar a little on my estimation of an adventure. That is, if I buy into the map, I’m predisposed to enjoy the adventure. Art can do the same thing sometimes for me.

 So, the map gives us a main entrance but several other ways into the heart of the Lichway – and a variety of interconnections as well. Water is used to good effect in the dungeon. The secret doors and the tricks and traps are suitably old-school. They make sense within the context of the dungeon. Notably, there are rival NPCs already here, doing their own exploring, who can become allies, adversaries or just another obstacle to overcome.

 The main monster here is a Susurrus, a strange Fiend Folio monster whose “song” (the sound of wind blowing through its exoskeleton) causes undead to “sleep the sleep of the dead.” One of the first books I bought for AD&D was the Fiend Folio. I thought the Susurrus was a... strange monster (no flumph or flailsnail perhaps, but odd nonetheless). I didn’t see a use for such a creature as this. But the Lichway gave it some purpose. It’s still an oddly specific creature...

 Tiny print and lack of whitespace make this hard to use, but the information is presented clearly enough that I’ve been able to run this with just a read-through.

 Gripes: most of the treasure in the adventure is pretty specific until the “big treasure” which is simply “gold candelabras, gems, jewelry, silver flasks everyday objects, tools, weapons (none magical), etc. (The total value of the hoard is left at the DM'S discretion.)” Dangit! You told me in one room that a “Loose stone in N. wall conceals 88 g.p. and 89 c.p.” but the big treasure is just “You figure it out DM.”

 Like many adventures, I think you’d want a highlighter – or at least a quick summary page of NPCs (there are 14 individuals named if I counted correctly) along with a handful of monsters and undead (well, there’s a lot of “sleeping” undead...).

 

Other reviews:

 

https://www.enworld.org/threads/white-dwarf-the-first-100-issues-a-read-through-and-review.325009/

https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/in-which-i-read-white-dwarf-from-issue-1.405199/page-6

 

https://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=22832&p=1208631&hilit=Lichway#p1208631

 

https://princeofnothingblogs.wordpress.com/2020/03/12/review-white-dwarf-9-lichway-due-diligence/#:~:text=A%20mere%204%20pages%2C%20Lichway,the%20mind%20of%20the%20GM.

 

 

http://rolesrules.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-lichway-white-dwarf-9-review.html

Free Map Friday

 I'm always looking for new maps so I started drawing some. They're pretty rough - but they're free!

Available for use in any way, including commercially, with attribution:

Map by WR Beatty

If you want a larger image or a different format or just to tell me you used the map:

daenralworld AT gmail