Designing an OSR Heartbreaker – Prologue

There has been some silence around the blog, since I posted most of my DragonLance as a/is a science fiction-posts, but since lately I have been caught up on a lot of work with creating a D&D retro-clone trying to all that I thought was wrong with D&D 3,5, D&D 4th and Pathfinder, and recently it has been playtested successfully at two minor conventions and privately and I have now people expanding the rules and adding more modules to the collection, as the grand playtest at Denmarks second largest roleplaying festival, Fastaval, is about to take place. But it is not just a fantasy heartbreaker designed in accordance to (as much as anything can be in accordance with the Old School Renaissance), it as at the same time a living campaign, where the players are exploring a huge sandbox area littered with dungeons (there will be somewhere between 13 and 17 dungeons presently), and when not exploring dungeons (that is sitting at a table playing the D&D retro-clone), you can roleplay yourself as a member of Fastaval Roleplaying Guild collecting rare roleplaying supplements (that is there will be rare rule supplements you can collect, that adds additional options, you can use when playing at the table). As a living campaign my project began back in January with the first convention introducing Hinterlandet, as my project is known as, and it has been running as a living campaign since.

At Fastaval this year Vincent Baker and Lizzie Stark will be attending (Lizzie also guested us last year), and so I will be presenting Old School roleplaying at a convention that usually features a whole slew of Nordic Roleplaying, which is quite artsy and edgy – and which are the RPG’s that I normally produce myself, so I am looking forward to this so rather different year.

I hope to share a lot of my thoughts on creating a OSR fantasy heartbreaker in the next few months and exploring the simulationism-side of roleplaying as I explore the development of the system.

The Hidden History of DragonLance – Part 2

In my previous post I argued, that DragonLance is really not fantasy as much as it is a post-apocalyptic science fiction or science fantasy disguised as fantasy – mostly due to the fact that the story and the setting is planted in the D&D-game.

The main evidence for DragonLance being a science fiction comes from the third and fourth module (and perhaps later in the series, but I have not studied the material that far yet), and it comes partly in the shape of some curious magic items and from vague descriptions, and then from archetypical science fiction narratives and tropes, such as domed cities connected by automated cars or trains and from “gods” destroying the world with “catastrophic” rains of fire – which in the world of pseudo-history as proponed by Ancient Alien Theorists is clear evidence of advanced aliens using nuclear weaponry and such like.

In the following I will sum up some the tropes, but others will be covered in detail in my post Re-Imagining DragonLance – Part 3b.

The Tropes

Degenerate People Living in the Ruins

The Aghar or Gully Dwarves are an obvious example of this (DL1, DL2, DL3)

Domed Cities Connected by Train

The seven underground cities of Thorbaddin in DL4 are a perfect example reminiscent of the cities in for instance Logan’s Run.

Doomed City Maintained in a Ritualistic Manner

The Steam City in DL3 inhabited by Gully Dwarves are an example of this. The city is supposed to run by steam utilizing the natural resources, but slowly it is collapsing as the city is falling apart.

Worshipping Forgotten Tech

The same Gully Dwarves in Steam City protects an ancient artefact, that they have lost the ability to use. The artefact is a black crystal on whose surface text appears, when the crystal is asked questions. This is a computer, and again this follows a not uncommon trope of lost tech in a post-apocalyptic world.

Lost City Protected by Invisible Guardian

In DL4 the PCs reach an ancient city or advanced tomb guarded by a gold dragon tied to the place, who uses an assortment of spells and shape shifting to interact with the PCs as a harmless guardian of the place. In science fiction terms the PCs have reached an automated city maintained by an artificial intelligence manifesting itself through robot and/or holographic projections.

Frozen For The Future

Another trope is the past trapped in ice in such a manner, that it easily can be observed and thus represents a perfect image of the past. In DL6 the PCs find a knight and his dragon mount trapped in ice.

The evidence

Flickering blue light

Strange ghosts and mysterious lights are present in both Xak Tsaroth og Fistandantilus’ grave (DL1, DL3), and time and again the ghosts in these sequences the ghosts are mechanically carrying out the same everyday action as from before the apocalypse. Ghosts repeating themselves in this manner are somewhat known from folklore, but these are very detailed actions with spoken lines etc. This is just as easily understood as remainders of holographic projections running own centuries later. A common element in post-apocalyptic fiction.

War Machines

In the marshes around Mount Skullcap, where Fistandantilus has his fortress are rotting war machines. These machines have been here for 300 years. Had they been catapults and ballistae they would have rotted away long ago, which is not the case. So what are these ‘war machines’? High tech weaponry slowly rusting away.

Stasis Field

Inside the grave of Fistandantilus (DL3) is a dragon trapped in a stasis field. The module does not explain the presence of the force field. It just is there, and it is hardly portrayed as a magical phenomenon, thus again a science fiction element.

Fistandantilus’ Blast

When Fistandantilus was defeated he took all with him, allies and enemies in a blast, that ruined his fortress and killed everyone on the battlefield leaving the aforementioned war machines. From one point it is just a powerful spell out of reach of the PCs, on the other hand this is just as well some sort of neutron blast, that left the war machines, but destroyed all living beings.

The dwarven helmet

At the end of the third module the PCs find the passage to the Gates of Thorbaddin, but they also find a dwarven helmet, that for some reason is inhabited by its previous owner, who magic jars into anyone who handles the helmet to tell his sad tale and have his helmet returned to his grave (in the next module). This is a curious thing, and again it may be magic – the module describes it as a magic jar-effect, but it does not describe, how or why this happened, but the science fiction point of view, this helmet carries an AI, and in this case the AI is most likely a primitive imprint of the original owner, who made it in his dying moments to send a message home, a message 300 hundred years late, but now the PCs are here, and the AI-imprint briefly manifests in the wearer of the helmet to deliver its message.

Next Up

There are more science fiction-elements to be dug out of DragonLance, and more of those in up-coming posts on re-imagining DragonLance. The presence (or absence) of the science fiction-elements does not change the flow of the modules, and can be ignored, if a reconstruction of the modules is all, that is desired.

There is one more way to view the general story of the DragonLance-modules, one that does not change the flow much either, but one that adds an extra dimension. More of this on the third post on the hidden history of DragonLance. Also coming up is the second half of the Re-Imagining DragonLance Part 3.

The Hidden History of DragonLance – Part 1

This post is related to my series on re-imagining DragonLance (DL0, DL1, DL2, DL3a). In the re-imagination of the modules, I strive to improve some of the flawed or weak parts of the modules, but also to introduce what believe is a hidden aspect of DragonLance, but before I continue doing this, this hidden history needs to be exposed.

Some time ago Monte Cook wrote briefly about Science Fantasy in lieu of his new – and rather interesting – Kickstarter (or kickstarted as it is) project Numenera, that plays out in a fantastic setting, where technology is so advanced, that it seems like magic – thus reminding us of Arthur C. Clarke’s famous third law:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

This relates in its own manner to my re-imagining of the old DragonLance modules for my reason to re-imagine them came not from a desire to improve the modules though improvement were sorely needed having been designed in an age, where there was very little experience in writing story heavy functional modules (and in the 90s it was no better as several PlaneScape and Ravenloft modules can attest – and I am a fan of those settings).

No, the reason for re-imagining the modules were the obvious presence of science fiction themes and elements, and that by reading between the lines it became obvious, that DragonLance was a science fiction-setting.

Through the lens of D&D

The one main reason for this not being so obvious is the need to keep DragonLance within the D&D paradigm, thus you must have elves, dwarves, and halflings, there must be gnomes and other elements central to the D&D-rulebooks. This obscures the fantasy-elements, but they are certainly not gone.

Science Fiction … in D&D …?

Expedition to Barrier Peaks is a classic, where the heroes discover a crashed space ship, encounters robots and other strangeness, but it is not the only module with science fiction-elements. The DA-modules for D&D becmi had the heroes travel back in time to distant past, where a spaceship has crash landed. Later this spaceship became a central object in the grand history and cosmology of the D&D Mystara-setting (among other things including a nuclear physics scientist among the Immortals of Mystara, i.e. that is the Mystaran version of deities) – see Gaz3, Gaz10, Gaz13, PC4 as well as Hollow World Campaign Setting and Wrath of the Immortals as well as the final episode of Voyage of the Princess Ark.

In CM6 Where Chaos Reigns the characters travel in time to three different ages to save a dimension from a time travelling, technological highly advanced race, the Oard, that are a bit like the Borg, and now the PCs must save the world in different eras from the borgish monsters.

In the D&D becmi-module IM1 The Immortal Storm the characters being Immortals since this is the i of the becmi-scale they travel to another dimension, where they end up in modern-day New York.

In the PlaneScape-setting can also remnants of spaceships be found, but they seem almost like easter eggs hidden to amuse GMs and players, rather than an attempt to add science fantasy to D&D.

In the AD&D 1st DMG were also rules for cross overs to Gamma World, so in general the D&D-games were not exclusively tied to a fantasy setting, but kept science fiction-elements as an option.

The Science Fantasy of DragonLance

In my re-imagining DragonLance I have hinted at the presence of technology, but it is not until DL3 Dragons of Hope it becomes truly obvious, that the re-imagining includes science fiction-elements. This works best when presented as a surprise for the players. However the science fiction-elements are not elements that I am adding to DragonLance. They were there all the time. I will only be pointing them out.

Next up is retelling the story of DragonLance, but this time emphasizing the Science Fantasy elements.

Retelling the Story of DragonLance

This is not the complete story, but it covers most of the elements, that can be gleamed from the first modules.

Gods from Outer Space

Long ago an alien race came to Krynn, and they were viewed as gods by the inhabitants of this low tech world. They granted immense advances to the inhabitants, and they often communicated with the inhabitants using an elected class of priests, and often using their Messengers to bring the knowledge of the Gods. In the local language the word for Messenger of the Gods were ‘dragon’.

Things went well on Krynn, but the arrogance of mankind angered the gods – as the story has already been told in the DragonLance material – and it was decided to punish mankind. The gods dropped a nuclear device or some equivalent on or near the city of Xak Tsaroth creating the catastrophe, that forms the present post-apocalyptic DragonLance-setting. It is likely that one faction (Thakisis) tricked the other alien factions into doing this, and then led them into exile, so the Thakisis faction could return and reshape the civilizations of Krynn, perhaps as slave races mining rare resources for their alien masters posing as gods.

Having regretted their decision the aliens went into a self-imposed exile, where they abandoned the population on Krynn to fight for itself.

Meanwhile back on Krynn the survivors of the nuclear blast escaped to the plains of Abbasinia – thus the name of the plains, Lands of the Abandoned – and from here the survivors split into three groups: The plains people, who disavowed technology forever, the first emigrants who went west and settled the town of Solace and Haven – hence the names of these settlements – and then a group went south to find shelter in the Seven Cities of Thorbardin.

The southbound emigrants passed the ancient fortress of Pax Tharkas and soon reached the lands of the Agar and their Seven Cities of Thorbardin. However the gates were closed and the emigrants were left to their own, had it not been for Fistandantilus.

Fistandantilus and His Fortress

In an ancient past the engineer Fistandantilus never felt appreciated for his technological knowhow and immense skills, so he uploaded himself as an AI to his mobile, technological fortress. From this position he led the southbound emigrants in battle for the Seven Cities of Thorbardin. In the plains near the Seven Cities it became a mighty battle involving armies of war machines, however Thorbardins mobile fortress were invaded by hostile forces, and Thorbardin released his neutron weapons in order to stop his enemies at the cost of his allies. Now the plains are littered with lifeless war machines and the mobile fortress were frozen in place. In the depths of the fortress Fistandantilus lived on trapped in the isolated circuits of his computers.

The Seven Cities of Thorbardin

Hidden beneath the seven domes are the wondrous cities of the Agar. The Agar were another breed of humans being slightly different from the people of Xak Tsaroth. The Agar had one weakness and it was their susceptibility to radiation. The agar population living in the domed cities that survived almost unscathed, but any agar living outside the domes were corrupted by the radiation and their descendants became the gully dwarves. There were agar living in Xak Tsaroth and at Pax Tharkas, and their descendants all became gully dwarves.

The domed cities have since fallen from their technological might and the survivors of the Agar have become mere shadows of their great ancestors, and now they live in a state of war between the domed cities.

One of the wonders of the domed cities is the flying city, which was the seat of the leaders of the Agar, but now the flying city is being run by an AI waiting for people to return to its city.

The Dragon Army and Lord Verminaard

The lords in the heavens have disagreed on how they should treat the people of Krynn. After having been lured to destroy the human population by one faction of aliens, they all went into exile to reflect on their actions. The faction that tricked the other aliens into destroying the civilization of Krynn had other plans, and they have now returned to reshape the population on Krynn in a new image. To do this they have sent their servant Lord Verminaard.

Lord Verminaard is likely just a robot or a cyborg. Most likely a cyborg with psychic powers. He has been upgraded by his lords from the stars, and been given several dragons as his servants. Lord Verminaard may be the descendant of the human servants, that served the “evil” aliens from outer space, and he has now sent back to Krynn to conquer the world.

Through a program of genetic hybridization he has been given an army of draconians.

So where is the evidence for this?

I will address this in my next post on the Hidden History of DragonLance.

Re-Imagining DragonLance – Part 3a

Welcome to my fourth post in the series of re-imagining the DragonLance. Presently I am running the old modules from 1984 with the AD&D 1st ed.-rules. While playing them I discovered several things, that need to be fixed, and I also found a hidden story within the modules. With this re-imagining I will attempt to fix some of the flaws, and I will also present the hidden story in the modules.

After a long delay I continue here my re-imagining of DragonLance: I am solely dealing with the old modules from AD&D 1st edition. Previously I covered DL1 and DL2, and now it is time for DL3 Dragons of Hope:

Now this module is whole lot better than DL2. It contains a mini-game for the PCs guiding the 800 refugees rescued from DL2, and as usual the module consists of two parts. The first part covers the journey to the dungeon, and the second part covers the dungeon.

Though it still contains scripted events, a poorly written transition from DL2 to DL3 and several minor plot holes the module flows a whole lot easier and better than DL2. With the third module the secret history of DragonLance also becomes obvious in this module, a secret I will go into detail with in a separate post.

The Basics

DL3 Dragons of Hope covers the search for the secret entrance to the kingdom of Thorbaddin. The PCs travel through the lands south of Pax Tharkas in search of clues, and soon their journey is directed towards the tomb of Fistandantilus, and once reached and explored, the PCs find the route hidden in the depths of the grave, and the modules ends. DL4 begins at the gate of Thorbaddin.

In this module little is learned. Most of the information retains to Fistandantilus, and that is mostly that he attempted to lead the humans into Thorbaddin and a mighty war took place, and that Fistandantilus released powerful magics from a different age. Also some dragons are good, and they are metallic rather than chromatic, as they are the evil dragons. Also there are shadowdragons, and they too are evil. It is less clear to me, whether or not the claim that dragons disappeared a long, long while ago is false, since the dragons at the grave of Fistandantilus disproves this. According to the dragons, then dragons (at least the good ones) were present as late as after the cataclysm some 300 years ago.

Re-imagining

This time little needs to be changed. The little game can be tightened a bit, and the journey through the lands south of Pax Tharkas extended into a heroic journey. The scripted encounters with Fizban are among the things, that I will ignore, and instead I will focus on revealing a whole lot more of the back story. As with the previous modules I will also focus on a getting the PCs into the center of things, rather than the NPCs.

Dwarves

I have changed the dwarves’ role, so the villages of hill dwarves must naturally be removed. The encounters are not strictly necessary, but they can be replaced with humans eking out an existence in the mountainous regions. The humans are most likely survivors of the now forgotten war for entrance to Thorbaddin’s realm. The survivors might possess tales

However the lost city inhabited by the Aghars remains, as it plays an important role, and thus they remain in place.

The Refugees

The Refugee aspect of DL3 has great potential, as there is a lot of character driven game in this, but the module does not utilize this. Somewhere between the second and the third module the refugees suddenly organize themselves in several different groups and found a council, who appoints the PCs to lead them to safety. There is no reason to skip this part, but instead give the players a say in how, they think the refugees should organize themselves, and let them help with appointing leaders or be the leaders themselves: Should the form a council, or should they simply lead the refugees, or should some other system be used? Use the NPCs from the module as potential spokes persons and leaders, and use them to challenge the players’ decisions.

From being a resource-management game this can become a character-driven challenge, and if you lack inspiration, then take a look at the tv-show Battlestar Galactica for inspiration.

Being Chased

This part is mechanically vague, and is tied into several scripted encounters, which were hopelessly forced, when we played them. By removing Fizban these encounters can become quite exciting in their own right. The best approach is to remove the scripted encounters and the mechanics for the chase, and instead recreate them as challenges for the players:

• Caught by the advancing forces, the PCs must lead the refugees in silence through a snow-covered ravine in order not to bury the refugees in tons of snow.
• A small group of refugees has been lost in a snow storm. What to do? Wait for them to return, go back and look for them, or keep moving?
• A group of refugees has refused to follow the lead of the PCs, and they have gone their own way, when it is discovered that the group is being led into a trap. Can they be saved?
• A group have fallen behind, and the PCs must lead them unseen through the lines of the advance guard.
• Perhaps the enemy must be led astray. Who can generate false tracks and how? Must some be sacrificed to create a convincing lead? Who decides, and whom must be chosen?

There are plenty of options to create several exciting scenes with the PCs trying to lead the refugees to safety, and combining this with the ordeal of leading the refugees and dealing with their council, then there are plenty of options.

The main point is to place the PCs in the center of the events, and to give them some very hard choices to make.

The Malign Influence of Lord Verminaard

Lord Verminaard has haunted (and hunted) the PCs since DL2, and ideally was foreshadowed in DL1 and even earlier, so he should of course also appear in this module. Seen leading his troops and flying on his dragon in the distance, but since he possesses powerful mental abilities, and since this is hinted in DL3 and DL5 he can naturally also influence any spokespersons and council members, partially recreating Lord of the Rings, where Gandalf confronts the king of the Rohirrim, and frees him from Saruman’s influence. Likewise the corrupting influence can also begin, and this can add an additional aspect to the game, as Lord Verminaard attempts to corrupt one of the leaders and sow dissent within the ranks of the refugees by forming a secret Cult of Takhisis guided by the ethereal presence of Lord Verminaard.

The PCs must now deal with a magically corrupted leader and the cult of Takhisis, and one option is to spread the word of old gods, and tell the refugees, that the gods of old has returned, and that their faith in the new ones is misguided.

Dealing with the cult gives the players an idea of, who and what their enemy is, and it puts Lord Verminaard in a nefarious position, where he can safely deal with and challenge the PCs (this also foreshadows his dream-presence in DL4).

The Next Part

The second half of the module I will cover in an upcoming post, and that part will focus on the aspects that reveal the true nature of the DragonLance world. In that part the player’s will no longer be in doubt as to the presence of the secret history and the scale of the post-apocalyptic story.

The next part will cover specific locations in the module, among other things The Steam City, and The Tomb of Fistandantilus.

Call for Board Games

The Danish Roleplaying Festival Fastaval, which each year presents some 20-30 cutting-edge roleplaying scenarios in the Scandinavian style of pen & paper and Parlor LARPS has expanded into board gaming as well. This year awards were also given to the best Board Game Design, and this tradition continues.

Fastaval Board Game Competition 2013

The rules are simple. You must present a workable, playable board game at Fastaval. It must be a ‘new’ game (so not a project, you be hiding in your drawer for the last five years), and it must be playable even if you are not present at the table.

The Challenge

These two points are optional:

• Writing rules. The participating games in 2012 were in general on a very high level, but the rules were not always of the same standard. Game-rules should be helpful to the players, not an obstacle. They must be made and layouted so they easily starts the players off and makes any complicated aspects of the game clear and understandable.
• “Borders / breaking down borders”. You are by no means required to follow this “theme”. It’s more like a suggestion from us to you, to challenge the mechanics and settings for what is considered “normal elements” in a boardgame or, on a meta level, think of a game that breaks down borders “between players” . Which borders and between what, we will leave to you to figure out.

To participate you must send your Board Game Synopsis within the deadline of October 1. 2012 to pap@fastaval.dk

If you’re board gamer or board game designer, then send your synopsis to Fastaval and participate in the contest about the Prestigious Otto Award. Read the full text on the competition here: Fastaval Board Games.

Re-Imagining DragonLance – Part 2

Welcome to my third post in the series of re-imagining the DragonLance. Presently I am running the old modules from 1984 with the AD&D 1st ed.-rules. While playing them I discovered several things, that need to be fixed, and I also found a hidden story within the modules. With this re-imagining I will attempt to fix some of the flaws, and I will also present the hidden story in the modules.

Of the modules that I have so far played and read, the second module, DL 2 Dragons of Fire, is the most troublesome as large parts of the module are heavily scripted to a level, where it becomes boring for both GM and players.

Basically the module wants the PCs to move from the ruined city of Xak Tsaroth, where DL1 ended, and have them travel through the plains seeing the destruction wrought by the draconians and then arriving at the City of Solace conquered by more draconians. Here the PCs are captured and later saved by the elves, and with some elves they travel to Pax Tharkas (where they would have ended up anyway had they not been rescued) in order to block Pax Tharkas and rescue the slaves.

All this in order to place the PCs in charge of 800 refugees fleeing south, where DL3 begins. During these travels are long descriptions and texts read aloud by the GM telling the players about all the important things the NPCs are doing, and these things are interrupted

The following is established in DL2:

• Lord Verminaard leads an army of draconias and dragons
• Toede Fewmaster serves Lord Verminaard
• Lord Verminaard has taken prisoners to work as slaves
• The elves are fleeing west, since they cannot stop the draconians
• Pax Tharkas was built by elves and dwarves, and with humans it was used against dragons in some ancient war, where Dragonlances were used.
• Also several NPCs are introduced, and they have more plot and character development, than the PCs.

In the re-imagining I want to establish most of those points, but also reveal some more the secrets of re-imagined Krynn, which contains some quite different elements, than the original modules.

So far the following points has been established:

• The New Gods are false, and dark forces are manipulating the priesthood of The New Gods
• Miracles are back, and our heroes are in contact with the true gods of old
• Strange “magics” were abound in the sunken city of Xak Tsaroth, and it was inhabited by draconians and an unknown species called Aghar working as slaves for the draconians
• The third group of emigrants went south past Pax Tharkas, and have not been heard from since.

And we need to establish the following points:

• The elves are leaving travelling west (leaving mankind alone against the draconians)
• Pax Tharkas were built by an alliance of the elves and the mysterious dwarves. Now it is inhabitated by the strange Aghars.
• During a war against the dragons a mysterious, powerful weapon called a “DragonLance” was employed.
• The mysterious, inhuman Lord Verminaard controls dragons and leads the draconian army.
• Fewmaster Toede serves Lord Verminaard
• The PCs are in charge of the refugees from Pax Tharkas, and the option is to go south following the path of the third group of emigrants.
• The lands of the survivors from the catastrophe (the plains people and the people of Haven og Solace) have fallen to the draconian armies.

Following the structure of the original module the first half is about travelling the to dungeon and the second half is exploring the dungeon. The next many DL-modules will follow this pattern. In the first half the PCs first return from Xak Tsaroth to Solace, then they travel south, where they encounter the elves, who tell them, they need to infiltrate Pax Tharkas, and from there the PCs travel to the secret entrance of Pax Tharkas and infiltrate the place from there. They sabotage the gate and then flee with the refugees travelling further south entering the territory of DL3 Dragons of Hope.

The module assumes that the PCs are captured by Fewmaster Toede in Solace, and are rescued by elves later, and that the PCs experience the elves doing a lot of stuff, and they see Laurana kidnapped, and meanwhile Elistan is having a crises of faith laying the foundation for later conversion to a priest of Paladine.

In the center: The PCs

The important thing here is to make the PCs the active party in the module. As of now the NPCs are doing all the important stuff, and in between the players get to roll a few dice and eliminate some random monsters, until we get to the dungeon. Once in the dungeon the players have more influence, but there are still some scripted sequences, that are cause for trouble (for instance the module presumes the PCs will rescue the children from the red dragon by dressing up as women and then lead all the children safely past the sleeping dragon. The reason for doing this is in part because that is what they did in the novel and in part because it is the plan suggested by an NPC. What the players don’t know is that this plan will automatically work, so they should just do it. This also assumes that the PCs sneaking in to save the children are not carrying the Wyrmslayer sword, they just picked up in the previous dungeon segment, as this sword according to its descriptions warns it wielder of dragons nearby by a loud humm, that automatically awakens any dragons, thus the automatic successfully plan encounters the automatic successfully spoiler).

DL2 reimagined – first segment

From Xak Tsaroth to Solace

Not much needs to be changed. The PCs have escaped from the destruction of Xak Tsaroth, and now waits only the journey home to Solace to lay new plans. As the PCs cross the plains of the abandoned people, they notice that the plains have been scourged. Destruction is everywhere, and the villages are in ruins. Everything is a wasteland, and people har been killed. Many have been burned to crisp (from the fire of the red dragons), others have been killed in battle (from claws and huge jaws), and the remainder have been taken away. In this wasteland the PCs encounter a small band of survivors, that tell the dreadful tale of mighty beasts led by a Lord Verminaard, who ordered the beasts to destroy the villages, and his army of hobgoblins commandeered by Toede Fewmaster has taken the survivors as slaves towards the south (where the group of survivors in the olden days fled). The survivors suggest that they should head for Solace to warn the town before it is too late.

This section I want to keep short, so minor encounters have been removed, as they only serve two purposes: introducing a new kind of draconian, and entertaining the players with a few random combats. This section can be stretched to become a struggle for survival, where the PCs and the survivors must traverse the destroyed lands – perhaps chased by a pack of draconians looking for survivors and travellers. This can be a small adventure in itself.

Mostly I want to foreshadow Lord Verminaard, Toede Fewmaster, and the red dragons for later use. I will put an emphasis on descriptions of Verminaard as mysterious foe always hidden behind a mask with great mystical powers and the gift of commanding dragons. Secondly I will remind the Players that the third group of survivors from the olden days went south and were never heard from again. This is naturally more foreshadowing.

If the players want to go south immediately I might choose either to challenge them with an arduous journey with few or no resources and a scourged land, or I might let them catch up a with a slave caravan not far from the land of the elves.

From Solace to the lands of the elves

This part in the original module is storywise interesting, but it is also heavily scripted rendering the players almost passive. Again is emphasis on empowering the players and their characters. In the module the city of Solace have been conquered and mostly destroyed, the people are prisoners and the place is being rebuild as a military camp. Elven spies have infiltrated the place with the help of the smith (as he is to play a major role later in the DL-stories), but they have been found out and all but one killed.

Not so this time.

The PCs encounter patrols of hobgoblins in the vicinity of Solace, and soon the PCs learn (perhaps from hobgoblin prisoners), that Solace have fallen and the people are prisoners of Toede Fewmaster. What are the PCs to do?

Leave it to the players to decide. They might want to slay Toede and liberate the city, or they might want to seek out Lord Verminaard instead, or perhaps they will go to Haven to warn the city of the oncoming army?

(I am assuming the PCs are being heroic, that is the basic premise of the story).

Meanwhile a group of elven spies plans to infiltrate the place. Their plans are to liberate a unit of elven warriors taken prisoners. The warriors were originally bound for Pax Tharkas, but encountered a northbound draconian army, were taken prisoner and brought to Solace for interrogation. The spies were elves who managed to escape and have since been tracking the army. At this point the PCs and the elves meet each other, and they can join forces.

In the city of Solace is also a small group of resistance fighters. They are being led by the black smith – who pretends he is too much of an idiot to be involved in the resistance, and he is the only smith with experience, so the draconians need his craftmanship. From this position he leads the resistance.

The basic situation is now, that the PCs can join forces with the elves and the resistance, and convince them to fight together. The elves want the elven prisoners liberated, and the black smith and his resistance fighters want Solace liberated.

The challenge to the situation is that there is an army of hobgoblins and draconians, and that many locals already have been transported elsewhere as slaves (in fact to Pax Tharkas).

In general I would let the PCs have the chance to unite the two groups in an attempt to rescue the remaining people in Solace and lead them securely away from the draconian and hobgoblin army. If the PCs fail, they are taken prisoners and transported away with the next slave caravan.

If they succeed they must decide if they will attempt to lead the prisoners to Haven (most will object fearing the draconians have already taken the city, others object because they want to find their loved ones, who’s been taken to Pax Tharkas). Alternatively they can find a refuge with the elves leaving the PCs to go to Pax Tharkas to liberate the slaves there (this will also allow the PCs to rescue the plains people). Most likely they will also be on the run from the draconian army.

From here it is fast forward to the land of the elves. Ideally the PCs lead the fugitives from Solace to the land of the elves. However being followed by the draconian army means, that the elves presence has been discovered, and the elven lands are now threatened. In order to divert the draconian forces coming from the north (i.e. from Solace) and soon from the south (Pax Tharkas), the elves need the heroes to go to Pax Tharkas and seal the gate. The elves know of a secret route into Pax Tharkas, so the heroes can either sneak through the Sla-Mori dungeons, or they can catch up with the latest slave caravan and either sneak aboard or be taken prisoners. Meanwhile the fugitives from Solace will be under the elves’ protection, and they will move with the elves towards the west, while the PCs delay the march of the southern draconian army.

(Notice that the prisoners on a slave caravan plot has been more or less abandoned. Now it either is an option the PCs choose to infiltrate Pax Tharkas or the consequences of failing to rescue the population of Solace)

(Note also that most the elven plot has been rewritten. Gone is the kidnapping of Laurana – as it is not about the PCs – and instead the PCs not accidentally becomes the cause of the elves being threatened and need to leave.)

To Pax Tharkas and Beyond

At present the PCs are charged with sealing the gate of Pax Tharkas to delay the southern draconian army and to rescue the slaves (plains people and Solace people, but also Haven people as they discover), so the elves can flee to safety.

This part of the module does not need many changes. Mainly the scripted events should be discarded, and the players given more options on how to seal the gate of Pax Tharkas. Likewise the way to rescue the slaves should be more open-ended and not tied to the story of the two red dragons.

What I would focus on instead is revealing the back story:

At this part most of the information that the players need to learn has already been presented (the elves are leaving, human lands have fallen, Lord Verminaard is a mysterious villain with great powers).

At Pax Tharkas the PCs discover the following:

In the gallery are ancient, defaced paintings of the builders of Pax Tharkas. It is revealed that the fortress was build ages ago (before the catastrophe) by elves and some other, unknown people. The PCs once again meet the strange Aghar-people, and now they learn that the aghar are primitive descendents of the original builders. The original builders, now all gone, are said to have a fabled kingdom to the south, and the aghar tells legends about The Seven Fabled Cities of their distant ancestors, and how they lived in luxury behind sturdy walls, that could even withstand the catastrophe that destroyed Xak Tsaroth (ideally the conclusion is drawn that the southern migrants went for the Seven Fabled Cities, and now the survivors of the two other migrant groups follow their paths as they escape south from Pax Tharkas unable to go north after sealing the fortress).

From other murals and paintings another thing is discovered. The fortress were once under attack from dragons of five colors, and from each color comes a specifik attack (in part it is to introduce the information of the different types of dragons and their breath weapons. Information the players most likely already have, and now their character do too). The fortress however is defended by an unknown order of knights seemingly human, neither elf nor mysterious builders, and they all wield long silvery weapons referred to as “DragonLances”, and these lances sprout death towards the dragons ending the assault on the fortress. (Introducing the idea of the dragonlance but not how it works. Right now it is a magical artefact that kills dragons).

Thus ends the second module. The PCs are leading the slaves from Pax Tharkas towards the south towards the Seven Fabled Cities of the Aghar’s ancestors and on the path of the lost migrant group. Now this might feel a little bit like Battlestar Galactica, and that is okay.

Next up is the third module, and this is where we really dive into the hidden story in the DragonLance-modules.

Re-Imagining DragonLance – part 1

In this series I presenting a re-imagination of the old DragonLance-modules. I am replaying them presently (well into DL3 Dragons of Hope right now), and they just don’t hold up. There are many good ideas in them, but playing them as written is not easy, for as many good ideas there are flaws.

DL0: Dragons of Prologue

In my previous post I argued for the production of a prologue-module to begin the campaign.

Before play

The players are given the following information before start:

• No one has seen a dragon for a thousand years. To people they are imaginary creatures of legend.
• Three hundred years ago the world died as old gods punished the people of Krynn with a rain of fire. Then the gods departed.
• The survivors from the civilization of Xak Tsaroth were the Abandoned and they fled to the plains (naming them thus the Abassania). From here left three migrations. Two went east and settled in two different places (at Solace and at Haven), the third went south and disappeared. The remainders became the three Que-tribes.
• Among the known humanoid races are humans and kendar (player character races), and goblins, hobgoblins and the elusive elves and some speak of a forgotten people, the dwarves.
• Now people worship The New Gods, and the center of worship is Haven.

During play

During module DL0 Dragons of Prologue the characters discover the following:

• A dark force is corrupting the priesthood of Haven.
• The new gods are false, and any miracles are mere tricks and illusions.
• The Song of the Blue Crystal Staff – a force of goodness has guided the PCs to an ancient statue of an unknown woman carrying a Blue Crystal Staff. The staff conveyed true miraculous powers, and the PCs were required to seek out legendary Xak Tsaroth to pick up ancient tablets of power.

Thus we begin DL1 Dragons Despair.

Dragons of Despair

Right now the PCs are in the middle of the story. Instead of NPCs doing the important stuff or important decisions being made before play, it has become an active part of the play.

In DL1 the PCs travel to Xak Tsaroth from Haven, and once at Xak Tsaroth they discover that evil forces has invaded the place and now guards the tablets of power.

The module: Overview

The basic structure remains unchanged: The PCs travel with the Blue Crystal Staff to Xak Tsaroth, navigate the sunken city and confront the dragon in order to regain the tablets. During the travel the PCs are harassed by Lord Toede and his hobgoblins and they encounter the first draconians and they meet the people of the plains

The Module: First Act

The PCs travel from Haven to Solace. During the journey they travel around the forest – as it is a dark and foreboding place inhabited by the malign spirits of the forest – and as they travel, they meet travellers talking about a band of hobgoblins led by the deformed Lord Toede (whom the travellers assume to be a hobgoblin due to his deformities). This is naturally foreshadowing the next part, where the PCs are being chased by the hobgoblins, until the hobgoblins are defeated or the heroes take refuge in the forest. Here a white stag guides them through the forest to just a few kilometers from Solace. Travelling the last part the heroes encounter hooded travellers asking about a Blue Crystal Staff. This is the classic first encounter with draconians, but this time the PCs are perhaps cautious and avoids answering and thus the draconians remain hidden. Otherwise it is another combat.

In the town of Solace the heroes can plan the next step of their journey, crossing the plains, and while they are in town, they must stay out of sight from the hooded travellers asking for them (thus we steal a scene from LotR).

The Module: Second Act

Crossing the plains is easy. The main purpose is to introduce the people of the plains, and while visiting them, the PCs are told the story of the aftermath from the plains people’s point of view about how they chose to remain of the plains of the abandoned rather than leave as three other groups – those that went to Haven and Solace, and those that went south never to be heard from again (Yes, more foreshadowing).

The plains people also claim to be morally superior for leaving a more modest life, as they purposefully are more primitive than the people of Haven and Solace (yes, this too is foreshadowing in some sense).

After the plains the heroes reach the remnants of a huge road that disappears out on the plains, but leads the heroes east through the mountains the high cliffs next to The New Sea, and from here, the heroes travel to the ruins of Xak Tsaroth.

The Module: Third Act

Now we enter dungeon-territory. The first part is the surface, where the remains of Xak Tsaroth are a muddy swamp.

Here the heroes encounter more draconians, and they discover a draconian temple, where they worship an alien god.

From a huge well a black dragon appears, and it briefly attacks the PCs, when the Blue Crystal Staff reveals more of its powers. The staff counters the acid blast from the dragon, and the monster retreats, when it sees the power of the staff.

Valiantly the heroes follows the dragon by entering a temple.

Inside they encounter statues for forgotten gods. As with the draconians’ statue, these are slightly alien. These gods are not quite human.

As with the original module they find an entrance to an underground city. The original Xak Tsaroth, the part that was swallowed up by the ground rather than the sea. Here they encounter more draconians and a weird race of slave people calling themselves the Aghar, who claims to be the ancestors of the original inhabitants of the city.

This statement is undermined by the remnants, that the heroes encounter. Here and there are flickering, bluish ghosts mindlessly repeating actions throughout the centuries. Some can be interacted with, and they can either answer simple questions about the city from before the destruction, but they are simple-minded and usually only talk about certain subjects or long forgotten products. Others guard certain buildings and can attack with shocking grasps.

Among other things they discover a library, where a ghostly librarian can make the books talk and display pictures revealing parts of the past.

Deepest down the heroes track down the dragon and its lair. They battle the dragon, and once more the Blue Crystal Staff counters the mighty powers of the dragon. The mighty battle causes the dragons lair to become unstable, and as it lies dying and the heroes retrieve the platinum tables of power, the cavern begins to collapse, and the heroes must flee, as the remnants of Xak Tsaroth is finally destroyed both underground and on the top. No traces are left, and the PCs are left with no evidence besides the metal discs (and in the chaos the staff has disappeared). The metal discs can magically display text telling the stories of the gods, and once more how to worship them in order to gain divine powers.

Discoveries in DL1

The PCs has now discovered the following:

• Xak Tsaroth was a strange and fabulous city using arcane techniques, that are now lost and seems magical.
• The dark forces are evil dragons and their draconian troops
• That there are the unknown and strange Aghar-people of Xak Tsaroth
• Flickering, bluish ghosts haunts the remnants of Xak Tsaroth
• The Platinum Tables of Power enables the chosen of the old gods to communicate with them, and they grant the chosen divine powers.
• The old gods look almost human

That was DL1. Next up is DL2.

Re-imagining DragonLance – DL0 The prologue

Part 1

So it became time re-making DragonLance. Initially my plan is to make one post for each module, and I intend to deal with DL1-6. The basic premise of the remake is, that the liberties that Battlestar Galatica Re-imagined took, I can take, and that material from the novels or campaign supplements will generally not be employed. The purpose is to uncover the story, that lies hidden in the DL-material.

Likewise I will also part for part reveal the new backstory for the campaign.

Addendum: My intention was initially to do a post on each of the modules, but as I began working with DL1 I realized, that a lot needed to be done, so this post will mostly deal with preparing the campaign and the prologue. In a sense I am adding a DL0-module to the series.

The players’ role

One of the major issues with DL is that, the NPCs get all the important plot- and character-developments leaving the PCs to march through dungeons killing monsters activating small storylets, where the players listen passively to more NPCs doing things.

This cannot do. So the players must have a considerably more central role, if not the central role.

The Characters

The original modules suggests that the players can use their own characters, and that these have arrived near the beginning of the module for some reason, perhaps arriving from another world, but this is kept vague, and leaves quite a few questions unanswered (for instance what about druids?), and the module recommends, that the pre-generated PCs based on the novels characters are used. Yet the backstory for the characters’ unique position – The new priesthood worships false gods and we are going to find the true gods – is left undeveloped, until it is described in a short story in DL5. DL5 is unlike the rest of the DL-books not a module but background material.

So new characters are needed, but before we get to create new characters, let’s have a look at the first part of the story.

In need of a Prologue

If the story is to begin the same place more or less as the original module, we miss out on a lot of exciting things:

Riverwind has found the Blue Crystal Staff, and he and Goldmoon has been teleported far away from their home village.

(for some reason Riverwind journeys to Xak Tsaroth and picks up the staff, then returns to his home village, and with Goldmoon he is teleported away to somewhere else, and just before the PCs encounter Riverwind and Goldmoon, they have been assaulted by hobgoblins looking for a blue staff, and then with Riverwind and Goldmoon they go back to Xak Tsaroth with the staff. Convoluted and confusing, and apparently they need to do it, in order to pick up the platinum tablets of the good gods, that are being guarded by a dragon – but why are the tablets here, why this confusing stuff with the Blue Staff etc.? This can be kept more simple and straightforward by having the PCs journey out to find the Blue Staff, that will point them towards the Platinum Discs. The Blue Staff can be introduced through visions, that becomes available, once you realize that the new gods are false.)

Before that Lord Verminard has begun influencing the council of (false) priests in Haven, and Elistan from this council has begun doubting his (false) faith (so that he will convert to worshipping Paladine due to events in DL2 and DL3, where we encounter him).

Elsewhere the main characters have realised that the priests worships false gods, and they have decided to go find the true gods. During these travels one member of the group is led astray (Kitiara).

In other places the armies of the Dragonlords have begun marching and the fortress Pax Tharkas has fallen. In the modules the elves claims that betrayal has played a part in the fall of the fortress, however how and who etc. is not covered the module (DL2).

Some of these elements will enter the DragonLance DL0 Prologue.

What stays in the GMs notes did not happen

One of my rules for scenario design is, that anything that stays in the DMs notes didn’t happen. With the exception of the GM the shared experience of the roleplaying is what happens between the participants, and if there are secrets in the GM-notes that stays there, it is simply not a part of what happened. Assuring the players, that it is there in the GM-notes changes nothing, it is a bit like cutting an important scene from a movie and then assuring the audience, that the scene exists – it still is not a part of the viewing experience.

Some of the worst offenders, that I have read are the Planescape Campaigns (Dead Gods, Modron March, Faction War), that no matter how interesting they might have been, contains huge amounts of information, that are limited to the GM’s eyes and keeps the whole purpose of the campaigns secret for the players, and no matter how cosmic, grand and epic the plots are, if they are hidden for the players, they simply are not part of the play-experience, and then it doesn’t matter how cool they are.

The DragonLance-modules and setting-material (DL5) contains plenty of small references, that are hidden from for the players and sometimes even the DM. Especially if you don’t have the novels fresh in memory: Did you know, that Lord Verminaard has telepathic powers, which he uses to manipulate various NPCs – and if you knew, can you give the names of the manipulated NPCs and Eben does not count.

These elements reveal that a lot of the story has begun long before the first module begins, and that the all the exciting things happened to the PCs, while they were NPCs. That won’t do for this project, so before the first module can be played, a preceding story needs to be played, and for that we need characters, and new ones because I want the players to create the characters, who will become the heroes of the story.

Creating New Characters

Okay, here goes.

This time the players get to make their own characters, and they will be imbedded in the campaign, so they become the main characters instead of the pre-generated.

The players can choose the following races:

• Human
• Kendar

And the following classes:

• Fighter/Ranger (non-spell casting)
• Rogue/Bard
• Wizard
• Priest of the New Gods (who necessarily does not have any spell casting powers)

Backstory

After the days of the cataclysm, when the gods destroyed the world, the survivors were abandoned by the gods. The survivors – or the Abandoned – were left on the great plains, that since were named Abanasinia from these ordeals. From these survivors three migrations took place, while the remaining stayed back. The staybacks became the descendants of the Que-people, who are divided into three main groups (Que-Shu, Que-Kiri and Que-Teh), and they shun civilised society (believing this to be the cause of the gods’ anger). Of the three migrations only two are known. The third went south and has never been heard from. The first migration settled in the forests and their new home became known as Solace – as this is what they found in the forests, and the second migration settled on the far side of the elven lands in a place named Haven, as this is what they found.

Hence there are three human societies to choose from, when making characters: The Que-tribes of Abanasinia, the people of Solace and the people of Haven. Kendars do not have a homeland, but are found wherever humans are.

Dwarves, gnomes and elves are not an option for reasons to be revealed.

The first module: DL0

This module will present the players for the setting, introduce the characters and cover elements, that were hidden away in GM notes, setting material and short stories.

In this module we learn the following:

• Dark powers are manipulating the priests of Haven
• The new gods are false
• The Song of the Blue Staff

The premise is the following: Our heroes becomes involved in the intrigues in Haven, where they meet Elistan, a priest of the New Gods, and they discover that a dark force is manipulating the priesthood of Haven thus weakening human society.

As a part of this realization the PCs soon discover, that the new gods are false, and that any miracles performed by the priests of the new gods are mere tricks.

Once this is realized, they receive a vision, that leads them to an ancient statue of an unknown woman (the statue might be hidden in a dungeon if a dungeon crawl is needed). In her possession is a Blue Crystal Staff with miraculous powers. From here the PCs are charged to go to Xak Tsaroth to recover the Platinum Discs.

Journeying towards Xak Tsaroth they begin to encounter the spies of the Dragonlords and people looking for a blue crystal staff forcing our heroes to stay out of sight.

Here we enter DL1.

Now the backstory (the gods are false),  the hidden elements (elsewhere Lord Verminaard were corrupting the priests of New Haven) and more backstory (picking up the Blue Staff) becomes active parts of the game, rather than things happening out of sight. There are however several mysteries, that I have not touched upon yet, but in my following posts I will reveal the new background for DragonLance.

I have not gone into the details of DL0 (how does the PCs discover the dark force corrupting the priesthood etc.), as these details are easy to handle, once one starts writing the scenario. I want to focus on the larger elements of the DragonLance Campaign.

Re-imagining DragonLance – part 0

So I have been playing DL1 Dragons of Despair and DL2 Dragons of Flame (publ. 1984) with AD&D 1st ed-rules, and between the two modules we implemented the DragonLance Campaign Setting Guide (1987).

Now I want to do a re-imagining of these old modules. If it can be done for TV-shows, then it can be done for roleplaying.

The good thing about DL1 was the okay dungeon-section being the marshy Xak Tsaroth and the awesome dungeon of the sunken, subterranean Xak Tsaroth. The bad things were the beginning of the scenario, which did not make much sense and was not very interesting.

Then came DL2, which was intensely boring for the first part, where I kept “telling” and “telling” and “telling” all these so-called exciting story-ish things, where NPCs did all the talking and the action, and it was once in a while interrupted by a brief combat-sequence, where the players got to do things. Soon we began skipping both descriptions and combats simply to get to a part of the module, where the events does not consists of NPCs doing and acting. That brought us to the dungeon of Sla-Mori and then to the fortress of Pax Tharkas. Here things got somewhat okay.

After that I began reading through the next modules to get an idea of what was happening, so after DL3, DL4 and DL6 – and the sourcebook DL5. Now that I have gotten to know the DL-modules, the contours of an interesting story is appearing to me. Just as Battlestar Galactica went through quite a change with the new series a few years back, so do I wish to present a new interpretation of the DL-modules.

In the next few posts I will cover each of the modules from DL1 to DL6. But before doing so, I will comment a bit on the material in the modules.

Behind the curtain

There is a lot of back story hidden in small references around the modules – and some seem even to be hidden in the private notes of the designers. In the back story of the NPC Elistan in DL5 – though the character is introduced in DL2 and plays a major role in DL3 and partly in DL4 – we learn of his struggles in Haven and the intrigues involving the villain Lord Verminaard, and this is also the section, where we learn a lot about Lord Verminaard, and this is mentioned no where in the description of Lord Verminaard himself.

In several places you get the feeling, that you as the GM only knows slightly more than the players, and that there is even more going on, that they (the designers) will hardly tell you about, but still assume is a vital part of what is going on. It worked for Tolkien, but he had a whole appendix to put these things into, the designers … well, they kinda had an appendix, they just did not use it very well.

It needs a rewrite

In several places it seems like new ideas were developed, which would actually ret-con earlier information, however as the modules we continuously being published, there was not any opportunity to go back and revise. In other places a clear knowledge of the books seems to be important, simply because the scenario neglects to tell us (both DM and players), what is going on. For instance in DL6 an NPC suddenly states, that the Orb is important and must be retrieved, though the Orb has never been introduced (it is described in the magic item-section of the module, but this section only reveals what the GM knows about it, not what is known by NPCs).

All the NPCs

The desire to tell an epic story has thrust the story into the hands of the NPCs leaving the players as bystanders, and this both wastes the setting and epic story, it is also boring. This basic flaw I generally attribute to the early age these modules were published in (being 1984), where the designers simply lacked the necessary tools to create this kind of product, and it ought to be possible to do it better by now.

So next up begins the science fantasy of DragonLance re-imagined.

My Next D&D-generation

Hurray, another edition is on its way.

Oh no, another edition is on its way.

And now everybody is rushing off to tell how a new edition war is going to break out, and they are telling us how it saddens them, and that they are not part of the war.

Then there are those who tells us, what the publishers should do, and some who present their own visions of, what the next should present. And that is what I want to do.

The various editions that I play

Two of my campaign-groups play by the D&D-rules. One uses what we usually call 3.4, since it began as a 3.0 and more or less upgraded to 3.5. My other group began with the 4th ed.-rules, then went on to D&D BECMI and now to AD&D 1st ed. Once we played 1st ed. for a while, we intend to shift to AD&D 2nd and from there on we have not really decided what to do. Perhaps 5th ed is around then?

My D&D

Having tried the many versions – besides all the other stuff, that I play (for instance my Delta Green-campaign, various indie-games (most recently Trollbabe) and Scandinavian Freeform – I have gathered an image of the D&D I like and want to play.

It is not about combat

It took forever to play through the dungeons in the good old Basic-modules (B4, B6, B9) using 4th ed.rules, whereas we could go through a wizards castle/tower in two sessions at Companion level using D&D BECMI and we handled the ruins of Xak Tsaroth and the sunken city in Xak Tsaroth in two sessions playing low-level AD&D 1st ed. DragonLance-modules.

The whole element of combat heavy roleplaying and encounterbased designs is not the D&D I want. Besides it being very long combats – and I have plenty of board games for that – very little playing roles, exploring, plot development or anything else happens. It does not matter if it is 4th ed or 3.5 ed, both fails with their focus on establishing encounters, much as Pathfinder fails me. We spend several sessions playing module B4 The Lost City just covering the first few levels (and they are not large) was tiresome.

Give me quick rules for combat, let them be simple and abstract, let combat be brief for the D&D I play is not about combat, and encounter-based designs to D&D into nothing but combat. Being able to handle multiple combats in one session is great and it changes to tone and the style of the game in ways, that I like.

It is the roles, the weirdness, the exploration

Once we are outside combat, there are plenty of opportunities to play roles, to have the players engage each others’ characters and various NPCs, and that is plenty of fun and is often the focus of my campaigns.

Secondly there is the weirdness. The further back I go, the weirder the modules get. There is some great stuff in the late eighties and nineties settings (Dark Sun (1st ed), Spelljammer, PlaneScape (pre-revolution), Ravenloft (Gothic Horror-period), Al-Qadim and Mystara (pre-AD&D-period)), and though many of the later modules are not necessarily great to play, they have plenty of strange ideas to steal and use. The same applies to the older modules from the early period (pre-1987 – yes, I am applying a very broad early period here), that contains interesting, strange and weird things. There is something interesting and wonderfully different to the early D&D-materials, that seem to use ideas and concepts from early weird fiction, sword & sorcery, (Lovecraftian) horror and science fiction, which creates an entirely different vibe than modern fantasy novels and roleplaying does. I do understand many old schoolers interest in recreating older D&D-experiences.

This naturally brings me to the exploration-part. This third element is the pleasure of exploring a fictional universe. Sometimes it is just drawing maps and navigating a dungeon, but this is usually only a minor component, and rather it is about strange ruins, long-lost cultures and fallen civilizations, and the remnants they left, and the challenges this leaves us. The mysterious ruins inhabited by headhunters on the Forbidden Plateau on The Isle of Dread (module X1) or the weird castle, where the d’Ambrevilles reside (module X2 Castle Amber) or the wizards tower hidden beneath a rock in which an elven temple has been built (B6 Rahasia). Naturally not every module was a success (X3 Curse of Xanathon for instance was boring).

The D&D-experience

Looking back at D&D and having played several versions these last years I have come to the realization, that even though detailed combats filled with complex actions and exciting choices seems so tempting, and yet it so very easily becomes a drag. Rules mastery becomes important for the players, prep-time increases for me, and we spend a lot of time with combat, when I play 3,5 and 4th ed. It becomes about the encounter, i.e. about combat, and that was not really the appeal of playing D&D. I don’t mind combat, but I would rather have many quick combats in one session, than one or two that makes most of the time.