Negative Space: Dungeons & Dragons
- Ability score training
- At each level increase, a player can choose one ability to try to increase.
- AD&D texts
- Stuff for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons
- Adults, age ten and up
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Even the Basic D&D game made it clear that this was a game for adults, no matter how young.
- Another path for the cleric
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Rather than clerics as prophets, what about clerics as men of science and faith?
- Appendix N Survey
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Jeffro at Jeffro’s Space Gaming Blog read everything on Appendix N, partly to see what influences it might have had on D&D.
- Beneath the Isle of Dread
- TSR’s module X1, The Isle of Dread has some caverns on level three unmapped, with the note “so the DM can create his or her own special encounter areas”. Well, okay. Edible dinosaur hardtack equals special.
- Changing Magic
- Many times, the “outer trappings” of a game’s magic system is in fact the rules about how magic works.
- Classical magic
- An older form of magic for worlds with “mnemonic” magic systems.
- Critical (fantasy) race theory
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It isn’t racist to address D&D characters by their race. D&D character races are things the character can do. It is racist to imply that real world races are as inferior and superior as fantasy races. Woke racism is still racism.
- Do You Believe in the Ways of Magic?
- Varying magic according to the culture that uses it.
- Dragon Dreams
- TSR’s Concordance of Arcane Space took Physics and threw it out the window. This article kicks Physics right out of town with a stern warning never to set foot in these here parts again.
- The Dungeon Master’s Adventure Log
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The DM’s Adventure Log was probably a very useful tool back in the day. It also had some interesting features, such as armor and weapon images and new, or at least obscure, rules.
- Esoteric examples of magic
- Examples of odd systems of magic in the World of Highland.
- Evil Quest for the Gem of Kerouac
- I wrote this adventure because all of the characters had turned evil and I had no adventures that would entice them. So I wrote a quest adventure using evil instigators.
- Fading Notes for the World of Highland
- The World of Highland, consisting mostly of modifications for AD&D and DragonQuest.
- The great falling damage debate of 1983-84
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There are some systems that get singled out, especially in mid-school games, for special treatment. The two canonical examples are falling damage and grappling.
- The Great Falling War, Revisited
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Delta’s D&D Hotspot revisits the falling wars, and provides a surprising bit of information about the lethality of falling.
- In Defense of the One-Minute Round
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The six-second combat round de-emphasizes role-playing and problem solving in favor of brute force and pre-defined from-the-sheet actions.
- Incident at Thunder Ridge
- A DragonQuest adventure, converted haphazardly to AD&D 2e, but most of the DQ still shows through.
- The Isle of Mordol
- An island a thousand miles from Specularum, filled with monsters and superstitious townfolk.
- The Last Tractor? Beneath the Isle of Dread
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I found one more tractor feed adventure, this one hidden away inside of D&D Expert Module X1, The Isle of Dread.
- Leering pumpkins
- On Hallowe’en, pumpkins are placed outside the home to protect the home from evil spirits. Some of these pumpkins do their job too well.
- Mista
- An adventure in which the characters travel to another dimension, gain superpowers, and… I’m not really sure what was supposed to come next.
- Mysterious Lights of Witch Mountain
- Aliens and Adventurers are a natural fit, judging from Carcosa, Barrier Peaks, and a goodly amount of Dave Arneson. Note that the title is the only thing this adventure has in common with Alexander Key’s book. (Which I loved as a kid; I never saw the movie, and judging from Wikipedia’s description of it I doubt I ever will.)
- North Texas RPG Con 2016
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NTRPG Con is a relatively small gaming-only convention focused on old-school games.
- Nothing will be restrained from them, which they imagine to do
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Figuring out stuff from “the times before” is hard to do.
- Object Oriented
- Some magic is invested in an object that makes up part of the spell or even is the spell.
- Old School Cool
- Since I first made Gods & Monsters public over ten years ago, there’s been a groundswell of support for “old-school” D&D games. Since Gods & Monsters is compatible with adventures for original D&D and AD&D, it’s also compatible with adventures for most of these new games.
- On a Cult of Gygax
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The extent and even existence of a “Cult of Gygax” is greatly exaggerated, to the point where even things that directly contradict the theory are interpreted as supporting it. The cult of Gygax is a self-perpetuating myth.
- Optional Rule for Classical Magic and Psionics
- Using the “Classical Magic” system with campaigns that include psionic abilities.
- The Passion of the Reader
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At the last minute before the awards banquet I broke down and bought two books from the AD&D reading list. I got them from Marty Massoglia who also raved about LosCon, a Thanksgiving weekend con up in Los Angeles, right by LAX. If you’re interested, note that the price goes up after October 31.
- The Petrified Forest
- The entire forest has turned to stone—and people seem to randomly turn to stone, too! Can you re-open the valley and make the village of Ashton profitable again?
- Rainbow City
- Set in “the badlands”, this adventure even included Monster Manual II creatures, placing it firmly in my AD&D college days.
- Role-Playing Defense
- Information about anti-gaming organizations and people, as well as a little about the benefits of gaming.
- Rolling random levels across a range of experience points in AD&D
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I’m going to North Texas again, and this time I’m going to run an AD&D game for levels 4-6. How can I roll a random number of experience points that will only produce characters of level 4, 5, or 6 regardless of class?
- Space, the Final Drag Strip
- How long does it take to get from planet to planet under animal power?
- The Speed of Magic
- Just how fast do spells fly?
- SpellSurfing in WildSpace
- Various spells let wizards “surf” from planet to planet.
- Surprise and initiative in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons
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For the North Texas Role-Playing Game Convention’s tenth anniversary, I ran an AD&D game; the hardest part was re-figuring out how initiative and surprise work.
- Swordhawk Rules (125.9 KB)
- Fantasy gaming in the Dungeons and Dragons tradition.
- Three OGLs walk into a bar: The Return of Gruumsh
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It has never been a good idea to use the OGL. That’s become obvious to a lot more people over the last several weeks.
- Three Orcs Walk Into a Bar
- Three orcs walk into a bar to have a discussion about copyright and trademark law.
- The Three Orientations of Magic
- Mixing and matching the categories that magic falls into is one way of coming up with different ways of magic.
- Tractor Feed Adventures
- Old adventures, not worth converting to Gods & Monsters. I haven’t played these since the eighties.
- Was table-top gaming inevitable?
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Gods & Monsters rolls an 18 for age today, pioneer game writer Greg Stafford died two weeks ago, and stories about the early days of gaming has me wondering, was the discovery of table-top gaming a perfect storm, or was it inevitable?
- Watches in Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition
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Watches are actually a bit difficult in D&D 5e due to the sleep/rest rules. Watches with multiple people on each watch, for twice the eyes on target, are even more difficult.
- Wood golems
- Tall, gaunt, husks of dead trees, become shadowy guards of weird places.
More Information
- Falling Revisited
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“The Dragon #88 (August 1984) had an infamous set of articles on the physics of falling damage. Some fans of the game maintain that this investigation of math and physics is unnecessary to a fantasy game. However, I’m on the other side of this argument; if there must be some base rule for a mundane activity like falling, then I see no reason not to “dial it in” correctly. ”
- The Isle of Dread• (adventure)
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This “special introductory wilderness module” came with the D&D Expert boxed set. The Expert set introduced wilderness adventures, and The Isle of Dread showed how to design and run one. (David Cook and Tom Moldvay)
- Dragon Magazine 57• (magazine)
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This was the first issue of Dragon Magazine I’d ever seen. And it’s the best cover Dragon ever had combined with one of the best adventures Dragon ever had: The Wandering Trees. And the articles are among the classics: Modern monsters, History of the Shield. This issue, for me, set the bar for every gaming magazine since.
- Dragonsfoot AD&D adventure modules
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These AD&D adventures should be easily usable with Gods & Monsters, though you may wish to pre-write some flavor text for the truly old-school modules. Don’t miss their original D&D modules as well.
