Wizards & Warriors ALPHA
Free PDF

It’s the 22 page player’s section and still needs some work. But a number of readers have expressed interest in this project and we’ve got a rough version of the player’s half ready, so here it is. Check it out if interested and, by all means, give us some feedback.

This product is not intended for any sort of professional or money-making publication, and so there is currently no art other than the frontpiece currently serving as the “cover” of the coverless Alpha PDF. I doubt there will be any art in the “finished” product.

Something else that is “missing” from this are how-to-play tips, in-depth descriptions of game concepts, and detailed examples of gameplay. As this is not intended for sale or for non-gamers to pick up on their own and learn, none of that sort of thing is included. It’s D&D with a few different classes and variant rules; no reason to start off explaining what a role-playing game is or give too many details about what armor class represents or how hit points work. The mechanical crunch is defined in simple, easy-to-tweak terms. And that’s about it.

Be aware that this has undergone nothing resembling playtesting in its current form. Many of the rules are our house rules from Labyrinth Lord and have been used for a while, but the chracter classes are brand new and untried. I think we’ve got a great start here, but no doubt some tweaking will be required along the way.

I can’t say when the GM section is going to be ready. I’d been thinking we were mostly done with monsters but upon looking again I see we’ve got quite a ways to go. And magic items have not even been started yet. Also, I’m not exactly sure what else is going to go into the GM section. I want a 48-page book when we’re done, so we’ll have to see how much room is left.

So check it out if interested, and let me know what you think. We like what we’ve got so far, but we also realize that we’re probably overlooking some obvious issues and we know that it can be improved.

What do people do about helmets?

1981 B/X D&D doesn’t seem to say anything about helmets. Labyrinth Lord (based on B/X) has a helmet in the equipment list but no rules for effects, though the Advanced Edition Companion uses the AD&D rule (below).

The AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide, of course, includes this:

Helmets:
It is assumed that an appropriate type of head armoring will be added to the suit of armor in order to allow uniform protection of the wearer. Wearing of a “great helm” adds the appropriate weight and restricts vision to the front 60″ only, but it gives the head AC 1. If a helmet is not worn, 1 blow in 6 will strike at the AC 10 head, unless the opponent is intelligent, in which case 1 blow in 2 will be aimed at the AC 10 head (d6, 1-3 = head blow).

To be honest, I’ve never really used this rule. I’ve been tempted from time to time to do so, maybe by just including a 6d roll along with every d20 to-hit roll, but have never gone ahead with it. I’ve also thought about the idea of a natural ’20′ indicating a “head shot” that causes double damage to those wearing helmets and triple damage to those without. Or maybe normal damage if wearing a helmet and double damage to those without.

Philotomy writes:

Wearing a suit of armor (i.e. doesn’t include “shield only”) without a helmet grants attackers a +1 bonus to the attack roll. (I followed the OD&D practice where an armor bonus/penalty applies to the enemy’s attack roll rather than to the PC’s armor class.)

This effectively grants an AC penalty to those wearing armor but no helmet and fits in with the AD&D view that “it is assumed that an appropriate type of head armoring will be added to the suit of armor.”

Generally, I’ve ruled that helmets don’t make any difference unless something specific comes up and I rule otherwise. Rocks raining down from above may cause 1d4 damage to those without helmets but only 1 damage to those with, for instance. Or maybe someone wearing a visored helmet gets a bonus when trying to avoid a medusa’s gaze. But I’ve never had any formal rules. Only on-the-spot rulings.

How do others handle helmets?

We considered using both INT and WIS as key components of our wizard classes, such as using one to determine success rates and chances of learning spells and the other to determine bonus spells. But that made the wizard class too dependent on two ability scores, and we’re trying to do a bit to untie the playability of a character from the scores rolled up during creation. So we rolled it all into INT. Wizards must have an intelligence score of 11 or more. Others must be warriors, which have no minimum requirements.

This leaves us with 3d6 in order for five ability scores, each of which can be modified based upon the color the player chooses for the PC.

This will likely be heresy for a great many.

Here is what it looks like it’s going to be:

• 48-page letter-size book
• Character levels 1 through 8
• Human PCs only
• 5 wizard classes
• 5 warrior classes
• Roll to advance
• Simplified monster write-ups

We’re thinking of the highly original name “Wizards & Warriors” because those are the two classes to choose from, with each having 5 colorized sub-classes. The mechanics of the game are going to be pretty much B/X D&D. The monster selection is going to be most of the AD&D list redone with combined single attacks and written in the OD&D matrix style. Other various tweaks and houserules that we’ve been using and like.

It is NOT going to be a Magic: The Roleplaying Game at all, rather more like D&D with magic and alignment loosely based on the five color scheme used in Magic: The Gathering.

SmallRoller main screen

You get all sorts of options, including mixing dice types in the ‘options’ menu. I know that there are lot of dice rollers out there, but I haven’t tried many and this does what I need and is a standalone program versus something I need to be online to use.

What I like is the easy ability to display the probability curve of whatever you want:

SmallRoller Probability Curve

It appears to be an older program that hasn’t been updated since 2005, but I think it does everything I need for analyzing various scenarios. If I was going to use something in a game, I’d probably look at one that was a little quicker to use.

What other dice rolling programs do people like?

A few months back in a post on dungeon density I tossed up an example map I created using the geomorphs:

Sepia Test Dungeon from Geomorphs

My plan is to put together a dungeon (maybe two or three levels) using the geomorphs and stock it straight from the Monster & Treasure Assortment. Hopefully, not only will this be a lot of fun to play through but it will give a little insight into how the game was expected to be played back in the day.

If you haven’t checked out the posts at Grognardia and Delta’s, I encourage you to go do so.

UPDATE: He’s now added a Warriors of Mars write-up, something that I think should fit in neatly with the OD&D lineup.

At one point I had plans to do a sword-and-planet variation on Basic D&D, but that was before I became aware of the scope of the retro-clone scene and how much great stuff is out there already and in the works.

It uses geomorphs based on those by Dyson Logos, encounters from your choice of Moldvay Basic or Moldvay/Cook/Marsh B/X, and dressing from AD&D’s DMG.

Simply incredible.

Now, I’ll admit that I’m not sure how much I’ll actually use this. The repetitive nature of large geomorph-based dungeons is off-putting (at least to me). But the scale of the thing and fun of scrolling through quick random megadungeons is mind-boggling.

I dare you to not try whipping up a couple just for fun.

1e AD&D Hardback Books

The Unearthed Arcana is a little out of place, as not only did it not join the others until late in the game, so to speak, but we didn’t actually use it all that much even after it did. And the Deities & Demigods cyclopedia was not used a whole lot, either, despite the fact that we had it for a long time.

Most of these books were mine. The Player’s Handbook was “jointly owned.” The Fiend Folio belonged to my brother. I don’t recall the exact details, but at some point I traded most of my Traveller stuff to my brother for his share of the Players Handbook and some other stuff (or maybe cash). Later, as 2nd Edition was coming out, I traded all of these to him and got my Traveller stuff back.

The big six

As I’m sure is the case with others and their books, each of these has a bit of story (or several stories) that go with it.

The Players Handbook is the “new art” version because we had been borrowing a friend’s PHB for a long time. Instead of buying a PHB like I planned one day, I grabbed the DMG instead. By the time we saved our pennies and bought a new PHB, the new cover was out. Though at first we liked the new artwork, it didn’t take me long to wish for the original.

Our Dungeon Masters Guide, like I mentioned, was bought one day when I was supposed to buying a Players Handbook so we could give back the borrowed one. The DMG was a few dollars more ($15 instead of $12, if I remember right) but I bought it after seeing all the wonderful stuff inside. Up until that point we had been playing with the PHB only. This book saw a lot of hard use and looks it, but it still works great.

This Monster Manual was bought when I and a friend (the one we were borrowing the PHB from) made a spur-of-the-moment decision to drive an hour to the nearest game store and buy it. Except, when we got there, the store had just closed for the day. It was next to a mall and I knew that a toy store also carried D&D stuff, so we ran in only to see the portcullis closing on that store as well. My friend talked the manager into getting us a copy of the MM and sliding it under the gate, and we slipped him the cash.

The Fiend Folio was bought by my brother, maybe even before we got the Monster Manual. Though we had the regular monster stats in the back of the DMG, I didn’t know too much about the FF monsters. For many months he guarded it like a spellbook in an attempt to keep the new monsters a secret from me. I seem to recall whole adventures where I ran into nothing but unfamiliar FF monsters. In the days when we lived an hour from the nearest store that carried D&D and no internet, you could get away with moves like that.

I bought Deities & Demigods with the store credit I got when I returned Star Frontiers. I remember that the store manager was not happy that I was returning the game (in perfect condition except that I had punched the counters) but after Traveller I was terribly disappointed in it. So we got Deities & Demigods, which I was also pretty disappointed in once the novelty of statting up gods and goddesses wore off. Also, my brother liked Star Frontiers and turned around and bought his own set not much later.

The Monster Manual II was also a bit of a disappointment, though we did use a lot of the monsters quite often over the years. I already owned The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth module, so a lot of the monsters in MM2 were not new to me. I think my favorite single thing about the book was the d8+d12 random encounter table method it introduced. That remains my favorite.

Looking through the books, seeing the familiar pencil marks, tears, and stains was quite a trip down memory lane. And playing a game with my brother, the first time we had played an RPG together since 1989 or 1990, was a blast. The fact that my son played, too, was icing on the cake.

AD&D Game: A good time was had by all.

In the news today is the story about finding the wreck of one of the ships sent out to find the Franklin expedition, the HMS Investigator. While searching for the lost ships caught in the ice, the Investigator became caught in the ice herself and was eventually abandoned in 1853. The wreck is remarkably well-preserved in the cold Arctic waters.