The Seven-Sided Die

The single most useful piece of GM advice I've yet read is Dr Rotwang's Adventure Funnel.

The Adventure Funnel is a quick and satisfying technique for creating nuanced and memorable adventures. Start with a goal, throw in some obstacles, season with details (I think I'm getting my metaphors mixed...) and the result is a stew of ideas that hang together loosely enough to not be binding, but are well-interconnected enough to run an adventure that looks, at the table, like pages of carefully-written notes. The key is throwing things at the wall (or page, or pot—as the case may be) without worrying about vetting it or making sense of it first. Something nonsensical you put down might inspire an entire plot thread that turns out to be brilliant. Once inspiration strikes the connections just make themselves, and the Adventure Funnel is nothing if not good at generating inspiration.

In my first attempt using the Adventure Funnel (and so far only, I should take my own advice and use it more), one of the silly things I wrote down when I couldn't think of anything was "And then: DRAGON ATTACK". It turned out to inspire one of two major villains that injected some delicious pathos into the adventure. Yes, a dragon attacked, no, the player didn't fight it, and the fallout from the dragon's actions (demanding a yearly ransom, killing the villiage elder, shaming the hubris-filled priest) is still being felt in my ongoing Edge of Empire campaign. In fact, the major reveal and cliffhanger from the last session is a direct result of the spiritual crisis of that shamed priest.

So, go read The Adventure Funnel and get cooking up something fast and tasty for your next game.

Our regular Tuesday game had two cancellations, so I ran a Savage Worlds one-shot instead for the two players who could make it. I decided to run the Tomb of Terrors one-sheet adventure that Pinnacle has available on their website. (Spoiler alert.) Overall the session was fun and I think a good demo of Savage Worlds' strengths and weaknesses. In four hours we managed to make characters and play through that short adventure, which is impressive considering none of us had ever played SW before.

Here are some of the highlights and "low"-lights.

Character creation

We started with character creation, which went slower than I hoped but still quicker than I'm used to chargen taking. There was some confusion between points and die sizes for skills, especially since "15 points for skills" looks so much like the skill ranks system in d20. We ended up with Guz, a lead pipe–wielding autonomous flesh golem-thing, and Stillmoon, a shape-changing human shaman. We used Arcane Background (Magic) to substitute for Shamanism. For Guz we decided that he was of a race much like Eberron's [[Warforged]], created for some historical purpose and now free and commonplace.

In general I, and I think my players too, were pleased with how straightforward a Savage Worlds character was. More choices and flexibility in choosing Hindrances would be good, though, since there's only so many character concepts that can fit into "One Legged" or "Blind", effectively shrinking an already-short list.

Interpreting powers

We used the standard magic system since I don't want to tinker until I get more hands-on experience with running the game. There was one point of contention around the Shape Change power: The player wanted to use it to sneak up and attack the necromancer, but I ruled that shifting out of crow form and attacking would be two actions and the Fight roll would suffer the standard -2 multi-action penalty. My reasoning was that drawing a weapon and attacking is considered two actions and the degree of readiness was comparable. I'm not sure that I handled that well at the time—really, I should have just given it to him and moved on—but in hindsight I think that would be the right way to handle it in the future.

Some guidance on this sort of thing might be useful as an aid for GMs who are trying to justify how magic works to players used to highly formal magic systems like d20 has. However, I do think that once everyone is invested in the philosophy of Savage Worlds, it'd be easier to get players to accept rulings like the one I made above. SW is a loose but consistent set of rules, and it's easy to use the rules philosophy of one part of the rules to extend another part. More on that next.

Making sensible rulings

Another notable ruling that needed to be made was how to handle Swarms and the Defense manœuver. Swarms hit automatically, making a +2 to Parry irrelevant. In various places in the rules there are "common sense" substitutions. In particular under Areas Attacks, a target in cover would normally give the attacker a penalty to Shooting, but instead this is made a bonus to the target's Toughness. The philosophy behind exceptions like this seems to be that the mechanics are meant to be flexible and not break in unexpected situations.

With this in mind, I ruled that the +2 from the Defense action applied to Toughness when resolving a Swarm's automatic attack. This satisfied my players, although there was some grumbling that I think I can attribute to familiarity with more rigid systems. Savage Worlds doesn't try to cover every eventuality, so it definitely falls into the old-school paradigm that makes good rulings more important than rigid adherence to a set of comprehensive rules.

The only disadvantage of this ruling is that it makes hits from a Swarm very unlikely for the average hero with even a Toughness of 5 or 6 since the Swarm only rolls 2d4 for damage. At first I thought this was a flaw, but I think that's more sensible. I don't expect a swarm of rats to do the major damage to a prepared hero that a Wound represents, but it would happen by rare bad luck, and the dice reflect that with this ruling.

Fighting

Our thoughts on the combat system were mixed. The bone golem was hard to take down. It kept being Shaken and then making its Spirit roll to recover. That made the combat seem interminable, and also effectively made it impossible for the golem counter-attack. (In hindsight I should have blew more bennies on instant recoveries, but at the time I didn't want to be a dick GM and erred on the side of letting my baddy get smacked around.) Afterwards my players were a bit concerned that the Shaken status makes things very swingy, which prompted me to think about how I should have used my bennies. The Actual Play account in the RPGnet review of Savage Worlds made me focus on using bennies for Soak rolls, but I think unShaking will be as important a use for them.

That said, the golem took two wounds on Round 4 and failed its Shaken recovery roll, then went down in Round 5 to a solid hit. We kept forgetting about the +1 bonus the PCs should have been getting for Ganging Up on it. On the whole, though, the combat mechanics were well received. Using a deck of cards was really popular despite initial doubt, since it makes the flow of combat easy to see at a glance and never results in ties.

After breaking the bone golem, Guz took one swing at the angry necromancer and hit with two swings of his lead pipe (using Frenzy) and rolled a cumulative damage of 32 (on 1d10 Str + 1d6 lead pipe, once for each hit). That involved two Aces on the pipe die, if I recall correctly. Needless to say, the necromancer and his paltry 4 Toughness went down spectacularly. At this point I entirely failed to remember the Knockout Blow rules, but it was a good place to wrap up for the night.

The one thing we didn't like about combat was that it was easy to devolve into a toe-to-toe fight. The AP report I linked above had the same problem. Partly this was our inexperience—trying to use Tricks didn't go well since we couldn't think of an appropriate trick, and I didn't make the golem do anything more than swing. Partly too this was an uninspiring combat environment (two enemies in a bare dungeon room) and there were few things that could conceivably be turned to one side's advantage. Another part of this was deciding to use a Trick first and then trying to decide on what the fluff was after, which puts the horse before the cart in a fiction-first system like Savage Worlds. In future games I will try to introduce the convention that players first describe what their characters are doing and afterwards decide what kind of combat manœuver it is.

The literal low point

Another gripe was the do-or-die nature of the 13-foot jump at the beginning of the adventure. A Seasoned Wild Card character had a so-so chance of jumping it, but Extras had almost no chance. I had a hard time justifying the rats managing to cross this chasm, since the scenario has them fleeing out of the Tomb and into the sewers but failed to explain how they could cross a 13-foot wide, 30-foot deep trench.

It also slowed down the session considerably as they tried to get across. I had sent two town guards with them in order to try out the Allies rules, but one fell in and nearly died and they had the other take him back to town. The silver lining is I got to try the Aftermath rules for Extras.

In hindsight I think this wasn't so much a flaw in the adventure design as a feature made into a flaw by a lack of other dungeon dressing. Had there been some planking or something in the Excavation Room, the fleet-footed Stillmoon could have gone and grabbed it for a makeshift bridge, and I didn't think to add anything like that on the fly.

Take-home impressions

The initiative system was a hit. Everyone was leery of using cards before we tried it, and now we're converts. Tracking initiative was never a problem and not having to write each number down let combat flow without interruption. The die system of d20 introduced cyclic initiative to get the same advantage, but this has all the advantages of round-by-round initiative without the disadvantage of slowing things down. I would even consider using a deck of cards (pared down to Aces through 10s to maintain scale) for AD&D initiative because it worked so well.

Combats didn't take exceedingly long, especially considering that it was a first time for all of us, including me as the GM. Swarms are interesting, but I'll have to try them in a different environment. We didn't get to try out the much-vaunted ability of the system to handle large numbers of combatants since the guards left at the beginning and the players opted to ignore the zombies unless they attacked first. Although I'm leery of the stupidly-high Toughness on the BFM at the end of The Red Swamp, I'm now leaning more toward running it next time we take SW for a test drive in order to try out its early multi-combatant battle.

Character creation is a bit mixed. It's fast and relatively intuitive. A fairly interesting and varied range of characters is possible with a minimum of fiddly character-sheet things to work out. On the down side there just isn't enough variety in the available Edges and Hindrances to satisfy a heroic or gritty fantasy game, which means that as the GM I am looking at a pile of writing to develop genre- and setting-specific lists of Edges, Hindrances, and Powers. Normally that'd be pleasant work that would just take some time, but with my schedule constraints it presents a daunting obstacle to starting a real campaign. (On the plus side, I hope to have a copy of Shaintar: Immortal Legends in the new year.)

Savage Worlds really, really, needs more Hindrances. There just aren't enough that can be applied to a broad set of character concepts. The result was that Guz had the Enemy Hindrance in a one-shot game where it didn't matter (I decided the necromancer was his enemy, but that didn't make it meaningful). Similarly, Stillmoon had a Vow to take vengeance on someone (which I also made the necromancer). These ended up being just filler on the sheet rather than having an impact on the game, and were picked because there just wasn't anything else that worked.

In the end these two players were pleased with the system and at least one of them has been looking around online for more stuff to make Shamanism work well. I enjoyed running it and my qualms so far were all with the adventure, the limitations of the lists for Eges, Hindrances, and Powers, and the need to get me and my players to think fiction-first before trying to invoke the mechanics.

Next time I'll talk about the astoundingly awesome support I got from Pinnacle when I discovered issues with my copy of the rulebook.

November's topic for the RPG Blog Carnival is religion.

In The B.A.D.D. Files, part1 I posted the first of a set of text files shared in the 80s and 90s among Christians alarmed about the nature of Dungeons & Dragons and roleplaying games in general. Today's text file is about the sad story of Darren Molitor. The History of Role-Playing, Part IV from issue 4 of Places to Go, People to Be has the story in brief:

In 1984, Pulling involved BADD in the trial of Darren Molitor. Darren was being tried for the murder of a young girl which allegedly occurred while he was acting out a Halloween joke. Pulling convinced the defence to argue on Molitor's lack of culpability due to the influence of D&D, presenting many so-called "D&D-experts" as witnesses. This evidence was dismissed as irrelevant, but this did not deter BADD from intervening in other trials.

What was most frightening about this incident was that BADD was also able to convince Molitor of the game's control over his actions. Under this belief, Molitor penned a damning essay blaming D&D for his crime, which was then widely disseminated by BADD. Later, Molitor stated that he was under a lot of stress and "completely in confusion" when he wrote the essay, and hence "may have gone overboard". He added "I no longer feel the game is dangerous for everyone".

The whole article has even more context, such as the thinness of the credentials of the "experts" and Pulling's own sad story. This file is B.A.D.D.'s own account of Molitor's story followed by the infamous essay itself:

Introduction

The following is an essay written by Darren Molitor, a former D&D player. Darren was a very devout D&D player who sometimes played marathon games that lasted for days.

The friends with whom this young man often played D&D, began "horsing around" in a game of their own while preparing for a "Friday the 13th party" on March 13, 1984. The "horsing around" went too far, and a young girl named Mary Towey (18 yrs old) became the victim of a "mind game." She was strangled to death by Darren Molitor.

Darren stated repeatedly in his trial that when he and another boy tied Mary up, they were just "messing with her mind." By the physical evidence in the case, a coroner testified that the death did appear accidental; however, a jury found Darren guilty of murder in the first degree.

The prosecution sought the death penalty, but Darren received a life sentence instead. D&D was a major influence in Darren's behavior at the time of the incident, but because of a lack of knowledge on the part of the police regarding D&D, this area of influence was not explored until it was too late to be considered "relevant."

Darren, in his own defense, never tried to excuse his actions. The essay that he has written on D&D was done after his trial, and he initially sent this essay to an elementary school in the hopes of helping young children.

Prior to his involvement with D&D, this young man had never been in any trouble.

Dungeons and Dragons - March 22, 1985 by Darren Molitor

I'm sure many, if not all, of you have heard about or played the very popular game of "Dungeons and Dragons". Now I'm not speaking of the board game of which there is one, I'm speaking of the game that is played in your minds.

To give some backround of the game for those of you that heven't had the so-called priviledgd of experiencing the game let me tell you about it.

The game is called "Dungeons and Dragons" and it is a fantasy role- playing game. As you can probably assume from the title it is set in the medieval era of our time of history. Because it is a game of "fantasy" anything is possible and being a "role-playing" game means you act as a character of that time as if you were on stage. But there is no physical action on the players part. Everything is played or imagined in the mind. And you as a player, are the sole person responsible for the actions of your character or characters. You control him totally. His/her actions, words, feelings, thoughts.  Everything about this character you control.

To obtain a "character", a player must first roll three six-sided dice. Add up the numbers rolled and write it down. A player does this six times and then he must organize the numbers he has rolled to the six characteristics of his character. The six characteristics are strength, intelligence, wisdom, constitution, dexterity and charisma.  These six characteristics are the "heart" of your character. After which the player may roll to obtain the height and weight or he/she may choose it. The player assigns a race to the character, a class, which is his/her occupation and the alignment. An alignment is the character's attitude or outlook on life. The different classes are many and each class has a sub-class. They are the following: cleric, (druid); fighter, (paladin, ranger); magic-user, (illusionist); thief, (assassin); monk and bard. The different alignments are: lawful good, lawful neutral, lawful evil, netural, chaotic good, chaotic neutral and chaotic evil. Now the player rolls a particular die or dice, of which are many to obtain a character's hit points. The "hit points" are the ammount of stamina or damage the character can sustain before going into a coma or even dying. You then give him/her some money, by rolling the dice, and equiping him with supplies, weapons and armor.  From here there is only two more steps. The first is to roll and obtain the spells a character has if he/she is able to use them. Some classes use spells and others don't. The final stage is picking a name for your newborn character. He/she is now a true and real person in the player's mind.

There is also a player called the dungeon master or DM, for short.  This player is usually more familiar and experienced in the game. The DM is a VERY important part of the game. Also a very powerful part.  He/she plays the sole role of being "god" of the game. The DM controls everything that happens within the game. The only part of the game he does not control entirely is the actions of your character. But he/she may constrict them if he/she chooses. He/she is also in control of that player's character's life. The DM may decide to destroy the character for some reason, but it should not be for any personal reason and the DM should refrain from doing such actions unless the player of that character has become uncontrollable and has changed the fun of the game.

The DM has a lot of responsibility, as you can imagine. For example, the DM must create an adventure or dungeon. There are many books called modules with "dungeons" already prepared, but for the most part the DM creates them himself/herself. He/she must create the scenery (indoor, outdoor, underground, the various and numerable characters a player may encounter, the temperature, the smell, the monsters and the treasure. It is a very long and tedious process and the average dungeon takes anywhere from 36-48 hours of work. There is one case of the game being followed, that the DM, a lady, has quit her job and does nothing except create and prepare a dungeon for her players. She has created an entire country. The players of the group support her living necessities. They pay for her home, her groceries, her bills, etc.

The game is played with two or more people with the average group consisting of 5, including the DM. The DM, as I have explained, runs the show. He/she will describe, in detail, what is around you. What action is taking place, what sounds you may hear, what smells you may notice, etc., etc. From here it is the player's option of what to do.  The player must decide what his/her character is going to do. In responce the DM tells the players of the result of their actions. As I've said before, a character may do anything, I emphasize anything, that a player wants him/her to do. For example; the DM has just told you that you have come up a cave entrance. It is midday, warm, you hear what appears as water running from inside, but you can't see anything. The players now decide if they wish to enter the cave, throw a stone in to try and locate the water, yell something in to try and get a response or just ignore it completely.

Another example is; you are in a room or chamber underground that you have discovered. There is a table, some chairs, a desk with numerous jars on it. There is a lot of dust covering everything. And in the corner a chest sits. As a player your first instinct is to search the chest for some treasure. During the process of checking for any traps and trying to unlock it a few orcs (a type of human-like monster, resembling a pig) sneak up from behind. They are very angry and have their weapons drawn and are about to attack. What do you do now? If you are a spell user you attempt to cast a spell. You may try and bargain with them. Or, amd most likely, you may fight them. You draw your weapon and charge. Now the dice come in. The DM rolls a six-sided, eight-sided, ten-sided or twelve-sided, depending on the weapon and the result is the amount of damage to the orc. Now the orc or orcs swing. The same process is used. And this continues until you or they are dead.

Remember now, all of this is imagined in the mind. You can actually see this. What they look like, how you're swinging, the damage given and obtained. It all appears in the mind.

The reason for explaining so much is so you may understand how the game is played. It may seem to be harmless and very entertaining and it is entertaining, but far from harmless. I have had the experience of the game for more than 3 years now and I know the effects of the game. For the majority of those that play it becomes a way to escape reality. It is a way of letting tension and anxieties loose. And that is good. But subjecting the mind to the amounts of violence involved isn't. It is far more bad than it is good. Especially to a young mind.  And an 18 or 20 year old still has a young mind. Its effects are both mental and physical. It is in comparison to drugs, alcohol or tobacco.  It is very possessive, addictive and evil. Evil may sound wrong or peculiar to explain a game, but there is no other way to describe it.  It is a device of Satan to lure us away from God. It is an occult.

An occult you say? What is an occult? Defined in American Family and School Dictionary, a publication based on the American College Dictionary, prepared by Random House, Inc., it is: beyond the bounds of ordinary knowledge; magical; supernatural; mystical. Staying on the same subject let's define occultism: the doctrine or study of the supernatural, magical, imaginary, etc. Stated concisely it is the participation or involvement in ANYWAY with fortune telling, magic practices, spiritism, or false religions cults and teachings. Within that category is using a ouija board, ESP, telepathy, horoscope, a seance, yoga, remote influence of the subconscious mind of others, self-hypnosis, following astrology and Dungeons and Dragons(R). They are all connected with an occult or are considered occultism practice.  All such occults are condemned by God in the Scriptures, being an abomination unto Him and are under His curse. To quote a passage from an article written by Dr. Hobart E. Freeman, I write the following:

"The Scriptures condemn all forms of occultism as sorcery and warn that.... they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God" (Gal. 5:19-21), but

".....are an abomination unto the Lord" (Deut. 18:12),

and ".... shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone" (Rev. 21:8).

From earliest times God forbade occultism as spiritually defiling (Lev. 19:31), and made participation in it punishable by death (Ex.  22:18; Lev. 20:27), and cause for rejection of that soul by God (Lev.  20:6).

Dungeons and Dragons(R) is based on magic and the supernatural.  There is, in fact, a hard bound book entitled "Deities and DemiGods" for the sole purpose of informing you of the "gods" that are involved in the game. It gives complete details of the "gods" and it expects you as a player character to pick a "god" to worship him/her. To pray to, to sacrifice to, to obey. And to die for if necessary.

Not only is the game based on the supernatural and magic it involves violence. Serious violence! The type of violence not allowed on TV. There is hack and slash murder, rape, theivery, pillaging and terrorism. And in the game it is natural and expected for a character to do those things. A character must, at least, murder and rob in order to survive. And it is the object of the game to survive. To do whatever you must, to anybody or anything, in order to survive and become more powerful and wealthy. The more you do those things the longer you live. The longer you live the more powerful you become and usually with power comes wealth.

You may be saying, "All of that may be true, but what does that have to do with me (or my children)? It has everything to do with you (or your children) if you (or they) are involved in the game. As I have repeated several times the game is played or imagined entirely in the mind. Totally and only in the mind. The conscious mind experiences these visions as reality while playing. And if it is played, let's say, 3-5 times a week, 4-8 hours each time, the conscious mind becomes accustomed to such acts of violence. Then when the person is finished playing for that day, it is all pushed back to the subconscious supposedly. But it is known that the mind is very powerful and unexplainable. It is very possible for the sub-conscious mind to "overpower" the conscious mind. Suddenly you are no longer in total control of your mind. The "fantasy game" becomes a "reality game". You begin to live it for real. Everything you do, or say, involves or associates to the game itself. You no longer play the game for enjoyment, you play it because you feel you have to. You must have it (play it) just like a person on drugs, achohol or tobacco must have them. It is an addiction. And your mind is under the control of the game. It is possessed by the game.

Now, you're probably saying that won't happen to me (or my children) because I won't let it happen or I'm too smart for that to happen. Believe me, it happens! And it happens to anyone. It has happened to me. It has happened to many college students that have committed suicide or have done some serious bodily harm to themselves and or others. It has happened to many younger teenagers, 13 and 14.  The destruction it can cause to the mind and soul is incredible. It's rather unexplainable. I and many others have had some very bad experiences because of the game and I am writing too, on their behalf to warn or make you aware of the game. It is dangerous and against God's command.

There are as I've said numerous recorded accounts of teenagers 13 to 19 and some older persons that have had some troublesome experiences. Many have commited suicide due to the game. Another good many have either caused serious harm to themselves or other individuals. And some have coused the death of a friend or family member by accident, but because of the "game", they took the "game" one step too far. "Playing" it for real one time too many. For some it was the last time they played it or any other game. Many were lucky, but you may not be.

And the fact is, that you don't even have to be playing the game at the time. The mind is continuously "playing" the game. You could have played it 2 or 3 days prior, but your mind is still playing.

So, please for your own safety and salvation and the safety of others don't play the game anymore. If you don't play it now, don't even start. It is more dangerous than I can fully explain. Don't play with your physical life that way and don't condemn your soul to hell by participating in the game.

A very concerned ex-player, Darren Molitor

If you would like to write to Darren Molitor or his parents the mailing address is:

Darren Molitor C/O Mr. & Mrs. Louis Molitor 2303 Sublette St. Louis, MO 63110

Or you may decide to send a word of encouragement to Darren's parents.

There is another young man who is in a similiar situation and he is 16 years old. He is guilty of murder in the first degree. He never had a trial (plea bargaining was involved). His parents feel that D & D was responsible for his bizarre behavior in the murder of a next door neighbor.

Paul Sargent C/O Mr. & Mrs. Robert Sargent 6545 Tauronee Kansas City, Kansas 66102

His parents certainly need a word of encouragement.

Reprinted with permission from:

B.A.D.D. Inc. P.O. Box 5513 Richmond, VA 23220

(B.A.D.D. stands for Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons - a national organization concerned about the widespread playing of D & D and its effects.)

This file has been brought to you by:

Southern Maryland Christian Information Service BBS (301) 862-3160 HST P.O. Box 463 California, MD 20619 Sysop:  Buggs Buggs

The ironically-extensive space in the essay given to how the game is played and the awkward misuse of the word "occult" make this one particularly awful.

This month's RPG Blog Carnival topic is religion.

Most fantasy settings have particular domains of interest and influence assigned to each god, but very few actually bother to say what the followers of the gods actually believe. It's a strange omission when designing a faith.

I was thinking about this when I was putting together the gods for the Iron Valley region for the Edge of Empire campaign. I decided that each god would not only have the traditional set of domains, but also some basic tenets that define how followers are expected to behave and what the church believes. Here are three ways you can add depth to gods and their followers' faiths in your setting by thinking about the nuts and bolts of belief.

1. Five tenets of the faith

Write down five things for each god that their followers believe or do. These can be prohibitions, duties, articles of faith, details of devotions, or principles of living.

Prohibitions are easy: things like wielding edged weapons, touching dead meat with bare hands, or speaking during the dawn are the sorts of things a god or its church might forbid.

Duties are the flip side of prohibitions. Always making an offering of food before eating, tithing 10% of your earnings to the local church, community service in the name of the god (imagine a weekly stint in the mortuary for a god of death!), never sleeping above the ground floor, and taking a vow of chastity are possible duties.

Articles of faith are what the followers of a faith hold to be true. They might believe that running water is the incarnate body of their god, that they are manifestations of a part of their god's soul, that ritual combat is the only proper way to resolve disputes, or that the world must be prepared for some future event.

Details of devotion are more fine-grained. A church might require its faithful to pray in a particular language. Perhaps holy water of a fire god can only be blessed while boiling. A god might require that a cleric confront incarnate evil by singing.

Principles of living is a catch-all category for anything that doesn't fall into the first four. A principle might be that followers should live in the moment because all things die and are forgotten, that giving to chartiy is for chumps, that followers should dedicate their every action to the greaty glory of their god, or that being soft-spoken is virtuous.

Focus on tying together the tenets with a theme in order to get across what a god is "about", and you might not even need to rely on the domain-of-power trope. Consider throwing in one seeming contradiction to imply greater depth without having to do too much more work. (For instance, followers of the god of death might be cheerful and flighty: they know all things end, so they are instructed to enjoy life before their master claims them.)

Also don't strain to hit each these categories—consider how a faith that has only duties gives it a distinctive flavour compared to a faith that has only prohibitions. The categories really aren't important and are just there to inspire a variety of tenets.

2. Devotion time

The god that has no holy days or times of particular importance is a rare god indeed. Holy days and other times of prescribed honouring add interest to the setting's culture and give priests of a god rites they have to perform. You can roll this into the list of tenets if you think it fits.

Times of significance to the god in particular or to the culture their church is a part of are good choices for holy days. Changes of season, the migratory patterns of herd animals, or the first rain of the year might be marked with feast or fasting days. The anniversary of a god's ascent, the longest night of the year, or the renewal of a pact would require certain rituals. A particular time of day might require meditation.

Events might call for particular devotions. The first birth in a new settlement might be marked with rituals, the coming of the spring floods, the first thawing of the sea ice, or the appearance of a dragon in the sky might call for certain rites.

3. Where is that written?

Gods in fantasy games have a habit of just coming right out and telling their followers what they should do and believe. Most gods are more circumspect, though, or maybe they just have better things to do than to constantly micromanage their followers. In that case, all this stuff needs to be remembered and passed on somehow.

Some cultures and faiths will pass it on from person to person, initiating new members into the rites and tenets of the faith as they prove themselves. These churches keep the details alive in an oral tradition. Others will write it down somewhere. Perhaps there was a prophet who spoke the god's will. Maybe there are oracles wired into their god who do nothing but write into the great libraries of the church.

The details aren't so much important as just figuring out the form these teachings take and how they're taught. A church might keep everything secret, divulging only what is necessary to tend the lay followers. The holy words might be inscribed in foot-high letters on a five-sided obelisk in the centre of the capitol. Maybe it's all written in one magnificent book, or stored in hundreds of yards of scrolls kept safe underground.

Putting it together

I've already mentioned bits of my setting's death god in the examples above. I'm going to give you a look at the Iron Valley's version of Isis though, since she and her church are of particular relevance to the characters at this point in that campaign.

The tenets of the Istan Church are:

1. Nourish and nurture wherever you go.
2. Preserve mysteries, and seek them in your travels.
3. Revenge the destruction of natural beauty.
4. Things magical are the domain of Isis, who knows best how they are kept.
5. Honour Isis with a daily libation.

This isn't a cut-and-dry goddess or church. It's mostly a "nice" church, doing charity work and preserving knowledge. It's also a selfish church, loath to share that knowledge and aggressively seeking out and seizing—by force if necessary—artefacts and items of power. It can unleash a terrible wrath when beauty is destroyed, which is all the more terrible for the gentle face that the church habitually presents.

The written expression of the core tenets of the Church of Isis are recorded and kept by monks in libraries constructed within the sacred grottos inside the Spire of Cantos. The libraries are constantly being expanded as priests seek the depths of the mysteries of their Lady.

The seekers attempt to commune directly with Isis. Devoted for life, these oracles are semi-amphibious and spend their waking hours in trance, floating in the currents of the crystal pools that well up in the sacred grottos. Alien and cryptic in their pronouncements, monks carefully record every word a particular oracle has ever said, and many a monk devotes their entire life to deciphering the larger truths their words reveal.

I will probably give Isis a holy day apart from the daily libations, but I'm leaving that open for now. Likely it will be something to do with the spring planting, as fertility is one of her portfolios.

We finally kicked off our Planescape game on Tuesday. We're using AD&D 2nd edition rules and, wonderfully, for once I am a player rather than the GM. I'm pleased with the character I came up with. Clearly, being on the other side of the screen is good for my creativity.

Marius Solain

The third son of a landed family, Marius spent most of his time playing and composing music, carousing in the taverns of Luskan, and hunting in the forests surrounding the Solain estate. He kept it to himself when he began seeing visions, and for the most part his family missed the growing madness in their dilettante son. He spent more time in seclusion, as troubled when lucid as when hallucinating. Thus it was that, the night the Solains were targeted for death and the manor house torched, he was returning late from the hunt only to see the flames. In despair he flung himself from the cliff overlooking the river that marked the edge of the Solain lands.

Of course he's not dead now. He just thinks he's dead, or at least about to be. The visions he'd been having had been starting to make sense, and to be controllable to a degree, before that fateful night. In truth his untutored psionic potential was giving him glimpses of his future, and the frightful panopoly of beings and places of the Planes that he'd seen now surrounded him. He'd fallen through a gate keyed to madness, or perhaps despair, and was now in the Outlands. He believes that all this is merely a hallucination, the culmination of his visions, that he is suffering in the bare moments before his body is dashed on the rocks at the bottom of that cliff. Bashers look at him funny when he says that they're just in his imagination, but they've heard and seen stranger things.

So, Marius is a psionicist. In the year or so he's been on the Planes he's learned to focus his mental potential into clairsentient abilities, although he just thinks this is evidence that the reality he perceives is just a hallucination that he can alter with an exertion of will.

He's a natural fit for the Sign of One, whose members each already believe that they're the only mind and that the whole multiverse is in their head. To make him a playable personality, though, I'm making him greedy for every moment of this "hallucination" that he can enjoy, considering that he thinks it will all end with his shattering death at any moment. In that direction he could become a Sensate, just looking to experience all and everything he can, with the license that nothing he does is of real consequence anyway.

I'm not sure if he's actually mad, or whether he just thinks he is. If he goes Signer he'll be maintaining and strengthening his belief, but if he doesn't there's the potential to bend his character arc toward discovering that, no, he's not mad, no, this isn't just a hallucination, and yes, he is really in the Outer Planes and his family is dead or scattered.

We managed to play a few hours in the first session, and it went well. The only rolls involved a composition that Marius wrote for the monks of the Three Waters monastery of Chantea on the spireward road from Faunel, and for a check to activate his Know Location power to discover those details of geography. There was plenty of interesting stuff to do, a two-year-gap in all the characters' memories to account for, a mysterious, bearded, one-eyed man who brought them to the monastery, and residents of a small village on the way to Faunel that are nearly all suffering from some kind of mind-dulling enchantment.

The other members of the party include a (Primer) depressed blacksmith whose wife left him for a beefier blacksmith, and a rogue modron wizard who is trying to be inconspicuous and who had some of the best lines of the night.

Marius asks, "You're a modron, aren't you? I've heard of your kind."

Ficus Softball Palin XMCVIII[1. So-named as to better blend in with non-modrons, in the best tradition of aliens from Betelgeuse assimilating into English society. The numeral is wrong because it's from memory, but it's not far off.] is visibly deflated and laments, "Discovered!"

This game is going to be a lot of fun.

Round 4 of the RPG Blog Carnival is being hosted by The Dice Bag, and the topic is religion.

Most of the contributions to the carnival so far deal with religion within the fiction. The one exception that deals with the elephant in the room is RPG Centric's post, It’s my fault Black Leaf died!, a look at the classic Chick Tract Dark Dungeons that represented Dungeons & Dragons as a satanic/occult recruiting tool.

Most gamers, myself included, think Dark Dungeons is hilarious. Not long ago, though, there were organised groups such as Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons (B.A.D.D., lead by the infamous Patricia Pulling) who were actively "educating" law enforcement, school counselors, psychologists, pastors, and parents about the evils of "Fantasy Role Play" and Dungeons & Dragons in particular.

I grew up in the 80s and started playing D&D in the early 90s. The moral panic about D&D was still going strong, though in hindsight I can say it was already beginning to fade when I cracked the 1st edition AD&D Players Handbook for the first time. At the time it strongly affected me and I felt compelled to hide my hobby and tangential interests from anyone who I thought might take it the wrong way—or worse, use it against me. I remember fellow students in high school making jokes about playing Dungeons & Dragons and then killing their parents. Most players today don't remember how D&D and roleplaying in general was demonised only a short time ago, but to a certain extent it still colours my reaction every time someone asks, "So, what did you do this weekend?"

Which is all just a lead-up to today's gem. When this month's carnival was announced my mind immediately went to an old The Watchtower article about the evils of D&D. I couldn't find that, but in my searches I came across an archive of BBS text files, extracts from a "D&D Handbook" available by mail-order, that were aimed at Christians as resources to use in their communities to fight the Fantasy Role Play Menace.

For gamers who mercifully missed out on that dark period in RPG history this will be an interesting peek into the hysteria that arose when D&D first gained a measure of popularity. For those who remember, this might be a less amusing reminder of what it was like to have to hide a major pastime and source of hours of pleasure. Either way, it's amusing to see how far out of context the "evidence" presented needed to be taken in order to look incriminating.

Without further ado...

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS.....

THE GAME

Mind against mind, the battle rages on with only the sharpest and fastest thinkers going out ahead of the pack of hungry and fighting players as each scheme and plot against the other to survive.

The "War Room" is in the mind of each player as the make-believe battles and struggles pit player against player; against the elements; against the environment; against creatures from this world and from other worlds; against lords - gods - demons - devils - curses - witchcraft - every known power of warfare that the mind can conjure up.

"Only the strong survive" doesn't apply here. The limitation of the mind determines the outcome. Rules and regulations, limits and players tools governing the "Game" are contained in the different manuals and volumes of books containing hundreds of pages. It isn't easy reading much less and easy game.

It is a challenge not only to win, but to stay alive. The sharper the mind, the better the memory, the longer the player will stay alive in the game.

Dungeons and Dragons (commonly known as D & D) is an elaborate fantasy game which evolved from the war games popular in the late 1950's. The DM (dungeon master, or god) sets the stage in the fantasy world. Each player assumes the identity of the character he creates. Their creatures are based on a chance roll of the dice. Each character will have six basic abilities: strength, intelligence, wisdom, constitution, dexterity, and charisma. The manual guideline will determine whether the character will be "good" or "evil".

The object of the game is to maneuver these characters through a maze of dungeons (tunnels) filled with monsters, magic, ambushes, and adventures in search of treasures. To survive, each character is equipped with special aids - such as magical weapons, potions, spells, and magical trinkets (holy water, garlic, wolves-bane, etc.) They are also given more conventional weapons: daggers, hand axes, swords and battle axes.

Each player can stay in the game as long as his character is not killed - from hours to years. If it continues long, most players identify themselves with their character, and the line between fantasy and reality tends to grow fuzzy. One authority concerning this "game" said: "The stuff that makes me nervous is over-identification with characters. I've seen people have fits, yell for fifteen minutes, hurl dice at a grand piano when their character dies."

Fantasy Role Playing (FRP) is promoted by many schools in "gifted and talented" programs as a means of challenging and developing the mind of a "bright" child.

The Fantasy Role Playing in D & D has come under fire by different individuals and groups claiming that the player may align himself to "God"; promoting violence, teaching religion, encouraging sexual perversion, indoctrinating in witchcraft, and even leading to death.

Well, lets look at some facts.

CONCERNING VIOLENCE - The following occured to D & D players as an apparent result of the game. In November a 12 year old boy shot his brother. In January a 14 year old boy walked into school and killed a teacher. Psychiatrist Laurance Johnson cautions, "If I had a child who tended toward schizophrenia, I'd never let him near D & D. There's a danger that it would reinforce feelings of grandiosity, of omnipotence. Reality and fantasy are hard enough for schizophrenics to differentiate."

CONCERNING BECOMING GODLIKE - "This game lets all your fantasies come true. This is a world where monsters, dragons, good and evil; high priests, fierce demons; and even the gods themselves may enter your character's life". * "Changing Alignment: Whether or not the character actively professes some deity, he or she will have an alignment and serve one or more deities of this general alignment indirectly or unbeknownst to the character" (Dungeons Masters Guide, p. 25). You serve a deity or deities whether you want to or not.

CONCERNING WITCHCRAFT / DEMONOLOGY - Swords and sorcery (witchcraft) best describes what this game is all about.... * "Magic users draw upon arcane powers in order to exercise their profession... He or she must memorize and prepare for the use of each spell, and its casting makes it necessary to reabsorb the incantation by consulting the proper book of spells..." * George Marsh, member of the Cardova Park School Board (California) stated in a letter, why he voted to remove D & D from the school district's summer program: "The Supreme Court has already barred religious activity from public facilities. D & D is clearly religious in content."

CONCERNING DEATH - "If the Assassination is being attempted by or in behalf of a player character, a complete plan of how the deed is to be done should be prepared by the player involved, and the precautions, if any, of the target character should be compared against the plan. Weapon damage always occurs and may kill the victim even though 'assassination' failed." (Dungeon Masters Guide, p. 75).

CONCERNING SEXUAL PERVERSION - "... These evil creatures will certainly expect to loot, pillage, and rape freely at every chance, and kill (and probably eat) captives" (Players Handbood, p. 31). The game may be just a game. However, it has become much more to many people. - In Seattle a father is under treatment because his son used his service revolver to kill himself after being involved in D & D for only 2 years. - In January a 17 year old walked onto a school stage, pointed a sawed off shotgun to his head and fired. Many - many cases are on public record of involvement in D & D leading to violence - murder - suicide.

Yes, it's only a game. But it contains the spiritual teachings of witchcraft.

"For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he..." Prov. 23:7. "Keep thy heart with all dilligence; for out of it are the issues of life." Prov. 4:23.

We become what we think. If we dwell on murder, rape, demonology, sadism, prostitution, witchcraft, etc. we absorb that knowledge and the thin line between fantasy and reality is removed and may leave no way out but death.

If you are involved - even a little bit with any fantasy role playing, stop and ask yourself of its influence on your mind and life.

"Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these things." Paul the Apostle wrote these words. You can read them for yourself in Philippians chapter 4 and verse 8.

* D & D Handbook

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I've been thinking about how to handle pseudo-Vancian magic as it appears in D&D-based settings like Forgotten Realms. I want any magic house rules I come up with to maintain the spirit of Savage Worlds, so easy handling and bookkeeping is important. The important part I want to keep about Vancian magic is the thrill of discovering a cool new spell in a dusty tome, and the New Power Edge just doesn't do that.

Having just read Savage Worlds: Three Don’ts at Tales of Rambling Bumblers, I'm not in a hurry to settle on a system until I've got a decent number of play-hours with Savage Worlds under my belt, but I can speculate until then. I would love some feedback from any experienced Savagers and D&D grognards out there, especially those who count themselves as both.

Going old-School

What I've been pondering is making spells a purely in-game element that are acquired by character actions, such as transcribing them from an allied mage's spellbook, research, buying them, or (the most important) finding them in a long-lost spellbook buried in a treasure trove or clutched in the dead(?) fingers of an entombed wizard. Each spell would have a Power Point cost, a more SW-like duration, and a minimum Rank requirement, though this last might trend slightly low relative to D&D spell levels because of the disadvantage (relative to SW's Powers system) of having to search them out in the first place. A Spellcasting skill roll would be used just as with vanilla SW Arcane characters.

To make it work, I was thinking of having the Arcane Background grant access not to the New Power Edge, but instead to a New School Edge with a choice of one of the eight Schools of magic first introduced in AD&D 2nd edition. (For the non-D&D players that's Abjuration, Evocation, Divination, Conjuration, Illusion, Transmutation, Enchantment, and Necromancy.) To learn and cast a given spell would require having access to the spell's School of magic. The Arcane Background Edge would give spellcasters access to three such Schools to start, and more would require spending an advance on the New School Edge.

I'd like some feedback on that idea. I'm not wedded to that particular School-based setup, but I do think an Edge or set of them is necessary to keep D&D-style spellcasters working well in a SW system alongside non-spellcasters. Am I going astray? Is there a better way of representing a world full of many diverse spells without an explosion of Powers, most of which a given mage could never get with their limited number of Edges? I want to keep the awesomeness of Savage Worlds' rules, but I don't want to entirely re-write the parts of the Forgotten Realms that have been shaped by Vancian magic assumptions.

Further variations

I'm considering a couple of tweaks on top of that base, though I think these will happily co-exist with a variety of magic schemes, including vanilla SW Powers.

Using Levi's Overloaded! as a way to manage Power Points

Instead of having a total that goes down, spellcasters keep track of how many points they've cast. They can go over their 10 Power Points (or however many) limit whenever they want, but each spell cast that adds points while the mage is over the threshold triggers a Vigour roll to avoid Fatigue. The effect is that a spellcaster can go all-out if they want, but only with a significant risk of temporarily wrecking or maybe even killing themselves. The usual per-hour Point regeneration would instead bring the accumulated total down away from the danger zone.

Extending spell durations an order of magnitude or two

For example, a spell with a duration of 1 (being 1 round) would last 1 minute or even 1 hour. Buffs could be applied before combat and last long enough to matter; the 2nd order of magnitude change would mean the town priest could bless the heroes before they go to slay the dragon, and it would actually last long enough to matter.[1. I got this part of the suggestion from someone else's post about extending spell durations, but for the life of me I can't find the post to link to it now. Anyone know who I'm stealing from?

Update: I found the source of my inspiration. It's Chris Kucsera's short-but-sweet Hedge Wizards, Wise Women and Adepts: An Alternate Magic System for Savage Worlds, downloaded from Savage Heroes. After re-reading it, I'm thinking of adapting Chris' item-creation rules for my purposes too.] However! The catch is that casting time wouldn't be just an Action, and would be increased by the same order of magnitude. (Or so. A spell that lasts for hours might take ten minutes to cast rather than an hour. Details are for later.) Blessing a party would be an extended ritual, not just a perk tossed off in 6 seconds.

I'm detailing this backwards, since that's really not very D&D-style. To bring this back into line, the above can be mitigated by mages by casting spells with their original casting time (usually one Action). Spells cast like this would have the normal-magnitude spell duration. So, a well-prepared mage might get an entire dungeon's worth of fighting out of one Armour spell and save herself a lot of Power Points, but a mage who found the need for Armour only after coming under attack would be able to maintain it for a very short period of time. Of course Fireballs and the like aren't amenable to longer casting times and are rarely, if ever, useful when there is time for leisurely casting, so spells of Instant duration have round-magnitude casting times.

I really like this modification because it rewards deliberate mages and encourages the use of utility spells without making mages useless when caught unprepared.

Joshua at Tales of the Rambling Bumblers has a lot of great posts about running Savage Worlds that I've been reading this morning. In Savage Bookkeeping Joshua extends the minimalist bookkeeping Savage Worlds uses for allies' ammo reserves to group provisions and torches.[1. Joshua's post is itself a response to PatrickWR's post Rations and record-keeping: Fun? at RPG Diehard. There are a bunch of good comments to that post.]

For background, an ally has their ammunition level abstractly represented on a scale of Very High–High–Low–Out (usually starting out at High). After combat a roll is made to see if the level drops, and if they botch a Shooting roll during combat it drops immediately.

Extending this to provisions, a once-daily roll can check to see whether the group's provisions drop a level. This frees the players and GM from having to track individual meals or days of rations, but still gives them reason to pay attention to their supplies. The level is reset after restocking in civilisation. A string of bad rolls can result in running out of food only a couple of days out from town, yes, but that nicely captures the rare bad luck of ruinous mold, wild animals tearing apart the food cache, or having been sold expired stock.

So far I've just summarised Joshua's post. It got me thinking, though. At the outset of my current AD&D game the players vociferously objected to having to track encumbrance, torches, and so on. I stubbornly insisted, because having players care at all about managing their equipment is important for the exploration style of game. In practice though, I haven't been holding them to it very strongly—we've been having too much fun with the adventure for me to constantly interrupt with reminders to track provisions.

I can see adapting Joshua's provisions system to 1e as a solution. Every day ask for a Wisdom check from the party member with the highest Wisdom, or from the party's quartermaster if they should be so organised as to have one. Give them a +2 (or so) bonus on the roll if there's a ranger or hunter in the group, to represent their ability to supplement supplies by foraging. On a failure the group's provisions drop a level on the typical SW scale of Very High–High–Low–Out. Allow a day of successful hunting to raise it a level. When in a town or city the level can be reset to High by spending 5gp per party member, or Very High by spending 10gp each. (These numbers may need tweaking after playtesting.)

I can do the same for torches, rolling every hour the party is underground. A party that is deep in the dungeon and hits "Low" on their torch supplies is going to be nicely on-edge. Probably even moreso than if they were tracking torches individually, since a player can always look at a sheet with "2 torches" written on it and say "oh, we're good for another hour of exploring, let's turn around in 30 minutes." A party looking at a torch gauge running on "Low", though, is going to have to think hard about whether to press on or to seek daylight.

I think adopting this system will make players care about the logistics of adventuring without making it a bookkeeping chore.

Ever since reading Lois McMaster Bujold's series revolving around Miles Vorkosigan I've wanted to play or run an RPG in that setting. It's brilliant space opera without the usual drags of a huge cast, ungraspably-complicated political networks, or soap-opera plotlines.

The level of tech varies from swords and ageing energy weapons in the backwoods of some planets to cryo-suspension medical technology and cloning in the more advanced polities. The habitable systems are connected in a wormhole network, and have a lot of within-system and substantial inter-system traffic. The political entities range from feudal to democratic to capitalist anarchy, with subgroups and independent mercenaries in between and among them.

The wide range of tech, political situations, and scales of travel offers a diversity that is rare in a setting and makes it really appealing. As Bujold designed it so that "I can have my swords 'n' spaceships in a way that makes both historical and economic sense."[1. L. M. Bujold, "Putting It Together: Life, the Vorkosiverse, and Everything", The Vorkosigan Companion. Apart from pithy quotes, there are some great notes to be taken about the themes and character arcs that shaped the books and the setting.]

To properly run a game in the Nexus I'd have to re-read the not-insubstantial series, but I wondered what I could find online. For the sake of sharing I've collected the resources I could find together here.

(It should go without saying that the following links contain major spoilers for the books.)

• A timeline of the Vorkosigan books.
• The Vorkosigan Saga article at Wikipedia has a lot of general information on the universe. Subordinate articles have more:
  • The systems of Barrayar, Komarr, Beta Colony, Cetaganda, Escobar, Jackson's Whole, Sergyar, Athos, and other planets mentioned in the series
  • Barrayar's Time of Isolation
• A fan-made map of Barrayar
• Five preview chapters of the soon-to-be-published Vorkosigan Companion, which I think I'd get if I ran this setting
• "The Mountains of Mourning", a short Miles Vorkosigan story online at Baen Books
• A collection of Miles Vorkosigan fanfiction, which might be useful for pilfering people/places/plot ideas
• a map of the known Wormhole Nexus, with system descriptions
  • people and places of Barrayar, at the same site
• Bujold's answers to fan questions in 2000
• chapters one through nine (of 21) of Komarr
• a forum thread about an imminent GURPS Vorkosigan book. I'll have to keep an eye out for its release.

Unsurprisingly, my recent interest in the multi-genre rules of Savage Worlds had a hand in inspiring this rekindled interest in playing in this setting, though I have to thank icedrake @ LJ for getting me thinking about sci-fi settings earlier this evening. The ease of mixing "swords 'n' spaceships" that Savage Worlds offers would make it a good fit.

Advanced Dungeons & Savages (ADS) is a fan-made PDF conversion of 1st edition AD&D for Savage Worlds by Joel Sparks. It's available for download free from Savage Heroes, a Savage Worlds fansite with a huge collection of adventures, setting conversions, and sundry bits of crunch. (Thanks to UncleBear for linking me to ADS!) There's also a copy at the Savage Worlds section of Dragonsfoot that includes some trivial errata that is mostly fixes to page number references.

First, a caveat: I have yet to play Savage Worlds. I'm looking at ADS as a veteran *D&D gamemaster with an eye to what it can offer me when I want to run an existing AD&D setting using Savage Worlds. Any implications about the system, balance, and such should be taken with a chunk of rock salt.

Look and feel

As a document it weighs in at a considerable 68 pages, including 3 pages of title, table of contents, and acknowledgments. It's missing bookmarks, and though bookmarks would make it more useful at the table, in a middling-sized PDF with a good table of contents like this it isn't a huge problem. In presentation and art style it looks just like an AD&D rule book, using the same typeface and font size, two-column layout, and that familiar, spare styling for headers, lists, and tables. There's quite a lot of art throughout the book (excepting the spells chapter, for some reason) mostly used as accents rather than illustrative of the nearby material. I might even say there's too much art, with some pages having two or three moderate accent pieces when smaller ones or just one moderate one would have been more true to the style.

The look immediately gave me a warm glow of nostalgia, and it very effectively invokes the style of gaming that is on offer in the rules themselves. However, after that initial glow the irritation with the cramped layout, spartan visual cues, and general ill-ease of reading set in. The AD&D books are not æsthetically pleasing, and neither is Advanced Dungeons & Savages. Worse for a PDF, it's hard to read on a screen and the abundance of art makes it wasteful to print. Noism over at Monsters and Manuals has written about the trend of coupling old-school rules and settings with 70s and 80s æsthetics to the product's detriment, and this complaint certainly applies to ADS. I would have preferred a more legible layout that was easier on the eyes and more suited to screen reading.

Characters

Visuals aside, ADS is a competent translation of the AD&D genre to Savage Worlds. The grognardiest of AD&D gamers will immediately feel at home with the Savage Worlds take on classic races, classes, and abilities. As were many AD&D supplements, it is split into a players and a GMs section. The players section is concerned exclusively with character creation and advancement, with information on races, Edges, classes, alignment, equipment, and spells in these 24 pages.

The first page of actual rules modifies how the character creation in Savage Worlds is handled. There are slightly more points for attributes. Race and class give a character automatic Edges and Hindrances, and the gold piece standard replaces generic Savage Worlds dollars. It also notes that ADS characters will have many more Edges and Hindrances than standard Savage Worlds characters due to the automatic ones from race and class. Next some modifications of certain Edges used for class abilities are detailed, and a saving throw mechanic is added.

The first hint that I wasn't going to like this modification of Savage Worlds 100% was the section on classes. ADS implements classes by dividing the majority of Edges between the classes; to take an Edge a character must be of a class that allows that Edge. I think this unnecessarily limits the possibilities in the Savage Worlds character system without adding anything. As a GM I would use the class section as a guide for what in-world people or organisations (such as a thieve's guild, druidic circle or a wizardling's master) might expected of or offer to teach to characters. Not every character possible with Savage Worlds is going to neatly slot into one of the D&D archetypes and the point of using a modern system like Savage Worlds is to give players more leeway in crafting a compelling and mechanically-interesting character. There's no reason a sword-slinging enchanter (who can't carry a tune or play an instrument) can't appear in Waterdeep, and I don't think requiring a player to pick "Bard" to do that is to anyone's advantage.

The section on alignment is unremarkable, detailing the 3x3 system familiar to AD&D players.

The equipment section looks good with a quick once-over. I haven't read the tables in detail but nothing jumped out at me as particularly out of place. One nice point of interest is that the crossbow uses the Savage Worlds armour piercing rules (it has AP 2), fixing one of my long-standing gripes with D&D's handling of bows and crossbows. Weapon damage is given in the old pre–Explorer's Edition way, with damage being Strenght plus a fixed number. This can easily be converted to the updated Strength + Damage Die rules by the guideline given in the FAQ in the Savage Worlds TestDrive rules:

In some earlier versions of the rules, melee weapons had a flat bonus instead of a die type. You can figure out what most weapons should be by this simple guideline: +1 = d4, +2 = d6, +3 = d8, +4 = d10, +5 = d12.

Spells are listed by spellcasting class and further divided by rank, echoing the spell levels of AD&D but with fewer divisions. The list for clerics, druids, and magic-users fits on a single page, there being only 22 cleric, 17 druid, and 40 magic-user spells (not including reversed forms). Though this might seem scant, it's worth noting that the original spell selection in 1st edition AD&D was pretty slim compared to the glut we've gotten used to in later editions. I think there's enough in the nine pages of spells to cover what most players will expect in a D&D-genre world, and standard Savage Worlds powers can always be added. However,  it's worth noting that ADS superimposes the Vancian magic system over top of the Savage Worlds powers system. As with other such decisions in ADS, I think this results in an unnecessary dilution of the strengths of Savage Worlds' system for little gain.

Savage Masters

The Dungeon Masters section covers NPCs, bennies and experience, converting AD&D material to Savage Worlds, random encounters, and magic items.

Curiously the illusionist class is considered an NPC-only class unless the GM decides otherwise, saying that they are too unbalanced to be a PC class. Anti-paladins and necromancers (plus spell lists for illusionists and necromancers) are given some room as well. Rouding out the NPC section are notes on how NPCs of particular races differ from PCs, and a short bit on hiring NPCs.

The section on bennies and experience advises to hand out bennies like candy on Hallowe'en to better "simulate the combat-and-treasure based experience system of AD&D". In line with my desire to use Savage Worlds not as an AD&D simulator but as an superior system for playing in published AD&D settings, I plan to thoroughly ignore this suggestion. There is also a section on how ADS differs from the standard Savage Worlds rules on converting unused bennies to experience at the end of a session, but players of the Explorer's Edition can ignore this since it's been removed from the rules.

The conversion guidelines look good, but without using them and throwing the results at players a few times I can't judge how faithful a converted monster will be in terms of dangerousness. There is a note here that Butch Curry's Savage Beasts PDF already converts many D&D staples that aren't already included in the Savage Worlds core book.

Seven pages on random encounters follows, mostly taken up by tables of possible creatures. The chance to encounter something depends on terrain and time of day as in AD&D, but uses a more Savage Worlds–like die system that includes Acing, which indicates multiple encounters simultaneously or within a short time span. The one odd note is that some of the probabilities listed are "1-6" on a d6, apparently obviating the need to roll except to see if the die Aces.

The philosophy evident in the tables and the accompanying text indicates that, like the rest of ADS, there is a lot of love for the old-school intent of random encounters. The tables provide for random encounters that are mostly flavourful, with a chance of rarer, nastier things being encountered. I do have to question some of the numbers, though: it appears to be that in half the terrain types listed the chance of an encounter during the day is 100%, since it's listed as "1-6" on a d6. I could just be completely failing to read the tables right, but if not I fail to grasp the purpose of "random" encounters that are guaranteed.

Apart from that complaint, the table that follows for what might appear includes a nice selection of creatures. Some are detailed in ADS, some in the companion Savage Beasts PDF, and some are from the first edition of Savage Worlds. For people like me who have bought the incredibly good deal that is the Savage Worlds Explorer's Edition which lacks those creatures, this will be a small sore point.

The magic items section begins with advice for including and managing the many magic items AD&D is renowned for in campaign with Savage Worlds mechanics. It even notes that giving them some non-simulationist flair is a good thing even if it makes players who crave predictable mechanical effects grumpy. ("Hey, it's magic", it says.) I approve of this take on AD&D magic items. It follows this with four pages of tables for randomly creating items in the best tradition of AD&D, and 14 pages of specific magic item descriptions. Notably it avoids many familiar magic items' names, such as the Cloak of Elvenkind or Apparatus of Qwalish, though it does have a Cloak of Camouflage and a Cloak of Vanishing. (A quick skimming didn't reveal an alternatively-named version of that quirky crustacean submersible, though.) Two pages on item creation include rules for creating bonus-conferring combat gear, Edge-granting items, potions, and scrolls.

Verdict

Overall, Advanced Dungeons & Savages is a good ruleset for playing the implied setting of classic AD&D rules. It takes the system in Savage Worlds and adds the restrictions and quirks of AD&D in order to create the old-school feel particular to the 1st edition AD&D core books. Players and GMs who want to recapture the feel of 1st edition AD&D but want a tidier set of resolution mechanics will be well pleased by ADS.

For my purposes, though, ADS is disappointing. Although I am an advocate of enforcing level limits and other restrictions when playing AD&D in order to foster the kind of play style that AD&D excels at, I think doing this in Savage Worlds makes the resulting mechanics more like AD&D than like Savage Worlds—I might as well just play AD&D. The PDF would be more valuable if it put more trust in Savage Worlds to do a good job of the mechanics, especially character creation/advancement and magic, and concentrated on adapting AD&D to Savage Worlds style. As it is, it is more of an adaptation of Savage Worlds to the AD&D mechanics.

Looking at it as a resource, though, Advanced Dungeons & Savages is full of useful crunch for any GM to pick and choose from to run a game with setting material that assumes *D&D mechanics. The spell conversions are particularly useful and serve as a good guide for adapting AD&D material to Savage Worlds. I particularly like the random encounter tables and magic item creation rules. Things I will ignore are the class and race rules and possibly the spell system. For GMs and players wanting to start with something more like 1st-level AD&D characters and less Novice-rank Savage Worlds characters, I would suggest just starting out at Seasoned rank instead. The magic will take more of a close look, and I'm leaning toward using the ADS spell lists while eliminating the Vancian overhead that ADS adds to the Savage Worlds powers system.