You should watch this interview with Dave Wesley, the inventor of Braunstein, the war game that led directly to Dave Arneson's Blackmoor and thence to Dungeons & Dragons.

Wesley describes how a refereed game changed his wargaming: once there was a referee, players could take ad-hoc actions. He describes how players in one wargame scenario decided to take apart a barn and use the timbers to build a bridge across a river to move their troops. And Wesley as the referee had to rule on how long it took the troops to deconstruct the barn and move the timbers. He also goes on with a few thoughts on how crossing rivers might work in a wargame, including randomly determining its depth and making rulings from there on what can go across.

This is an adaptation of the principles of free Kriegsspiel – the open war game method used in 19th century Prussia – based on Wesley's reading of Charles Totten's Strategos rules. (You can buy a facsimile of Strategos online now.) The historical progression that Wesley describes is logical and compelling; his desire for more complex refereed scenarios and his severe time constraints combined to create what would become Braunstein.

Wesley describes three basic things that make part of his rulings. First, there's the question of what he had decided secretly before the scenario; he may already know that the river is only a foot or two deep and cavalry and infantry can wade across (although artillery cannot follow). Second, there is random determination, where Wesley would throw a die to decide how deep the river is at this point. And third, his own knowledge often factors in, as he describes the results of the river's depth. There is no formal rule for this. so he comes up with appropriate descriptions.

He also describes a touch of classical irony that sometimes happens in gaming as well as war, where soldiers fought to take a bridge when they could as well have waded across. I'm sure this rings true for many referees.

Although Wesley focuses on the river scenario in this discussion, the lessons (and indeed, much of the ideas of free Kriegsspiel) are generally applicable in RPGs. One thing I think adventures benefit greatly from are details like the barn that properly motivated PCs can use to try and gain an advantage.

The other detail that Wesley gets into that applies in obvious and not-so-obvious ways to RPGs is when he talks about the persistence of details across games. While it's mostly obvious, the idea I particularly liked is using notoriety as a way of changing how a PC is perceived. Dave Arneson's bandit starts off as a no-name Mexican but once he blows up the bank there are "Wanted" posters plastered across the town. (Of course, it's also a delightful gaming story that he blew up the bank.)

The specific resolution that Wesley arrived at for a duel in the first Braunstein game (a simple roll-off where one participant had 3 dice and the other 2) is too simplistic for RPG combat, but most of the ideas can translate directly. Wesley is a brilliant referee and this is a great peek into his mind.

(The photo at the top of this article is referenced during the discussion.)

In Greg Svenson's article The First Dungeon Adventure, a participant's account of the very first Blackmoor dungeon delve, the player of the legendary "Great Svenny" recounts the very first monster that the players encountered.

At this point Dave took us into the laundry area of the basement, telling us he wanted to see what we would do. He had us line up in our marching order. Then he turned off the lights saying a sudden wind had blown out our torches. Then we heard some screaming. We generally scattered as best we could. He turned on the lights looked at what we had done and then went back to the other room, telling us that a black blob (like the thing in the classic Japanese horror movie "The Blob" from the 1950’s) had killed one of the NPCs who ran into it. We soon found that our weapons dissolving when we struck it. Then we got some torches relit and found that we could fight it with fire. Eventually we killed it losing a couple more men in the process.

I have no idea why Greg remembered The Blob – an American movie starring Steve McQueen – as Japanese, but that was the first monster. It's funny to imagine a bunch of college students (wearing early '70s clothes) running around a dark basement, essentially doing the first LARP, to determine relative position, but these were literally people figuring out how to play these games for the first time.

The fact that the first monster was a blob warms my heart. It wasn't a humanoid or undead, there was no pedigree from mythology or pulp fantasy. Monster Number One was the creature from a bona fide Creature Feature. When look at the time that the guys playing Blackmoor grew up, this makes perfect sense. Science fiction film then didn't mean big budget productions, but B-films with whatever creatures could be cooked up on a shoestring budget. 2001: A Space Odyssey was less than three years old, and Star Wars wouldn't come out for another six years. These were kids who grew up on these movies, of course that's what they imagined.

One twist that I find interesting is that Arneson's blob is killed by fire. This is similar to the OD&D monster Black Pudding (itself something of a culinary joke) and the opposite of the Blob in the eponymous film, which is found to be vulnerable to cold via a CO₂ fire extinguisher. Gygax would separate Blob-types into two, with the Black Pudding vulnerable only to fire, and the Gray Ooze harmed by weapons or lightning. The morale effect on a party is quite visible when they find they have used the wrong attack type on a blob, and a torch gutters out harmlessly in a Gray Ooze or the Black Pudding is struck by a lightning bolt and divides in two.

The premier generator for unique blobs every time is the "Goops, Glops and Gobs" section of Geoffrey McKinney's Dungeon of the Unknown. A creature whose vulnerability has not been discovered, but has a movement rate, can easily become the villain of a terrific chase sequence. After all, in The Blob the title creature does ooze under doors and over various surfaces, making getting away from it a difficult problem.

Aside from the importance of the blob itself, I think this shows us the importance of the B-movie as an "Appendix N" for early D&D. Much as Gygax would be influenced by Harryhausen as much as Howard and Vance, this kind of sensibility – the willingness to go in for weird aliens, giant creatures and things of indeterminate origin as "feature" monsters – provides another, deeply old school, alternative to monsters out of the fantasy "canon." And if anybody gives you grief for it, remember - the blob was first.

If you have Jon Peterson's Playing at the World, you may have noticed the earliest known character sheet from a D&D game. On the back of the sheet, under the heading "Personality," there are scores for the following attributes, in two columns:

Brains, Looks, Credibility*, Sex, Health, Strength, Courage
Horsemanship, Woodsmanship, Leadership*, Flying, Seamanship, Cunning
* these are spelled poorly but you get the idea

The so-called "Dalluhn Manuscript" or "Beyond This Point Be Dragons" document, the following statistics appear on the character write-up (you can see it in a picture here):

Intelligence, Cunning, Strength, Health, Appearance, Ego

From the Gaylord sheet to Dalluhn (likely a playtest document or a copy of one), we see that things are a bit more formalized, with Brains clearly becoming Intelligence, and Looks going to Appearance. Credibility, Courage, Sex, Leadership, and the skill-like values (Horsemanship, Woodsmanship, Flying, Seamanship) are gone entirely.

In the Gaylord sheet, these are in the range from 3 (Gaylord's Seamanship) to 11 (his Brains, Flying and Cunning). Several values are crossed out and replaced with increased values. It's not clear whether these values were increased through play, or if they were changed for some other reason, but it seems entirely within reason that attributes would increase in Arnesonian D&D; it was very much Gygax's bailiwick to make them extremely static. Against this, many other games of the very early days of RPGs, such as Tunnels & Trolls and Runequest, used very similar statistics but assumed that they would be increasing as the character's adventuring career went on.

Over at the Comeback Inn, Greg Svenson says, "In my recollection, the stats were used more for task resolution than for adjustments in combat." This squares with Arneson's tendency to have players roll 2d6 for a great deal of task resolution: Gaylord's original Strength was 5, so on a Strength related roll he might have had to roll a 5 or less on 2d6. This same logic works in OD&D, where ability numbers have very little impact on the probabilities of combat, but many referees have used them for roll-under task resolution, such as calling for 3d6 or 1d20 under a specific stat to resolve an action not documented in the rules (which in OD&D is most non-combat actions).

Arneson was using this as a work continuously in progress. For instance, in the Comeback Inn link, Svenson mentions that the "Sex" stat was not, as may be expected, particularly involved in the more Gorean parts of Arneson's game. The "standard six" of D&D as codified by Gygax, even in the correct OD&D order (Constitution before Dexterity), are tried and true but far from exhaustive. Arneson was much more freewheeling, and felt free to define things that we might call "skills" but he treated just the same as any other characteristic. There is something to be learned from that attitude.

One of the implied uses of these statistics was for saving throws, which makes a neat parallel for later games like Castles & Crusades and 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons. It's doubly interesting that "Dexterity" – a favorite for stat-based saving throws involving dodges – appears neither in the Gaylord sheet nor in Dalluhn, even in some form that's not a word dragged out of a thesaurus by Gary Gygax. Most of the modern "Dexterity" score is actually a combination of dexterity (hand-eye coordination / fine motor tasks) and agility (quickness of reaction and ability to move easily). As an oddity of history, Daniel Boggs's Arnesonian reconstruction, Dragons at Dawn, wound up stuck with a very out-of-place Dexterity.

I also like a few of Arneson's stats, particularly "Cunning." Think of the difference between a game with a Wisdom stat and one with a score for Cunning; it's like the difference between a Tolkien novel and a Fritz Leiber short story. (I think this is why, for instance, Dungeon Crawl Classics uses Luck over Wisdom.) Appearance/Looks and Credibility are also an interesting twist on Charisma, although I'm less keen on "Sex" given the looks of many gamers. I'm really thinking that tinkering with ability scores is an easy way to give your D&D a small Arnesonian twist.

In addition to my B/X campaign, I've been working on some concepts for a combination of a world setting and a megadungeon. But it's a bit different from what I've been doing previously. I want to talk a bit about where I'm thinking of going in terms of world creation, theme and influences.

A big thing thematically that I want to achieve with this setting is to do a world that is, at the same time, both recognizable as Dungeons & Dragons, and isn't at all a generic fantasy setting. Hence the deinonychus above.

What I'd really like to get down is a science fantasy world that doesn't have a gonzo, crazy-go-nuts feel. I know that's an odd balance to hit when your goal is wizards and laser rifles, but I feel that it's a time-honored part of Dungeons & Dragons that should still be able to take itself with a modicum of seriousness. Part of that is doing things like dinosaurs but having them be scary rather than wacky. Again, hence deinonychus.

The basic assumption of the Dungeons & Dragons setting is that it's a pseudo-medieval world. I'm not going with that, although the PCs still look and act basically the same. The underlying idea is that the main human civilization are themselves literally aliens. The world that the PCs (well, their ancestors) come from is a high-magic world with all of the standard fantasy trimmings. They no longer live there. During the magical equivalent of a global thermonuclear war, the Second Empire opened a gate to another world. The first brave and hardy settlers had wizards helping them; much of their resources and knowledge were lost, but fragments remain. Now it is two centuries later, and the human realm (name TBD) has gone into a semblance of normal life.

So there are several sources of monsters. One is the other civilizations of the world that the humans came into; at this point the one they have the most contact with are lizardmen, who live in a vast swampy kingdom to the south of the human settlement. They have some weird technology, mostly a mix of found tech from previous civilizations – nothing orderly and modern, but enough that humans pose no fundamental threat to them.

As to the megadungeon itself, it's a multi-level dungeon that happens to be built near the ruined and long-since buried capital of an Atlantis style civilization, a mix of high technology and high magic. There are tribes of primitive blue-skinned humans living underground, the descendants of the last survivors of this world; they are savage and have no memory of their lost homeland, only a sort of religious worship of some of its artifacts.

I want to play a lot with megafauna in this setting, both dinosaurs and giant creatures. I'm particularly inspired by this description from Holmes's manuscript (reproduced on the Zenopus Archives):

Giant rats, spiders, scorpions and other horrors are naturals for dungeons. The Dungeon Master should adjust the monster's hit dice to the depth below the surface and assign a suitable armor class. These creatures fight ferociously, have special abilities, and there are many interesting possibilities.

I really love that bit about "have special abilities." Yes, you know what a fire beetle is in a standard D&D world, but the beetles in this world might be based on the bombardier beetle.

Future posts will talk more about this as I flesh out the world and solidify more of its aspects. But I'd be interested in reading what thoughts and ideas folks have for developing this kind of setting while keeping it feeling like a more or less logical world, not a zany mish-mash.

In First Fantasy Campaign, Dave Arneson describes in a brief thumbnail the original magic system he used in what would become Dungeons & Dragons.

In Blackmoor, magic followed the "Formula" pattern for most magic. The reason behind limiting the number of spells that a Magic User could take down into the Dungeon was simply that many of the ingredients had to be prepared ahead of time, and of course, once used were then powerless. Special adventures could then be organized by the parties to gain some special ingredients that could only be found in some dangerous place.

Progression reflected the increasing ability of the Magic User to mix spells of greater and greater complexity. Study and practice were the most important factors involved. A Magic User did not progress unless he used Spells, either in the Dungeon or in practice (there was no difference) sessions. Since there was always the chance of failure in spells (unless they were practiced) and materials for some spells were limited (determined simply by a die roll) the Magic User did not just go around practicing all the time. The Magic User could practice low level spells all the time, cheaply and safely, but his Constitution determined how often he could practice without rest. Thus, the adventurers might want a Magic User to come with them only to find him lying exhausted.

So to progress to a new level, one first learned the spells, and then got to use that spell. There was no automatic progression, rather it was a slow step by step, spell by spell progression.

It strikes me that this is not entirely gone from OD&D - magic-users preparing scrolls (only at wizard level) for 100 GP/level at a rate of 1 week/level seems to take a page from Arneson's non-Vancian style of preparation. Holmes took it even closer by allowing scroll creation at first level, following the same rules as OD&D. By the book, you could actually get pretty close to Arneson's spell system right there.

Taking a step back, the Vancian system is one that has survived not so much out of sentiment but because it is dead simple to use in a game. Like hit points and armor class, the specific rationale is second to the fact that the system is very effective in game. It limits the magic-user in a readily defined fashion and keeps the bookkeeping manageable.

For many players, though, Vancian casting is a weird limitation. It requires tactical choice, which is good, but very little flexibility. Once out of spells, the MU is useless. A lot of alternative systems such as spell points try to alleviate this by making the MU super-flexible. But with this advantage the game tilts entirely in favor of the spellcasters, who already get powerful at high levels with Vancian casting.

I like Arneson's concept because it invokes a bit more resource management than traditional Vanciancasting. A spell is not just an investment of a spell slot, but is a permanent resource bought with money and/or effort, and available to the magic-user as long as he or she is alive. The decision to use or not use a prepared spell is one that has lasting consequences and cannot be idly cast just to use up a spell for the day.

To use this I think the OD&D pricing is a good start. The prices are about right where an MU will not suddenly become super-powerful, and the referee might give a free spell or two at the game's start to speed things along. Also, an alternative method of preparing spells from ingredients that the MU has to search for at low levels might be a natural source of adventure fodder. The spell components for AD&D are one possibility, as are randomly determined components a la Arneson.

In practice, then: spells would cost 100 GP/level, but take only 1 day/level to prepare. The trade-off is that more spells can be prepared than could be cast. Magic-users would have alternative but difficult methods of finding ingredients. A spell, once cast, is used up. Beginning characters would have 2 spells already prepared. Characters can only cast spells of levels they would be able to cast per the OD&D Magic-User chart (i.e. level 2 at 3rd, etc). I'm also thinking that after some time a spell could start to go unstable.

Has anybody used this kind of system? Any thoughts on potential side effects? Maybe some differentiation in the pricing?

The assassin class was one of the innovations in Supplement II: Blackmoor, and hails more or less (there is some difficulty with who wrote what in the supplement; its editor, Tim Kask, has said that the assassin material was revised) from Dave Arneson's work. There has been ample objection to this class over the years, and it was used in 1e AD&D but excluded from 2e with the concept that an assassin is not a true "class" function. By that measure, a thief shouldn't be either; neither stealing nor killing is a pure class. Similarly, it is pointed out that assassins aren't heroic; again the thief speaks against ideals of pure heroism. Both are breaking major moral and ethical rules as a way to make a living. So none of the arguments against them really wash for me.

The assassin character type adds to the game a built-in structure, the Assassins Guild. This lasted into 1e, but was made optional for PC assassins; in Blackmoor they are all guild members, PCs included. It also makes the fascinating observation that assassins are neutral, whereas AD&D stuck them firmly in the "Evil" side of its alignment matrix. That certainly colors your Blackmoorish neutrality and chaos differently, I think, considering that thieves can be neutral or chaotic, and hired by lawfuls. It also works in terms of insulating assassins from either "side" when viewing law vs chaos as a fight with two sides instead of a grand ethical dilemma. Assassins are for hire and don't take sides.

An assassin's guild was part of Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar, built into the "Slayer's Brotherhood." This certainly seems much closer to the concept of the Blackmoor assassin than the somewhat muddled accounts of Islamic killers in various medieval sources. It has little basis in reality, but presents a fantasy setting with a very distinctly grey sense of morals. The mere existence of an assassin's guild means that society, tacitly or openly, accepts its existence.

Blackmoor introduced levels that require you to fight a superior, both for monks and assassins. With monks fights aren't necessarily to the death; with assassins they are. A Guildmaster assassin got there by killing his predecessor, period. AD&D added to this the Grandfather of Assassins, a level above that again can only be reached by more murdering. Too many assassins reaching higher levels automatically spells trouble, and a whole high-level campaign could be waged simply around a PC as a Guildmaster Assassin.

What is really interesting to me is the question of the assassin in a dungeon crawl campaign. Having an assassin PC seems like an invitation to basically switch over to a city-based campaign. But assassins are low-functioning thieves (2 levels lower than the already paltry thief numbers) per Blackmoor, and will be skilled poisoners as well. Consider - instead of the traditional "hack through the opponents" mission, an assassin PC could really thrive in a "faction dungeon," getting hired (with the available treasure) to take out assassinations on all the leader-types of different monster factions. It really puts the normal dungeon crawl on its head, but I think it's a fascinating possibility, even for solo play.

A final tidbit that I think wasn't followed up well enough appears in the Blackmoor assassin write-up: "Details of poison types will be handled in some future supplement when alchemists are fully covered." There's a bit more in the Dungeon Masters Guide, but doesn't really give us that full treatment I would like to see.

More time running Stonehell and thinking about Blackmoor has me considering a certain principle of dungeon design that I think can be best summarized as "fast" and "slow" levels of megadungeons.

A lot of what we see in the field of published megadungeons are composed of slow levels. I think the reputation of Gygax's early levels (such as the one glimpsed in the photo above) and the general desire to have big maps had a definite influence on this. By a slow level, I mean a level that encourages a party to spend multiple sessions exploring it and finding its secrets. Big levels tend to be slow, but a small level with a lot of rooms and secrets and not many passages down will also be slow. Most sub-levels will be small, but slow, levels.

Fast levels, by contrast, are levels like the first level of Blackmoor. They are designed to encourage the PCs to get through quickly and down to another level. A fast level isn't necessarily a small level; a level with a few big cavernous rooms could be fast if there was nothing in particular to keep the players in full-on exploration mode. Likewise, a level where some local condition makes in-depth exploration difficult or dangerous could be fast.

There is a lot of value in having slow levels; this is where much of the meat of the gameplay will take place. I think the error in modern megadungeon design is an assumption that every level should be slow. We see big intricate maps and think - "I want that in my dungeon." It's understandable. And I think Barrowmaze represents the extreme end: a first level so massive it has its own book. That is a slow dungeon level.

One reason I think good design should lean more towards fast levels in the early parts of the dungeon is that low levels shouldn't always be a grind. The average OD&D piece of jewelry is worth 3,410 gold pieces. There should be jewelry in one out of 15 rooms on level 2 based on the chances of finding jewelry, and there should be 3.5 pieces on average. On average it will be worth 11,935 gold pieces and at 1 GP = 1 XP, that's almost enough for 6 characters to gain a level, more than enough if they have prime requisite bonuses. So in theory, a dungeon should have a single treasure on the second level that first-level PCs can go in, get it, get out, and come back second level. If that second level has 30 rooms, it should have two such treasures, which will get the PCs to third level.

Now, that might require some reconnoitering and planning to extract with a minimum of PC deaths, but that's the nature of the game. I think the ideal pattern for a megadungeon would be a fast first level, a big slow second level, and then two fast third half-levels that each lead to different paths down. After the third level, of course, things begin to be weird.

I have some more ideas about fast levels that I'll get into detail on, hopefully later this week.

In running Stonehell, I've been given to thinking a bit about megadungeon design - and low-level dungeon play in general. The overall pattern of published dungeons, following the rules for populating a level in the D&D rules, tends towards a fairly high concentration of presumed combat encounters. The modern megadungeon is inclined to have more empty rooms, but it still presumes a fairly high degree of combat, sometimes with new inventions and other times with the cursus honorum of humanoids. All this tends to lead to a pattern of short bursts of exploration punctuated by monster fights.

But if you look at the original dungeon, Blackmoor Castle, as presented in First Fantasy Campaign, it's nothing like that. The first level is very sparse - there are nine rooms, only a few of which have combat encounters. The ones that do have large combat encounters - 60 goblins between two rooms (marked 9C and 9D), another with 16 goblins, one with 32 kobolds. But there are nine or ten ways down, and at least five or six stairways up.

One aspect of this I find interesting is the volume of monsters. Sixty goblins, sweet merciful crap! Older D&D is a game where numbers matter, and that many goblins will overwhelm any party you can throw at them. It makes some other tactical solution more or less inevitable, at least after the first TPK when players knock down the door and charge in. This lets the dungeon have adversaries and factions without stringing them through a dozen or more rooms to make them manageable.

This also makes good logical sense. Who is most able to survive in the first level of the dungeon, most vulnerable to raids, small enclaves or large masses of cannon fodder?

The number of entrances and exits, likewise, is stellar. Figuring out which way to go into a dungeon is important when there are rooms with sixty goblins in them! This also encourages a style much more in line with early megadungeon play, where instead of leveling up carefully on the first floors, players would go as deep as they could and get the best treasure they can find. Making the first level less of a place for accumulating levels and more of a passageway down really creates a different dynamic from the dungeon that I think is worth exploring.

Of course, Blackmoor is a first, and as such doesn't have everything. The FFC notes very few "weird" rooms, which I think should be features of the early dungeon levels. Traps, statues, pools, odd features - pretty much what we see in the Dungeon Alphabet - should round out those early levels and make them strange and foreign, setting a tone much different from a monster-heavy place. In Stonehell, I find myself thinking I'd have really appreciated this style of dungeon; there are some really great weird rooms that kind of get lost in the shuffle because of all the rooms built more or less for combat, particularly in the grind-y Quiet Halls.

These are lessons worth considering for megadungeon design. None of it means that big, sprawling levels are in any way inappropriate. It's just that there are other models for first levels that I think we should look at, and think about in terms of dungeon design.

The article I posted from Bill Paley is fairly typical of some of the things I've found in the early run of Alarums & Excursions: it reflects the complexity and assumptions of the early years of RPGs in a way that I think gets lost when we just look back at the official products and the reminisces of the TSR old-timers.

I love the fact that Arneson let the players roll for level. But there's an element I want to point out that I think goes a bit deeper. In A&E, and throughout its early years that I've been reading this is consistent, a DM (referee) was a person who had a "dungeon." GenCon games weren't scenarios prepared with pregen characters made up for balance; they were forays into an existing dungeon, at least until TSR started releasing tournament modules and that became the basis of the whole format.

Both the PC group and the monster groups were simply massive. The PCs (there were upward of 12) run into 50 orcs. I guess the "# Appearing" column was read literally in some of the larger games. It's interesting to see in context, because decades in which 12 is an almost unmanageable number of players has created the expectation of much smaller enemy groups.

What's probably the most fascinating is the fact of wildly contrasting play style and expectations. Bill's "heretical" assumption about 1st level magic-users is interesting by contrast to the idea thrummed into my head, and probably countless others, that a first level MU is a sleep spell, or maybe a magic missile, and nothing else. The three little books, plus supplements (which earned quick and widespread use, but mixed approval) created a riotous diversity. And for what it's worth, I think that's something the modern old-school gaming scene needs to nurture and expand.

I realize I'm not as prolific as I'd like to be on this blog. But I do have a bit of a treat from my stack of Alarums & Excursions issues: an actual play account from a game run by Dave Arneson in 1976. I was fortunate enough to get the ok from Bill Paley to reprint his article with proper attribution. I hope you enjoy it, and I'll be posting commentary soon enough.

The following article appeared in Alarums & Excursions #15, October 1976, as Searchlight #1 by Bill Paley. It is reprinted as it appeared in its original form (complete with all spelling and punctuation), with Mr. Paley's kind permission.

Anybody want some +1 Armor from Grimborg?

After a long hot wait in the wastes of North Carolina and an even longer one before that in the wastes of Los Angeles (Westwood to be exact) I acquired A&Es 10-14., SR 1-6 and Dragons 1 & 2, not to mention "Gods, Demigods and Heroes" (just in time!). Ah, nothing like an overdose after the dry season. There was scattered applause after my debut in A&E #8 with the poem of Gabbo (thanks to the typing skills of Mrs. Gold) but nobody threw the bard any gold. Maybe they saved....

Also, Jack Harness, I hear, wrote up a run into the Spire Vigilant in which he walked out much the richer. I made at least one mistake, perhaps more, but the party didn't notice, so I guess it's okay.

The main reason I'm adding this extra bulk to an already weighty 'zine is to relate a bit of what occurred to me at GenCon IX in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. I was returning home from my summer labors and stopped in Milwaukee. After teaching the relatives the wonders of D&D, we found out about the convention but an hour's drive away.

On Sunday, August 22nd, my cousin and I found ourselves outside Horticulture Hall, the seat of the convention. We perused displays of miniatures and such games as Banzai!, Boot Hill, Blue & Grey and others from the wargaming ranks. We found that Blackmoor was to be available to the first twelve entrants at 3:30. I found out that signups began at 2:45 and that (at 12:45) ten people were already in line. I grabbed the next spot. The wait was made bearable by the friendly atmosphere and the sudden appearance of the card game Nuclear War.

The expedition's prize for the "best" character was to be one year's subscription to the Dragon, but it was a very subjective prize. Upon arriving at the game, I found that several folks from Lake Geneva were added to the original twelve (though not competing). We rolled the six standard characteristics (sorry CalTech) and hit dice a la Men & Magic, but we were additionally allowed to roll a D4 for...LEVEL.

I rolled a cleric 10-11-14-11-10-9, Tindell. Unfortunately the #*&%¢$ die rolled a 1. (Nothing more useless than....) (Boy, did I miss Jock Root's tables, A&E 4). One of the Lake Geneva folks brought his 14th level Paladin--the Great Sweeney (apparently in case we ran into Sir Fang. I couldn't get no data on who this character (or monster) could be). When this occurred, I had a distinct shiver of fear course down my spine, but I decided that I would more likely learn something if I went and listened, than if I went and pretended to be a superhero.With a first level cleric, you either tend mules or die gloriously. (Surprise: we didn't take any mules! hint, hint.) There were two MUs , a third and a first, one hobbit thief (with a paladin! Good heavens!), one or two more clerics and a vast number of fighters. Things were so confused that I never really found anything else about them. Two dwarves, no elves.

Apparently Blackmoor Castle was destroyed during a battle actually played in Lake Geneva and over the hundred or so years ensuing the elves who took over ignored the increase of chaos beneath them. This led to the present difficulties.

The party went through various tests administered by the elves to try to make certain that we were not attempting to join the Chaotics below (drink holy water, touch silver crosses, etc.) We then entered a large odd-shaped room which I heard was once the throneroom of the castle, but had since changed shape. Many doors out of this chamber were found, leading to linen closets (with outhouse-style arrangements) and some leading to five-foot corridors.

We finally chose one such corridor (with some trepidation; walking single file can be dangerous!) after a drunken fighter named Richard leaped into a linen closet and tripped...We walked along it a bit until it widened to ten feet (apparently a major disaster collapsed the room and the area was repaired to different specifications).

At this point (having no graph paper), Tindell became lost. He vaguely recalls walking down a long corridor and then turning back when the ceiling started becoming quite wet. The group also burst into a room of goblins who fought tenaciously (Tindell racks up two!) until they caught sight of "the Great Sweeney." They instantly recognized him and immediately dropped weapons, etc., and ran like...er. heaven was after them. We pursued and killed a couple more and then found a door held closed by an ogre's body. We shoved our way in and continued exploration. Tindell brightly suggested spiking a door open and the group woke up...ten people began spiking it. Ho hum.

Finally we came to an open stairway with circular stairs down which we heard music playing. Richard stumbled down the stairs immediately. The rest of the group halted and tried to decide to follow him or not, Tindell urging them on. As we walked down, we heard the orc national anthem (don't blame me; it's Arneson's dungeon; how could orcs have one nation?) played backwards. This brought a horde of orcs on us from in front. While we battled (and Sweeney worked his way forward) ten of the fifty ran off. Soon after, thirty hit us in the rear as well. The battle was fierce with wounds exchanged rapidly on both sides, but when Sweeney appeared up front, again the orcs ran off. Arneson stated: "Sweeney, in a whirlwind, has just killed 17 orcs in this melee round" (!) (Not only that, no one else was allowed to pursue. I'm still confused about this.)

In the rear one fighter died and nearly everyone was wounded. At this point, I showed my ignorance. Coming from an LA dungeon (distinct from Bay Area) I was used to multiple spell casting capabilities and asked why our first level MU didn't throw sleep his second time. (The third level MU never threw anything!) The howls of shocked amazement nearly caused me to hide under the table. I rapidly learned "the right way" to play MUs.

After Sweeney "feared" the others, we slew all but one slept orc and questioned the remaining one. He told us Richard had come down the stairs, taken one look at the horde and run back up, disappearing. Figuring that he lied, ourdwarves dismembered him.

On exploring this level, we entered a room, finding some 12 "heroes" in plate with crossbows. We found they were not chaotic and not friendly, so we left. A bit farther on, we found a room full of gold. Sweeney and some of the lawfuls stayed out, but Tindell entered to investigate a gold statue (perhaps a religious article?). When Tindell realized that the others were merely filling their packs with gold, he complained loudly and ordered them to leave his "share" behind. A number of other lawfuls agreed but not many.

We began to return the way we had come when we came across some of the "heroes" playing craps. Two of our neutrals joined in, trying to win more gold. When the remainder of the party tried to pass, they found themselves taken under custody. Apparently the treasure room was the Heroes'. After many denunciations ("He did it," "No, he did it.") the heroes sent some men to find how much we'd stolen. At this point, they once again found Sweeney with two dwarves and a cleric. Genuflecting to Sweeney, they asked his permission to search the dwarves . A dwarf offered to fight to the death, winner takes treasure. Scratch one dwarf. THEY LEFT THE BODY BEHIND! The other dwarf surrendered. We were handed over to the custody of Sweeney.

We soon found ourselves at the magic stairway. At this point Sweeney teleported out of the dungeon (!) and left us behind. As we climbed up, we found that the stairs went up higher than we thought. Testing for illusions didn't work. We walked all the way up, where we found a trap door. Opening it revealed blue sky. We began to climb out, first the MUI, then Tindell.

The DM led me out. "As you climb out, you see blue sky above you, then around you, and then the trapdoor winks out and you have a gorgeous view of Blackmoor Castle and the lake below you, 200 feet. What are you doing?" "Stripping off my armor as fast as I can." "Very good, I'll only give you one hit die damage. How many hit points do you have?" "Four." What did the die roll up? 4." So Tindell's in unconsciousness. Glub, glub.

Don't ask me what happened to anyone else. I left rather than give it away. Somebody did ask if I got wet though.