Day 5 - First character to go from 1st level to 20th level (or highest possible level in a given edition)

I prefer being the DM rather than playing. I never took a character to twentieth level until playing D&D third edition. I played a human fighter. I previously blogged how this character died, Total Party Kill as a Player Character,

I remember when Dragon Magazine issue #5 came out. Bill Seligman wrote an article titled "Gandalf Was Only a Fifth Level Magic-User". As a DM, I run into difficulty handling high-level magic users. In OD&D, a fourteenth level Magic User can have a Limited Wish spell once a day. I find if you have intelligent and creative players, the campaign degenerates. The campaign turns into a Wish War or mimics the Twilight Zone episode, "It's a Good Life".

Day 4 - First dragon you slew (or some other powerful monster)

A more efficient and more remorseless killing machine than a dragon does not exist in all of nature. So precisely honed are their killing techniques and instincts that millions of years have wrought no evolutionary improvements. They are as they were at the dawn of creation -- as patient, as watchful, as swift, and just as incapable of pity. By comparison, even the great white shark is second-class. The dragon is infinitely more efficient because it thinks about killing and uses practiced stealth to catch its victims. And it can do this on land, water, or in the air. A dragon can sprint fast enough to grab an adventurer before the victim gets up speed enough to escape. Hitting a dragon anywhere except the brain is pretty much a wasted effort. Unless you can blow one apart with a howitzer, the dragon's reaction to a body shot will be almost no reaction at all. (I paraphrased this paragraph from an article on crocodiles found here:)

I remember hearing the story of Jim Carmichel killing a sixteen-foot crocodile. He shot the crocodile in the head. While dragging the body of the croc from one riverbank to the other, the croc woke up. The first shot hit the croc's brain. But, the croc is too stupid to know it is dead. He emptied two more rounds into the croc's head. They got the croc to the riverbank and skinned it. An hour later they came back to find the dead, skinned croc untouched by any scavenger and with a dead buzzard in its mouth. Even without a brain, the nervous system of the croc sensed the buzzard and killed it, without thinking. A dragon is much more dangerous than a croc. A dragon will keep on fighting even after it is dead.

Personally, I cannot remember killing a dragon (except in Skyrim). I tend to play low-level fighters. They often die before they kill anything significant. I do remember playing Tunnels and Trolls with Rocky Russo. I found a wand that would "kill any monster". We fought something big and nasty. I was nearly dead. I pulled out the wand and killed it. Until I wrote this, I did not realize that Rocky passed away in 2012.

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The D&D 40th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge - Day 3

What was the first dungeon you explored as a PC or ran as a DM?

I created the first dungeon I ran as a DM. It was awful. A friend and I borrowed the books, gathered up all the spare change we could muster, and headed downtown. We found a copy machine. Each copy cost twenty Pfennig. That was about $0.08 per page (the exchange rate was 2.50 marks to the dollar at the time). I created copies of the original three books and Grayhawk.

A short while later I pulled advanced guard duty in Hohenfels, Germany. My duty was to guard the tent full of equipment. The bigger challenge was to stay warm. I drew up my first dungeon on graph paper. The tent did not have any lanterns or sources of light. I pulled my cot next to the flap. I had to open the flap enough for light to shine in, but not wide enough to let out the heat. I drew up a huge dungeon. There was no story. Just a large number of rooms.

I only used that dungeon once. The game was a disaster. After an hour we stopped. I generated everything randomly. The majority of the rooms were empty. I knew there was something wrong but I did not know what the problem was.

Shortly after returning from Hohenfels, my copies of the original books, Grayhawk, Blackmoor, and Eldritch Wizardry arrived. At first, I dismissed Blackmoor. Blackmoor added the Assassin class. I keep trying to figure out what was wrong with my dungeon. Finally, I noticed the Temple of the Frog in Blackmoor.

Blackmoor is the only one of the original books written solely by Dave Arneson. That points out the difference between Gygax and Arneson. The original books controlled by Gygax imply everything is random. Arneson was the storyteller.

Blackmoor was a revelation. I learned from my failure with my first dungeon. I started making all the rooms interesting. The rooms had stuff in them. The dungeon had a reason; though, I admit some of the reasons required a lot of willing suspension of disbelief. Each room in the dungeon had something to make it interesting.

I still have my second dungeon. It is a mega dungeon by today's standards. A few months ago, in my World of Tiglath campaign, a group of players explored a small portion of it. That was fun.

Unfortunately, the US Postal Service destroyed my original copy of Blackmoor when I shipped it back from Germany.

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The D&D 40th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge - Day 2

The question is who was the first person you introduced to D&D? Which edition? What was their first character?

I introduced Dungeons and Dragons to several people at one time around 1977. I was in the army stationed in Erlangen, Germany. The Baader-Meinhof gang was captured, sentenced to life, and committed suicide. The remaining followers of the Red Army Faction (a.k.a. the Baader-Meinhof gang) tried recruit new followers by attacking some US bases. I heard they blew up an officer's club and some trucks in a motor pool. At this time, there was a serious drug problem on post. The heightened security because of the terror threat caused a disruption of the heroin drug supply.

One of the enterprising drug traffickers noticed if an opening. When there was a bomb threat at one end of the post, it was possible to smuggle a truckload of drugs on base through the gate at the other end of the post. Supposedly, the main drug traffickers on the post all worked in brigade S2. Brigade S2 is responsible for intelligence and security. The drug traffickers started calling in bomb threats. In response, each battalion headquarters company formed a bomb squad.

I was on one of the bomb squads. When you are on bomb squad duty, everyone has to stay together, all day long in the barracks. I convinced the entire squad to play Dungeon's and Dragons. I used the original Dungeon's and Dragons in the white box.

I was not very successful introducing Dungeon's and Dragons to the rest of the squad. After they caught the drug traffickers in brigade S2 and sent them Leavenworth, none of the group every played again. It was an interesting way to spend a day.

Someone called in three bomb threats while I was on bomb squad duty. The first two, the PX and the Officer's Club, found nothing. The third call was a bit different. A two-and-a-half-ton truck with a bulldozer blade was smoothing out the dirt racetrack just off post when it dug up a World War II anti-tank mine. The bomb squad had to keep everyone away until the bomb disposal unit arrived. They still find World War II bombs in Germany. In January of 2014, a construction worker near Bonn, Germany accidentally hit an unexploded bomb causing it to explode. The bomb killed the construction worker.

Image taken from here:


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Kilroy Was Here

Graffiti can be a powerful political force. Before the invention of the printing press and newspapers, graffiti was the tool to influence the masses. Graffiti can spice up fantasy role-playing.

In front of a set of double doors in a dungeon is one of my favorite places to scrawl in dried blood, "Open the other door!" This simple graffiti causes much consternation in the party. Should they heed the warning or not? Should they avoid the doors all together and go another way?

In a previous adventure in the World of Tiglath campaign, the party found some graffiti engraved in the wall. Someone used a stone shape spell to engrave, "Celadus makes the girls moan." The party heard the moans generated by a magic mouth spell. Unseen servant and magic mouth can add interesting dimensions to graffiti. The ruins of Pompeii are the source of the graffiti about Celadus.

"Kilroy was here" is a graffiti from World War II. According to the Straight Dope, numerous newspapers reported pregnant women going to the delivery room with "Kilroy was here" written on their stomachs.

The same Straight Dope article mentions Stalin demanding to know "Who is Kilroy?" after seeing the graffiti in an opulent marble bathroom during the meeting of the Big Three in Potsdam, Germany, in July 1945.

Back in the early 1980's, I dungeon mastered a game each week at the University of Utah. A friend of mine, Harley, created a human fighter named Julian. Harley came up with an interesting list of equipment. Julian, the fighter, always carried several pieces of chalk and paints. Julian left graffiti everywhere he ventured.

I took the graphic from here: http://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/forums/showthread.php?154048-*Free-Event*-Kilroy-Was-Here/page9

The D&D 40th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge - Day 1

The question was who is the first person who introduced you to D&D? Unfortunately, I cannot remember his name. I was in the Army and stationed in Erlangen Germany in 1975. A new staff sergeant joined the company. He was pulling brigade CQ duty. That mean he needed to monitor the phones and radio all night in case an urgent message arrived. This is a boring job most nights. The sergeant asked three of us to come over and play a game. We picked up some pizza from the local German bar and headed over to brigade headquarters.

The sergeant pulled out small white box containing the original three books, Men & Magic, Monsters & Treasure, and Underworld & Wilderness Adventures; he also had the first supplement Greyhawk. We start rolling up our characters while we ate our pizza (pizza in Germany is a bit different from pizza "back in the world" as we referred to the United States). My first character was a fighter. Grease from the pizza appropriately stained the character sheet.

We started actually playing around 7:00 PM. We ended the adventure the next morning right after reveille. I was hooked.

The Locked Door

This is a quick overview of the party's current situation.

The Marazzer invaded the country of Greth. The Marazzer slaughtered the army of Greth on the Plains of Lethe. The party avoided the slaughter by the Marazzer because they were still going through basic training. Iroine is a witch leading a rebellion against the Marazzer. The party wants to reach the hut of Iroine.

Iroine lives in a swamp. Few ever survive entering the swamp. Fewer still ever make it to the hut of Iroine. Most get lost in the swamp and die. The party came to the village of Appary looking for a way to reach the hut of Iroine. A platoon of Marazzer soldiers occupied Appary. The party poisoned the Marazzer killing the soldiers.

Chinyere is the Apothecary in Appary. Chinyere knows a way to get to the hut of Iroine. She will only provide the instructions if the party solves a puzzle.

In order to solve the puzzle the party needed to get a flower from the garden of Noelani. Noelani said she would give the party one of her Night Blooming Witches Blood flowers if they investigate the sounds coming from down in a storage room in her basement.

The party investigates the storage room and finds an ant tunnel. The ant are about one foot long in size. The party kills several ants, then retreat to heal and rest. The party tells Noelani about the ants. They say they will get rid of the ants but recommend that Noelani lock the door to the storage closet behind them.

The party ventures back down into the ant hive. They kill several ants. The worker ants grab the eggs and retreat into an alcove. The worker ants form a line of defense to protect the eggs. The sorceress casts a Burning Spray spell killing all the ant eggs. The worker ants go insane and attack the party. The party retreats up into the storage closet. Noelani locked the door to the storage closet as the party suggested. The worker ants are in hot pursuit of the evil monsters that killed all their eggs.