Art by: Steve Prescott
Mind flayer using psionic attack, by Tom Wham from the AD&D Monster Manual, TSR, 1977.
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Dungeons & Deluges
It is pouring out. After five long years of drought, California has been getting storm after storm after storm. Last year’s El Nino was a disappointment, but this year is more than making up for it.
There was another long drought in the mid-to-late ‘70s, and it broke about a year after I started playing Dungeons & Dragons, just as the line was shifting from the Three Little Books and Blue Book Basic over to AD&D. So I am feeling intensely nostalgic right now: I will always associate heavy rain with sitting in our motor home, pouring through a brand new game book, letting whole new worlds open in front of me.
d&d 3.5e-5e art: Epic Fantasy Arte
d&d 3e art: same but weirder
ad&d 2e art: stuff that looks like things a drug dealer obsessed with led zeppelin would paint on his van
everything earlier, including this: editorial cartoons from the Neverwinter Herald
Much as great care must be taken when descending into the depths of a forsaken dungeon, care must be taken when perusing strange and eldritch tomes filled with strange knowledge and peculiar mathematics.
Such as Vol. 2: Monsters & Treasures of the original Dungeons & Dragons game from 1974. Like, just look at this:
That's from the random magical sword table, and those are all under one result. Now, if you're a gamer who was brought up on one of the recent editions of the game, this might seem utterly baffling to you. And this humble scholar of the old lore, dear reader, found herself at first a bit perplexed. Until she (that is to say, I) remembered one crucial bit of wisdom:
You have to relinquish preconceptions. The modern flame tongue, which one might set aflame with a command word and deal +1d6 fire damage or some such, goes back no further in the annals of history than the year 2000. So how exactly does a flaming sword work in this case, then?
It's simple! You see that +1? That's how much of a bonus you get to hit. Not to damage, though. Those other bonuses are to damage (but not to hit) against the specified creatures! So what's with the flaming thing? Well that's where all the damage bonuses come from, of course, and there are also certain other rules that interact with specifically flaming swords.
Also the sword is intelligent but that's just all magical swords (and only swords) in general.
As someone who played D&D back in the '70s, you're ALMOST right -- however, the plusses apply to both to-hit AND damage.
It's both easier to get a damaging blow on something that's flammable, and that blow will do more damage.
This text begs to differ. Now, I'm not actually 100% on whether the regular +1 affects damage or not (though I lean towards no), but I am certain the specific bonuses against creature types only affect damage.
Hmmm. that either changed between OD&D and AD&D1, or -- and this is actually pretty likely -- Everyone I Played With Was Doing It Wrong.
Definitely something that changed between the White Box and AD&D. Probably answering the question "Do I get to add my bonus to damage?" all the time got to be too tedious for the majority of DMs.
Out of curiosity, do more recent versions of D&D do much with intelligent weapons and other “unusual aspects” mentioned above? That was Such A Big Thing in the early days, but I haven’t seen any mention of it in Pathfinder 2nd Edition (which is what I play these days), and I don’t remember seeing much about it in D&D 3.X (the last version of brand-name D&D I played).
(Honestly, much as I enjoyed the gimmick back in the day, the only pre-D&D example of intelligent swords who can overwhelm the will of their wielders that I can think of is Stormbringer, from Michael Moorcock’s Elric Saga.)
How to Identify Cross Orbweaver Spiders
Originally posted on my website at https://rebeccalexa.com/how-to-identify-cross-orbweaver-spiders/. Click here to learn more about the How to Identify article series.
Name: Cross orbweaver spider (Araneus diadematus), also known as cross spider, European garden spider, et. al.
Range and typical habitat(s): Native to much of Europe, sporadically found in temperate areas of Asia, introduced to North America, particularly the west coast and northeast United States.
Distinguishing physical characteristics (size, colors, overall shapes, detail shapes) and behaviors: Fall is just around the corner, and if you’re looking for more eco-friendly seasonal decorations, the cross orbweaver is the perfect fit! While these spiders have spent all summer chowing down on insects, by September they’ve gotten big enough to be quite visible on their large orb webs.
ALTA mature female cross orbweaver spider.
Elf, Halfling and Dwarf by Larry Elmore
Dungeons & Dragons Basic Rules (1983)
Today, on #UnpopularOpinions:
I always liked Elmore’s black and white inkwork better than his painting. His black and white inks are so fluid and alive and full of personality, while so many of his paintings just feel stiff and static. It’s particularly marked since his paintings and his inks are still obviously the work of the same hand: it’s like the paint covered up all the vitality in the underlying linework, while the inks amplified it.
Daily reminder that the entirety* of Pathfinder 2nd Edition is available online, for free, endorsed by the developers
*not including Adventure Paths or World Lore, but that's easy enough to find and most of you are probably just gonna use your homebrew settings anyways
Note that all the stuff from the Adventure Paths makes its way to the Archives: feats, spells, equipment, magic items, monsters, and all that. The Crunch, in other words.
イラスト企画に参加した絵…
投稿してもいいのかな
일본 쪽 합작으로 그린 미라클매터…
올려도 되는걸까…
First Reaction: “Wow, this kind of surreal, bizarre extra-dimensional entity would be a much more interesting version of the D&D Beholder than the usual Tentacle Ball.”
Second Reaction: Beauty is in the Die of the Beholder
bakudreamer asked:
I'm curious what anyone else has come up with running down what the inspiration for Arduin's Phraint might have been. ( The Deodanth is straight up the Deodand from Vance's ' Dying Earth ' for example )
oldschoolfrp answered:
The only direct statement of inspiration I know is in The Arduin Grimoire: Vol I:
They are cold, emotionless, logical, a veritable bug “Mr. Spock.”
The idea of insect men from space is now common enough to seem almost generic, but I think the timing, the similarity in names, and the description of blue colors points to the Thranx in Alan Dean Foster’s Commonwealth series as a possible inspiration for their appearance. I believe the Thranx appeared in Foster’s first novel The Tar-Aiym Krang in 1972, five years before Arduin’s publication in 1977.
I LOVED the Arduin Grimoire series, and used it liberally in the AD&D-is-barely-out-yet campaign I ran in high school from ’78-’82, and one of my regular players in that campaign played a Phraint.
Arduin was a hot mess of poor editing and wild, disorganized concepts, but deep down in my heart of hearts, its “Take a Troll to Lunch” philosophy is a lot closer to my archetype of High Adventure Sword & Sorcery than the watered-down Tolkien imitations that blandified the game later on.
Much as great care must be taken when descending into the depths of a forsaken dungeon, care must be taken when perusing strange and eldritch tomes filled with strange knowledge and peculiar mathematics.
Such as Vol. 2: Monsters & Treasures of the original Dungeons & Dragons game from 1974. Like, just look at this:
That's from the random magical sword table, and those are all under one result. Now, if you're a gamer who was brought up on one of the recent editions of the game, this might seem utterly baffling to you. And this humble scholar of the old lore, dear reader, found herself at first a bit perplexed. Until she (that is to say, I) remembered one crucial bit of wisdom:
You have to relinquish preconceptions. The modern flame tongue, which one might set aflame with a command word and deal +1d6 fire damage or some such, goes back no further in the annals of history than the year 2000. So how exactly does a flaming sword work in this case, then?
It's simple! You see that +1? That's how much of a bonus you get to hit. Not to damage, though. Those other bonuses are to damage (but not to hit) against the specified creatures! So what's with the flaming thing? Well that's where all the damage bonuses come from, of course, and there are also certain other rules that interact with specifically flaming swords.
Also the sword is intelligent but that's just all magical swords (and only swords) in general.
As someone who played D&D back in the '70s, you're ALMOST right -- however, the plusses apply to both to-hit AND damage.
It's both easier to get a damaging blow on something that's flammable, and that blow will do more damage.
This text begs to differ. Now, I'm not actually 100% on whether the regular +1 affects damage or not (though I lean towards no), but I am certain the specific bonuses against creature types only affect damage.
Hmmm. that either changed between OD&D and AD&D1, or -- and this is actually pretty likely -- Everyone I Played With Was Doing It Wrong.
Definitely something that changed between the White Box and AD&D. Probably answering the question "Do I get to add my bonus to damage?" all the time got to be too tedious for the majority of DMs.
Out of curiosity, do more recent versions of D&D do much with intelligent weapons and other "unusual aspects" mentioned above? That was Such A Big Thing in the early days, but I haven't seen any mention of it in Pathfinder 2nd Edition (which is what I play these days), and I don't remember seeing much about it in D&D 3.X (the last version of brand-name D&D I played).
(Honestly, much as I enjoyed the gimmick back in the day, the only pre-D&D example of intelligent swords who can overwhelm the will of their wielders that I can think of is Stormbringer, from Michael Moorcock's Elric Saga.)
From a quick check, the 5E DMG spends all of three and a half pages on Sentient Magic Items before delving into artifacts. It discusses ability scores, alignment, senses and communication, and special purpose, before giving rules for conflict with the wielder. Then it sets forth stats on Blackrazor, Wave and Whelm. There's certainly no traits like "detects gems & jewels" that showed up in AD&D.
As far as I can tell, the core 4E books don't talk about sentient magic items at all. The only mention of Blackrazor that I can find with five minutes' work is in Into The Unknown - The Dungeon Survival Handbook, from 2012.
A quick survey on 5e.tools turns up almost 30 items with the Sentient feature in official 5E products, and a lot more specifically in the Explorer's Guide to Wildemount.
Dungeons & Dragons dragons by age category:
0-10 Years: Basically a giant fire-breathing housecat. Has a big ego, but rarely plans beyond the next meal. Distract with something shiny.
10-100 Years: The firepower of a small army paired with the emotional keel of a somewhat sheltered teenager. Has grand ambitions, but makes poor life decisions; has probably fucked a bard.
100-1000 Years: Remember Smaug’s boast? The unabridged version from the book, not the cut-up version from the movie? Yeah, that. Legitimately scary, but not quite as clever as it thinks it is. Decent “final boss” material.
1000+ Years: A shapeshifting world-class sorcerer with superhuman intelligence, unlimited resources, and a lot of time on its hands. Some decide to impersonate gods; most are motivated primarily in terms of “hey, you know what would be hilarious?”. Distract with something shiny.
Confirmed
messiambrandybuck
