Advanced Diseases and Diagnoses

Adventuring is dangerous business. Dungeons are filled with monsters, tricks, and traps. The wilderness is littered with small armies of orcs and bandits, and strongholds ruled by hostile high-level characters who demand jousts or tribute in the form of magic items, or send player characters on quests via geas to obtain such items.

But even adventurers who overcome these challenges have another, unseen threat to contend with: disease! The AD&D DMG has detailed rules for handling the contracting of diseases, although Gygax claims that the "system does not attempt a specific treatment of a subject which is beyond its scope and purpose":

From the AD&D DMG, CHARACTER AGE, AGING, DISEASE & DEATH, page 13

I will clarify what exactly Gygax means by this shortly. For now, let's get into the non-"specific" but nonetheless very thorough handling of disease in AD&D.

First, we are told that the DM should generally check whether each player character has contracted a disease once a month, once a week if conditions are favorable, or each time a player character is exposed to a disease carrier:

We are then provided with the percentage chances of contracting a disease each time the check is made:

With a base 2% chance and no situational modifiers, we can expect a player character to contract a disease, on average, once every 50 months, or a little more than 4 years, which seems a bit low. 

In particularly dangerous circumstances - the character is already diseased or infected with parasites (I'll get to that later), is in a crowded, filthy environment (a city, encampment, ship, or siege) in a hot and moist swamp or jungle, and is of venerable age - the chance increases to as high as 14%. On average, such a character would contract a disease about once every seven weeks (remember that under ideal conditions, the check is made every week instead of every month). 

If there is an outbreak in such circumstances and the poor character is being exposed to disease carriers left and right, the chance increases to 24%, meaning the character will contract a disease roughly every four encounters (assuming, I suppose, that there are somehow multiple diseases at play, which seems unlikely in an epidemic scenario). That would be a terrible situation indeed!

Hopefully, the character is a paladin or monk, as both of these classes are immune to disease - in the monk's case, beginning at 5th-level. Speaking of 5th-level, that's also when clerics and druids get access to the cure disease spell, so it's safe to say that disease is, for most adventuring parties, one of those low-level setbacks which is eventually trivialized by access to more potent forms of magic. It is a "lock" for which the players will eventually acquire a "key", so to speak.

And that's great news, because diseases are really annoying! Here is the table you roll on to determine what area of the body is affected by a disease, the disease's occurrence, and severity:

Here we see what Gygax meant when he said that AD&D "does not attempt a specific treatment of" diseases. I take this to mean that specific in-world diseases are not described in detail, but rather generally, and in terms of actual game mechanics. If you want your AD&D diseases to reflect those found in the real world, apparently OD&D Supplement II: Blackmoor has you covered.

Instead of that, Gygax provides some general guidelines regarding occurrence and severity:

And then descriptions of the game mechanics pertaining to each type of disease:

Diseases are brutal. A diseased character is incapacitated for anywhere from 1 to 4 weeks, may suffer permanent penalties to their ability scores, lose the function of body parts, and even die. 

A character who contracts a disease has a 1% chance of it being a brain/nervous system disease, which has a 37.5% chance of being terminal, which has an 8% chance of killing them in one hour. That's a .03% chance overall, so it's very unlikely to happen, but it could. Imagine being the unlucky player whose character drops dead before they even know that anything's wrong with them. People who complain about save or die traps and spell effects in AD&D clearly have not read about the diseases!

If my math is right, a character who contracts a disease has a 13.125% chance of contracting a terminal case - and that's before accounting for modifiers to the severity die roll. Fortunately, having a high (or even average) Constitution score significantly mitigates this risk:

Disease goes hand in hand with parasitic infestation, which the DM must also check for each month or week (in favorable conditions), or whenever the player character is exposed to a carrier:

Parasitic infestation also gets its own percentage chance of occurring:

In particularly nasty situations - the character is exposed to filth (i.e., is in the city, probably), eats improperly cooked meat, drinks polluted water, and is in a swamp or jungle environment - the chance is as high as 16%, indicating infestation once every 6 months, weeks, or encounters with a carrier.

Here is the table of infestation types and severity:

A character who is infested with parasites has a 15.625% chance of developing a terminal case (there are no modifiers to severity for parasitic infection). Assuming an unmodified disease severity roll, parasitic infestations are slightly more deadly than diseases.

A character who dies from disease or infestation (most likely) continues to suffer the effects after being brought back from the dead:

This all to say nothing of lycanthropy, which in AD&D is a disease...as well as a curse? It is treatable with both cure disease as well as remove curse. Lycanthropy however is a much larger subject and is beyond the scope of this post (I will likely write about it some other time).

Aside from lycanthropes and monthly/weekly checks, what else can spread disease/parasitic infestation? Let's start by looking at the Monster Manual.

Cerebral parasites are, of course, parasites. They siphon energy from psionics:

The demon Demogorgon's tentacles inflict a disease which can cause limbs to rot and fall off, or permanently reduce a creature's maximum hit points unless cure disease is administered within 6 rounds:

Another demon, Juiblex, has the spell-like ability to cause disease (the reverse, evil version of cure disease):

Infestation by ear seekers can be thwarted by cure disease if cast with 4-24 hours of contact. Otherwise, the host is 90% likely to die:

Violet fungi's branches inflict flesh rot similar to Demogorgon's tentacles, but that of violet fungi takes effect in only one melee round, although a saving throw is allowed (the mechanical effects of the rot are not elaborated upon, so I'm not sure how it's meant to function in game terms - perhaps similar to that of Demogorgon):

Gas spores, when exposed to flesh, infest a creature with tiny rhizomes (parasites) which kill within 24 hours and produce more gas spores unless a cure disease is applied:

Green slime is a "strange plant growth" which turns exposed creatures into more green slime within 1-4 rounds. Its vulnerability to cure disease suggests it is itself either a disease or parasite, though it isn't clear which:

A bite from a giant leech has a 50% chance of causing a disease which kills in 2-5 weeks (here a mischievous leprechaun from the adjoining column, unaware of or perhaps immune to the danger, is seen riding the leech):

Yellow mold, when attacked, releases spores which infect the lungs and kill instantly unless a saving throw is made. A cure disease and a resurrection cast within 24 hours can save the afflicted:

The touch of a mummy inflicts a rotting disease which kills in 1 to 6 months, permanently reduces a creature's Charisma score by 2 each month, negates cure wounds spells, and reduces the rate of natural healing to 10%. The disease causes the bodies of those killed to rot away, and such individuals cannot be brought back to life unless cure disease and raise dead are applied within 6 turns:

The neo-otyugh inflicts disease, although the method of transmission and the exact type isn't specified:

Presumably, like the standard otyugh, its bite has a 90% chance of inflicting typhus - yes, typhus specifically, for some reason (perhaps the neo-otyugh transmits neo-typhus):

Typhus is, of course, a real world disease, and it affects multiple areas of the body, including the skin, gastro-intestinal organs, and brain. I'm not sure how it would be classified within AD&D's non-specific disease schema.

The bite of a giant rat has a 5% chance of transmitting a "serious" disease (is this meant to mean "severe" disease?) unless a saving throw is made. Since the specifics of the disease are not detailed, presumably the DM would roll on the disease table in the DMG:

Like the cerebral parasite and ear seeker, rot grubs are treated as parasites. Infestation is countered by cure disease if applied within 1-3 turns:

Like the giant leech, a bite from a giant tick has a 50% chance of inflicting a disease which is fatal in 2-8 days unless a cure disease is applied:

Of the monsters that cause disease or parasitic infestation, ear seekers, giant rats, rot grubs, gas spores, violet fungi, wererats, giant ticks, werewolves, and yellow mold all appear on the random monster tables for dungeon levels I thru IV, meaning that player characters will likely encounter these monsters prior to having access to cure disease. Of those, diseases/infestations inflicted by ear seekers, violet fungi, yellow mold, and rot grubs will take their course well before the player characters have a chance to return from the dungeon and treat the ailment, so low-level characters without access to cure disease should be especially wary of these threats.

In addition, while low-level adventurers would be wise not to venture into the wilderness too early, there one might find green slime (in shallow fresh water), giant leeches (in shallow fresh water and uninhabited marshes), lycanthropes (in both inhabited and uninhabited areas), mummies (in uninhabited rough terrain, hills, and mountains - undead are not encountered in deserts, for some reason, and unfortunately there are no bog mummies here), giant rats (in sub-arctic forest, rough terrain, and marshes, as well as most terrain types in inhabited areas), and giant ticks (in uninhabited scrub and forest). While all but the green slime inflict diseases which allow some time for treatment, this is of course the wilderness - who knows how far away treatment might be?

If the player characters happen to use psionics, they run the additional risk of encountering cerebral parasites, demon princes such as Demogorgon and Juiblex, and yellow mold.

It is telling that disease-carrying and parasitic monsters are more common in the dungeon than in the wilderness (dungeons are, fittingly, disease pits).

I would be remiss not to mention the dreaded beggar, which may also be a disease carrier:

Since beggars can be disease carriers, an encounter with one could be cause for the DM to immediately check to see if the player character has contracted a disease (with +10% chance of contracting the disease, according to the table at the beginning of this post) - just another hidden danger of city encounters! And don't forget that giant rats and all manner of lycanthrope will be encountered in cities and towns as well.

Evil clerics - and druids, apparently - can also cause disease by reversing the cure disease spell (druids are Neutral by necessity, but they still have access to the - evil - reverse of cure disease):

Evil clerics can also reverse the heal spell to instead harm and by doing so inflict disease:

It's not all monsters, wretched beggars, evil clerics, and the ubiquitous peril of living in the AD&D world. Cursed scrolls have a 25% chance of inflicting a disease which kills in 2-8 turns:

The periapt of foul rotting, which may appear as any "gem of small value" inflicts a rotting disease which reduces Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma by 1 each week. When any score is reduced to 0, the character dies. The disease can only be removed by remove curse and cure disease and heal, limited wish, or wish:

Outside of avoiding hot, moist, crowded conditions, swamps, jungles, cities, encampments, ships, nasty monsters, beggars, scrolls, and gems of small value, never getting old, living in the mountains, being naturally gifted in Constitution, or being a paladin or 5th-level monk, are there any other ways to avoid diseases and parasites?

You can start by cooking your meat and boiling your water. Alternatively, a 1st-level cleric can instantly purify it for you:

Druids can only purify water (not food), for some reason:

Additionally, amber gemstones are reputed to ward of disease:

Unfortunately, Gygax immediately informs us that, actually, that's hogwash, and carrying around such a gemstone "will convey absolutely no benefit of magical nature":

This is too bad, as I quite like the list of REPUTED MAGICAL PROPERTIES OF GEMS. I really like the idea of player characters carrying around a bunch of bejeweled items (rather than selling them) in order to benefit from minor magical properties. I say if they're carrying around some amber, give them a -1% chance of contracting a disease!

The periapt of health (which looks exactly the same as a periapt of foul rotting) confers immunity to all diseases except the foul rotting inflicted by the aforementioned periapt (interestingly though, the periapt of health can be crushed into dust and sprinkled upon an afflicted character to counter the periapt of foul rotting's effects):

Finally, one possible minor benign power of an artifact or relic is to grant immunity to disease:

But you're not a paladin or 5th-level monk. You don't live in the mountains. You're of a sickly disposition, and very old. You live in a city which is for some reason built in a swampy jungle. You run into beggars on your way to the plague rat-infested ship which takes you to the dungeon full of gas spores, green slime, and violet fungi. You break for lunch and eat and drink nothing but raw otyugh meat and polluted dungeon water. You're gonna get sick. Where can you get a cure?

Cure disease is of course the obvious solution. As I mentioned earlier, it's a 3rd-level spell for clerics and druids:

In addition to being immune to disease, paladins can also cure disease (even before they gain access to the cleric spell, which isn't until 13th-level):

A psionic can use cell adjustment to cure disease as well:

If you have a disease of the eyes, cure blindness (another 3rd-level cleric spell) will help, but not if you've already lost the affected eye(s):

If you have no cleric, druid, paladin, or psionic in your party, you will have to find an NPC to help you. Cure disease costs 1,000 gold pieces:

A dungeon room containing unguarded gold contains 250 gold per level, so this is equivalent to four such rooms for a 1st-level character and one such room for a 4th-level character (that is, it is not cheap):

Remember that even if the player characters can afford this service, actually obtaining it from the NPC should still be irritating!

If you have no luck finding a human/demihuman spellcaster to aid you, you might seek out a "tribal spell caster":

It will have to be a bugbear, gnoll, kobold, orc, giant, goblin, hobgoblin, or lizard man, however, as these are the only monsters able to attain a high enough spellcasting level:

However, considering that most of these monsters are Evil, and curing disease is Good, casting these spells often will put these monsters in jeopardy with their gods and alignment:

It is probably fair to say that convincing these monsters to utilize this magic will be even more expensive and irritating than usual!

If you also have no luck finding a tribal spell caster, consider tracking down a werebear:

Or steal a night hag's periapt forged in Hades:

Failing all that, you might track down some medicinal herbs, spices, or vegetables. APPENDIX J has a detailed list of such things and their reputed medicinal benefits, which is much too thorough to get into here. In short, they can be used to treat urinary, venereal, skin, liver, pulmonary, eye, mouth, and respiratory diseases. As with gems, Gygax spoils the fun by saying, no, actually, none of this stuff actually does anything, but we don't always have to listen to the old man.

Finally, there are a few magic items that cure diseases, such as the staff of curing:

Keoghtom's ointment:

A bead of curing (found on a necklace of prayer beads):

The cup and talisman of Al'Akbar:

And as a major benign power of an artifact or relic:

All this is to say: give your player characters diseases! Make them face down disgusting little dungeon creatures. Make them ward off hoards of beggars. Introduce a plague to your next urban or seafaring adventure. Have the Evil warlord in the castle lay siege to the city and start catapulting diseased corpses inside. Make the player characters properly cook their meat, or make the cleric prepare purify food and drink. Make them spend tons of gold dealing with annoying NPCs. Make them seek out and parley with monstrous spellcasters and werebears. Make them steal from hags. Make them quest for rare magic items to ward and cure themselves (and don't forget to sprinkle in the occasional cursed scroll or gem). 

Put in them the fear of swamps and jungles, cities, ships, old age, fungi, mold, and rats, and all the unseen dangers lurking in heaps of filth, standing water, rotting wood, and the very air they breathe!

It Did Not End with a Mere Slaying of Ogres: Treasure as a Source of Challenge in D&D

It's easy to think of treasure as purely reward - the player characters have overcome the challenges of the dungeon or wilderness and have slain some monster in its lair. The monster's treasure hoard (if any) is some collection of coins, gems, jewelry, and occasionally even magic items, all for the player characters' taking. 

However, just because the dungeon or wilderness and its inhabitants have been defeated, the challenge needn't end there. The recovery of treasure poses its own challenges. From PLACEMENT OF MONETARY TREASURE in the AD&D DMG, beginning on page 91:

The first challenge posed by treasure is one of transportation. However, of the treasure types listed in the appendix of the Monster Manual, all but the coins are readily transportable. But coins pose a problem only in large quantities - although it is worth mentioning that monsters' treasure hoards (in their wilderness lairs) only ever contain most denominations of coin in the thousands:

Even then, the movement of large amounts of coin is one of those low-level setbacks in D&D which is often eventually trivialized by the accumulation of equipment or magical ability - just as past a certain point players will likely have magical means of providing light, creating food and water, traveling overland, and even coming back from the dead, they will likely some day acquire a bag of holding, handy haversack, portable hole, or a personal demiplane in which to stuff vast sums of cumbersome coins. Thus it would be insufficient to say that transportation is the sole or ultimate means of challenge posed by treasure.

While not at all related to this subject, since I'm analyzing this section of the DMG I feel the need to call out this bit:

This suggests that it is not so simple as to say that, for example, all minotaur groups possess treasure type C, which means that, among other treasures, they have a 30% chance of possessing 1,000 to 6,000 silver coins. Rather, minotaurs have a 30% chance of possessing silver coins, and because they appear in groups of 1 to 8, a group of 8 will have the maximum 6,000, while a pair of 2 will have 25% of that, a group of 4 will have 50%, and so on. 

Or perhaps we're meant to roll to determine the amount of silver coins and then adjust that number according to the actual number of minotaurs relative to the theoretical maximum (for example, if I have just one minotaur and roll to determine that it has 3,000 silver pieces, I might then divide that number by 8 because the actual number of minotaurs is one eighth of the maximum, giving it 375 silver). I could be misinterpreting what Gygax is saying, but that's my takeaway. Kind of weird that this bit is buried in a single sentence in the DMG! But I digress.

Continuing on, Gygax next suggests that treasure comes in forms not listed in the Monster Manual appendix:

(At this point I feel I could write an essay on the use of the Gygaxian "of course".)

Rather than blindly rolling on the treasure table to assign a monster heaps of coins, gems, jewelry, magic items, and the like, the DM is meant to "Assign each monster treasure, or lack thereof, with reason". Brigands, giant rats, and centipedes will all have their own treasure types as listed in the Monster Manual, but ("of course") the treasure will manifest itself differently according to the qualities of the monster in question:

(I thought it worth highlighting that, "naturally" - the cousin of the Gygaxian "of course" - monsters without treasure will "hate and envy" those with treasure - an opportunity for the players to engage in some social manipulation between enemies, albeit with bedfellows they'll later have to reckon with if they want the treasure for themselves.)

Again Gygax describes types of treasure not found in the treasure tables:

Here Gygax is once more describing a method other than blindly rolling on tables to generate results. Rather than randomly determining by a roll of the dice that a monster with a huge treasure hoard like, for example, a dragon, is lairing right in the middle of a settled region, he suggests that these creatures and their treasure should reside in "more inaccessible regions". 

This same principle is described earlier under MONSTER POPULATIONS AND PLACEMENT on pages 90 and 91:

Likewise, orc warbands in a settled region should be small relative to those found in true wilderness (monster populations in inhabited areas and wilderness regions can differ on the basis of "individual prowess" or "due to numbers"). While those two groups of orcs, according to the treasure table, might have the same chance at possessing copper, silver, electrum, gems, jewelry, and magic items, this suggests that those in "more inaccessible regions" should somehow have a greater chance of possessing more valuable treasure (or that those in more accessible regions should have a lesser chance of possessing it).

There is something to be said of the fact that Gygax simultaneously provides a bunch of tables for randomly determining placement of settlements, strongholds, ruins, monster lairs, and treasures contained within while also telling the DM that they should do all of this according to reason, but I won't get into it more than I already have. At the very least, it's justification to reroll a result you don't like. Suffice it to say that I enjoy my "Disneyland" campaigns just fine, thank you very much.

Returning to PLACEMENT OF MONETARY TREASURE, the example provided is illuminating:

Rather than simply possessing 2,000 gold pieces, the ogres in the example have a variety of treasure (including mundane items like food and provisions, helmets, and a bardiche) which in sum total amount to the aforementioned 2,000 gold pieces. What I think this means is that if I use the treasure table to determine that the ogres possess 2,000 gold pieces, I'm supposed to then invent a variety of more specific items of treasure that add up to that amount, not just dump a pile of 2,000 gold pieces in their lair and call it a day.

This is complicated by the inclusion in the example of the 350 gold piece silver necklace, which I imagine would fall under jewelry. I assume that if I roll up a number of gems, jewelry, or magic items that these are left as is. It is only the coinage in the treasure hoard that needs breaking down into more flavorful units of treasure. We already have a procedure/tables for doing the same to gems and jewelry:

So the inclusion of the silver necklace in the example of the ogres is either an oversight or I'm again over-interpreting Gygax and he's instead suggesting an entirely different way of determining the specific contents of a treasure hoard which, for whatever reason, he doesn't care to elucidate.

The latter highlighted section in the ogre example again brings up the issue of transportation, but also the challenge of recognizing all of the items of value. Saying simply that the ogres possess 2,000 gold pieces is too easy. By instead providing a weird insurance guy's actuarial accounting of every item of value in the ogres' lair, the players are challenged with spending time actually sorting through all of this junk to find the good stuff - and if they want to reap the full benefits of their 2,000 gold piece reward, they will need to figure out how to take all of that (junk included) with them.

There is time pressure as well. The treasure won't wait for the player characters to return for the rest of it. Gygax ominously portends the challenge ahead with a deftly-employed Boomer ellipsis: "It did not end with a mere slaying of ogres..."

Yet the ogre example is a bit of weak one. I don't really see a party of player characters having much trouble hauling all of this out in one go. The challenge is better illustrated in the next example:

Here we even get a supercharged Boomer ellipsis with a space between each period ("What a problem . . ."). I'm delighted that even the "so useful" and "so devoted" henchmen get a special shoutout here. They may expect a fair share of the treasure, but even they're not stupid enough to stay behind and guard it. There are more monsters coming!

All of this challenge ("of course") is in the name of preventing too much treasure from falling into the player characters' hands (a possibility with which Gygax is particularly preoccupied, and which he goes to great lengths to prevent with his advice throughout the DMG). 

This isn't Gygax making things onerous for its own sake. Treasure is how characters advance in AD&D. The more treasure they accumulate, the more powerful they become, and the more powerful they become, the less challenging the game is. The accumulation and retention of treasure is a specific challenge necessary to maintain the overall challenge of the game. 

This lack of funds is what motivates the players to adventure, as Gygax describes multiple times throughout the DMG:

(STARTING LEVEL OF EXPERIENCE FOR PLAYER CHARACTERS, page 12)

(ACQUISITION OF MAGIC-USER SPELLS, page 39)

At the conclusion of PLACEMENT OF MONETARY TREASURE, Gygax suggests additional ways to counterbalance the accumulation of wealth, and again draws the connection between the challenge of treasure retention, the overall challenge of the campaign, and the call to adventure:

There are no free lunches in AD&D. Like everything else in the game, treasure is a challenge to be overcome, even after it's been "earned".

Appendix N of Forlorn Encystment

This post is part of the Appendicitis N blog bandwagon, originally put forth by Marcia of Traverse Fantasy. The challenge to bloggers was to compile a list of inspirations that impact their game design, akin to Gygax's APPENDIX N: INSPIRATIONAL AND EDUCATIONAL READING, originally found in the AD&D 1e DMG.

An alternative option was to write about the DMG appendix corresponding to the first letter of one's own name. That would have me writing about APPENDIX A: RANDOM DUNGEON GENERATION. While I would love to write about this at some point, I couldn't quite figure out what the angle might be, so that will have to come some other time. 

I considered writing about some other appendix from the DMG, but I've already done a lot of that on this very blog, so inspirations it will have to be. In no particular order, I present the APPENDIX N OF FORLORN ENCYSTMENT:

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring film came out just two days shy of my ninth birthday. I had no idea what the Lord of the Rings was. While I (and Gary Gygax) may maintain that Tolkien was not as influential on D&D as many claim (besides halflings, and rangers, and balrogs - dwarves and elves can just as easily be traced to other inspirations as well, and even orcs as presented, at least originally, in D&D are very different from Tolkien's, also the D&D wizard is very much not a Gandalf-type), I would never kid myself by feigning to believe that this movie did not inspire me.

Everyone has their favorite of these movies, but Fellowship will always be mine. I love that the gang is all here together. It feels the most like a D&D adventure, with a big group of disparate personalities embarking on a dangerous wilderness adventure and dungeon crawl together. The subsequent movies only become more epic in scale, but they never feel the same. I love Gandalf the Grey, and Rivendell, and Moria, and Boromir's heroic redemption and death. I love how sad it is. This movie has always inspired wonder in me, and is probably the single biggest reason I'm a fantasy fan today.

This is more of an honorable mention, since I'm not sure how much this inspired my game design, but thirteen-year-old me loved DM of the Rings. I always loved reading and drawing comics when I was a kid. I wanted so badly to be a webcomic creator. I was playing D&D by this time (and had been for a while - although 3rd edition was out by now, with 4th around the corner, 2nd was our game of choice) and this was more or less my introduction to the idea that playing D&D was a specific type of experience that allowed you to relate to total strangers who also played D&D. 

As a weird aside, I was really into Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead remake at the time and briefly worked on a DM of the Rings ripoff where Dawn of the Dead was instead used as the framing device. I have no idea how far I made it with that idea. It is (perhaps thankfully) now lost to time.

I loved LEGO as a kid (and, let's be realistic, probably until I was in high school and maybe a bit later). I had a castle. I don't remember which one, but I spent hours devising little adventures to happen in and around that place using whatever I had on hand. LEGO was the ultimate imagination fuel and physical outlet for that same inspiration.

LEGO was always a part of D&D for us. Every D&D character needed a representative minifigure. When my paladin got a new magic suit of armor or sword, you bet the corresponding minifig was getting an upgraded loadout as well. LEGO minifigs and Pokémon figures were the only miniatures we had, until...

...Heroscape came along! This game was very D&D, with dragons and elf archers and Vikings and whatnot, but it also opened my mind to the idea that D&D could be weird. Sure, you can have standard orcs, but what if they road dinosaurs? What if skeletons had plasma rifles? What if there was a killer robot army? Throw in samurai, World War II soldiers, and guys from the Matrix for good measure. There's a Monster Manual-sized trove of inspirational material here to mine for your next bestiary.

Heroscape also caused tactical combat, for better or worse, to worm its way into my brain. We mostly played a theater of the mind-style game in my youth, but laying down different types of terrain with their own variable movement costs and rules associated with them, walls and trees for cover, and elevation differences convinced me that a game which made these factors worth considering was something that appealed to me.

My burgeoning fascination with tactical combat exploded when I played XCOM: Enemy Unknown. This game (and especially the hugely popular, awesome, challenging, and exhausting Long War mod) consumed my life for longer than I'd like to admit. XCOM feels very much like modern D&D. It's squad-based tactical turn-based combat with a class-based roster of randomly-generated playable characters with lots of fun powers to unleash.

XCOM is a game about emergent storytelling. You never know which of your new recruit soldiers will survive to rise to the top, who will unlock their psionic potential, and - spoilers for a thirteen-year-old game - sacrifice themselves to save the planet. You have to make peace with the idea that these characters are expendable, but they become less expendable the more powerful they become, and the more attached you get to them. You have to learn to make peace with the RNG and move on. Sound familiar?

XCOM is also great fodder for your next bestiary. For your consideration:

• Weak little guys with psychic powers that are little danger on their own, but can inflict temporary status effects on your characters and form psychic networks to bolster one another and more powerful enemies
• Fast little jumpy guys with deadly aim, who can quickly flank you or gain a height advantage, with a long range AoE poison debuff attack
• A slow, floating automaton which is highly resistant to damage when its shell is closed, but extremely vulnerable when it opens to fire
• Very fast melee units which are either hard to kill or come in overwhelming numbers, who run right at you and can nearly instantly kill you if they get close enough - one of which becomes more dangerous when injured, the other of which turns those it kills into zombies
• Units with invisibility cloaks that lie in wait until they can emerge from hiding and strangle you
• Mechas with forcefields - if you want to damage them, you have to kill the little guy hiding way in the back of the combat area

Every XCOM fight is a puzzle to solve. You have to think very carefully about how to use each and every one of your characters' abilities in the correct order to the maximum possible effect if you want to survive. I really wish modern D&D's tactical combat was more like this.

Civilization V is another game by Firaxis which feels worth mentioning. While I've only gotten into it fairly recently (and have only played this installment in the series), it has, like XCOM, consumed more of my time than I'd like to admit.

I'm not really sure how much it has informed the way I approach D&D. If anything, it's made me think about why cities are where they are (mostly resources, and access to rivers and the sea - obvious stuff really, but somehow playing the game has enforced it for me), and how the desire for certain land and the clashing personalities of a civilization's leaders can lead to conflict.

There are odd tidbits to be taken from this game. One could easily take the social policies and victory conditions and translate them into ideals or personalities of a given civilization. Is this civilization expansionist? Warlike? Pious? Artistic? Seafaring? Mercantile? Technological? I like to think about how I might run mass combat based on my experiences playing Civ. I also really like the idea of playing a game of Civ up to the Medieval or Renaissance Era and then using the map and political history of that world (or some approximation of it) in a D&D game.

I felt this list wouldn't be complete without some blogs, and Welsh Piper's Hex-Based Campaign Design definitely deserves a mention. I love procedures in my games, and prep procedures are little games the DM can play on their own. Although my methods have changed over the years, it should be clear that I love playing this game. 

This post was my introduction to Hexographer (and creating hex maps in general). I can't count the number of sandboxes I've created without ever intending to use them for a game (for better or worse), and every game I've run since discovering this post has been facilitated by such a map because this procedure (or at least my version of it) is so much fun.

If Welsh Piper deserves a shoutout, so does The Original D&D Setting by Wayne Rossi. I love implied setting stuff! I probably wouldn't be writing so many blog posts about one or two throwaway sentences from the AD&D DMG if this hadn't originally sparked my imagination.

I would be remiss not to mention Web DM. My interest in D&D is somewhat cyclical and periodic. I recently got back into it in 2018, after not playing for several years. Around the time I started playing again, I discovered Web DM. I'm not one for watching a lot of D&D content on YouTube, but something about Web DM has always captured my attention and imagination.

It's a very 5e-heavy channel, which was great for me at the time because I was just getting into 5e, but Jim is also an OSR guy who reads blogs, and he brings many of those sensibilities to his approach to 5e. As someone who came from playing older editions and has always been a bit dissatisfied with 5e, this really resonated with me. When Jim and Pruitt aren't talking pure game mechanics, they really dig into the tired tropes of D&D and try to breathe new life into them, which has been a constant source of inspiration since I got back into the hobby.

Unfortunately Web DM no longer makes YouTube content, but they do have a podcast which you can access via their Patreon. They talk about other games too, like Call of Cthulhu, Pendragon, and Mothership. It's not my favorite show anymore, but I do feel like they deserve some recognition for rekindling my interest in the hobby most recently.

By the way, here's their excellent video on Appendix N literature.

My list would not be complete without at least one item from Gygax's Appendix N, and for me it's got to be The Dying Earth stories by Jack Vance. These are stories about D&D wizards, full stop. Cugel the Clever is the prototypical D&D player character. D&D does not make sense until you read these stories. While Gygax listed plenty of inspirations in Appendix N, I'm fully convinced that he was injecting this stuff directly into his veins.

The Dying Earth is a weird world inhabited by petty and selfish protagonists (not heroes) and megalomaniacal wizards. It is an antisocial world filled with difficult people. It provides this blog's name. Need I say more?

Retired Adventurers Long for the Dungeon

From the AD&D 1e DMG, page 106:

It is an assumption that high-level player characters with strongholds "will desire some dungeon mazes" beneath them. This is not referring to something like a castle dungeon one might find in the real world, but the "dungeon mazes" characteristic of D&D - specifically early D&D. We're talking dungeons like those you might generate using the tables in APPENDIX A - something weird like this:

It seems a bold claim to make that player characters simply will desire this sort of complex beneath their stronghold. Can the fighter not fit their men-at-arms' barracks and armory in the castle proper? Can the cleric not accommodate their shrine and altar in the above ground portion of their place of worship? Can the magic-user not find room for their laboratory in one of the many levels of their tower? Why would a character "desire" this?

APPENDIX I: DUNGEON DRESSING provides some examples of rooms which might be found in a dungeon:

Surely any of these could just as easily be included in the structure above ground, no? Is it somehow more convenient to construct these rooms below ground?

Gygax helpfully provides the cubic volume of rock that can be mined in an 8-hour period by different demihuman/humanoid races and monsters:

And, of course, since this is AD&D there is detailed guidance for determining the productivity of slave labor and number/quality of armed guards needed to ensure maximum productivity and keep the slaves in line:

There isn't much to suggest that underground construction is cheaper or faster than above ground construction, save this bit under CONSTRUCTION TIME:

An excavated subterranean area is, after all, the crudest form of a "room", I suppose. If properly excavated and supported, it may obviate the need for building materials like dressed stone, which in turn eliminates transportation costs. For proper "interior dungeon walls", however, one must extrapolate from the cost of above ground stone buildings:

It is also worth noting that the player character would likely want their above ground construction to be protected by walls. The more such construction one undertakes, the more area the walls will have to cover. Walls are expensive:

Underground construction, on the other hand, comes with its own walls (albeit crude ones, unless the player character wishes to spend additional money to improve them, as previously mentioned).

So maybe subterranean construction ends up being more cost efficient than above ground construction, even if not explicitly stated in the text. I'm not sure there's enough information to easily determine whether this is true, and I don't particularly care to do the accounting anyway. 

As to why player characters might desire dungeon mazes beneath their strongholds, I think there's a more fun explanation.

Retired adventures, settled in their strongholds with armies, tax-paying settlements, and the occasional wandering monster to manage, now part of the established order, long for the dungeon. It's where they came of age, tested their mettle against monsters, tricks, and traps, and accumulated their power and wealth. They miss it. Deep down inside, they've always wanted one of their own. They're bored. They have money. Their mind wanders back to the dungeon.

I'm still not entirely convinced that player characters will desire to build mazelike dungeons beneath their strongholds. Maybe it would be fun to coordinate with the DM on a project like this, slowly building out your dungeon for the next generation of player characters to one day explore. Maybe this is a pastime the gamers of the late '70s enjoyed, but I don't see it happening in the play culture we're familiar with today.

Rather, what I think is more interesting is the more general assumption that high-level NPCs will build mazelike dungeons beneath their strongholds. It then follows that every fighter's castle, cleric's temple, and magic-user's tower encountered in the wilderness has a dungeon underneath it.

I'm not supposing that these NPCs are true dungeon sickos, filling their labyrinths with monsters, tricks, traps, and treasure (although it would be fun if they did - you could take the classic "a wizard did it" dungeon trope and expand to include any characters class). Rather, I imagine these dungeons would simply be subterranean expansions of the stronghold above - more armories, more chapels, more laboratories, and so on. I suppose then that the "monsters" would just be men-at-arms and other guards, and tricks and traps might be in place to guard treasures secured therein against possible invasion and looting.

What I find most interesting about this is it answers a question I grappled with back when I wrote about "totally deserted" castles: are these supposed to be dungeons or not? Now, the answer is clear: Yes, totally deserted castles do contain dungeons underneath, because all high-level characters will build dungeons beneath their strongholds. 

While inhabited "castles" (meaning strongholds in general) will have dungeons which are more or less extensions of the above ground construction in terms of purpose and contents, deserted castles will be weirder, proper dungeons. Their layout and dressing will be consistent with their original purpose and occupants, but the whole will be filtered through time and ruination. The armories contain crumbling weapon racks and tattered coat of arms, and are now home to rust monsters who have eaten all of the weapons and armor once stored there. The chapels contain defiled altars, fetid pools of unholy water, and perverted holy symbols, and are haunted by undead who draw power from the desecration. The laboratories contain wilted herbs and beakers and flasks in disarray, boiling over with alchemical oozes.

This presents adventurers as not just the young upstarts who foray into dungeons, clear them out, and abscond with their treasure, but also as the old retirees with a late-in-life hobby, who in their hubris (or by their own design) perpetuate the ruination which they once exploited - by carving out the labyrinths monsters will one day inhabit, placing the tricks and traps that will deter future looters, and hiding their accumulated wealth behind secret doors and shifting walls for their successors to discover, accumulate, and eventually begin the cycle anew.

That other category of deserted castle - "deserted (monster therein)" - also presents a more interesting scenario in this light. The castle is not just a monster lair with a unique skin - rather, the dragon, orc warband, or will-o-wisp which now inhabits the castle is an additional (and deadly) obstacle which must be overcome before the riches of the dungeon beneath can be plundered. 

While dungeons in AD&D are adventure sites which are "balanced" according to dungeon level such that they are a fitting challenge for low-level characters at the start and get progressively more dangerous as the characters delve deeper within, deserted castles which contain a monster on the surface are stocked using the wilderness encounter tables, which are considerably less "balanced" and more dangerous for low-level characters. The low-level adventurers who wish to plunder the level-appropriate dungeons beneath such a deserted castle are unlikely to be able to face the monsters inhabiting the surface ruins head on. This opens the door to creative solutions such as deception, parley, or the discovery of a secret means of ingress.