First some good news: Wizards Of The Coast have made my preferred version of Basic D&D – the 1983 Basic rulebooks A.K.A Mentzer, A.K.A BECMI – available for online purchase ($5 each for the Player and DM books) as a downloadable PDF over at D&D Classics, RPG Now, Drive-Thru RPG possibly other places. Previously they only had the 1981 – A.K.A. Moldvay A.K.A. B/X – version.
(BTW: does any-one know how these 3 web sites are linked? They seem to share their back-end infrastructure. Weird)
More good news: I scored a free copy of the D&D Essentials “Dungeon Masters Kit“. It’s gone into the cupboard for now, but it looks very cool and I’m looking forward to playing this. It contains:
rules and advice to help Dungeon Masters run games for adventurers of levels 1–30. It also includes useful DM tools such as a Dungeon Master’s screen (with tables and rules printed on the inside), die-cut terrain tiles and monster tokens, and fold-out battle maps.
I got because an online store mistakenly shipped it to me (I ordered something else). When I rang them they told me to keep it, and they sent me the correct item! So, they are somewhat incompetent but I guess their heart is in the right place. I won’t mention their name because I’ve had other problems with them on other orders too – don’t really want to endorse them 🙂
And some bad news. I am probably the last person to hear that the my favourite author of all time, Jack Vance, has died. I only mention it here because the magic system used in D&D (where magic users forget spells once cast, and have to re-learn them), was “inspired” by Vance’s Dying Earth novels. I highly recommend reading every word the man ever wrote, and The Dying Earth is a pretty good place to start. Farewell Jack, and say “Hi” to E. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson for me.
Then even more good news: I found a very cheap place to get polyhedral dice sets. For between AU$4.00 and AU$5.40 (and that price INCLUDES shipping to Australia) you can pick up a set of 7 polyhedral dice in an assortment of colours. The price also includes a dice bag (with a choice of 3 colours). SUPER Bargain. I have ordered stuff from them twice now, and so far had no problems (but don’t expect overnight delivery, OK). You can see their eBay store here. Again, I have no affiliation with these guys, and at that price they couldn’t afford to give me a kick-back 🙂 I also have no idea how long they will continue to sell this stuff!
Now, on with the show…
Bargle has fled.
Our brave fighter (now named “Coocoo” apparently) has made it back to town and his wounds have healed. The next thing that happens is that he visits the local smithy and gets some better armour (British/Australian spelling only, please), and then learns a little more about the game mechanics of slaughtering monsters.
Once the administrivia is done, it’s time to head back to the caves for some more monster bashing. Here you will learn some rudimentary mapping skills, and fight some more monsters: rats, goblins, skeletons, and a rust monster. Coocoo died a couple of times attempting this, but he got there in the end. It helped once Alpha got into the mindset of being a savage fighter and just started killing everything at first sight (so they couldn’t call reinforcements).
In the caves you will also discover some hidden clues, an assortment of treasures, a magical riddling mouth in a wall that can double the treasure you are holding, or take it all away. On the final attempt at this dungeon, Alpha held off on visiting the mouth until the end when she had collected all the other treasure. That’s thinking!
By the end of the adventure Alphas character had reached level 2! Huzzah!
Once you finish up in the caves, you head back to town, where you can go shopping to replace any of the items you used (oil for your lamp, weapons and armour eaten by the rust monster etc.), and maybe treat yourself to a few extra bits and pieces for your next adventure using your newly bulging treasure sack.
Once this solo adventure is complete, it’s time to read the rest of the players manual which explains races and classes, prime requisites, alignment, adjustments and saving throws and everything else a player might need. It talks you through how to roll up a new character and how playing with a group differs from the solo adventure you just completed.
Overall, this was very entertaining. I am already getting hassled about when we can continue the adventure, but at this stage I still need to get a few other players up to speed. There is a further adventure in the DM’s guide, but it requires multiple players. I suppose I could just run BSOLO (one player module) or M1 SOLO (old invisible ink module) with her in the mean time. The invisible ink is no longer functional, but you can find the hidden text online (or if that link goes down, here).
One of the issues that came up is that there was a lot of scribbling out of Hit Points. To stop us having to do that, I threw together a simple 0-99 counter (pictuerd below). This is made of 200 gsm cardboard (thicker would be better, but my printer won’t go much thicker than that). After printing, I put clear “ConTact” over the whole thing before cutting it out, and attaching the wheels with some small brads. For anyone who wants to make these themselves, I am putting the 1-page template for download as a png file here.
See you next month, nerdy folk.
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