What Am I Reading: Dungeon & Dragons Player’s Handbook, 5th edition
Part Two: Dungeons, Dragons and
Caving ...
I
started to write a simple review of Dungeon & Dragons Player’s Handbook,
5th edition, but it grew into a series of blogs about the history of the
game itself! If you are confused about some of the terms and initials - I
define them in my previous blog: http://michaelgcurry.com/2014/09/03/a-brief-history-of-dungeons-and-dragons-being-an-eventual-review-of-dd-5e/
I pick
up in 1982 ...
The
game in both its versions - D&D and AD&D caught on among us nerds like
the plague! We played and played and bought supplement after supplement and
module after module. Modules were scenarios and maps of a complete adventure
the DM’s could use for their game sessions. I still love reading modules and
imagining characters going through the game. It’s like reading the outline of a
book and coming up the details on my own! Much like a ghost writer for most celebrity
fiction...
New
classes were introduced - the barbarian and the thief-acrobat. There was a
Saturday morning cartoon.
There
were also complaints. Lots of them. “I
have an 18 Dex and I can’t roll for squat! Why should the Magic User make HIS
Dex roll of 9 when he jumps and I can’t with my 18?”
“That’s
the way the dice rolls,” says the DM.
“It’s
not fair!” whines the poor roller...
And
then there were the Christians.
Since
neither D&D nor AD&D mentioned Jesus every third sentence it was deemed
Satanic. They said the books taught youngsters how to actually invoke devils
and demons - which of course explains their proliferation in the skies of the
mid-1980s. D&D replaced Judas Priest as the chief cause of teen suicide.
“That’s cruel, Mike.” True; and I apologize. I shouldn’t make light of such a
serious subject - but to use D&D or Judas Priest as the straw man is
unfair. Those kids needed help from the adults around them and didn’t get it.
OK,
back to the Christian nonsense: read Dark Dungeons - I’ll wait. http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.ASP
So
between the whiners with bad dice and the kooks with bad divinity, TSR (the
parent company that published D&D and AD&D) came out with a Second
Edition in 1987. It came with a new Player’s Handbook, Monster Manuals
(several of them) and Dungeon Master’s Guide.
The
classes and races were toned down to satisfy the kooks (like you can ever
satisfy the kooks) - Magic Users became Mages, Assassins were removed
altogether. So were any references to devils and demons. Some changes weren’t
so puritanical and made a bit of sense - Rangers became a sub-class of
Fighters. Druids became a subclass of Clerics.
2nd
edition introduced THAC0 - “to hit Armor Class Zero”. Players and monsters had
armor classes - the thicker your hide or armor the better your armor class and
the harder it is to take damage. Too much damage and you die. Fighters clad
with metal plates ala Ivanhoe and King Arthur had ACs of 1 or less. Magic Users
- er - mages in robes has AC 9 and were easier to hit - if you could get around
the fighter in plate mail. Dragons had ACs in the negatives. A particular
goblin had a THAC0 of 18, say. A player with a fighter with an AC 1 would be
hit if the goblin rolled a 17 or higher (18 - 1) - not too good. The fighter
had a THAC0 of 14 and this goblin had AC 7, so he could hit on a roll of 7 or
better - which has pretty good odds of succeeding. This won’t be much of a
fight...
I have
yet to mention the dice used in the game - it started with what the rest of the
world calls dice - a six-sided cube with dots on it you found in all the board
games and in every scene of “Guys and Dolls”. D&D and other role-playing
games use a lot more than those. There are 4, 8, 10, 12, 20, and even 30 and
100-sided dice available. You can always tell a gamer by the way they refer to
a standard dice with the dots on them. We call them “six siders”. By the time I
got into the game - d6s (six-sided dice) was used for rolling stats and some
hit points - mostly the d20 was used. If I had a Dex of 15 and had to “beat
Dex” (see my previous blogs), I had to roll a 15 or less on a twenty-sided
dice.
Anyway,
back to THAC0: once you got used to it, and you used your fingers and toes, it
wasn’t so bad.
Magic
and Clerical abilities were divided into “spheres” - your character
concentrated on only a few spheres. You couldn’t cast just anything.
Whether this is good or bad is an individual choice. Personally, I think we
should be leery of any rule that limits play. On the other hand, it makes for
more of a challenge in selecting how best to overcome a game’s obstacles.
“Blast the orc with a fireball!” “But I’m an illusionist! All I can do is turn
him purple!’ “What the hell good is that spell!?” “You didn’t mind when
we hid in front of that purple tapestry!” “Shut up!”
They
also added proficiencies. A fighter could no longer just pick up an axe dropped
by that ogre and use it to slice necks. He had to be proficient in the weapon.
The character learned proficiencies as he got higher and higher in level (note:
as a character plays, he gains experience points and goes up in levels - this
means he can gain hit points, gain more spells, gets tougher and better at what
he does, etc.).
There
were also non-weapon proficiencies. Here is where the rot set it, in my
opinion.
Remember
the scenario from Part One?
“I try
to grab the vine and swing over the chasm.”
“Beat
your Dex,” says the DM.
“I have
the Jump Proficiency, so I can subtract one from my roll. {Roll} Good thing, I
just made it!”
“It’s
about time, Mr. Poor Roller. Now the Magic User - er - Mage, sorry, you roll
your Dex.”
“I only
have a Dex of 9...” {Roll} “Made it!” says the Mage.
“You
always make it,” says Mr. Poor Roller.
“Whiner,”
mumbles the Mage.
The
Jumping Proficiency. Jumping. Anybody can jump! My grandmother could jump! Roll
your Dexterity - if you roll shitty, you fall, if you roll low, you make it.
You don’t need to be proficient in jumping...
And
Jumping was only available to the Rogue class. If you were a Rogue, you got a
plus to jump if you selected Jumping. The rest of us had to rely on our die
roll. Between the four base classes there were about 68 skills to choose from.
68.
It gets
worse.
But in
the meantime 2nd Edition was an even better success that 1st! Character kits
were introduced - there are different types of thieves (an urban pickpocket vs.
a Robin-Hood-esque-good-guy) and with the different non-weapon proficiencies
you add lots of different flavors to the basic classes. Classes had their own
supplements. A mage could be a chronomancer and cast spells based on time.
Different worlds and venues developed - Aztec-like rules and scenarios to play
along with the Oriental Adventures (a 1st edition supplement); Dark Sun - set
in a ecological-disaster-desert world; Ravenloft - a gothic horror setting,
Spelljammer took the players into outer space: all were available as 2nd
edition play. The supplements filled the
shelves.
It was
huge. Huge! So huge the fat and bloated company that was TSR sold the company
lock stock and dragon hoard for $25 million to Wizards of the Coast.
And
WotC took the game and changed everything...
TO BE CONTINUED...
Copyright 2014 Michael
Curry
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