Old School: That first D&D round-table

title: the broadside tapes-alignment in D&D, excerpts from Broadside's first "Dungeon Masters of the Round Table Symposium", aired October 10th, 1977 Featuring Stephen Zahn, Marc Trottier, Albert Hennen, Paul Creelman, and Laurence Gillespie...

LG- My personal opinion is that Alignment should be fairly rigid and that lawfulness should be equated with goodness. I would not agree with those who would rate lawfulness as strictly being a desire for order, even though it might involve quite a bit of evil actions on the part of the players. If you are going to be lawful on my world, you have to follow certain basic moral codes.
MT- And what does that have to do with killing?
LG- Well, of course the great problem in the dungeons is what do you kill? The chaotics of course aren't constrained by any means, they can go off and slaughter everything in sight. But the lawfuls, when they're down there when they're not fighting off attacks from other monsters, are often faced with the moral quandary of when or not to attack. And obviously a key problem for lawfuls is whether they should attack sentient or intelligent creatures who may be posessed of treasures of tremendous value. And there are also the borderline creatures of the monster lists, things like kobolds and goblins and even orcs for that matter, who may not be utterly evil and thus not really excusable for lawfuls to kill, but are hard to imagine as doing mankind any service.
LG- And thus for most lawfuls it is considered propper to launch agression against that sort of thing.
MT- Well perhaps I could generalize more alignment systems. There is a different system using alignment and the two classes, lawful/neutral/chaotic and then there's your good and bad. Perhaps Stephen Zahn can illustrate to us exactly what is the difference in his world?
SZ- On my board, you've got your good, right, and and if a person is good he's benevolent, you know, like the kind army boy scout type who'd help your little old lady across the street. And with that he can be either chaotic or lawful. Right, if he's lawful and good he would... every time he saw a little old lady, ask to help her across the street. If he's chaotic, whenever the whim hit him. And evil, it would still be applied to whether he is going to be whimsical about it or are you going to do it every time the situation arises. Thats the way I differentiate.
MT- And what about neutrals?
SZ- Neutral, well, they're opportunists. If he thinks he can get something out of it, either that or he just minds his own business completely and never bothers anyone.
MT- Now does this work out well with your characters, in that if they are lawful/good, they do tend to be lawful good in actual fact?
SZ- Some characters I find play realy close to their alignment. Others just forget it and play it the way they want to, which basically boils down to being a neutral person.
MT- What could you say about extremists? I've often argued about how lawful or how good are you, and perhaps a scale of 1-10 would be needed in a case like that, where many times its been argued that, well, if you are an extreme lawful, then you shouldnt be down in the dungeon in the first place, you should actually be helping the dungeon and the poor little creatures inside, whereas you can be your low-level lawful which just helps little old ladies across the street.
SZ- Well, something with a 10 for lawful goodness would be something like a paladin, who is almost a saint. He would be the kind that would go down into the dungeon and help out your poor little kobolds and so on and so forth. Same with your good cleric. But as a small fighter, 1st level, 2nd level fighter that'd be good, he would be more like your boy scout type where as if you got a fighter lord, he would be generally benevolent to the kobolds and so on and so forth.
MT- So the higher level you are, the more benevolent you would tend to be.
SZ- Or should be...
MT- Should be...
SZ- Its a role playing game, how well they play their roles…

from Zeppelin #54

Old School: B/X Hobbit

Hobbit
A diminutive humanoid folk living a rural or sub-urban existance of agrarian toil-who on occasion are stricken with a terrible eccentricity. They dont care to wear Armour or wield weapons other than burning torches or thrown rocks. Physically 4'-5' tall.

Prime Requisite: Wisdom 13+, Charisma 13+
Weapons: Skip-Stone, Burning Torch
Armour: Heavy cloth clothing (as Padded Armour)
Hitrolls: as thief
Save as:    cleric
HD: d6

Level     Title                 HD              XP      Spells
                                                                             1       2        3         4  
1             Follower        1d6+1                 0       0       0        0         0
2             Devotee         2d6+1           3500       1       0        0         0
3             Enthusiast     3d6+2           7000       2       0        0         0  
4             Fanatic          4d6+2         14000       2       1        0         0  
5             Zealot            5d6+3         28000       2       2        0         0
6             Scholar          6d6+3         57000       2        2       1         0  
7             Eccentric       7d6+4       114000       2       2        2         1

Usable spells
1st                               2nd                           3rd                                  4th 
Predict Weather       Plant Growth          Neutralize Poison        Bless
Locate animals         Speak w/ animals   Cure Serious Wounds Read Languages
Detect Snares            Animal Growth       Cure disease                 Read Magic
Purify food/water    Hold Animals        
Locate Plants            Speak with Plants
Cure light wounds

Mystaran Campaign: The Siege of Riverfork Keep

The Sorcerer's Forces
(200) Orcs: 1HD; AC6; MV 120' (40'); AT 1 Weapon; 1-6 or wpn; NA Combat unit of 20; SA F1; ML 8; TT D; AL Chaotic

Siege Mortar: HD 40* (Colossal); AC -10; MV 30' (10'); AT 1 Artillery Round/turn; DA 20d6; NA 0(1); SA F20; ML12; INT 10; TT A; XP 14,000
Description: this mechanical wonder crafted and piloted by a gnome scientist named Isgo Kaboom can fire single-use explosive fireball enchanted gem rounds up to a mile. Its Crew can load a new artillery round and recharge the air compressed weapon and fire in a 10 minute turn.

The Sorcerers forces march on Riverfork Keep from the north, some two hundred Orcs following the great siege-mortar south...their task is to route the Kings forces, demolish the keep and then take control of the riverfork preventing boats from coming up river.

Beyond Greyhawk: A few oddities...

The World of Oerth
Here is greyhawk scaled to a planet the size of earth. The Black Ice extends south some three thousand miles from the pole. The Snow barbarians are located above +30 degrees putting them in the polar +60 degree region. If I move the map north, so do deserts while the northern part of the map must distort and compress to fit the globe. The world of greyhawk is of course a small spur of land hanging off a much larger continent.

The Movement of Information
Population of cities is a determining factor for information flow and accuracy. And it seems to be flowing into the Wild coast with a high accuracy. While you might think Greyhawk city to be the centre of the world, you would be mistaken. Information arriving in Greyhawk city is considerably degraded compared to what is flowing into the Wild coast.
The Sea Princes are also a major source of high accuracy information flowing west.

Old School: When your Magic Sword is Smarter than you...

Arasil, Sword of the One True King: The Player/Character is Matt Diller...assumedly because he didnt bother with a character name. Arasil, Sword of the One True King is highly intelligent, Lawful, and has turned the PC into a Paladin with 18/100 strength (thats just an alignment shift to Lawful and eighteen strength for the BX crowd). It is intent on leading the PC off to search for The One True King because it is DISAPPOINTED! in Matt, or hoping he will prove himself worthy. Matt has asked the sword for advice and gotten insults from it: "Figure it out for yourself, stupid!" being its go-to answer so thats unlikely to be any time soon (in game terms).

As Sentient Swords go...its a bit of a dick.

Frankly the player should journey into the nearest village and in the village square drive it into a stone and leave it to look for that one true king.

This is perhaps one of the Earliest Examples of a D&D Campaign I could find: Maximau #36. It makes for interesting reading. Clerics forming healing guilds, wizards who attract fireballs so often they renamed them 'Scott's Bane'...

 

Random Backwater: The Village of Briarstoke

Straddling a road between more important places like a highwayman looking to lift your belongings is the Village of Briarstoke...

Dice Drop: The Village of...

 Once again, I drop a jar of dice on a sheet of paper generating a random village.

Total Population (91)

         Population by Dwelling
Key     pop.             Key           pop.
1               9                14              6
2               3                15              3
3               1                16              2
4               5                17              6
5               10              18              1
6               6                19              2

7               6                20              6
8               4                21             5
9              1                 22             2
10            3
11            1
12             4
13             5

They settled around a gatekeep, the hill to the south was to be the future site of a castle...but construction fell through.