“If ever Dan challenges you to a game of Chainmail Jousting, don’t do it. Just don’t do it! He has a system…”—Paul Siegel, Wandering DMs
I was properly warned. But when I got an email from Wandering DMs co-host Dan Collins earlier this week with the subject line: “Jousting Sunday?,” did I heed the warning? Of course not, I’m an adventurer after all.
This week on Wandering DMs, Dan and I tilt in the lists. My strategy is based on an analysis of Chainmail’s Jousting Matrix, outlined here. I rank each aiming point and defensive position using a simple point system.
Dan’s strategy is based on the Nash equilibrium. It’s a math thing. Essentially, as Dan explains, the goal of calculating the Nash equilibrium is to “optimize the possibly-infinite sequence of ‘if you know that I know that you know that I know’ decisions.” Or, as I understand it, Dan fed the Jousting Matrix to the machine, which coughed up the optimal strategy for winning a joust, and Dan turned the results into a weighted table.
It’s an age-old scenario: a human does a thing well until some other human builds a machine that does it better, faster, stronger… I’m not talking Steve Austin. I’m talking less fictional characters against automated opponents: John Henry vs. the steam drill, Garry Kasparov vs. Deep Blue, Jeopardy! champions vs. Watson.
In all these cases, the machine wins! Have I got a chance…?
This month makes 40 years I’ve been playing D&D. Last year I wrote down all the stories from my earliest experiences with the game, playing Holmes Basic with my best friend. I am now at work editing the anecdotes together into a short book.
I hesitate to put into words what I mean by “the Holmes spirit.” Certain qualities of the brief rules booklet set it apart from other D&D editions. Holmes’s simplicity is one. Keeping—or rather reinstating—d6 weapon damage from OD&D is an example. Another example, while some might use the term incomplete, I count the lower-level limitation within its simplicity.
The Dexterity-based initiative system, simpler and faster than rolling for it, is unique among editions. The Editor sourced it, not from OD&D but from a set of house rules that have come to be known as the “Perrin Conventions.” Revisited and revised 23 years later though it was, we hardly recognize its influence on 3rd Edition.
The Bluebook’s special demand for house rules lends, at the same time, to its simplicity as well as its uniquity. That it was intended only to introduce players to AD&D, and that we desire to—and do—play it as our own necessarily customized version of the game, also make it unique.
In that regard, the 48-page rulebook serves as the research question of a game designer’s thesis project: The goal is to turn these rules into a complete game. Each of us sets the criteria for a successful defense.
For, while simple and unique are the best adjectives to describe my own sense of it, more likely, the Holmes spirit means something different for each one of us who learned how to use those crazy dice reading text from eggshell pages in a pale blue book.
The original text of this article erroneously cited Warlock, a 1975 D&D supplement, as Holmes’s source for the Dexterity-based initiative system. In fact, the source is likely the “Perrin Conventions,” a reprint of which you can find on Christopher Helton’s Dorkland! blog (the Dexterity section). The text above has been corrected. [18:10 19 May 2022 GMT]
I only ever saw the box. It was the late ’80s, and I was with a friend, who was a veteran gamer, in a game store—a rare visit to such a wonderland.
The box was among a display of obscure games in a far corner of the shop. The cover art was a colorful map in an ancient style. The colors were blues and reds, yellows and greens.
The map depicted portions of two continents either side a calm sea. The continents were edged in cliffs and sandy beaches. Port cities, fortresses, and temples were drawn in perspective, not the icons I was used to seeing on fantasy maps. Oversize human figures dressed in decorated armor or elaborate garb stood among buildings or sat on them or waded shin-deep in the sea.
My friend came up beside me and followed my gaze.
“What’s that?” I said.
“That’s—” He hesitated. “…An old game. It has a whole world with its own different cultures and languages. It’s kind of weird and complicated.”
“…a whole world with its own different cultures and languages. It’s kind of weird and complicated.”
I picked up the squarish box. Smaller in length and width than D&D’s Basic and Expert Sets, and thinner too, it was heavier than I expected.
I hardly recognized the compass rose in an upper corner, as its four points were marked with curvy glyphs instead of Latin letters. In the lower corner opposite, two figures held an unrolled parchment between them. It read, “Empire of the Petal Throne.” The author was M. A. R. Barker, the copyright date 1975, and the publisher—the only thing I recognized—was Tactical Studies Rules. The spelled out name, already then, signaled a relic from the hoary past.
A small white sticker, rectangular with rounded corners, put the price at $45—far out of my modest reach.
Still admiring the cover, my last question was, “Is it D&D?”
My friend’s response: “Not really.”
I put the box back in its display. We left the shop empty handed.
The image stayed with me though. As did the idea that a fantasy setting could have its own unique cultures—apart from medieval European—as well as languages. And during the 2000s, when I had a salaried job and a mounting interest in old-school games, the 1975 edition of Empire of the Petal Throne did not escape my acquisition.
So when, in 2015, James Maliszewski intoned this popular sentiment, lamented that it was so, and proposed to run a Petal Throne campaign to debunk it, I was in.
Still though, the dense text, sparse black and white drawings, numbered paragraphs, accents hand-drawn into the copy, and names made with awkward syllables stuck together as if they had been speared one by one onto a skewer, like a shish kebab, does not foster comprehension or encourage play.
So when, in 2015, James Maliszewski intoned this popular sentiment, lamented that it was so, and proposed to run a Petal Throne campaign to debunk it, I was in.
House of Worms
Other than one of the initial six players, we were all fresh off the boat, so to speak, on Tékumel, though James did not use the standard barbarians-come-to-Jakálla starting scenario. Instead, the campaign began much like any other. The PCs are Tsolyáni citizens. The campaign is named after the clan to which most player characters belong.
The player with prior experience in the setting is Barry Blatt, who blogs Petal Throne and other RPGs at Expanding Universe. The party looks to his magic-using character, Znayáshu, for guidance. Barry’s expertise has been an assistance to our group of neophytes, though not a crutch. Barry is at times able to expound on the setting’s cultural aspects, saving the GM’s breath, but the details, known to the characters even when the players are ignorant, don’t necessarily save us from any dangers.
Aíthfo hiZnáyu
I generated my character’s personal name using the method Barker describes in a Strategic Review article (Vol. 1, No. 4) “Tsolyáni Names Without Tears.” I cried anyway. The first generated name had five syllables and a comical number of Ss. The lineage name, I chose from a list of families provided by the GM. The prefix “hi,” pronounced hee, translates to “of” in the Tsolyáni language.
Aíthfo is an adventurer (a spell-casting fighter character class of James’s invention). He is motivated by exploration, discovery, and the acquisition of “cash and prizes.” He is most comfortable at the helm of a sailing vessel and in combat.
Travels and Calamities
Over the years, Aíthfo and his clan mates have traveled to the far corners of the planet Tékumel, sometimes of their own accord.
Objects unique to Tékumel are “eyes.” These magically charged devices fit in a palm and are roundish, like a gem, with a stud, which is the trigger, and an aperture, which is the business end. Eyes exist in numerous sorts and of verbose nomenclature. There are, among others, Eyes of Hastening Destiny (which is to say haste) and Being an Unimpeachable Shield Against Foes (invulnerable to weapons), the Splendid Eye of Krá the Mighty (pushes down walls or inflicts six dice of damage), the Terrible Eye of Raging Power (lightning bolt), and the Eye of Creeping Fog of Doom (what it sounds like).
A time early in our careers, in some tight fix and not seeing our way out of it, we decided to test an unidentified eye on our opponents.
Upon finding them, we usually have no idea what they do. A test, by trial and error, is required. But because eyes are so powerful as are their effects diverse, even a trial might go awry. A time early in our careers, in some tight fix and not seeing our way out of it, we decided to test an unidentified eye on our opponents. Instead of destroying the enemy, the Eye of Departing in Safety displaced our entire party to a far corner of the continent in an instant. The return was a picaresque journey across vast deserts and through enemy lands, a veritable sight-seeing tour across Tékumel. Six months passed in the game over about a year of play.
Since then, we have sailed to the Southern Continent, which runs off the edge of the game map, and zipped across the length and breadth of the planet via an ancient underground “tube car” system; we have been to the Battle of Dórmoron Plain, a sort of demi-plane where the gods and their armies fight one another in an eternal war; and we slipped from one time line to another, only once as far as we can tell.
In all our travels, we saved the world from certain destruction a couple times. We may have provoked the destruction once or twice.
Clan Mates
Though our characters began as family, their players were mostly strangers to one another. I suppose it happens faster when the venue is a game table, but after so many years of weekly gatherings with these folks around this small window into a virtual world, where we share co-imagined experiences in a fictional one, we have got to know each other. Though at some distance, we have shared a number of triumphs and tragedies—the best and the worst. I’ve grown to think of the players behind Aíthfo’s clan mates as my own. I am affected by what’s going on in their lives, excited for the good things and concerned for the bad.
Metal-Clad Spell-Casting, Divine Intervention, Resurrection, and Apotheosis
Through Aíthfo, I have experienced a number of iconic moments in fantasy role-playing. The least of which is becoming governor of a remote province, the classic domain ruler.
Aíthfo once cast a spell through the blade of a sword while wearing armor, both metal. When he did not survive, priest and clan mate Keléno called for divine intervention. This failed, but not before sword and armor, both also magical, were sacrificed. The party, far from home, negotiated with a local cult to have him raised from the dead. The deal was that Aíthfo, once raised, would be invested by an aspect of their god. After his raising, he found he could speak the local language and see magical auras. Later, this divine power was sapped to halt the invasion of the planet by a malign deity.
The adventurer was his old self again until recently, when he suffered a critical hit. An attack roll result of 20, in Petal Throne, deals double damage to the target and triggers a second roll. On this roll, a 19 or 20 kills. We count four instances when a party member has defeated an opponent by this rule. Aíthfo was the first of us to be on the other end of it.
For Aíthfo, though, the game is not over. He was returned to life a second time. This time through some divine power, possibly a vestige of the god still within him. We haven’t quite figured that one out yet. Now, he has a heightened sense of military strategy and an unreasonable fear of fish.
It’s about time he begins work on an autobiography. Working title: “The Life and Deaths of Aíthfo hiZnáyu.”
House of Worms Party Portrait.
The cast of original characters: Aíthfo, at top, and from left to right, Znayáshu, Ssúri, Keléno, Grujúng, Jangáiva.
This drawing by Zhu Bajiee appears on the cover of The Excellent Traveling Volume, No. 6. There are so far 13 issues of Maliszewski’s old-school fanzine dedicated to Empire of the Petal Throne.
Anniversary
House of Worms’ numbered sessions are scheduled every Friday. We play when at least four players are in attendance. When not, we usually fill the two-hour period with friendly game chatter.
Being an online game, I get an invitation every week for “House of Worms.” My habit is to respond Yes and delete the message from my inbox. So, every week at game time, when I need the meeting link, I search “in: trash worms.”
This week, we celebrate seven years of the House of Worms campaign. Today’s is session 259. As it is also GMs Day, let me say, James, on behalf of myself and my House of Worms clan mates, thank you for showing us that, while Empire of the Petal Throne remains weird and complicated, it is wonderfully so, and it isn’t as inaccessible as its reputation might lead us to believe.
My grandmother—her grandchildren called her “Nanna”—lived in the small Middle Tennessee town where Garth and I used to live. Crows flew less than a mile from Nanna’s house to our old neighborhood. Encircling a murky lake, the neighborhood was bordered on the outer edges by woods and fields with a two-lane highway on one side.
During our elementary school years, Garth and I spent long summer days exploring the woods and fields or paddling the lake in a canoe. It had been only a year since I was last there. I would start high school in the fall. Not too old to go exploring—but everything now seemed changed.
The dry summer heat shrank the lake. Brown algae covered the shallow end. The fields, where we used to play “war” and “cowboys and Indians,” were thick with brambles. The grass, that hid us to the waist, was low and stubbly.
The woods appeared less dense. The trees not so high, their trunks more widely scattered. Leaves more brownish-green than the rich emerald I remembered. The bubbling stream we once built a dam across was dried up. Its rocky bed was quiet, narrow, and gray.
The whole world was less bright, like a pale reflection of itself, and I missed my best friend. It was too late to pick up where we left off, too soon to feel nostalgia.
I remember sunny days that week at Nanna’s but no bright fields or dappled woods. Instead, the sunlight splayed across the living room floor, where I had arranged sheets of graph paper like tiles. After the brief foray to the old neighborhood, I entertained myself by making a map.
I asked Nanna if she had graph paper. She had. She gave me a pad full. I asked for a pencil. She hadn’t. She gave me a Bic roller. It was red. That will do.
Kneeling between the sofa and the coffee table, I teased a sheet from the pad and set the roller at a point where two light blue lines crossed.
I wanted to draw a castle. I wanted it to be a big castle, where a wizard lived. I dragged a red line down the page’s long edge, made a corner, then another line along the short edge.
Pulling three more sheets, I laid them two by two on the table. I had to move a bouquet centerpiece to make enough space. Similar lines on the other sheets made a large red rectangle.
It seemed not big enough. I added sheets between each corner. Three by three didn’t fit on the coffee table, so I had to draw the lines at the table and move the arrangement to the carpeted floor. Now there was plenty of room, and the castle under construction was too rectangular. I added sheets on two opposite sides to make it four portrait pages wide by three deep.
In the center of a long wall, I put a double door, which were two small rectangles end to end. I knew how to draw doors, because I had seen them on Garth’s dungeon map. The center of four pages put the door on the edge at the meeting of two sheets. One door on each sheet, they lined up together when I laid them on the carpet.
Drawing the castle meant a lot of back and forth between the coffee table, where I got more sheets and added details, and the floor, where I laid sheets in place and admired the grandness of the wizard’s castle.
I thought the wizard must live in a forest. On more sheets around, I drew a moat and the edge of the woods. Trails crisscrossed the forest, and streams met the moat. I imagined Garth and myself exploring the woods—wearing chain mail and long cloaks—discovering the castle where a trail followed moat’s edge. That reminded me to add a drawbridge over the moat at the double doors.
I imagined Garth and myself exploring the woods—wearing chain mail and long cloaks—discovering the castle where a trail followed moat’s edge.
Outside the forest, a final sheet protruded from the six-by-five-page wizard’s domain. Straight, parallel lines and a few rectangles made streets and buildings in a town.
A rectangle beside the first street corner coming into town would be the tavern where adventurer’s could get the hook for expeditions to the wizard’s castle. I didn’t know how a tavern should be named. After a few minutes thought, I wrote “Joe’s Bar” next to the rectangle.
I didn’t know what a castle’s interior looked like, either. I knew only that adventurers should find monsters and treasures inside. Looking at my lists of monsters copied from the blue book, I guessed they must be hiding in corners and roaming the vast open space that was the one-room castle, while the wizard chants incantations from his books of spells.
The castle should have traps too. I knew about the covered pit trap, that it was ten feet deep, might be filled with spikes or monsters, and it was shown on the map with an “X” inside a square.
I knew about the covered pit trap, that it was ten feet deep, might be filled with spikes or monsters, and it was shown on the map with an “X” inside a square.
I drew an X in both squares after the double doors. Lacking imagination for other kinds of traps, I put more Xs inside squares at arbitrary places inside the castle. I had a lot of white space, so I drew a lot of Xs. Covered pits were the major hazard of the wizard’s castle.
I thought a pit might drop straight down to a level below. I also knew about sliding stairs that carried the unwary to a lower level. That gave me the idea to add upper levels to the castle.
I outlined the second floor, the same as the first, and drew Xs in a few squares. Then I switched to rectangles, one-by-two squares, with a long arrow to show a chute. Laying the leaf over its corresponding first-level sheet, I noted where the pit or the chute would come out and drew a square in dotted lines at that location.
With more overlays I made more levels above. Towers sprang up from the third level’s four corners. A large square central tower rose up to a fourth level. Then I thought to add support columns beneath the towers. Stairs at various locations went up and down between floors.
The wizard’s castle was full of means to get from top to bottom, some more quickly than others.
A Reproduction from Memory of the Wizard’s Castle, Ground Level. At ⅛ the original scale, this one fits on a single sheet. Light blue rectangles mark page edges. Red lines are made with a Bic.
When Nanna asked what I was drawing, I said, “It’s a castle.”
She said, “It doesn’t look much like a castle.”
I had to point out the forest and the moat. “This is the drawbridge that goes into the castle. Watch out for those traps.”
I didn’t think to tell her it was a plan view, looking down on the castle, not the perspective view she might have expected from a grandchild. Instead, I showed her how you had to walk up the stairs to each level, being careful to avoid prowling monsters.
I laid the top sheet over the third level of the central tower. It had a square, outlined in red. At the center, stairs went down.
“The best view is from the top floor. That’s where the wizard lives.”
Nanna was nonplussed. But at the end of the week, she made a good report to my mom. “That Steve is a good boy. He’s quiet and plays all day at his drawings.”
As then, still now, D&D for me is much about the maps.
In “Holmes on a Coin’s Weight,” we take the Editor’s proposed weight of a standard coin—twice that of a quarter—and calculate that 40 coins make a pound. This was prompted by questioning the validity of old-school D&D’s standard, ten coins to a pound, to measure encumbrance. Now I’m curious about the real weight of coins made from precious metals.
Source of Incongruence
In his review of the TREASURE chapter of the Holmes manuscript, Zach Howard notes that the section with heading BASE TREASURE VALUES (Holmes, 34), in which the weight of a coin is specified as twice that of a quarter, is not present.1 We deduce, then, that neither the 1⁄10 nor the 1⁄40 pound coin is proposed by Holmes. Rather, the incongruous weights entered the publication during editing.
I added a brief mention in an update to the earlier article.
Precious Metal Coin Weights
A US quarter-dollar piece, 1.75 mm thick and 24.26 mm in diameter, has a volume of 808.93 mm3 or 0.81 cm3. By the weight of the precious metals from which D&D realms mint coins, we can calculate the number of coins in a pound by metal. We ignore electrum as the alloy varies in weight depending on its composition.
Precious Metal Pieces
Piece
Copper
Silver
Gold
Platinum
Average
Volume (cm3)
0.81
0.81
0.81
0.81
0.81
1 cm3 Weight (lbs.)
0.0197
0.0231
0.0426
0.0473
0.0332
Piece Weight (lbs.)
0.0160
0.0187
0.0345
0.0383
0.0269
Pieces in 1 lb.
62.64
53.38
28.99
26.11
42.78
More precious metals are heavier. A pound of copper counts 64 pieces, while less than half that number make a pound of gold or platinum, 29 or 26 pieces respectively.
Forty Coins to a Pound
We could justify a pound of 40 coins by assuming most treasure hauls will have a mix of silver, gold, and platinum, with silver making up a half. We leave the copper pieces in a trail behind us, so we can find our way back to the hoard for a second load.2 The average of 53, 29, and 26 is 36 coins, which rounds up to an even 40.
And let’s take another look at the Holmes quarter-sized coin. Its weight, 0.025 pounds, is practically the average of the ensemble of precious metal coins: 0.027 pounds.
Precious Metal Pieces Compared to the Holmes Quarter
Piece
Average of Precious Metal Pieces
Holmes Quarter
Volume (cm3)
0.81
0.81
1 cm3 Weight (lbs.)
0.0332
0.0309
Piece Weight (lbs.)
0.0269
0.0250
Pieces in 1 lb.
42.78
40.00
The average number of pieces per pound is 42.78. Adding electrum (not shown) with equal parts gold and silver brings the average down to 41.74.
Aside: Early Calculations
That the average weight of precious metal coins comes so close to Holmes’s twice-a-quarter’s-weight makes me wonder whether some editor might have done the research and made the calculations.
In the Internet Age, out of sheer curiosity, I looked up the precise dimensions of a quarter and plugged them into a volume calculator, found a web page that gives weights of metals by volume, and entered a few simple formulas into an electronic spreadsheet.
Certainly, the average 1970s high school student could accomplish the same,3 though by other means. All the calculations—the coin’s volume and each formula for each metal—must be done by hand, possibly with the assistance of a handheld calculator. Before doing the numbers, the research to find the weights of precious metals—unless one had a set of encyclopedias on the home shelf or a reference work noting specific gravities of metals—required a library trip.
Again, it was doable without the web, but it took more time and effort. Whoever did it, if it was done prior to 1977, had to be motivated.
Ten Coins to a Pound
To weigh one-tenth of a pound, how big would a coin have to be?
The average weight of 1 cm3 of the given precious metals is 0.033178 lbs. One-tenth pound divided by 0.033178 is 3.014. So we need about 3 cm3 of metal. A coin of that volume and, let’s say, twice a quarter’s thickness, 3.5 mm, must have a diameter of 33.1 mm, which is 1.30 inches or just shy of 15⁄16.
Coincidentally, the Eisenhower dollar coin, with a 1½-inch diameter and 1⁄10-inch thickness, has a volume of 2.8958 cm3. It weighs 24.624 grams or 1⁄20 of a pound. So, instead of a quarter dollar, we might say coins in D&D are the size of an Eisenhower dollar and twice the weight.
In a world of fantasy adventure, I could go with a coin of such an important size. It’s treasure, after all. It ought to look like treasure!
Still, even at quarter-size, we could argue for the ten-coin pound. As Moldvay suggests, when measuring encumbrance, we mustn’t neglect bulk. A coin seems to be the antithesis of bulk. It’s small, stackable with others, creates minimal lost space between pieces, and fistfuls of them fill voids between silver goblets and gold statuettes.
But a sack of coins isn’t rigid. I’m guessing that the only difference between a sack of 1,750 metal pieces and a party member’s corpse carried over your shoulder is that one of them will pay for a round at the base town tavern.
Euro Equivalents. The 2- and 1-euro coins are just larger and just smaller than a quarter: 25.25 and 23.25 mm in diameter, respectively. The 50-cent piece is the closest match at 24.25 mm, though its thickness, 2.38 mm, is a third again that of a quarter.
2 In adventurer jargon, copper pieces are called “dungeon marks.”
3 In a December 1983 Dragon article, David F. Godwin makes such calculations. “How many coins in a coffer?” (Dragon #80, 9) doesn’t question the tenth-pound coin but addresses the related problem of a coin hoard’s volume. One point Godwin makes is that, due to the heavier weights of metals, the volume of coins in a “full” sack is much less than the sack’s volume. Imagine a stack of ten quarters. It weighs one pound. Make six rows of stacks by ten columns. Rounding to convenient dimensions, a stack of ten quarters takes up a volume 1" × 1" × ¾". Stacked, the 600 coins take up 6" × 10" × ¾". Dump them into a large sack. Any more weight would burst the seams, but there’s still a lot of air in the volume. So much that even four times as many coins doesn’t begin to take up the space.
For an example of a large sack overfull, see the Erol Otus illustration in Moldvay’s D&D Basic Rulebook, B20.
To my first best friend,
Who showed me how to play this game 40 years ago.
That has made all the difference.
Following is an ordered index of select episodes from the category Anecdotes and Old Games. I omit entries that discuss origins, rules, and other aspects of D&D and related games of the era. Included here are only the anecdotes recounting my earliest experience with D&D—playing the Holmes Basic edition.
“…for 300 gold pieces are assumed to weigh about 30 pounds” (Holmes, 9).
Melqart raised the torch over his head. Flickering light glinted off gold and silver. An alabaster frieze decorated the far wall. Before it, coins spilled from coffers, chests, and brass urns. A gold chain adorned with precious stones sparkled red and green.
Melqart drew a breath. “How many rounds1 you reckon, Hathor?”
She blinked at the dazzling mound. “Thousands and thousands!”
“How many sacks do we have?”
“Three large, one small… and I’ve got room in my backpack.”
In early D&D editions, the base unit to measure encumbrance is the “coin,” and ten of them weigh one pound. I struggled with that idea for a long time. Even if we assume that encumbrance is “a combination of weight and bulk,” as Tom Moldvay puts it (B20), a one-tenth-pound coin seems hardly credible. Eventually, I came around to accept the absurdity in favor of playability.
Ten coins to a pound started as early as OD&D, in which the average man weighs 1,750 coins (Vol. 1, 15). That the entry tops the encumbrance list is either to set a benchmark—175 lbs. was average for a 1970s American male—or to remind us it’s a dangerous world: there are rules for carrying a comrade’s corpse.
The ten-coin standard continued through AD&D and the “Basic” line (B/X, BECM/I, and the Rules Cyclopedia). It was abandoned in 2nd Edition, which uses pounds to measure encumbrance.
The quote at top from the section on encumbrance in Holmes Basic D&D pulls the heavy coin forward from OD&D. But Zach Howard’s reading of the Holmes manuscript implies that it wasn’t the Editor who wrote the encumbrance section,2 but rather a subsequent editor.3
Elsewhere in Holmes we read:
“All coins are roughly equal in size and weight, being approximately the circumference and thickness of a quarter and weighing about twice as much” (34).
Reading Zach Howard’s discussion of the Treasure section in the Holmes manuscript, I see that Holmes didn’t write about the size and weight of coins either. [22:30 13 February 2022 GMT]
This gives us the idea that Holmes used, at least in his own game, a smaller value for the weight of a coin.4 A US quarter-dollar piece weighs 5.67 grams. Twice that, 11.34, is 0.025 pounds. Using this as the standard, there are 40 coins in a pound.
Do you know what that means? You can carry four times more treasure out of the dungeon. That’s four times more treasure! More treasure for you, more treasure for me—more treasure for everyone!
Laden Thieves. Adventurers carry 9,600 rounds in four large sacks.
Notes
1 A round, in adventurer jargon, is a precious-metal coin of any realm, past or present.
4 Written accounts from the Editor himself indicate that Holmes knew and used some rules from an early third-party OD&D supplement called Warlock. I wonder if a coin’s weight is addressed in those rules. Zenopus Archives blog, “Warlock or how to play D&D without playing D&D?”
Having now had the opportunity to read Warlock as printed in The Spartan #9 (August 1975), I can report that, other than that it weighs one unit, no mention of a coin’s weight is contained therein. Nor is any other of Holmes’s unique rules. [18:34 19 May 2022 GMT]
Every now and again life shows us a thing that changes the way we look at it. Before D&D, life appeared mundane. The future and what I would do in it was vague and distant. But after my first experience with this new kind of game, I saw another future. This one was more distinct, more tangible, and it was lit by a brilliant blue flame with tiny stars. In that future was fantasy and magic, and the path to it lay at my feet.
Like Robert Frost’s traveler pondering divergent roads, I knew that I couldn’t take the one path without leaving behind the other. Unlike the traveler, though, I didn’t long linger. I saw the way clear to the bend. The fantastic path had the better claim.
The road, I realized later, was the less well trod. In those days, it was the rare traveler who had heard of the game, fewer still who did not equate it with devil worship, and only a small number who played it.
Without knowing, I joined a small club. The club’s members, few and dispersed, made up a subculture that blended wargames with fantasy and science-fiction literature. An introverted adolescent, I found myself not always comfortable among the diverse crowd of geeks and nerds and metalheads, but always accepted into the awkward fellowship. As way led on to way, I didn’t look back.
Now, ages and ages thence, I, like Frost’s traveler, think back on the time life showed me the fantastic path, sometimes, with a sigh. How much different life would be had I never learned to play DUNGEONS & DRAGONS.
Other than playing D&D, I don’t remember what else Garth and I might have done with those summer days. But the week ran out much too soon. My family had gone north to visit relatives for two weeks, dropping me off at Garth’s on the way. Now I was to spend the second week at my grandmother’s house.
At noon, my suitcase was packed, and the phone rang. Garth’s mom said it was my grandmother. She would be there in an hour.
While waiting, I asked Garth if I could look at the blue book. “I want to copy the important parts.”
Armed with pencil and ruled paper, I flipped through the eggshell pages. Monsters, I knew, were important, so, I started there.
Garth pursed his lips. “It’ll take you forever to copy all that.”
“I’ll just write the names.”
“Here,” Garth turned to the last page and pointed to three columns of monster names. “That’s most of the monsters. The stuff on those two pages is all you really need.”
Many of the monsters were alien to me. As I copied each name, I tried to conjure up what the creature should look like and how it might make a dangerous foe.
From fairy tales, I knew goblins were diminutive boogie men that run around all harry-scarry on dark nights. I knew bandits from Westerns, and I wondered what they were doing in medieval times. I was overly familiar with ticks from boyhood outdoor explorations, and even giant specimens seemed out of place in the fantastic world.
But orcs were unknown to me. I had seen, too young, cartoon movies with hobbits, but I failed to make the connection to the films’ frog-mouthed foot soldiers.
Then there were berserkers, bugbears, and gelatinous cubes, stirges and displacer beasts. Together the names conjured mayhem, but I wrote them down. Time pressed.
After the monsters, I turned to the magic spells. As the neutral human fighter, I witnessed Kaytar at his esoteric profession. But how magic worked in the game was a complete mystery. The names at least gave some hint to their purpose.
The hour was passing quickly, so I copied the “books” of magic-user spells without thinking. When I got to the clerical spells, I paused.
“Garth, how does light hurt you?”
“What do you mean?”
“This spell cures light wounds.”
“No, it cures a few hit points of damage. Like from a small wound.”
Then I heard a car pull into the drive outside. Time to go. I closed the pale blue book and looked one last time at the cover. A dragon’s treasure, blue flame, tiny stars.
Garth and I said our goodbyes and write-soons and maybe next summer again. I climbed into the backseat and waved out the rear window as the car pulled out of the drive. Clutching the leaf of ruled paper, I studied the lists of monsters and spells until car sickness came on.
Monster Lists from the Perforated Page, Holmes Basic D&D (1977).
