“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.
Phenster’s Pandemonium Society House Rules is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, events, incidents, and newsletters are either products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is pure coincidence.
The following text is from L’avant garde #32 (August 1980). In transcribing, I fix spelling and punctuation errors, but I leave grammar as is.
Pandemonium Society House Rules
by Phenster
I was talking to Ivanhoe at the Game Hoard one day. I invited him and the other big kids from the store to join the Pandemonium Society and play D&D with us. He asked me, "What version do you play?" I said, "What do you mean? We play D&D," and I showed him the rulebook. He said, "Basic is for kids. We play Advanced D&D. It's more sophisticated."
I didn't know what he meant by that. Then he showed me the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons rulebooks. There's three of them and they have hard covers with colored pictures on the front. The rules look more complicated than ours do, but more sophisticated I don't know about.
In the Pandemonium Society, we only have one D&D book. It has 46 pages and a soft cover. And we use some extra rules too. Hazard calls them "house rules." We make up house rules when we need them, and sometimes we write them down. That makes our game plenty sophisticated. I'll give you some examples.
The rulebook says all weapons roll a 6-sided die for damage. That's nonsense though, because some weapons are heavier than others. So, we say that the light weapons do one less damage point and the heavy weapons do one more point. Some weapons that are extra-heavy, like a two-handed sword, do TWO more points.
Another thing it says in the rulebook is that some weapons go more or less times in a round. That's hard to keep track of, and a weapon that doesn't get to attack in a round is pretty useless. So everybody wanted to fight with a dagger, except Beowulf. That's his campaign name, but we like to call him "the Bully," because he's always getting into fights. When Beowulf the Bully gets into a fight, he likes to use a two-handed sword, so we figured out another way to do it.
We play it where all the weapons only go once per round, except the heavy crossbows, which shoot every other round, so they're still pretty useless. But if your crossbow is already loaded, you can fire it fast, so you shoot first, but only for that go. Both crossbows always shoot last in the round. After bows are fired, if you don't move or do anything else, you can fire again at the end of the round.
Daggers always go last on the first round when you're fighting something. After that, they go first. Two-handed swords, et. al., always go last in the round, unless it's also a long weapon. Long weapons, like pole arms and two-handed swords, go first when closing to hand-to-hand combat, then they go last after that. So, when Beowulf is charging into a horde of orcs with his two-handed sword, he gets the first blow against the first orc that's fighting with an axe. But after that he goes last, until he wins the fight and goes to fight another orc.
Starting with this issue and sporadically throughout the next years, L’avant garde printed a series of articles, under the byline Phenster, describing various house rules used by the Pandemonium Society of Neighborhood Dungeons and Dragons Players.
In Phenster’s Pandemonium Society House Rules, I reprint parts of Phenster’s articles, reedit the house rules into a form more comprehensible to the modern reader, and discuss certain points I find interesting.
Spurned by her lover, the wizard Agodt built the tower that now crouches below the crest of a high crag in the remote foothills of the Western Mountains. Other than the occasional apprentice, she lived alone.
Agodt named her home Schlafender Drachenturm—or Sleeping Dragon Tower—after the motif with which she adorned the structure. But even in the wizard’s day, folks called it “the Lonely Tower,” for Agodt pined after her lost love. Since her disappearance some decades ago, the tower has been undisturbed. Only time takes its toll on crumbling stones.
Before the summertime distraction that was the Valormr Campaign, I played the first session of Wyrmwyrd. Wyrm Dawn, the Battle of Throrgardr, and Valormr were invaluable in fleshing out the dungeon’s history and culture as well as the geography of surrounding lands. Though short campaigns, the three together took up the better part of the game-playing year.
The autumn passed in house-moving, “there and back again” to the beach-front apartment, where I’ll be through April at least. A nomad’s is a precarious lifestyle. I intend to get in at least one more session of Wyrmwyrd before the end of B/X’s 40th-anniversary year. In any case, the campaign continues.
Schlafender Drachenturm, the Lonely Tower
Player Characters
Thorsdottir serves as an acolyte of the Allfather Church in the Elding Wood village. Her friend Gandrefr is apprenticed to a sorcerer, who lives in a nearby hamlet.
Now, an adventurer has come to the Elding Wood village. Ansgar the Bold speaks of a powerful magic sword once possessed by the wizard of the Lonely Tower. Proof of the claim is a parchment he found among the belongings of Arkadin Hoarcloak, Agodt’s last apprentice, long-dead. Ansgar shows this parchment to anyone who expresses interest in joining his adventuring party. The calf skin is yellow with age, its edges burnt.
“I saw it only once,” reads the crooked scrawl, “before she was aware of my presence. The sword lay on the worktable before her. It was magnificent: a serpent coiled around the hilt, from bejeweled pommel to crossguard, and runes ran the length of the bronze blade. When Agodt noticed me, she covered the sword and bid me away.
“Later, in the dungeon below the tower, she built a secret vault. Among many wondrous treasures she stored there was a yew-wood case, narrow and long, bound in brass, a serpent engraved on the lid.
“Agodt closed the vault behind a solid stone-block wall. I dared to ask: How do you get in? She answered: The key is on the lintel. I searched the entire tower from upper works to dungeons below. I found no kind of key nor anything else on any lintel.
“It was soon after this that I was dismissed. Agodt gave no reason, and she never took another apprentice.”
Arkadin Hoarcloak Eversden Hamlet, Odenwoad
From the village and surrounding communities, a score of hopeful adventurers gathered at the Elf King’s Inn. The company discussed plans for the expedition. Ansgar hired a local guide to escort the party to the Lonely Tower. They would depart at dawn on the morrow.
Short festivities followed. The ambiance was jovial. Afterward, Ansgar retired to his room. When he didn’t come down in the morning, two of the company banged on the door before entering. They found Ansgar in a blood-soaked bed, his throat slit. The parchment was not found.
With the company now divided between those who would venture to the Lonely Tower as planned, those who doubted the parchment’s veracity, and those who would find the killer, the inn erupted in boisterous debate. Amid the cacophony, Gandrefr approached a quiet fellow who stood apart from the crowd, while Thorsdottir sought the guide. After brief negotiations, the four departed.
The guide escorted the party to the Lonely Tower then waited outside as agreed. Thorsdottir, Gandrefr, and the retainer Ardur explored the tower’s three upper levels. They discovered, above the entry door and on each floor, something of interest.
Entrance
Engraved in the arch over the entry door is the following inscription:
LOST ALONE TOGETHER FOUND
First Floor
A fresco covers the west wall, between the two stair bases, from floor to 20-foot ceiling. It depicts two robed figures, man and woman, he in blue, she in lavender. He carries a short blade. She holds a ball of light overhead. They walk through a wood. Ahead of them, a circle of stones. On the stones are carved eight-legged serpentine creatures. Above the circle’s center floats an object wreathed in a radiant aura.
Second Floor
A statue of a human female and a dragon coiled around. The paint is chipped and worn, showing alabaster beneath. The woman’s face is triangular, the nose thin. She wears a lavender robe, trimmed with white flowers. The dragon’s tail circles her waist, leaving arms free, and turns up at her knees. It’s head rests on a shoulder, peering up at her.
Third Floor
An iron statue, covered in a layer of rust, of a dragon standing, wings displayed, tail wrapped around the base. One eye is closed. The other is open, but the socket is empty. A claw held to its chest is clenched tight in a fist.
Urgent cries in distant dark. Dying echoes, fading into empty space. A spark—a flash of light, flickering orange. Columns rise high above, stabbing gloomy shade. Tunnels twisting out of sight.
Stumbling, lost, behind lumbering figures, purple-cloaked. Under arch, stepping down. Between close walls, beneath heavy vault, cauldrons crouch on red coals. Chanting priests raise green goblets to a shadowed image. All eyes are closed…
Many are troubled by such nightmares. Some wake, seeking respite. Some lie yet in fitful sleep.
Scale: 10’ Dungeon Levels: Seven Levels Deep Treasure Sequence: The Full Monty Squared Contents:Flying Tables by Dungeon Geomorphs Rules: Bluebook D&D
What I’m Doing
In “Dungeon Levels and Treasures,” I present several combinations of scale, dungeon level configuration, and treasure sequence. With the choice of rules and room contents determination method, there are myriad ways to run a Deep Halls campaign.
I want to try a few of them. I’m starting with the most deadly dungeon level configuration and an overly generous treasure sequence to see if it’s possible that player characters might survive to reach 2nd level. If it doesn’t work, it won’t take long.
First Delve into the Deep Halls.
The Full Monty Squared
10-5-1(2)^1-1-1{44:10}[4,763 XP, 2,255 g.p., 3]
Using this Squared variant of the Full Monty treasure sequence, we award 2 XP per gold piece. While, in a 50-room Level 1 dungeon, there are more than four times the XP required to gain a level, in the seven level configuration of the Deep Halls, Level 1 has only four rooms. Worse, our neophyte adventurers enter on Level 2, which has only 15 rooms. Even these are not contiguous. Nor is Level 3. The 1st-level party must venture to Level 4 before any characters level-up.
A year ago, due to the current world situation, I had the opportunity to rent a small apartment on the beach at a monthly rate that fit a nomad’s budget. It’s equipped with all the necessities in two rooms with a view on the sea, a constant breeze, and three tables of various sizes. With an eye on the tables and knowing that human contact should be limited for the coming months, I rekindled the decade-old idea to play a solo wargames campaign.
The strategic movement map is laid out on the first table. When opposing forces meet, battles are fought on the second. The third table is reserved for the Throrgrmir Citadel, where take place the opening and closing engagements: the dragon’s assault on the Citadel and its storming by the Forces of Law.
No table for dinning remains to me, but who needs to eat when you can play wargames?
Forces of Law Execute a Plan.
Moving overland, the Aeskrvald and Lanze armies are escorted by elves through the Ellriendi Forest to take up positions northeast of the Citadel, while Noerdenheim and Grallune move by sea to capture Port-of-Sands then the Keep on the Pale Moor, thereby cutting the Chaos Armies’ supply lines.
Battle of Throrgrmir.
The Chaos Armies routed from the field, Anax Archontas hops from his perch atop the Throrgrmir Citadel to deliver a tongue of fire into a formation of Grallune troops.
Meanwhile, an adventuring party gains the base of the Citadel, where they enter a secret tunnel. The adventurers must find their way through a dungeon, overcoming any obstacles, to enter the Citadel’s upperworks.
Ostanner ninjas move through woods to the base of the Citadel’s plateau. They are to scale the cliff and the ramparts to create a diversion as the adventuring party enters the Citadel to open the gates.
Zosimos Wields the Wyrmwyrd.
A moment later, a strange wizard from south of the World Dragon Mountains confronts the dragon. With a device fashioned by the Throrgrmir dwarves, Zosimos banishes the would-be usurper from the Throrgrmir Valley. Anax Archontas’s bid to become the first emperor of the Age of Dragons ends with a few spoken words bolstered by the power of the Fates. The device ever after is called the Wyrmwyrd.
Hadewych Pretends to an Empire.
The dragon is gone and with it the Chaos Armies’ raison d’être. But the dwarves below are starving, and the Forces of Law are diminished and weakened, while armies of kobolds, orcs, and gnolls arrive from the south, and the Wraithwright marches at the head of an undead legion from the north. Hadewych the Arbiter, with two regiments, a host of heroes, and the Citadel’s upperworks under her control, finds herself atop an empire ready for the taking.
Storming of the Citadel.
But the Forces of Law set up a catapult on the hill due south. It pelts the ramparts before Grallune forces march up the slope. As fighting erupts on the Stonesward, the adventuring party fights its way from the Greensward toward the gate, and, bursting through the door from below, dwarves cry vengeance and death to Throrgrmir’s enemies.
This is the Throrgrmir Empire, rich with gold and gems and treasures beyond imagining. If she wants it, Hadewych must fight for it.
Storming of the Citadel (Overhead).
The year on the beach draws to a close, as does the wargames campaign. I’ve kept a detailed record of events of Valormr, which, like Wyrm Dawn from which it spawned, informs the upcoming B/X campaign.
Who says B/X’s 40th anniversary says Chainmail’s 50th. Before there was “the game that started it all,” there was the game that started that. Initiated by wargamer Jeff Perren and further elaborated by Gary Gygax, iterations of the rules for medieval miniatures wargames were published in zines as early as 1970.
Just prior to its 1971 publication by Guidon Games, Gygax added 14 pages of rules inspired by fantasy fiction. The “Fantasy Supplement” opened the gates on tabletop battles with wizards and heroes, elves, trolls, giants, and other fantastic and mythical creatures, including dragons. Chainmail was the steel with which Dave Arneson struck Wesely’s Braunstein flint. The spark was Blackmoor, and it ignited the flame that became DUNGEONS & DRAGONS.
“Valormr: val (war or slain) + ormr (wyrm), pronounced Val-ORM-r. During the Throrgrmir Renaissance, when the new-hatched wyrmlings prowled the dungeon, already dragons came to hasten the prophesied Age of Dragons. The dwarves called to their neighbors, who responded in force. Dragons recruited forces of Chaos to oppose them.”
The Valormr Campaign plays out events leading to the battle and the battle itself, using Chainmail: rules for medieval miniatures by Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren (3rd Edition, Lake Geneva, WI: Tactical Studies Rules, 1975).
Notes
For the history of D&D, see Playing at the World (Jon Peterson, San Diego: Unreason, 2012) and Designers & Dragons: The ’70s (Shannon Appelcline, Silver Springs, MD: Evil Hat, 2013).
“Built by priests of Amon-Gorloth, this dungeon was constructed and adapted from existing caverns following their dreams channeled from Amon-Gorloth itself—making them a twisted and nightmarish version of the convoluted mausoleums under the desert sands where Amon-Gorloth sleeps and dreams.”—Dyson Logos
For a minimum-preparation D&D campaign, use The Deep Halls of Amon-Gorloth with the rules of your choice and some method to generate monster encounters.
This is one of my favorite maps from the map god mere mortals call Dyson Logos.1 Every time I look at it, a voice in my head screams, “Bluebook D&D!”
Today, I’m doing it.
You might run it as a seven-level dungeon. Without counting encounter areas per color, though, I’m guessing there aren’t enough to stock a whole level of experience points for even a single character to level-up. So I group the colors into “logical” levels of two or three colors each.2
“The Deep Halls of Amon-Gorloth,” Hand-Drawn Map by Dyson Logos.
“To make it a bit easier to navigate, I’ve also provided a pair of colour-coded versions of the maps indicating the depth of each individual level. This is based on the excellent work of Michael Prescott who colourized a photograph of the original map before I had scanned it.”
Applying the “Stone Mountain” nomenclature from Holmes to Prescott’s colors, we get the following three-level dungeon.
Level
Color
Name
1
Red Tan Light Green
1st UP 1A 1B
2
Dark Green Blue-green
2A 2B
3
Blue Violet
3A 3B
Even at two or three colors each, XP per level will be tight. A fun solution to the problem is to throw treasure at it. See “Monty Haul” below.
Mine is a solo campaign, so I don’t trouble myself with placed encounters. As the PCs explore the dungeon, I roll on the tables in Monster & Treasure Assortment Set One: Levels One-Three. This random generation fits the dungeon’s “dreams of Amon-Gorloth” theme.
I say, “What’s next?” and the voice says, “Three-dee-six in order…”
A “Monty Haul” Dungeon
There might be a line between “giving away treasure” and what we used to call a “Monty Haul” dungeon. If the PCs open a door to a ten-by-ten room and see piles of gold and platinum coins counted in the thousands, littered with gems and jewelry, and “one of every magic item in the book,”3 that’s giving away treasure.
To maintain the thrill in treasure-finding, the DM might put constraints on treasure placement by establishing a method. Your “Monty Haul” method might be anything, but keep to it.
My own “Monty Haul” method is simple: triple, quadruple, or quintuple any treasure, guarded and unguarded alike.
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of my favorite DUNGEONS & DRAGONS edition, I’m starting a new B/X campaign. Wyrmwyrd is a solo campaign, and I’m using Tony Dowler’s How to Host a Dungeon to create some back story. I think of it as a prequel campaign—working title: Wyrm Dawn. I just finished the primordial age. The mother of dragons spawned in the deepest caverns.
Wyrm Dawn Campaign Map with B/X D&D and Host to Host a Dungeon.
