I have discovered a treasure—all in my mind. A treasure no less.
Welcome to PARADIGM LOST
My name is Phenster. Least that's my campaign name. Me and the kids in my neighborhood play a game called "Dungeons and Dragons." In a game of D&D, we pretend to be heroes and wizards, and we go on perilous adventures in a fantastic world of dangerous dungeons. The dungeons are filled with terrible monsters that guard fabulous treasures. We explore the dungeons, slay the monsters, and take the treasures. It's like a game of make-believe, but with paper and pencil and dice.
All our adventures together make a campaign. We all made up campaign names that we use for our heroes and wizards. There are about 20 of us who play, so we made a club. Not everyone always shows up for games at the same time, but sometimes there are quite a lot of us.
One time, Hazard--that's his campaign name--invited all of us over to his house to play. It was a cold and rainy Saturday, and almost everyone was there. The kitchen was full of kids. We had to sit two to a chair, and some kids were standing up or sitting on the countertops. We were all talking and laughing, because there's a lot of talking and laughing when we play this game, and sometimes shouting and swearing, too. Hazard's mom came in and said, "What's all the pandemonium?" We all got quiet and jumped down from countertops and sat straight in our chairs. She said we were behaving like little demons and told us not to swear. Then she took a jar down from on top of the fridge and gave us all cookies. Homemade chocolate chip, my favorite.
After that, we named our club "The Pandemonium Society of Neighborhood Dungeons and Dragons Players." This is the first issue of our newsletter. There's one of Hazard's dungeons and a story about our adventure in it, so you can see what it's like. If you want to play with us, you can join our club and make up a campaign name. Call Hazard: [redacted], after school but not at dinner time.
—from Paradigm Lost, the Pandemonium Society Newsletter, #1 (April 1980)
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.
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS and D&D are registered trademarks of Wizards of the Coast, LLC, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. Use of these trademarks is not a challenge to the trademark and does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by Wizards of the Coast or its parent company.
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.
I am a long-time professor of D&D’s influence on contemporary culture. The thesis, familiar to many of us, begins with the concepts of hit points and experience levels, borrowed from D&D and incorporated into the earliest video games. Where it ends is expressed in eloquent fashion by Jon Peterson at the close of Game Wizards.
Back in 1980, a reporter who asked if D&D was only a passing fad learned that “Gygax and Blume think not. D&D, they say, will last fifty years or more.” As unlikely as it was in the 1970s that this esoteric offshoot of the wargaming hobby might become a pop-culture phenomenon, it is just as unlikely that in 2021 the game would be more popular than ever. As a new generation grows up playing the game, it may be that the true impact of Dungeons & Dragons has yet to be felt.
Jon Peterson’s Triptych of D&D History: Playing at the World: A History of Simulating Wars, People and Fantastic Adventures, from Chess to Role-Playing Games, San Diego: Unreason, 2012 [currently out of print]; The Elusive Shift: How Role-Playing Games Forged Their Identity, Cambridge: MIT, 2020; and Game Wizards: The Epic Battle for Dungeons & Dragons, Cambridge: MIT, 2021.
Peterson’s work is thorough, well-researched, and written from the historian’s objective perspective in a clear, concise style. Jon Peterson carries the lantern by which we explore the labyrinth of D&D’s obscure past, from its creation throughout its continuing evolution.
“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.”
After the second foray into the Deep Halls, in which the party descended briefly to Level 4, they hauled out goodly treasure. Four characters advanced to 2nd level. One of those, the party leader, is blind, and two party members did not survive.
The Gygax Tax or Where Does All the Treasure Go
Different methods to reduce excessive wealth are discussed under the heading Wealth Extraction in “Running the Campaign.” Our recent delve yielded sufficient treasure to make an example.
Money Changer
All told, the party ported 7,600 coins of ancient mint—in silver, electrum, and gold—and two bejeweled necklaces out of the dungeon storeroom-cum-den of thieves.
The coins are declared at the town gate and taken to the money changer. Their total value, 3,375 g.p., is taxed 10%. The jewelry, worth 4,000 g.p., is not taxed.
Gygax suggests a 1% import duty on goods, such as jewelry (AD&D DMG, 90), but in the campaign we ignore single-digit percentages. The full value of gems and jewelry may be bartered. The money changer collects a 10% luxury tax should they be sold for coin.
So while experience is calculated from the full gold.jpgece value, the party comes away with 4,000 g.p. in jewelry and 3,038 g.p. in coin of the realm.
Restorative Spells
Hathor-Ra escorts Melqart to the temple. They learn that a cure for blindness requires 16,000 g.p.
Blindness from cobra’s spittle may be healed with a cure serious wounds spell (house rule). With the overly generous treasure stocking method, a restorative spell costs its level squared times 1,000 g.p.
Bank
Melqart, cursing ill luck, and Hathor then proceed to the bank, where they rent a small coffer (10 g.p.) to store the gold and jewelry.
Professional Expenses
From their shares, Hathor-Ra tithes 176 g.p. to the temple, and Melqart joins the Magic-User’s Guild, paying 500 g.p. in annual dues.
Upkeep
Upon receiving experience point awards, each PC immediately pays 1% of earned XP—that is, earned during the adventure, not total—in g.p. for upkeep. This includes room and board. PCs pay upkeep for their hirelings.
I pull this rule from OD&D (Vol. 3, 24). Though beneath our 10% threshold, taking a percentage from earned XP is less tedious than a daily or weekly payment.
Inability to pay one’s upkeep in full indicates a level of impoverishment, reflected in the character’s standing and reputation, i.e. NPC reactions. Failure to pay a hireling’s upkeep provokes an additional loyalty check.
I find upkeep’s impact on town encounters to be worth the effort. If a group feels otherwise, upkeep is easily ignored. In that case, we assume that PCs have in pocket whatever small sums are necessary for daily needs.
Company Charter
After a good night’s rest, Melqart considers the options. He proposes that the party form an adventuring company. The party agrees that Melqart will manage the company, with a hired assistant, until his sight is restored. Thereafter, the manager role will rotate through party members.
Treasure division:
All treasure obtained on adventures belongs to the Company.
Monetary treasure is divided into shares, which are disbursed by the Company.
Adventuring party members earn one share, while the Company Manager earns one-half share.
Magic items are distributed to individual members to the Company’s best benefit.
Company Manager responsibilities:
Submits to member oversight.
Keeps financial records.
Directs research in the absence of the party leader.
Organizes rescue parties.
The Company pays:
Necessary adventuring equipment, including that for hirelings.
Hireling advances on share.
Restorative magic to heal injuries suffered while on party business.
Research, magical or scholarly, conducted for party benefit.
The Company does not pay:
Upkeep.
Hireling fees or bonuses.
Professional expenses (tithes, guild fees, gambling debts).
Any other extras.
The Spitting Cobra, Melqart’s Last Visual Memory. With 40 g.p. Melqart commissions an artisan to carve an ornament from acacia wood. It is to be affixed on a staff’s head. The spitting cobra becomes the symbol of the Company of the Blind Seer.
Current Party Composition
The following character records include those for the deceased, three new hirelings, and Melqart’s assistant Ur-Zaruund.
The party is not overly wealthy, I think, for 2nd-level characters. Especially considering that they are essentially 16,000 g.p. in debt to the future restoration of Melqart’s sight.
Melqart and Hathor-Ra loaded treasure. The medium held a sack open at the hem, while the acolyte dumped the contents of an iron coffer into it. Gold coins rattled and clinked, like a stream of metallic pebbles.
Plate-armored Iltani, with sword and shield, stood over a sharper. The thief, bloody hands bound and tethered to an ankle, crouched beside a wall. The charmed harpy fed on three others in the room beyond a door, which was guarded by Zagros, also armor-clad with sword and shield.
The party’s own thief, Idan Thyrsus, lay face down. A dagger protruded from between shoulder blades.
Coins sacked, Melqart and Hathor strung necklaces around their necks, sequestering the jewels beneath robe and tunic.
Iltani, Zagros, and the hobbled sharper would each carry a large sack, Melqart a small. Hathor, otherwise unburdened, would port the corpse of Thyrsus back to base town, where she hired him the previous day.
“Wait,” said Melqart. “Where’s the papyrus?”
Hathor raised her eyebrows. “The oneiromancer said it would be in this room.”
“Maybe here…” Melqart approached the frieze, pushing aside an empty coffer with a foot.
The frieze covered the wall up to fifteen feet high under the barrel-vaulted ceiling. A line of life-size human figures, one foot before another, faced a larger figure, seated on the left. The upright figures were male and female. Males were bare chested, wearing only kilts. Females wore long gowns to the ankle. All were barefoot and held some object in both hands before them: the first a scroll, the second a tall jar, followed by a cornucopia, a jug, a bowl, and so on. The seated figure, male, wore a kilt. Two concentric circles haloed the head. Straight lines, like rays, protruded from the outermost.
Hathor stepped closer with the torch. Melqart felt the relief with fingertips, tracing outlines in smooth alabaster.
“It’s a procession,” said the cleric. “Subjects bring offerings. The king’s halo represents Gor’s double crown.”
“I don’t see any—” Melqart’s fingers slipped over the lip of the tall jar. “What’s this?” He rapped on the jar with a knuckle. It rang hollow.
Melqart gripped the jar by the lip and held it at the base. A tug revealed a crack between jar and relief. Wiggling the jar from side to side, he pulled, and it gave.
“Give me a hand,” said the magic-user.
Hathor lay the torch on the floor. Shadows leapt high up the wall. Together they pulled the jar from the niche and set it down on the floor.
Hathor went for the torch. Melqart stood up to peer inside the jar. From the shadow within, a cobra’s head raised to meet his gaze. Its hood spread, black eyes glinted, and it spat into Melqart’s face.
The medium recoiled with a grunt. Hathor struck out at the snake. The mace came down hard on the jar lip.
The cobra spilled from broken alabaster, coiling its three-foot length. Iltani and Zagros advanced from either side. The serpent soon writhed in two parts.
“Are you well, Melqart?” said Hathor.
Melqart blinked his eyes, opening wide. “I can’t see.”
The blind Melqart and the hobbled sharper in tow, the limp Thyrsus over a shoulder, Hathor-Ra led the party up to the dungeon’s first level. There, she rendered the papyrus, a rolled page with magical writing on it found in the jar, to the witch who called herself an oneiromancer.
Sharpers and Cobra. Sharpers (7th-level thieves) hideout on the dungeon’s 3rd level. A spitting cobra guards a papyrus concealed within an alabaster frieze.
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.
The Deep Halls of Amon-Gorloth, Keyed by Sublevels and Encounter Areas. Encounter areas are numbered. Sublevels are noted with the level number followed by a letter designator, highlighted in purple. Map by Dyson Logos.
Getting Into the Deep Halls
Dreaming Amon-Gorloth is a dungeon and wilderness adventure campaign for character levels 1 to 9 intended for use with any old-school edition of the world’s most superlative role-playing game.
The should-be simple exercise of keying rooms is already a nightmare. The dungeon, consisting of 180 encounter areas, goes down seven levels. Each level is divided, by contiguous rooms, into 51 sublevels.
The first four dozen encounter areas by sublevel serve to demonstrate its twisted quality.
Sublevel
Encounter Areas
Sublevel
Encounter Areas
2A.
1-3
3C.
23-25
2B.
4-8
2C.
26-29
1A.
9-12
3D.
30-31
3A.
13-14
3E.
32-33
4A.
15-18
4B.
34-40
3B.
19-22
4C.
41-48
A party might enter the dungeon and proceed immediately along 3. Grand Entry Hall (2A.) down to area 34. Nightmare Bazaar (4B.), or they might follow at least five other circuitous routes to the same destination.
Your Favorite Monsters from Holmes
I have worked out much of the campaign scenario, and Melqart and his “Company of the Blind Seer” have explored several chambers close to the entrance—as far as 57. Chamber of the Processional (3F.).
I’m taking your suggestions for favorite Holmesian monsters to place in sublevels and particular halls and chambers in the Deep Halls of Amon-Gorloth.
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]
