B/X Notebook: The Daveing of D&D Continues

I don't know if these are the kinds of things Arneson would have done in his game, but I decided to keep it positive and use "Daveing" to describe the alterations I made to D&D instead of "de-gygaxing."

I've already discussed a number of changes, but today I want to talk about Daveing the orc family tree. By that I mean that kobolds, goblins, hobgoblins, gnolls, and bugbears are essentially just orcs with lesser or greater amounts of hit dice- .5, 1-1, 1+1, 2, and 3+1 respectively. I realize, of course, that gnolls are not related to orcs, but for the sake of this article, I'll include them as well as a couple of other orc variants (in the meta sense.)

The idea here is to make the motivations of each race unique and give them more of a visual identifier than "orc with dog-head" or "orc with hyena-head," etc. For now I'll just lay on the flayva and skip the nuts & bolts. Some of these guys deserve an entry all their own due to changes in powers and the like.

Koboldes*
In various editions of the game, it's mentioned that gnomes and kobolds hate each other. That was my starting point for this version. In the distant past, a group of gnome miners found themselves trapped in a mine containing an ore that gave off a queer elemental force that poisoned and bent the gnomes, turning them into angry little blue bastards.

The gnomes that arrived to free them were forced back by the deadly ore, eventually leaving those trapped inside for dead. As a result, the koboldes (as they eventually referred to themselves) blamed and came to hate their brethren for their condition.

*I'm using a variant spelling of kobold here so as to differentiate them from the standard D&D monster. I am not adding the "e" to fancify the name the way some dorks do with "Lich." The word "lich" is English. It means "corpse" and it is pronounced "bitch." Not "leech" or "leek" or "like" or whatever other ghey hyperforeignisms get ascribed to it. This is why there's no fucking "e" on the end of it, understand?

He didn't get out of the cock-a-doodie CAR!

Goblins
The idea here is that goblins are the lowest ranking, most numerous, inhabitants of Hell. They exist primarily to torment the souls of the damned. On occasion, a few of these mini-fiends make their way (or were they released?) to the mortal realm where they gleefully terrorize the living.

The idea for this came from two sources, the movie Legend and the works of Heironymus Bosch. Each goblin is a random mix of man, animal, and junk. So, you could have a bird with a pig's head wearing a pair of big boots or a giant pair of scissors with legs. Whatever I think would make for an unsettling bogie. Ideally, no two are the same, but all have the same stats.

Hobgoblins
The inspiration for these fellows comes from Ralph Bakshi's Wizards. These are probably the closest to what is described in the game. They make up the bulk of their demonic masters' military forces, acting primarily as cannon fodder. In their downtime, they crack whips at goblins, bend, fold, spindle and mutilate the damned, and otherwise sit and stare at stuff. Like the goblins, they get to visit the world of the living, where they likewise terrorize mortals, albeit less gleefully.

Visually, they are hulking humanoids in a variety of earth tone colors. They glowing red eyes, large pointed ears, a mouthful of sharp teeth, and clawed hands. Some of them share traits more common to demons (horns, wings, tails, etc.) but those are just for show.

Gnolls
These are completely useless to me. If I was gonna use them at all, I'd just build them from the ground up and call the Gnoles, the creatures that Dunsany created and that were made stupid by Gygax. A cross between a gnome and a troll, Gary? Really?

Bugbears
These guys are completely unrelated to goblins. They are wicked forest monsters that only come out at night to abuse those foolish enough to get caught in the wilderness alone. They are creatures of Chaos that exist to sow fear and will sometimes be in the company of ghouls, bats, snakes, gargoyles and other night creepers.

These are full-on representations of the image Greg "More Cow" Bell gave the world in Dungeons & Dragons Supplement 1: Greyhawk, which means they're big, naked, dark, hairy and have motherfuckin' pumpkins for heads. Way scarier than the plus-sized goblins that Gygax wanted. Sorry, Gary. This time you lose.

Ogres
Ogres are essentially simple folk that don't like to be messed with. So, basically a less cartoony, larger version of Shrek. In this case, though, they could almost pass for human if you squint, looking more like oversized cavemen, but with a better wardrobe. Ogres being French, both resemble and sound like Andre the Giant. They also speak French. This all makes more sense if you're familiar with the Mystara setting.

These guys enjoy the same things in life as humans do, but if you cross them, they'll be happy to eat you. And your family and all your pets. And your horse. Having said that, if you really want something that big, but more stupid and violent, there's always the perfectly good Hill Giant to make use of.

Trolls
When drawn properly, they look like Meg Knucklebones from the aforementioned movie Legend, which is a good thing in my opinion. I, however, prefer Russ Nicholson's take on them in the Fiend Folio (the giant troll, anyway.) Like ogres, I prefer my trolls to be at least somewhat intelligent, to wear clothes, to be able to communicate, etc. Unlike ogres, though, trolls are complete assholes that just want to eat you, regardless of whether or not you actually walked across their lawn.

I like the different flavors of troll that Dave Trampier had in his Wormy comic and ultimately will probably base my trolls on them. I think they should have horns, though.


So that covers the common humanoids. Keep in mind that I'm dealing strictly with B/X D&D and so don't know or care about all the swell variations in later editions. These work for me and my game just fine.

Next time I think I'll present my modified version of Arneson's dragon maker from Adventures in Fantasy.

B/X Notebook- How I do it.

Some of this was already discussed, but I thought I'd list all the changes I have in mind.

Clerics. Either leave them out all together and replace them with Paladins, or make them the "Christian soldiers" they were clearly intended with no other gods represented. I accomplished the latter by filing the name off of Jehova, renaming him "Mithras." If you know anything about Mithras/Mitra then you'll get my thinking behind this.

Priests. If clerics are out as a character class, simply have that area covered by Magic-Users with spells borrowed from the clerics list of spells. Simple enough, I think.

Paladins. Remove the spells, allow for any weapons, and make a few other minor tweaks to the cleric class and you get the paladin. In my mind, they'd still have to serve Mithras/Jehova or they wouldn't be paladins, they'd be... I dunno, some other dumbass class.

How these three changes will be implemented depends of the type of game I'm running. My current game, Atranta, technically has no clerics, but one of my players rolled one up while I wasn't looking and it's a really neat character, so he stays. All others are Magic-Users-as-priests. In my Savage Atvatabar/Hollow World game (not a Savage Worlds game) Mithraic clerics are in full force. So...just depends.

No Alignment. I'd resolved a long time ago that alignment did in no way dictate how a character behaved, it simply stated which team you were rooting for. So, really, I could keep it and it would have no effect on the game or I could get rid of it altogether. Either works fine for me.

Dragons. D&D dragons are pretty stupid. Color-coded and, worse, having some really idiotic "breath" weapons. Chlorine gas? Seriously? No, all dragons in my game breathe fire. All of them. And they're whatever color I want them to be. A guy I knew had an interesting way of handling dragon's breath. Instead of rolling for how many times a day they could use their breath weapon, he gave them a number of points of damage they could exhale. So, like 400 points per day and blow however much fire they wanted to until the points run out. I really like this idea and will probably use it if I ever have a dragon in my game.

Other than that I'll probably use Dave Arneson's dragon creation tables from his Adventures in Fantasy rpg or some variation of it.

The Orc Family Tree. I've made changes to Bugbears, Kobolds, Goblins, and Hobgoblins, but it's a lot of stuff and I'll save it for a later post. I will say this, though- bugbears have pumpkin heads. Because it's fucking awesome, that's why!

Rakes. Introduced in Dawn of the Emperors, the Rake is a variant on the Thief class. Either a skill-less Thief or a Fighter-lite, you decide. Someone tweaked the Rake a little bit, giving them a Fighter's hit die and attack table and retaining the loss of most Thief skills. The result is a pretty nifty Errol Flynn swashbuckler type class that really appeals to me (I usually play a Thief.)

Winning the game. One of the original members of the TRS crew mentioned to me that his group actually had a way to "win" D&D. The first person in the group to build and maintain a keep to level 15 (I assume they were playing AD&D) was the king of the hill. My memory may be slightly off on the particulars of that idea, but it doesn't matter since it fits in nicely with B/X. The first person to start a domain at 9th level and maintain it until 14th wins.
 Now, this is something that will probably never happen since I don't play D&D in a group nor do I run a regular game, but I still think it's an interesting way to play. The alternative that will most likely be put into use is the following.

Advancing past 14th level. This is something I just came up with recently and there are a lot of things to work out, but the gist of it is that the DM would award magic items of increasing power as the situation demands. This would mean that all new powers and abilities are "borrowed" and lost once the item is returned or destroyed or whatever. No more experience points or counting gold or whatever. Just play for the fun of it and try to achieve whatever the goal of the adventure or campaign is.
 If nothing else it's a way to keep playing your character without him becoming a ridiculous, bloated demi-god.

Everybody has a god. If a god is not chosen at character creation, one will be assigned to you. Quit yer bitchin', it's not like I'm making you go to fuckin' church. Everybody has a god. Get over it.

Fuck You, Gary Gygax!

I'm going to celebrate my birthday today (which just happens to be Gygax's birthday, as if I need any more reasons to be depressed) by honoring Mr. Dave Arneson, inventor of role-playing games and co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons.

While Arneson's contributions to the industry may be few, there is no doubt that his greatest contribution was giving that thieving scumbag Gary Gygax his career. You see, the one-time insurance salesman realized Arneson had captured lighting in a bottle with his Blackmoor campaign and quickly did everything in his power to wrest that bottle from Arneson's grasp, which, for a time, he successfully pulled off with the creation of AD&D.

Until the lawsuit, that is. Arneson won, but the public continues to think that Gygax created the game, thanks to him never mentioning Dave's name in regards to D&D. It's like he took a page or two out of Stan Lee's 'Fuck You, Jack Kirby' Playbook. When you run the company and edit the magazine you get to revise history as you see fit.

So, what we're left with now is the few remaining Gygax ass-kissers and coattail riders occasionally shitting on Arneson's name over at Dragonsfoot.org. Classy lot, they are.


Here's to you, Dave Arneson, sole inventor of role-playing games. Some of us know the truth and appreciate your fine work.