TenKeep

Today, I listened to Daniel Norton’s wonderful YouTube video “ Sympathetic Creatures in DnD ” (on Bandit’s Keep). I’m convinced great tactics in DnD are sympathy, engagement, and other alternatives to combat and "hack n' slash." Think back to the old film “ The Creature of the Black Lagoon ” -   Norton re-imagined him as a fourth-level merman – harassed and protecting. In the video, he seemed to be asking, ‘What’s an alternative to killing a sympathetic creature?’ It reminded me of a great player some years back. In around 2011, I'd rediscovered DnD, and a few years later I ran the 5e module “The Lost Mines of Phandelver.” Near the adventure's end - a player found a spectacular way to handle the unwound Spectator in Wave Echo Cave. [Illustration is from WotC's "The Lost Mines of Phandelver."] When the party encountered the creature, it was lost in time, it misremembered  even the fall of Wave Echo Mine. A player, his half-orc cleric, stood ...

Today, let’s focus on magic in Ursula Le Guin’s “The Tombs of Atuan.” Here, in the world of Earthsea, the name of things is the source of magic. It's a well of ideas for old school gamers. [Illustration by Gail Garraty in the Tombs of Atuan]   Sparrowhawk, the magic user, who in the heart of the novel befriends the captured priestess Tenar, explains the source of magic. Knowing names is my job. My art. To weave the magic of a thing…one must find its true name out…all wizardry hangs still upon the knowledge – the relearning, the remembering – of that true and ancient language of Making. The Tombs of Atuan also are home to are dark, brooding, magical force that would bury Tenar and Sparrowhawk. Tenar had gone only a few steps when she paused. “What is it?” she murmured…There was a noise in the dead, vast, black bubble of air: a tremor or shaking sound heard by the blood and felt in the bones. The time-carven walls beneath her fingers thrummed, thrummed. And yet, Sparrowhawk, ...

Hirelings (a brother and classmates) are the first details I remember about DnD. Looking at Mike Carr’s, “Special Instructional Dungeon Module #B1 IN SEARCH OF THE UNKNOWN,” I remember why. You walked inside an inn and there was “Wilberd the Silent” (human cleric), Pendor (the Halfling fighting man), and “Ralt Gaither” (a human magic user). It seemed as though the world was already happening. Already, the world was sorting me. As Carr, on pg.3 wrote: Seeking hirelings and henchmen is a matter to be handled by the Dungeon Master. A player’s success in attracting either will depend upon the financial rewards offered...or the charisma of the seeker... How keenly the issue of charisma settled in. Carr, on pg. 26 wrote: Hirelings, although not always plentiful, are nonetheless easier to find than henchman. They will serve for a fee….[however,] Henchmen are usually characters who will be willing to serve a particular character out of admiration or respect…in any case, with only first...

A level 1 druid can jostle the natural world, but he’s a good protector. Maybe a low-level party would be okay, even confronting d6 spitting cobras? Here's a look through some level 1 spells in OSE. Animal Friendship Finding a stray hound, a druid invokes an arboreal power. The hound fails a saving throw, and the druid names it - Garond, animal friend. Over three months, the hound learns to retrieve felled game, recognize a scent, return to a hand signal, and defend. In a 5e module about Saltmarsh, I recall a druid in the town. I can imagine an acolyte, a level 1 druid, drinking beer on the back porch. Maybe, he be-spelled the hound. He'd be a great one to solo along the shore near town. Detect Danger A druid, some kind of hedge-druid learned to scan a 10 x 10 area and discern the dangers. She'd learned something odd - six caves near a canyon pass - five were nasty drops - filled with dust, centipedes, and snakes. Another, hid a flurry of sprites. But which one? ...

 [Earl Otus' giant snake in Moldvay Basic] A giant snake’s a horror in old school DnD, and Appendix N writers from 2000 years back. Let's look at Virgil’s Aeneid, when Aeneas encounters a giant snake at his father’s tomb.                                            …At his [Aeneas] last words a serpent slithered up from the shrine’s depths, drawing its seven huge coils, seven rolling coils calmly enfolding the tomb, gliding through the altars: his back blazed with a maze of sea-blue flecks, his scales with a sheen of gold, shimmering as a rainbow showers iridescent sunlight arcing through the clouds. Aeneas stopped, struck by the sight. The snake, slowly sweeping along his length among the bowls and polished goblets, tasted the feast, then back he slid below t...

For OSR October 15 th , let’s look at towers in Appendix N, old school games, and newer games in the old school spirit.  Up north of TenKeep, rare clouds above the canyonlands rub against the magic user Realto’s tower. In Howard’s “Tower of the Elephant,” Yara the priest “came not often from his tower of magic, and always to work evil on some man or some nation.” Howard described the tower as follows: The shimmering shaft of the tower...was round, a slim perfect cylinder, a hundred and fifty feet in height, and its rim glittered in the starlight with the great jewels that crusted it…No lights shone forth; there seemed to be no windows…Only the gems high above sparkled frostily in the starlight. Perhaps the Tower of the Elephant was an inspiration for Sutherland’s back-cover illustration in the TSR module “B1, In Search of the Unknown.” The tower signals the remnants in the ruin of Rogahn and Zelligar’s fortune. One more. Look on page 60 of Glynn Seal’ s mini-setting and be...