Have Folks Forgot T$R???

There is much wringing of hands, clucking of tongues, and vapours regarding statements by Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks planning to move D&D to a live service model and supposedly away from physical book format. "Books will always be an important part of D&D," Cocks said. "It will always be kind of like a special totem that you can collect."

Gamers, we have been here before!

In the giddy and impetuous 1970s by the time I started gaming had evolved into a free-for-all here on the West Coast. While we imported D&D and Judges Guild, we also had local third party publishers Arduin and Chaosium, plus our annual San Francisco Bay Area D&D convention, DunDraCon, and from the south in Los Angeles the amateur press publication Alarums and Excursions, all to add D&D flavor and crunch to our campaigns. 

Then, in the early 80's T$R started to clampdown on what was becoming a nation-wide phenomenon. T$R ceased licensing "official" ruled 3rd party material to publishers like Judges Guild (Goodbye Wilderlands). Then started licensing their D&D intellectual property on action figures, electronic games, coloring books, and, my personal favorite bloat, "Player Packs" (you would get your ass kicked or at least taunting a second time if you showed up at our game with a "Player Pack"). What capitalistic bullshit designed to separate imaginative youth from their likely small amount of discretionary income for something completely unnecessary and useless.

Here's what we did that you can do too... get yourself a set of rulebooks and a group of players and play the wheels off that version for twenty years! And there are always ways to add new material someone might pickup, even from subsequent newer editions. David Hargrave (author of the Arduin Grimoires) famously wrote, "The numbers don't matter - only the ideas!"

Something the early publishers somewhat understood is that once players possess a set of rules, they don't need to purchase anything else (the need is purely convenience). You have tools to produce anything you desire for your game. Subsequent iterations of D&D have been attempts to fine tune the experience and make D&D more accessible to a greater number of players. If some industrious DM with ducats wants to purchase online retail material at any price, that DM must find a way to bring that to the game table - and our game tables, in-person and online, are already limitless. We have always found a way to play.

And don't forget about what happened with 4th edition. Rebellion against the 4th edition conceits jump-started a revolutionary renewal of older version games and the Old-School Renaissance line of supremely imaginative merging of tropes. Say what you will of Peter Adkison, but he did the D&D gaming community a fat gift insisting Hasbro honor the Open Gaming License and System Reference Document (anyone needing a reminder of T$R's position on D&D IP pre OGL check out this historical essay "Spinning in Circles: A History & Analysis of TSR’s Copyright Policies"). In 2023 Ryan Dancy, former business head of Wizards of the Coast role-playing department during the development of 3rd edition and the OGL, lead the charge with the gaming community that eventually ended Hasbro's public effort to make a new version of the OGL.

HASBRO MUST HAVE PLAYERS, but those of us who game at D&D are like no other because we are not passive consumers of gaming content. We are all of us creators in the games we play, using our imaginations every game in battles of good vs. evil, evil vs. good, powerful vs. the downtrodden, powerful vs. the more powerful, and so on. Navigating the underpinnings of humanity and its malcontents is what we practice every. single. game.

The rules are mere language in the experience of D&D, not the experience itself.

Get your set of rules, attract your band of players, then fuck-all to Hasbro. They are at our mercy.

"Siege the DM!"

 

A new screen I assembled for our B/X-AD&D retro-clone "Advanced Labyrinth Lord" game. Player facing art is all Steve Zeiser except mid-right piece, "Witch Grave Ossuary," by Evelyn Moreau.

The first three interior chart pages had a layout by Shane Mangus (Shane's blog is http://swordandsanity.blogspot.com/ however, its private...). The last page I just really needed a "Monsters Experience Points Table" handy, then just some random others.

I printed each of the eight 8.5"x11" pages using glossy photo sticker paper then repurposed an underused 5e screen. You can download a PDF of the pages here. 

Out of the Annulus and into the Spire

 

(We use an old CSWE map for Future Sigil.)

    As the 3 adventurers return from Astral jaunt to final piece of the Rod of Seven Parts, and also discovering the psionic-suppressing Annulus on the way, a Dark Man awaits – and is holding onto Raspatan’s Astral cord. The Dark Man yanks Raspatan’s chord causing Raspatan and the Dark man to fall back, disappearing into the breach in a wall of the Decantur Room. 

    Fog-like shadow elves move into the room through the breach, followed swiftly by several blood-sucking creatures, and then still more shadow elves. 

    The party, deciding they must rest and that their Protection from Evil 10' Radius spell will not last long enough, exit Decanter Room only to find they are back in future Sigil where a 200’-wide path of magic destruction has blasted through to the Church of IT. The Church, they see, is now surrounded by scaffolding with 4 huge pipes at the corners belching forth pitch black columns of smoke 1000’ high. 

    The crest of the church displays a huge symbol of a left hand with an eyeball in its palm. For 100 yards surrounding the church is a field of the dead. Bodies there have chunks of flesh disintegrated by floating softball-sized Spheres of Annihilation. 

    Many Sigil residents have surrounded this killing field, but fear of death keeps them back. Weird Salt Mephits fly overhead to irritate the crowd as a Green Slaad Emissary encourages everyone to pledge their fealty to the soon-to-be God Vecna. The party moves to the lodgings at the elf mistress and learn of earthquakes and deadly green hail. Heading over to Al Samaran the disturbing news from Al is Vecna’s possible ascent to godhood – within Sigil – will destroy the Multiverse!

Is 5th Edition OSR? (Part II)

(Design by Thaddeus Moore)

Considering the AD&D (1e) experience that comprehensive rules actually guided DM rulings, we can the second "Zen Moment" of player skill over character abilities. Common examples for player skill over character abilities are pouring water over a floor looking for hidden cracks, or a PC tapping the floor ahead with a 10-foot pole to trigger any pit traps are rather quaint, but sort of a sophomore effort. Our game had graduate-level dissertations taking on vague descriptions by Gygax and turning the volume way up as if around were no parents.

To the extent player skill enhanced play over character abilities that most often translated into players understanding the idiosyncrasies inherent in the comprehensive rules and applying those idiosyncrasies in different and interesting ways, such as:

• Using a water-breathing spell with a character's mouth and nose submerged into the opening of a waterskin to keep out poison gas.
• That light spells are not visible to creatures using infravision because the spells emit no heat.
• Using 1st level Cleric Sanctuary spells instead of invisibility (especially in cities) so that anyone attempting to strike or attack that character had to make a saving throw versus magic first.
• Permanent polymorph into imaginary, but beastly, humanoids with owl wings and gills under our arms.
• Many spells such as 3rd level spells fireball and lightning bolt scaled up by caster level so would come to do double, triple, or more damage still while occupying the original level spell slot. (This accounted a lot for 1e magic users getting so imbalanced at higher levels - picture a 9th level wizard with up to three 9 hit die fireballs every day - kaboom!
• Gygaxianisms such as "... the magic item gains +5 on saving throws against attack forms in its own mode" was the source of many considerations. Apart from Gygax only providing a couple examples of "mode," what about the list of saving throws, were the saves versus included on the ITEM SAVING THROW MATRIX (1e DMG pg. 80) the only saving throws where magic items get saves, or should it apply to any time an item must make a saving throw?

So this is not the sort of parochial knowledge that are often used as examples of "player skill," rather the supremely skillful 1e AD&D player had pedantic knowledge of the rules bending towards favorable outcomes for their character or the adventuring party.

Another area touted as player skill is resource management. Setting aside food and water rations (both old school D&D and 5th edition have rules for daily physiological needs of the PC), the main resources that require management are spells and the primarily spell subset of healing.

A big complaint from grognardlings I consort with are the rates of recovery from short and long rests. The argument goes that it is simply not realistic a short rest provides characters the essential approximation of cure wounds, while a long rest returns all hit points to the full maximum. A closer look at how we actually played 1e AD&D reveals an absurdity how adventuring parties managed their health through spells and rest.

Natural healing sans magic in 1e AD&D was absurdly time consuming. The original rules from the AD&D 1e DMG provided a mere 7 points per week, and after the SECOND week of healing a character could add their constitution bonus (if any). In our game we upped the number for natural healing to 1 plus the Con bonus, but even then it was a chore because a character must take total rest - no combat, spell casting, or similar activity. (It's kind that 5e provides an out for this, rather than ruining the entire rest 5e only adds a little more resting time after sleep interruptions that involved combat, spells, or similar.)

That meant adventuring parties had to rely on healing spells to keep their hit points up.

I kid you not, there were deadly dungeons where we would adventure for as little as 10 minutes (game time) before we would be looking for a secure place to shelter, rest, and recover spells and hit points. Before someone discovered rules defining sleep periods, we even had spell casters resting 2 or even 3 times per day to regain spells! 

As a result, is it any wonder folks were reluctant to play clerics? Basically clerics, other than turning undead, had to load up on cure wound spells, then bounce around during combat to help PCs to whom the dice were not being particularly kind. Medic!

5th edition deals with hit points in a way that avoids uncharacteristic pauses to sleep in the middle of dungeons (Did Conan take a nap exploring the Temple of Thulsa Doom?), and at the same time frees up cleric to be more than the fantasy doctor. Anyone who objects to this faster natural rejuvenation of hit points on the grounds of "realism" has probably blocked out the nappy times of yore, or had a DM who freely supplied healing potions, or probably never gamed a cleric.

This repetitive resting phenomena was not limited to divine casters either. On the offensive side once a high level wizard had gone through their 3rd and 4th level offensive spells they too were sent to time-out to sleep and get them back. Ha, that is why we often had elven mages. They could sort-of be aware during their meditation (not asleep) and were often counted in our old games as part of the watch.

Post Script: Death Saves! 

Our old parties used negative 10 + Con Attribute Bonus as the number of hit points below 0 at which a character dies. 

The "old-school" way our parties ran was that constitution somehow figured into when character death occurs. So I was initially dismayed that 5e did not look to Con as toughening a PC versus dying. This death save stuff made character death so rare. But in actuality character death was rare in our old games. When a PC dropped below zero and there were other living adventurers to fight, the critters often left alone dying heroes. 

Losing a hit point per round when you often had as many as 13 or even 14 negative hit points to go before becoming croaked meant a lot of time to be saved by magic or binding wounds. Typically character death most often occurred due to massive damage, and 5e retains that. Con in 5e IS factored into character death as high Con provides extra hit points to the maximum (and Con's extra hit points also lengthen the number of hit points before 0 is reached).

All that said, my "old school" proclivity resists things that "standardize" disparate characters, so my inclination would be to somehow modify either the number of Death Saves or the Death Save itself. My recent personal favorites are death and dismemberment tables which are sort of like death saves and critical hits all at once and factors in the actual number of hit points below zero.

Is 5th Edition OSR? (Part I)

(Design by Thaddeus Moore)

The Old School Renaissance movement found solid footing in D&D RPGs shortly after D&D 4th Edition was released in 2008. During that time Matthew Finch (OSRIC, Swords & Wizardry) wrote “A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming” based on 0e, the original edition Dungeons & Dragons.

Finch described the “Zen Moments” of Old School gaming generally as:

• First "Rulings, not Rules" - Letting game referee use common sense to decide what happens or a roll if there is some random element in what a player decides to do;
• Second "Player Skill, not Character Abilities" – A player doesn’t just rely on a character sheet and must use a player’s skill to tell the referee where to look, what to touch, or what a player character is saying or experimenting with in order to gain advantage; 
• Third "Heroic, not Superhero" - Emphasizing the heroic rather than the super-heroic in keeping the game on a human-sized scale becoming a feared or powerful character over time; and 
• Fourth "Forget 'Game Balance'"- That game balance is not important because the fantasy world, with all its perils, contradictions, and surprises is not a “game setting” which somehow always produces challenges of just the right difficulty for the party’s level of experience, The game is a story with dice growing out of the combined efforts of the referee and the players with both being just as surprised by the results.

Let's start with #1 “Rulings, not Rules” because, other than the initial several months of our intro to D&D through John Eric Holmes’ "Basic Set," our group played Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

Homes' Basic incorporated rules from OD&D, but was only set for character levels one through three for players to learn D&D concepts. The progression was for players to graduate to Gary Gygax's AD&D (1st Edition). Now the stated purpose Gygax's "Advanced" D&D and divorce from Dave Arneson was to make a rules-heavy system intended to cover any conceivable situation ostensibly to arbitrate disputes at tournaments. In practice that meant ...

We. Had. Rules. For. Everything.

Initially there was the modest-sized 126 page Players Handbook with rules on abilities, species, classes, alignment, hit points, languages, money, equipment, armor, weapons, hirelings, henchmen, time, distances, spells, encumbrance, movement, light, vision, surprise, traps, initiative, communication, combat, damage, falling, healing, obedience, morale, mapping, experience, morale, mapping, poison, psionics, and the Known Planes of Existence.

This was 1978 so no DM’s guide yet, so we supplemented our game with Judges Guild Ready Ref Sheets (50 pages) rules for social level, city encounters, crimes/trials, advertising, esxchange rates, gems, beggars, binding wounds, guards, repartee, more poison, construction costs, item enchantment, resurrection results, swimming, sea monsters, melee tables, underwater encounter tables, rules on wishes and limited wishes, more on hirelings, income, civilization technology levels, population density, caves, lairs, ruins, prospecting, flora, fauna.

During late 1978 we added rules from the Arduin Grimoire Trilogy. 3 booklets of about 100 pages each (The Arduin Grimoire, Welcome to Skull Tower, and Runes of Doom) with additional playable species, classes, monsters, spells, and magic items. Tables for critical hits, fumbles, character's eyes, hair, weight & height, techno weapons, guilds, brawling, diseases, weather, and more.

We initially used the 3 Oe D&D supplements Greyhawk, Blackmoor, and Eldritch Wizardry. However, these pamphlet booklets were superseded in 1979 by the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide. 

Even though our game had already hard-wired much of our rules prior to the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide that would persist for decades (in particular the insane way we figured "speed factor" prior to the DMG explanation), we did lock into the DMG's clarifications of spells and abilities in addition to rules on character aging, disease, encumbrance, loyalty, morale, acquisition and recovery of spells, airborne travel and combat, combat underwater, plane travel, vision, experience, climate, economics, languages, construction, spell research, divine intervention, random treasure, random encounters, and buying/selling magic items.

A ginormous aspect of our D&D game related to our explosion of rules is that we regularly rotated games refs. So our dependence on some sort of canon version of rules for just about everything was how we made the game fair. And, other than players who originally started with the OD&D booklets, AD&D 1e is a huge aspect of how more players experienced OSR before it became OSR.

Game designer Anthony Huso best describes the purpose of this type of Old School D&D in his article:  "Rules over Rulings: Consistency in DMing"

I respect the rules because they are the foundation of my game. They are agreed upon, even if a few of them are not perfect. They are predictable and therefore viewed as fair. Implementation and adherence is also consistent ... Shields are broken. Spell books are destroyed by fire. Characters perish in the wastes without water. And the rules do not care. The rules are unrelenting and therefore shoulder the blame when characters die ... Rules should be memorized whenever possible or allocated to handy screens. They should not be searched for during a game unless doing so is minimally intrusive. It is the DM’s burden to know the rules front and back and to hew closely to them. 

I have always ran a sandbox campaign. Characters could run in whatever direction they please and that ends up being how the details from any setting I'm using gets built. I was often and rightfully so accused of "making it up as I go along" but extremely rarely was I ever accused of not following the rules (ha, except the hour-long buzz kill argument over whether the rules for sword damage during subdual attacks also applied to regular attacks - that was a doozy!)

The rules were essentially comprehensive and our players trusted the rules probably mostly because everyone knew them front and back, including our home-brew interpretations (sorry Dr. John PhD), and the rules essentially appeared to cover most all aspects of the reality within the game.

Splendid Isolation

(My original Judges Guild Judge's Shield (1977), DM view.)

Almost always I have used a dungeon master shield. 

• In 1978 I picked up the original first published Judge's Shield by Judges Guild. This was really made for OD&D using the Greyhawk supplement, but it worked for our D&D gane until the Dungeon Masters Guide was released around the summer of 1979. (I made a canary yellow Advanced Labyrinth Lord screen in honor of my old and worn Judges Guild screen.)
• During this period of the late 70s through the 80s is was also common for Dungeon Master's to just use gatefold record albums. This did not provide any helpful tables, but did hide the DM's notes and often the record albums were chosen for their trippy art.
• Later (not sure when) I acquired or most likely shared the T$R AD&D (1st Ed.) Dungeon Master's Screen. This is probably the most classic and well known screen, even had a separate 2-panel screen just for psionics!) 
• When I restarted our game with new rules in 2004 I used the Ver. 3.5 D&D Deluxe Dungeon Master's Screen which was my first landscape paneled screen (my older screens basically had panels in portrait orientation). I really enjoyed being able to see over the screen better without having to stand up.
• When I developed a 3rd Ed./AD&D hybrid rules we used in our game starting in 2012 I found the original 3rd Edition DM screen from 2000 and just clipped a whole bunch of alternate tables on top the screen.
• During 2018 when we switched to a modified 5th Ed. I used Dungeon Master's Screen, Reincarnated (2017) which was the first screen I used in game play that was hardbacked instead of cardstock (4th Ed. had the first landscape/hardback screen I ever purchased, however we never ran our campaign in 4th Ed.). This was a superb improvement, especially when players in our game "sieged the DM" by launching volleys of dice attacks. The hardback screen repelled dice attacks where the cardstock screens often fee. I ended up over time covering this screen in stickers.
• When we switched to Advanced Labyrinth Lord retro-clone in 2019 I made the aforementioned canary yellow Judges Guild tribute screen.
• I also created homemade ref screens for Arduin games I've run for Green Hell in 2022 and a more generic Arduin screen in 2023. And also made a little mini-screen for Lamentations of the Flame Princess off of art for a future screen that hasn't yet been published.
• During 2024 we first started our new 5th edition campaign I used the 5e screen from the 5e Wilderness Kit (the screen art is very cool), then when the 2024 revision books were released switched to the 2024 standard screen.

So what is the deal? I often have DMed without a shield, in particular by the 1990s when I knew the AD&D (1st ed) rules like the proverbial back of my hand. We also did a lot of "theatre of the mind" style games without miniatures and adventures were built out of imagination in real time improvised off simple maps and small sets of notes.

For me at least I enjoy having a wide variety of tables and notes for situations that might come up during a game. I am also often translating scenarios from different rules editions so want to make adjustments on the fly. Also cool and provocative player-facing art on a screen helps set the vibe a little.

And I guess I do like DMing from the far side of the table, away from the door, where a screen provides some privacy when I get up to pee and still have my maps and notes somewhat hidden. Unless someone wants to obviously sneak a peak.

Ha. mostly though, if I am being honest, when I am furiously going through a variety of materials trying to find that note or rules section or piece of a dungeon I am hacking for my campaign, it really is best for my players not to see that.

Attuning Fork (or I Almost Started Loving Myself Again)

But, nah, so probably the most significant 5th edition rule that grates on my OSR sensibilities is magic item attunement. 

The idea that certain magic items and their wielder to "form a bond" before the creature can use the item's magical properties is just a little to cozy. I can close my eyes and see Cyberpunk cybertech. (Should there be magic attunement psychosis?) And, as others have noted, the rules are pretty vague on what actually happens during the 1-hour short rest required to bond with such items - the time must be spent "focused on only that item while being in physical contact with it..." This takes away an opportunity to secure a magic item requiring attunement and using it during the battle during which the item is acquired. A total buzz kill.

The universal rule of a 3-item limit, for all creatures (except Artificers), seems inherently meta pox. Ugh. I understand that the 3-item rule only applies to certain magic items and for particular reasons unrelated to an items power, multiplicity of effects, or how interesting the item is (See Sword of Spirit's exhaustive look into the 2014 5e attunement, Reverse Engineering the Real Rules of Attunement, on EN World). 

The 2024 revision Dungeon Master's Guide no longer deigns to disclose a basis for when a particular magic item should require attunement. We can look back at the original 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide which informs (DMG, 2014, pg. 285):

Decide whether the item requires a character to be attuned to it to use its properties. Use these rules of thumb to help you decide:

1. If having all the characters in a party pass an item around to gain its lasting benefits would be disruptive, the item should require attunement.
2. If the item grants a bonus that other items also grant, it's a good idea to require attunement so that characters don't try to collect too many of those items.

Number 1 can be dealt with in other ways such as limits on the number of uses or the time between uses, or having the item be restricted to certain classes, species, etc. This is kind of silly as a reason because even with attunement items granting "lasting benefits" could be passed around.

That makes the reason that makes sense is to prevent stacking which we all know was quite out of control in 3rd edition. Which means keep attunement, but without being needlessly cumbersome.

Here are what I've culled as modified rules of attunement:

Attuning to a magic item that requires it may be by an Action that is not automatically successful.

The consequence for failure is you can perform attunement via a 10 minute Ritual-like focus and contact with the item. (You may always perform attunement via 10 minute Ritual-like focus and contact with the item.)

When an attempt is made to attune to an item, you must make a difficulty check according to the item type where bonuses to that roll correspond to your character attribute most closely related to the item's function and the check adds your proficiency bonus.

The DC is 10 for common items, 12 uncommon, 14 rare, 16 very rare, 18 legendary, and 20 artifact.

If the check succeeds, you attune to the item. However, if you fail, you must perform attunement via 10 minute Ritual-like focus and contact with the item. Some magic items (e.g. Artifacts) may present unique consequences for failure. 

NOTE: If you have already attuned to 3 items or more there is disadvantage on the check. Your successful check with 3 existing attuned items results that a random pre-existing attunement (that is not a cursed item) ends.

Attunement ends if:

• You no longer satisfy the prerequisites for attunement.
• The item has been more than 100 feet away from you for at least 24 hours.
• If you die.
• If another creature attunes to the item.
• If you voluntarily end attunement by a 10 minute Ritual-like focus and contact with the item unless the item is cursed.

To Touch the Annulus

(Matrox Lusch and Sick Rick bookend newcomers' viewing "The Annulus")

I finally dug into the "End of the Multiverse" scenario which was where our New Old Weird World campaign left off in 2022 (and the site of where our Blipping #2 campaign left off). The scenario is a hack from Dawn of the Overmind by Bruce R. Cordell. 

Ha, most everyone said the night vibed like an old Blipping game as yes we pretty much followed Ye elder game anatomy:

1. Drive: 2 hours each way from the Bay Area to Mountain Ranch up in the Sierra foothills.
2. Jam: We did have a pretty fun set, plus had our Geo Pigs singer Sumerled for a couple of covers "Last Days of May" and "Guns of the Roof."
3. Feeding Frenzy: Jeez, 3 flavors of BBQ chicken, steak, salad with homemade dressing (Thanks Michelle!), 2 different sorts of cheesy bread, etc., etc., etc... 
4. Pre-Game Business: So J.A.S. daughter visited with her beau and she hadn't gamed regularly with us since the ver. 3.5 "High Fantasy" days. They ended up playing Grady, the plane and time-hopping techno-barbarian from the 20th century. Then also, because the last time we played this party was in 2022 there was a bit of clean up like folks who couldn't find their current character sheet, what happened last time, stuff like that.
5. The Game: It was actually very exciting considering there were only a couple of encounters (well, 3, except the party purposefully avoided one). I did good when I mixed up the stats for the Grimlocks with another critter and gave the Grimlocks 4x damage from their claws due to their bodies producing a corrosive enzyme. Har, Plus I rolled 3 natural 20s on J.A.S.'s Pixie. (The Grimlocks use echo-location by emitting a soft clicking noise, to the Pixie's invisibility was nullified.) Fortunately I wasn't using the Arduin critical hit table or the Pixie would have been toast. On natural 20s I use exploding max damage, then if a character drops below zero then Zak Smith's Death & Dismemberment table. Raspatan the Elf cleric-assassin shifted himself over to the Astral Plane along with "7" the half-orc, Elf cleric mage Darrius, and the mercenary Sando Brech. It was Brech who grabbed the Annulus, and the characters also spotted not one, but two Mind Flayer "Engine Consummate" adrift on the Astral waiting to travel through time...
6. Interlude Journey: Was there? I am not sure. 
7. Stacking: Unfortunately no, we do not all drink nor as hard for most of those that do. 
8. Wind-Down: Indeed we chowed more sugar and discussed where to play the next session.
9. The Ride Home: Some did stay for breakfast. Me and a couple others headed back home at 1:30am, barely making a gas station in Mountain Ranch for a 12-pac of Budweiser just before 2am.

It was a good OSR-style game, at least our version of that style. Advanced Labyrinth Lord with my New Knights of the All Mind (Conventional Edition). Since all my other games are running 5th edition it felt good to have at least one intermittent old-style game hanging around. Although there is that pesky ending of the Multiverse thing. And the game finished as the Astral Travelers your see the destructive blot consuming the Multiverse had intruded even onto the Astral plane.

Party Like It's 1979

 

(Art by Cynthia Sims Millan, 1978)

I've got my half-round combat and floating seconds initiative for the low-rollers. What else from golden games of yore can I cram into the most modern version of D&D?

We had fun using in our game the critical hit table from Arduin which, as often mentioned in many commentaries, is daft because over time odds are your PCs are going to suffer many more double natural 20s than any individual monster they are presently fighting. What happened over time is crit tables became more watered down (no more having a spine severed in one blow).

An excellent replacement is the Death and Dismemberment table by Zak Smith of Playing D&D With Pornstars. Basically, the Death and Dismemberment table is an alternative to death saves in 5th edition. Once a character falls below 0 hit points, a single roll is made with a variety of modifications against a table ranging from the very bad (hey, my spine can be severed again!) to characters getting that second wind and single hit point that comes with it.

The fairness of a Death and Dismemberment Table is that someone has to already drop to zero hit points before it's rolled on. To get there you use the standard critical hits of double damage (although I am experimenting with an exploding damage die on crits). This method is more fair to PCs, but still leads to broken bones and scars.

Another thing, that I am somewhat on the fence about, are divine intervention rolls. These used to be pretty common back in the day as a last ditch before character death or TPK, although it doesn't seem to be very common in the same way nowadays. The latest edition asking for divine intervention and expecting results is limited to 10th level clerics receiving a free cast of 5th level or lower spell or a 20th level cleric getting a free wish. And looing like RAW the cleric can call upon their deity as often as they meet the rest requirements.

I kind of like the idea that only the divine magic practitioners may call upon their personal deities, I had several religiously ne'er do well characters who asked for divine intervention without even listing a deity on their character sheet. But I still thing there should be some rules a'la the 1st ed AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide (pgs 111-112) that deities may refuse or even be angered by excessive requests for extra special boons. I have a table that expands on the original olden rolls, and will be working on something to make the clerical divine intervention interplay a little more robust. And perhaps offer some kind of an expansion to any character that regularly practices their religious faith.

What other gems have I tried to maintain over the years...? Ha, I do like weapon to-hit mods by armor type (although I've become attached to Anthony Huso's idea of tying the modifications to numeric base armor class sans dex & magic modifiers). I noticed character's age, height, and weight tables are missing from the latest versions. Ditto for eye and hair color. I mean, you could just pick an abnormal color - but those special Arduin tables were fun too. 

Half-Round Combat

Using half rounds for combat can add granularity and tension to combat encounters in your 5th edition D&D campaign. 

A standard round is 6 seconds, and each creature acts once per round in initiative order (a creature’s turn). Half rounds divide that round into two 3-second phases:

    • Phase A and Phase B
This allows for two opportunities to act per round with a movement and possible bonus action or by taking an action. How a creature may act is limited per phase dependent on the choice of which opportunity to act is taken first.

Mechanics
1. Initiative
    • Roll initiative as normal. 
    • Each round is split into two phases. 

    • Each phase is taken in initiative order.
2. Action Economy Per Phase
Generally split actions like this:
Phase Allowed Actions
   A Movement + Bonus Action
   B Action or Reaction Setup

Or:

Phase Allowed Actions

   A Action or Reaction Setup

   B Movement + Bonus Action
This motivates players to plan ahead, creating tactical depth.

Creatures move or take an action in either phase, but if movement is split before and after an action, the action will start in Phase A, and occur in Phase B.
3. Spellcasting
    • Spells with casting time of 1 action occur at the end of a Phase/3 seconds. 
    • Concentration checks and reactions can occur during either phase. 
4. Reactions
Reactions still occur outside a creature's turn during any phase of an opponent's subsequent turn, or during a subsequent phase of the creature reacting.
5. Status Effects
    • Effects like “stunned until end of next turn” now last two phases. 
    • Conditions should be clarified to specify which phase they end on. 

Pros
    • More tactical combat: Players must think in smaller increments. 
    • Faster pacing: Movement and action separation speeds up decision-making. 
    • Cinematic feel: Feels like bullet-time or split-second dueling. 

Cons
    • Complexity: More tracking for DMs and players. 
    • Balance issues: Some classes (e.g., monks, rogues) may benefit disproportionately. 
    • Longer combats: More phases can mean more time per encounter. 

Options
    • Legendary Creatures: Give them actions in both phases to emphasize threat. 
    • Initiative Time Drift: Shift a creature’s turn to start 1 second later per each 5 points of initiative less than the highest initiative score. 
    • Environmental Effects: Trigger hazards or changes between phases. 

Portal to Adventure OSR Bundle - Kickstarter Live!

 

("Portal to Adventure" box art by Roland Brown)

A new collection of Old School Renaissance-style gaming products opens the "Portal to Adventure" Kickstarter campaign October 1st that runs through October 31. The Kickstarter is organized through Emperor's Choice Games & Miniatures who team with with Matthew Tapp of Barrows & Borderlands and Griffith Morgan from The Fellowship of the Thing project dedicated to the original TTRPG fantasy campaign - Blackmoor.

The interesting hook from the project is developing a set of ideas for blending different, albeit related, games together for running a single game. The history for this is super applicable for Arduin rules from Emperor's Choice because historically the players (myself included) used Arduin as supplements to D&D.

Arduin fans will appreciate the original trilogy of Arduin Grimoires being published in the original 3-booklet format which Emperors Choice has not published for over a decade, and all the books come with premium covers and paper. From Fellowship of the Thing is a soft-cover version of an original mega-dungeon, Tonisborg, by Greg Svenson in Dave Arneson's first fantasy campaign. The final contribution of Barrows & Borderlands I hadn't heard of, but is a 4-volume new OSR game based in Od&d, Holmes Basic, 1e AD&D, and Metamorphosis Alpha.

The set also includes new dungeons for both Arduin and Barrows & Borderlands, continent maps for Arduin's Khaas, character sheets, monster and treasure cards, and more.

There are a number of unique Arduin miniatures offered as stretch goals. The fulfillment date in February 2026 seems to me will be accurate as the writing work on all these products is completed. Emperors Choice on their last Kickstarter of Arduin products also met their fulfillment goal no problem.

I encourage folks who haven't experienced the sci-fi and fantasy blend of Arduin or those who need a new copy of the original trilogy to check this out, with the dungeons and extras this is a terrific collection. 

Binding Combat Turns With Time in a Round

(J.A.S. 15th Level Paladin "Alancrost" by J.A.S.)

"But with regard to the material world, we can at least go so far as this — we can perceive that events are brought about not by insulated interpositions of Divine power, exerted in each particular case, but by the establishment of general laws."  

Whewell: Bridgewater Treatise.

 

The abstraction of time in a 5th edition combat round reared it's ugly head when the Reaver intended to blow a horn sounding alarm and J.A.S. wanted to know how much time his PC had to stop it. 5th edition combat rounds combatant turns (apart from a reaction) each fully occur prior to the subsequent actions of the next combatant's turn in initiative order.

On the one hand a result of taking full-round turns sequentially in order, rather simultaneous turns, is that game play is easier. The counter-intuitive abstraction is that there is potentially an infinite amount of time within each 6 second round bounded only by the number of combatants taking turns that round (i.e. in our combat with the Reavers the first combat round there were 13 sequential 6-second periods, 6 PCs + 7 Reavers, in total 78 sequential seconds of combat turns had elapsed). The rules abstract the turns as simultaneous, however there is no simultaneous effect.

I have been working on assigning time duration to actions/movement/bonus actions/extra attacks using 3-second half-rounds to reintroduce a combat round being governed by time and the idea of simultaneity to combatants' turns within a round.

Below are my ideas I was intending to introduce first in my in-person Wilderlands game, but since these ideas were briefly touched on by J.A.S. during our combat Saturday night, perhaps we'll attempt the  new rules first in Psychedelic Deadlands / Dreamer of Dreams campaign (or not, Dr. John PhD is DMing the next 2 sessions for October and November).

Tony "Hawklord" in his blog "The Cryptic Archivist" writes how ideas for D&D to abstract time in combat have been a source of debate between Midwest and West Coast D&D from since the earliest days of the game.

"D&D evolved from wargame rules by members of the Castle & Crusade Society, founded by Gary Gygax and Rob Kuntz as a chapter of the International Federation of Wargaming, itself founded by Gygax, Scott Duncan and Bill Speer in 1966. These gamers got together around a sand table (usually in Gary's basement) ordering miniature armies into mock battles. Abstract combat was simple and made sense.

"Conversely, the [Society for Creative Anachronism] was founded in Berkeley in 1966 with armored members going outside to fight mock battles with padded weapons. Their point of view was not that of a military commander with a bird's eye view of battle, but as a common soldier who has felt the heft of their shield and the sting of a (padded) sword. Combat seems abstract if you aren't the one fighting. The reenactors saw something missing in abstract combat and created their own rules and games to fill those gaps."

(from California Gaming Part I - Steve Perrin's Conventions, "Conclusions" ¶¶ 2-3.)

Anyhow, here is my take thus far...
----------------------------------------------------------

Rounds are an abstraction of 6 seconds.

During combat in the 5th edition (2024 revision) of the World’s Most Popular Role-Playing Game here is how a 6-second round of a combatant’s turn is divided:

• Action (cost is 3 seconds)
• Movement (cost is 3 seconds)
• Brief Communication (cost is 0 seconds, duration is less than 6 seconds)
• Interact with 1 object or feature of the environment (cost is 0 seconds)
• Ready Action/Movement (cost is 0 seconds)
• Bonus Action (cost is generally 0 seconds, duration is 1 second or less)
• Reaction (happens outside of your turn)

We can discern that within a round an action and a movement are each equal to a duration of 3 seconds. This is because movement permits you to move up to a distance equal to your speed in 3 seconds, and the action "dash" permits you an extra move up to a distance equal to your speed in 3 seconds.

However, movement is different than an action such that while you can take an action for additional movement, a combatant cannot substitute an additional action from not moving.

There is a quality of reconnaissance to movement.

During the movement phase of your round regardless whether you are actually moving, you are also making an effort to locate enemies (and allies) and to ascertain strategic features of the combat. Even if you do not move at all, it takes 3 seconds from within a round to a round to evaluate your strategic situation within a combat round.

Dividing 6 seconds generally into a 3-second movement and a 3-second action, we must consider what happens to that time when bonus actions and extra attacks occur.

I suggest that a bonus action takes 1 second at any time during the 6-second round while the gaining of an extra attack takes 1 second from the 3-second action phase.

Inserting a bonus action into a 6-second round requires some additional time, but seems would overlay movement and action rather than interfere with them. I considered many different bonus actions to arrive at this conclusion.

Some classes permit extra attacks at higher levels which historically would fit within that same amount of time for an attack action, with the inference that you attack faster.

Each individual combatant rolls for initiative on a d20 (an exception for a group of identical monsters who roll one d20 as a group), then adds their Dexterity Modifier.

The number difference between the highest initiative score and the lower scores determines the second in the initial round when each combatant begins their particular turn. Each 5 points a combatant’s initiative score is less than the highest initiative score results in beginning their turn 1 second later that the highest initiative score. (For example, at 5-9 points below, that combatant begins their first turn 1 second after the combatant with the highest initiative score; at 10-14 points below, begins their turn 2 second later; at 15-19 points below, 3 seconds later; etc.)

Where multiple combatants can act in the same second, compare actual initiative scores and the highest acts first. If actual initiative scores tie, the combatant’s dexterity ability score is the tie-breaker.

Rounds would be managed in 3-second half-rounds, rather than full 6-second rounds.

By breaking down the round by seconds, and then assigning a staggered starting second based on initiative, combatants actions can be arguably more simultaneous. The order of turns in a round is actually bound by time as overlapping sequential rounds instead of time having been bounded artificially by all the sequential turns in the round.

In their given 3-second half round a combatant may:

• Take an action (with or without a bonus action or extra attack); or
• Make a full movement (with or without a bonus action); or
• Make a partial movement and begin or conclude an action (with or without a bonus action or extra attack). 

However, because of staggered starting seconds within the initial round, a combatant may not have a full 3 seconds in their initial half round (or even, if a combatant rolls particularly poor versus the highest initiative score, lose the entire first half round and perhaps seconds from the second half round). 

This would be similar to "surprise" (ha, especially if a combatant rolled very poorly on initiative), but more accurately could be assessed as the amount of time for a combatant to react in an attack.

A Cascade of D&D

Ha, so all our games were not drug and alcohol infused debauchery.

Technically speaking, our first game system was from the Dungeons and Dragons Basic Set by J. Eric Holmes. Holmes uses a very simple weapon speed system - Daggers get 2 blows per round, long swords 1, and 2-handed swords 1 every 2 rounds. When the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Players Handbook came out the summer of 1978 we naturally assumed the 'speed factor' of weapons indicated the number of segments within a round it took to wield any particular weapon.

There was no AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide until sometime during the summer of 1979, and I don’t believe I ever read that book straight through. We just began using the updated to-hit and saving through tables, magic items and such, but never got into the nitty-gritty for what we thought we already knew. (Ha, except Dr. John PhD may have tried to explain the DMs Guide version of speed factor, lo by then the drugs were beginning to kick in.)

Pre-Blipping Campaign Dr. John PhD ran our 8th grade Greyhawk campaign from the formal dining table in John's family’s front room. I began to DM some when we hit high school and at the same time began branching out into the Wilderlands of High Fantasy City State of the Invincible Overlord campaign and started integrating the Arduin Grimoire original trilogy into our rules. (We also I think never played at John's again, his mom had a better nose than mine for weed!)

Our D&D combat was FAST, segment by segment actions with multitudes of attacks per 1-minute rounds. Often decisions had to be made in half a melee round or less.

Post Blipping Campaign we never quite attained our old style of play. Ha, #1 was because previously we were not plying rules-as-written (the DMs Guide strangely only used speed factor for initiative). But also, #2, because 3e, 3.5, and 5e (including most all of the reputed “Advanced” retro clones) were based on a style of play where AD&D was cropped onto the Moldvey/Cook BX D&D or the Mentzer BECMI which did away with segments of melee rounds and used only gross action and gross movement.

Rather than our simulation where actions were subjugated to TIME, i.e. the clock would be ticking and the PCs and monsters had to fit their possible and variable duration-based actions within the confines of the passing seconds, the new versions has time subjugated to the ACTIONS of each participant, i.e. everyone gets their move and their attack and at that moment 6 seconds (or 10 seconds depending on the version) duration had passed.

A rundown of our main campaigns pre-Blipping Campaign were:

    • Dr. John PhD’s “Greyhawk” (1977-1982) – Pretty much centered in the Pomarj, we went through most all the classic AD&D modules: Hommlet, the Giants and Descent into the Depth of the Earth series, White Plume Mountain, Tomb of Horrors. This campaign ended after we graduated high school when Dr. John headed of to UC Santa Barbara to become a chemist.

    • Matrox Lusch & Others “Wilderlands of High Fantasy” (1979-1984) – I piggy backed several T$R modules like the giant series, but also ran Tegal Manor, Thieves of Fortress Badabaskor, Dark Tower, all 3 city states (Invincible Overlord, World Emperor, and Tarantis) as part of my main campaign. I also ran the some of the Judges Guild one-offs like Citadel of Fire, Sword of Hope, and Under the Storm Giant’s Castle. The Wilderlands was somewhat of a shared campaign as my brother Sumerled ran Modron and Verbosh and our friend Spacin Jason would run the Arguin dungeons there. In 1982 Judges Guild lost their license to publish “official” AD&D materials and started to use this “Universal” format which was a pain in the ass. Plus a lot of Judges Guild had been disconnected from the Wilderlands setting and sort of silly even before they lost the license.

    • Matrox Lusch “Krull” (1980-1985) – To fill in the gaps of the Wilderlands I would just make things up, ha, with the problem being the monsters would usually “cry uncle” when I was too tired to carry on. So I was accused of “making things up” (true) and also railroading (somewhat true when I was falling asleep in the wee hours). I had written up a dungeon during probably 1979 or so based on the “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride at Disneyland (one of my favorites), and began to spread out from there into other regions of my game world “Krull” (well before the 1983 movie of the same name). Ha, the problem was I still made shit up – I mean it’s D&D and I loved a sandbox and would do these on the fly all the time.

    • J.A.S. “Drow Mag-Tec” (1986-1987) – This is seriously as close as I got to the 80s “Satanic Panic” (our group was so insulated we never heard of that at the time). J.A.S.’s wife watched the 700 Club (Jim Bakker & Tammy Fay Bakker) who did a show on the evils of D&D. So his wife wanted J.A.S. to stop playing that evil magic game immediately. John compromised by developing a setting with no other religions besides the Mycretians (a Wilderlands quasi-Christian-type religion) and the main enemies were the Drow who used something called “Mag-Tec” which was basically sci-fi technology. All the characters were fey (our party was a brownie, a pixie, and a leprechaun) so we had a bunch of innate magical abilities, but no spells. Ha, we were all technos.

By the time our Post Blipping campaigns began in 2004 I had sobered up and wondered what happened to all the friends I used to have, so toward the end of 2005 corralled everyone into version 3.5 by anonymously sending them copies of the new Player’s Handbook. (Also, since Dr. John PhD had moved off to Oregon with his Physician wife I was the de facto DM.)

    • Matrox Lusch “High Fantasy” (2005-2011) – This campaign was set in the Wilderlands, but the party did travel around the planes quite a bit. Timewise I don’t think there was any time travel, but I did have the party visit other settings such as Grayhawk and Arduin during different time periods than when campaigns in these settings typically started. Tragically in 2011 we lost our long-time 30-year gaming friend, Postman Bob (and a friend of J.A.S. longer than that). This sad event resulted in the campaign ending as we decided to roll up new characters rather than carry on without Bob. In addition to Wilderlands products, among the other published works I leaned on for this campaign were Red Hand of Doom, City of the Spider Queen, Expedition to the Demonweb Pits, “The Lich-Queen’s Beloved” three-magazine Incursion event featured in POLYHEDRON #159, DRAGON #309, and DUNGEON #100. The overarching plot was an attempt by Tharizdun to free itself from Prime Material chains.

    • Matrox Lusch “Blipping 2” (2012-2019) – In this campaign the characters were unstuck in time and space, but it was due to a mysterious orb they discovered (or possibly revealed itself to them) on Sigil, and the orb transported the party around. We also did not rotate DMs in this campaign, but I visited many of the locations and NPCs from our Blipping Campaign. I also developed a set of rules for this campaign that was a blend between v3.5 and AD&D. Fast forward to DunDraCon in 2018, I ran an “official” game where players could bring in any D&D version of a character they wished, hoping folks would bring out some old high-level characters they hadn’t played in years. However, every single player in that game brought a 5th edition character. Then, at our regular game that Saturday night at the Con the group was short a cleric and advertised for one – every interested person brought a 5th edition cleric. The writing, I saw, was on the wall that 5e had settled in as the standard. I put together a hand-crafted 5e adding some modifications such as critical hit tables and psionic abilities and we ran this modified 5th edition for almost 2 years.

    • Various “New Old Weird World” (2019-2023) – I was fortunate to run a character in a scenario Jeff Rients was testing out and had this realization I had not run a character since I became sober 15 years earlier! I kind of overreacted and told my group I wasn’t going to run the campaign solo any more, that I was going to run a character, we were going to rotate DMs, and we were going to run an AD&D retro-clone (we ended up using Advanced Labyrinth Lord with some of my collected mods). This was more truly a Blipping 2 campaign, although we used only single DMs for 3 sessions each. After the campaign surviving through Coved that campaign took a hiatus when we had all kinds of troubles getting the group together, and were missing some fun players like Sumerled and Random Addison who were extremely opposed to online D&D games. These are the characters I am running (in-person) my End of Time Extravaganza for up at J.A.S.’s mountain abode next October 27, 2025. 

And now I've ended up co-DMing and DMing two 5th edition (2024) campaigns: The Psychedelic Deadlands / Dreamer of Dreams campaign online with Dr. John PhD, and the new "5th Iteration Wilderlands" in-person campaign.

My next task is to understand how I can break down the variety of things folks can do in a 5th edition melee round, and to see if I can get the game subject to time again rather than time subject to the actions. Perhaps it's a difference with no meaning - but I am digging in. It has been almost 15 years since we all last played an official Dungeons & Dragons RAW. Until next week I hope you go easy.

Anatomy of A Grown-Ass Dysfunctional Dungeons and Dragons Game: The Movie

***This Video has been corrected to meet YouTube Standards***

 

A portion of AC/DC's "Back in Black" is in the background during a segment of this video. The song is globally blocked by SEM Entertainment Group in unofficial videos on YouTube. The offending audio has been replaced with an excerpt from my original music: "Teacher Summertime Blues"

The Blipping Campaign, Saturday July 27, 1996

Magic Item of Note: Star Trek Armored Space Shuttle (The “Agencourt”); Jump Drive A = Jump 2; Movement Drive A = 2 Gs; Power Plant A = 40 tons fuel; 2 staterooms; Mod. 3 Computer (CPU = 5, Storage = 9); 2 low berths; 20 point force field; 10 ton cargo area; Triple Turret = Beam laser, Sandcaster, Beam Laser; Computer = (1) Jump 1 – 1, (2) Jump 2 – 2, (3) Library – 1, (4) Navigation – 1, (5) Target – 1, (6) Gunner Interact – 1, (7) Auto Evade – 1, (8) Return Fire – 1, (9) Launch – 1, (10) Anti-hijack – 1, (11) E.C.M. – 3.

Game Background Music: Yes, (?), U2, Queensryche, AC/DC, Neal Young, Mr. Bungle, Jethro Tull.

Anatomy of Grown-Ass Dysfunctional Dungeons and Dragons Games

 

("How it started" by Sumerled)

As my gaming group hit the 1990's and individual players our late 20's into our thirtysomethings, we left a trail of alcohol bottles, cigarette butts, vomit, hanger heads, stacked and painted people, and fucking hellacious games. 

Our DunDraCon game sessions were so renowned we designated them with proper nouns: The undercover Flower People ('92), Pee-Wee Herman's genie-inspired Jambicon ('93), methamphetamine-fueled Jitterycon ('94), insanely drunk dungeon mastering Revenge of the Son of Greg ('95), and the Wild Turkey 101 extravaganza Executive Decision ('96). 

Now I wouldn't recommend drinking, drugs, insanity to anyone. And eventually they exact their pounds of flesh. As these epic games progressed through the decade I entered the Dark Times from 1997 through 2004, coming out of that for our group to begin running some things where sessions were more, say, congruent?

However, while reviewing another one of our old videos, this one from 1996, I remembered we did have a rhythm to our games that sat on top of whomever was running the game and whatever the details were of the adventure. I always said our sessions were like poker games where you didn't lose any money. All night affairs to avoid imperial entanglements. In general if you were there for the game you were there for the night.

We generally ran about 6-8 games each year rotated to different locations, including annual games at DunDraCon and a variety of camping locations for our annual camping trip. 

Each game had distinct parts that recurred each session...

The Drive: Since by this decade of the 90s most of us had jobs and were raising families there was some dispersment around the San Francisco Bay Area and Northern California. Unless you were hosting there was often a 1-3 hour beer-fueled freeway trip to get to the game location.

The Jam: Many of the folks in my gaming group were either presently or formerly in bands together so there were electric and acoustic music jams to kick off the event (much to the chagrin of our non-music playing friends). 

The Feeding Frenzy: Most often BBQ, but for sure some kind feast either hosted or pot luck before the game. So everyone started the night with a good meal in their belly - sometimes with disastrous results. (pickles)

Pre-Game Business: Who was here last time? How many experience points were awarded? Was there time to train and level up? What the hell is even going on right now??? We rotated DMs after 3 sessions for two co-DMs and after a single game for solo DMs.

The Game: This is it, the game session where all the action happens either connected or not with the prior session or any sort of campaign arc. (Our characters became unstuck in the Multiverse and could end up virtually any place or time.)

The Interlude Journey: This most often occurred around 1-2am involving Sumerled and whomever he could drag along for the alcohol/cigarettes/snacks/candles/etc.-run. That magical time during the Witching Hour when a previously bare fridge would become amazingly restocked to the brim with Budweiser.

Stacking: Did not want to be the first to pass out at our games. We practiced a parlor game we called "stacking" which was basically to see how many pizza cartons, paper plates, dog masks, candles, etc. we could build on top a dozing player without causing them to move and have the entire structure come tumbling down. Extra points for the number of empty beer can layers, the record was at least 4 and maybe 5 cans high. This might involve face painting.

Wind-down: As the sky turns from black to purple and then the Sun begins to peek our game is wrapping up, early sleepers are waking up and the hardcore beer-drinkers are still drinking beer. Might involve a little quiet acoustic guitar, baseball catch, or hurling in the corner of someone's yard.

Breakfast/The Ride Home: Some games, like DunDraCon and the camping trip, J.A.S. would break out his gas grill for pancakes. Otherwise it was some kind of fast food breakfast sandwich on the drive home, which often also involved more beer albeit not consumed quit so vigorously as the previous night's trip.

If we had an agenda for each games session this would be it. The lack of sleep and overabundance of alcohol was not sustainable, recovery time from each game increased as the years went by. Most of us are on the proverbial wagon now, and even those that still imbibe generally are not pulling all-nighters.

Amazingly, with most of the original group in their sixties now, we only lost one of our friends - Postman Bob, RIP, who passed back in 2011.

What did we earn from all of these games? Ha, one thing is we kind of do whatever the fuck we want within the context of our careers. (OK Boomer.) Another is that when emergencies occur and late or all night hours are required we laugh when other more normal folks are whimpering. 

("By Crom" by Shel Kahn)