Here’s a cool list someone made quite some time ago. I wish there were a way to leave comments or offer additions — there were no howlers but I think there could be some more detail in places.
The above link cited a dead page which, happily, is archived and is basically an encyclopedia of monsters, some well-known and some less so.
The good news is that Tom Moldvay’s gaming materials and manuscripts etc. were not destroyed in a bonfire.
The bad news is that they were trashed by a jackhole landlord.
Rebecca Moldvay Weiner, his sister, stumbled upon my blog and set the record straight.
Thanks for all of your memories of my brother Tom but fear that your source has been pulling your leg. I am not sure if I should be upset at being called a religious fanatic or be amused as my brother would have been at the absurd story. Sadly Tom passed while living alone and was not discovered for some time. I was notified by the coroner only after he had been cremated. After contacting his landlord I was given 2 days to go through his belongings which were stuffed into garbage bags. I tried to rescue what I could but it was a small portion of a long and creative lifetime of work. I love and miss you Tom. Sister Rebecca (yes like the character he named for me) This made me cry.
I apologized to her privately for repeating an unconfirmed rumor and I hope she will forgive any hurt that story caused.
In hindsight I can imagine a chain of events where the bare facts (Tom’s stuff mostly destroyed after his death; his sister was there) might have morphed into an urban legend that better fit the typos of the Satanic Panic (Tom’s stuff was burned in a bonfire, just like in Dark Dungeons! His fanatic sister did it!), and I am sorry I repeated the story.
I was discussing house rules for D&D with my brother and mentioned that I liked the LotFP rule that essentially removes weapon and armor restrictions in favor of limiting certain activities (arcane spell casting, skill use) while encumbered. He thought it better to keep existing weapon & restrictions by class because using certain weapons*, and wearing heavy armor, actually require some training.
I used ‘class based damage’ in my Telengard campaign before, and part of the thinking there is that more martial classes just use weapons more effectively. A fighter does d8 with a mace because he’s a fighter who has been trained for war; a thief does d6 with the mace because his training is mostly in stealth and skills. So Tom suggested class-based AC, such that fighters would derive the full benefit of mail or plate while other classes got only a smaller increase in AC from the same armor, again based on the class’ training. So maybe leather/mail/playte add a base of +1/+2/+3 to ascending AC, so while fighters and clerics add another +2 or 3, thieves and mages add nothing. This also boosts AC for unarmored fighters, which is nice if you’d like more swashbucklers and barbarians in you basic D&D. I’m leaning towards just leaving the armor restrictions as they are (although I’m not convinced that this is functionally different from saying thief skills can only be used if encumbrance is medium or less, and arcane spells can only be used if encumbrance is light or none…a wizard will almost certainly be better off in no armor, casting spells, and a thief would pretty dumb to forgo using skills just so he can have heavier armor…which raises the question of why bother changing armor restrictions at all…)
The discussion also reminded me of one of Plato’s dialogues, the Laches, where, right at the beginning, the characters discuss whether it is a good idea to hire a teacher of hoplomachia — “fighting in armor” according to the translation I read in college. The idea is rejected because the Spartans have the greatest warriors and do not study hoplomachia. One participant (Nicias) even says that the hoplomachia teachers avoid Sparta as if it were ‘sacred ground’ — the Spartans apparently would not suffer such fools.** I think the reality is, the Spartans did a lot of training in armor, just not the specific kind ‘hoplomachia‘ the character in the dialogue was peddling — which may have been something more like ‘fencing,’ i.e. a combat sport rather than a true martial art. Apparently hoplomachia meant the actual warrior’s skills in Homeric times but by Plato’s time meant something like ‘swordplay’ or ‘fencing’.
I have read about medieval knights wearing their armor all the time until they were strong and agile enough to vault onto a horse, or scale a wall, or even do a cartwheel in it, and seen video of re-enactors at the Leeds museum do such things; Tom also related an anecdote about a Renaissance Fair acrobat who said he wore mail under his clothes until he could perform his routine in it, and it took him three years of practice to manage it. So what we’re really talking about is learning to compensate for the encumbrance of armor. I think there is a way to understand the existing limitations on armor as reflecting this same reality — thieves and magic-users just don’t wear armor because it interferes with their freedom of movement which they need to function in their primary roles. The LotFP rules make this more explicit, but leave the option to wear some armor open, much as the Unearthed Arcana rules gave thieves some leeway to wear a few heavier armor types.
I guess I should note that the rules for Rolemaster were way ahead of me on this too, as wearing armor was a skill to be developed alongside everything else (in fact, a suite of skills for different armor types!). I never questioned those rules back in the day, and they still make sense.
So the bottom line is I have come around to accept limitations on armor use. I might keep it tied to encumbrance, or might leave open the possibility that characters could learn to wear heavy armor, and now that I think of it, maybe fighters (and clerics) should face smaller penalties for climbing and jumping in armor, since they are trained to bear it.
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Update (since writing this post up last week):
I asked about these issues on “AncMed,” the Society of Ancients’ yahoo group, and one member gave a very interesting response, based on his re-enactment experiences:
Hi Mike
Just based on my own 15th century replica experience it’s pretty easy to wear armour straight off, the issues are usually:
a) getting it on properly in the 1st place! This is very dependent on what sort of armour it is – so I’d anticipate a lorica would be pretty straight forward, but like even a simple back & breast-plate it is helpful to have an old hand or a mate around to tighten fastenings & ensure that the straps are not tangled. In many ways learning to fight in a close helmet is probably more of an adjustment – but again it depends upon what type of helmet it is. Similarly you need a lot of training to fight with a shield effectively – my guess is much more so than just wearing the armour.
b) My own experience is that ‘soft armours’ such as jacks etc. are dead easy to wear & fight in & mail shirts are similar. The issue with mail however is that it generally ‘hangs’ all it’s weight on the wearers shoulders, so it’s best belted to take the weight of the mail skirt on the hips. Or if it’s worn under a ‘hard’ armour — such as a breast plate — the mail is reduced and the mail sleeves & skirt are best sown onto a padded under garment (an arming doublet). Mail is hot to fight in & you will dehydrate quickly. Surprisingly the same is true of soft armours such as jacks — which to give any real degree of protection require to be quite thick. However, mail & most other metal armours also conduct the cold very quickly (which is not the case with soft armours) and so I’d imagine many deaths after battles caused by hypothermia adding to shock. Soft armours, unless greased or tarred will also get sodden with sweat & rain of course, which can make them a lot heavier even than mail!
c) more complex 15th century harness requires an established process or order to put on. So it’s standard practice in full harness to put your leg & arm harness on first — it’s a sort of ‘inside-out’ process — nearest the body first: arming doublet, leg harness, arm harness, mail standard, upper breast plate, then fould & skirt and tassets, and finally shoulder plates, gorget, helmet and gauntlets. You will need at least 1 assistant — usually to click the sliding rivets on the back & breastplates into place (using a bear-hug technique) and also to tie on your shoulder plates and do the rear strap up on your bevor. For speed, you can leave off the leg harness & just drop the upper breast & back plates on over the arming doublet. Or, as we see in some 14th century illustrations you get mounted men-at-arms in just their arming doublets, with helmets, arm & leg harness, as this is the camp ‘dress-down’ state of a fully armoured man (a crab without his shell!).
As has been stated here previously the weight of a full harness is distributed over the whole body so unlike mail it’s not a huge burden initially, but once fatigued it’s a true burden — especially leg-harness.
Fighting in full harness is a truly learned skill (not one that I ever fully mastered!). It requires lots & lots of practice and training (both individually & in groups) so as not to injure yourself as well as your friends. Whilst (in my experience) it makes you feel truly invulnerable (9 feet tall) equally you can be exceptionally vulnerable, as you have restricted vision, a generally poor top-heavy point of balance (helmets & shoulder plates move your center of balance upwards quite considerably) and the fact that once in it it’s not really a quick process to get out of it.
Fighting in full harness is about using the whole body — yes you’ve got your sword, dagger, mace or pole-axe but equally you are wearing another +6olbs of hard & often deliberately sharp outer shell. Elbow points are truly deadly (hence the common expression of “giving somebody the elbow”). In fact your elbows are deceptively dangerous weapons. I remember a re-enactment of the Battle of St.Albans many years ago. We (The White Company Men-at-Arms) were engaged in a hand-to-hand melee in a series of mocked-up stage built houses and an opponent with a sword & buckler (in a metal breast plate thankfully) engaged me unexpectedly from my rear right side – just slightly inside of my visor slit line of vision. I was expecting my back to be covered, but my supporting bills were engaged with other assailants — all I saw was a flash of opposing livery colours (Staffords – red & black) & a raised sword. As I was also engaged with my pole-axe with another armoured enemy with a longsword to my front instinctively I jerked out with my right elbow with as much force as I could muster & the impact knocked my assailant off his feet & threw him out through a low window a full 2 or 3 yards, winding him badly. From my rear, I was extremely vulnerable as the backs of my thighs are unprotected and a sharp blade could easily slide up under my shoulder plates and into my shoulder.
Similarly, if you get hit by a pole-axe (the hammer or blade) on a sliding rivet in your shoulder plates, it will lock the whole arm and you end up looking like a bird with a broken wing as your arm is locked in the position it was in when the rivets were locked, again making you extremely vulnerable.
d) I don’t know about ancient Greek linen armours or greaves, but again I guess they’d become 2nd nature after a while.
Hope that helps, but we probably need to bear in mind that we (me) are nowhere near as fit or ‘hardy’ as those ancient or medieval soldiers – more used to physical graft and burden carrying than us ‘soft’ modern types!!!
Mark [Fry]
I asked for a little more information about the armor ‘locking up’ and Mark expanded on this, as well as adding some other interesting insights about armor use in the late middle ages:
I should mention that anyone interested in ancient and medieval warfare, weapons, armor, and armies — especially if you are interested in wargames — should join AncMed and/or The Society of Ancients. I’ve been lurking AncMed on and off for years and it’s been quite an education. Although you sometimes get some heated arguments, the level of sophistication and maturity (not to mention scholarship!) is usually very high.
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*He mentioned flails specifically, as opposed to a simpler, handier weapon like a short sword; I think he’s right about that. Likewise pole-arms seem more complicated to wield than spears, and while you see depictions of peasant levies armed with spears, clubs, and simple pole-arms derived from agricultural tools, you don’t see them carrying great-swords, halberds, and so on. So maybe the ‘simple’ versus ‘martial’ distinction in 3rd and 4th editions are a good idea.
**Nicias also mentions that one of the teachers of this art made a fool of himself with a weapon he invented that combined a spear and scythe. Apparently when he tried to use it in a boarding action to cut another galley’s rigging, it got entangled and he was dragged the length of the ship. So any early guisearme apparently failed to impress the Greeks. It’s a very interesting anecdote, though, as a reminder that even the Greeks experimented with polearms.
Back a little bit before I posted the D&D poem, I also sent an email to the author and asked for some more information about the poem and his experiences. He recently got back to me, and here are his comments. Mr. Brown’s book Wisdom Teeth is available from Teaching for Change.
By the way, if anyone has heard of the game “Spellcasters,” let me know. There was a computer/video game of that title later on but I wonder if Mr. Brown’s group was playing a home-brewed variant of D&D, a somewhat obscure published game, or what. But as he notes, he’s not sure about the name….
Anyway i sent off my questions before getting the comments on the original post, but I imagine Mr. Brown will comment there is he wants to. My questions in italics, his answers in bold. BTW Groucho is an awesome name for a rogue.
Q: I’m [...] curious whether the poem was written because you really played D&D or if D&D is just standing in for general nerdom (the mention of Junot Diaz’s book makes me wonder)
A: Yes, I played D&D for a time, starting in middle school, probably around sixth grade until seventh grade, when Nintendo became my sole supplier for adventure. I was and still continue to be a fan of Fantasy and Sci-Fi. I was a big Piers Anthony fan, I loved Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea Cycle, and I am and continue to be a big Tolkien fan. I just saw The Hobbit trailer and I am excited, though I wonder what it would have looked like if Del Toro had directed it. I was a comic book collector for a time as well; I dug ElfQuest, TMNT, Usagi Yojimbo, and later I moved up to Lone Wolf and Cub, Fist Of The North Star, and a few Marvel and DC titles, but I’m going on a tangent.
Anyway, I played with four to five other kids. We spend the night at this one kid’s house because he had the larger dining room and parents that didn’t mind that we stayed up late. Also his older sister, when she visited from college, was our DM. We also played a bootleg version of D&D called Spellcasters (sp?). Sidenote: I had a Rouge/Thief character I named Groucho. Neutral .
Q: Did it seem like something weird & lonely because the guys you were playing with were all white, or because it was a niche/nerd hobby, or because of something about the game itself?
A: It never seemed weird or lonely to me at the time because it was fun and my friends liked to play it and I liked to play it and that was that. Being the only black kid playing , wasn’t odd to me either, I was pretty used to being the only black kid is certain situations. As far as being black, my Mom instilled in me a positive and realistic outlook, understanding, and historical context behind my race. But she also let me know that “blackness” wasn’t this monolithic, rigid, requirement. Though at times, throughout my life I would struggle with the assumed things and actions that were perceived as “black,” I eventually learned that I could proceed and do all I wanted to do with the confidence that I was being true to myself.
I knew it was a nerd/niche hobby. Oddly enough, I got more grief from white kids, about my D&D involvement, and it wasn’t a race thing. it was an adolescent, middle school pecking order thing. D&D + Me = Member of the “Nerd Herd.”
Q: There is some debate among D&D players about whether the game, in its various versions and editions, is inherently sexist, racist, Eurocentric, etc., on account of the art, language, source material (specifically the fantastic literature, mostly European mythologies, etc.), and so on.
A: Looking back on it now through adult eyes, and the fact that as a writer and Creative Writing teacher, I have to read critically and think critically, I can most definitely recognize the validity of the argument that various versions of the game hold many “isms” . Sexism (check), Racism/Stereotypical depictions (yup), Eurocentric (uh-huh), language and source material (of course).
But during the time I played D&D, each of us kids used our imaginations to visualize the creatures we faced, the vast lands we explored, and pretty much inserted ourselves into the games. Honestly, my thief looked like me, waaay taller, and more or less dressed like a Ninja or something in my imagination. I selected the thief, because I liked the fact that he was neutral. I didn’t have any misgivings about selecting the thief for fear that folks would blurt out “Ha-ha, future career Derrick!” Nope. This wasn’t that kind of party. My time playing D&D was short. I was young and just really scraping the surface of the social awareness I would develop as I got older. Call it a time of innocence with a game I enjoyed for a brief time and then moved away from.
(Junot Diaz’s character from The Brief and Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao is probably the first Dominican Geek I’d ever heard of; he played RPG’s up until the very end of the novel.)
Scott B of OSFMapa (the old school fantasy miniatures APA) brought this to me attention:
Duke University has just opened up a large collection of role-playing games and miniatures. As a ‘special collection’ it is presumably non-circulating but open to research. It looks like they got quite the haul. An inventory of the collection’s contents is here. The same donors gave the library their collections of comics and fanzines. Note the description of the collections in linear feet … that is how many feet of shelves it takes to house them. Almost 300 feet of comics! 12 feet of ‘zines! and 350 feet of RPG stuff!!!
And yet these collections are hardly complete. I did not notice the OD&D LBBs in the inventory, for example.
Cracked magazine on the Gygax/Arneson thing.
A little simplistic, sure. It’s Cracked.
The whole article is pretty interesting, too.
Hoping to find some inspiration for the island-hopping “5DM campaign,” I read Phantom islands of the Atlantic by Donald S. Johnson. The book is written by an historian and sailor, and discusses seven legendary islands (or groups of islands) that have appeared, for varying terms, on maps of the Atlantic. Links go to the Wikipedia pages on them so you don’t have to read the book too. (It’s not a bad read but I skipped a fair amount of the geography and seamanship heavy discussions of where the islands might have been located and which real islands or phenomena might have inspired the stories.) The maps included in the book include both some reproductions of the originals and some simplified line drawings, which could be useful.
The book also drew my attention to the Ebstorf Map, which I’d never seen before. Some one needs to redo this in English, or better yet do a version for Greyhawk or some other fantasy world. This is exactly the sort of map players should have.
During a several year hiatus from D&D, I got seriously interested in ancient and medieval wargaming, and read everything I could get my hands on, about pretty much every ancient civilization. Honestly, I read so much, so fast, that I have forgotten more than I know now… It turns out that just reading, without taking any notes or making any outlines, leads to much less long term memorization than it did when I was 20 years younger. 
But I still know Medians from Midianites and Lycians from Lybians, so I guess I can recall the bare outlines of things. I kind of recall a few major battles, but couldn’t begin to place, say, the various successors of Alexander and the borders of their kingdoms. (And I guess good riddance to a lot of it… what use is it, really, to know the order of succession of Hittite kings or the names of twenty plus ancient German tribes? That’s what a library is for.)
But I still read the “Ancmed” yahoo group — the email list for the Society of Ancients, a large and amazingly knowledgable club for wargamers which spans several continents. Among the frequent posters there are several professional historians and legions of amateurs who can debate, at length:
and on and on. A few guys are clearly cranks and contrarians. But I started reading the list digest (ok, maybe skimming it) again because every once in a while someone posts amazing resources or news items. The latest is a link to a news item about how Gaddafi’s downfall* has begun to open up Garamante ruins to scholars. The Garamantes are one of the civilizations that completely flew under my radar, altohugh I have read a bit on African civilizations.** Apparently*** they lived on the north coast of Africa, where modern Lybia is, and dug extensive mines to extract “fossil water”. They were clearly quite advanced despite the inhospitable terrain, with cities and such, no doubt enabled by their vast (but nonrenewable) stores of water.
A few minutes of Googling “Garamantes” turns up some interesting flat-topped pyramids, and mentions of “black mummies,” as well as extensive networks of mines. I smell a lot of D&D inspiration there. But if wargaming is more your thing, here’s some Garamantes painted up for battle. Evidently they also utilized camelry and chariots, which would certainly look cool on the table.
For the record Africa is terribly under utilized in gaming, and way too much of what there is reduces everything to jungles and pyramids. The ancient Lybians, Songhai, Nok, Axum, Nubia, the Marinids, not to mention the Zulu and their many neighbors … someone needs to do a decent sourcebook that has more than just the Yoruba…
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*Stupid library science fact: there are at least 60 ways to spell his name, in the Roman alphabet, and another dozen or so in Arabic.
**My top picks would be: Great civilizations of Ancient Africa by Lester Brooks for the ancient/medieval period and The dark kingdoms by Alan Scholefield for 18th/19th century stuff.
***I.e., Wikipedia tells me…
The blog Architectural History at Sea (well worth exploring for the minutia of maritime history and architecture) posted a link to some great photos of some truly amazing ship models.
I scoured the Kent State University library some time ago looking for books on ships and naval warfare (they have a pretty good collection) and stumbled onto a number of books on building ship models and also books of photos of ship models, and among the interesting little bits I found was a book (or a chapter of a book, it’s been years now) on votive ship models. Apparently the grateful survivors of shipwrecks and naval battles, as well as ship owners hoping for blessings on their new ships, would build intricate ship models and have them hung from the rafters of churches, as decorations and religious offerings. I’d read before of other votive models offered at medieval churches — often body parts, made of silver, to ask for the healing of, or express gratitude for the healing of, various ailments and injuries. So, if you wanted the cankers on your leg to be healed, you might offer a clay or (if you were rich) silver model of a leg to the church. I don’t know how long the churches kept them intact but I suspect that after a while at least some would be sold off or melted down.
The whole practice of offering votive models (and medallions, paintings, etc)at churches and temples goes back to ancient times, and such things might make nice source of treasure for plundering adventurers in D&D — a golden nose or a large and delicate model of a ship would be much more interesting than a coffer of coins.
Anyway here’s a Flickr collection of votive ships from Europe.
And an old ship model — said to be the oldest museum model (some votive models are much older)
Seeing all those ship models in books back in the day helped me come up with ideas for the Man’o'War models I scratch built. At our last multi-DM campaign planning session Matt mentioned he’d like to see some naval battles at some point in the game, and that got me thinking about Man’o'War, the Games Workshop naval battle game I sank a fair amount of money and modelling time into without ever really playing much. We ended up using some of the components in a GURPS pirates campaign but I should give the game a another shot. All I remember about it is that we found the fleets to be pretty ‘unbalanced’ for a competitive game but now that I have room for a 6′ x 8′ game board, it could be a fun diversion once in a while.
I’m not qualified or self-important enough to think I can explain the significance of today’s “anniversary.” I can’t offer deep solace or draw lessons. In fact I kind of hate hearing 9/11 re-hashed except maybe by first responders and people who were in the WTC, or the Pentagon, or NYC, or who lost someone then, because so many people seem to have hitched on, lamprey-like, to claim some personal aggrandizement in the guise of anger, concern, sorrow, etc. 9/11 has become such a political tool that I’d rather not hear about it at all. (potentially offensive image and discussion below the ‘more’ line) (more…)
