Smoldering Wizard's Old-School Gaming Forums

New post up:

https://smolderingwizard.wordpress.com/ ... e-warrior/

Glad this series is back. I think your people need more hirelings though.

Thanks! My intent was to see just how far a single PC could go, and have them buy retainers as they advanced. But of course, it's been quite deadly.

In my next two sessions I had four PCs join the surviving MU from this session, they were a bit more successful, I'll write those up and post them when I have time.

I just made a post describing my son's solo play. He had one DMNPC and two Dwarven hirelings along for the ride. Fun times for all.

https://jaspersrantings.wordpress.com/2 ... o-dungeon/

That's awesome! You can create really interesting dungeons with a mix of random stocking and common sense. It's no wonder Moldvay and the 3 LBBs both advised the ref. to stock dungeons this way.

You said you customized the Monster & Treasure Assortment - did you create new tables, or just alter them slightly?

I created entirely new tables. The monster one is not terribly impressive, but the treasure one involved a deep analysis and complete rebuild. I basically compressed it to two separate charts (not counting the 'treasure is contained in' and 'protected by' charts). I don't know how to format a chart here but I can give you an idea of what it looks like:

treasure
1-5 1d12x100 cp
6-10 1d12x100 sp
11-12 (1d12+2)x50 ep
13-14 (1d8+2)x50 gp
15-16 (1d8+2)x10 pp
17 1d6 gems
18 1 jewelry (3d6x100 gp)
19-20 magic item

gem value
1-10 10 gp
11-15 50 gp
16-18 100 gp
19 500 gp
20 1,000 gp

I wish I knew exactly how Gygax and Arneson exploding gem dice worked. I've listened to the recent podcast where Jim Ward is DM and even though he described it, I still can't figure it out.

Very nice, thanks. Do you mean the gem value table in the 3LBBs? The exploding gem value is one of the best parts of OD&D - it results in some unexpectedly huge hauls sometimes. I have to look at that again, as I _thought_ I understood it, but maybe I am just interpreting it wrongly.

Thank you for pointing out the LBBs. So the gem valuation seems straight forward, but it's confusing because it says that for every gem (or group of 5 or 10) roll a d6 and on a 1, its value is one level higher. Going by that, the highest value would be 5,000 gp, but it goes on to list levels all the way to 500,000 gp. It never says continue rolling d6s. Now in Jim's podcast, it seems like they only rolled d6s. I envisioned it as a roll of 1 = 10 gp, 2 = 50 gp, 3 = 100 gp, 4 = 500 gp, 5 = 1,000 gp, 6 = roll again and add a zero.

This link goes to a short discussion on Gem Values in OD&D http://knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb3/view ... =5&t=14783. You are almost certainly doing it right. I just never knew about the exploding dice, and then when I listened to the podcast, I thought they were only using d6s.

Edit: Typos

Yep, that is how I read it - roll a d6 after you get the initial gem value, and on a 1, hop to the next higher value, repeat until you no longer get a 1.