History of a game that failed
An essay on mistakes  —and how not to make them
by David F. Godwin

Lord Arrogo, a 15th-level fighter, walks
into a great cavern  — the lair of the huge,
ancient red dragon Feuerhauch. The
dragon has lately been a terror to the coun-
tryside, flame-broiling whole herds of live-
stock and leveling sizable villages.
Arrogo is modestly equipped with plate
mail +5, a shield +5, and a dexterity of
18, giving him an AC of -12. In
other words, Feuerhauch will have to roll
20s to hit him with his claw/claw/bite attack
routine.

Lord Arrogo also happens to have a
hammer of thunderbolts, gauntlets of ogre
power, and a girdle of storm giant strength.
That means that he will automatically hit
the dragon’s armor class of -1, no “to hit”
roll needed. He gets two attacks per round,
so no initiative roll is required, either. Dam-
age will be 2d4 + 5 + 6 + 12 .(“all girdle and
gauntlets bonuses”), or a minimum of 25
points of damage per hit. He can also throw
the hammer 90’ and stun the dragon for
one round.

But Arrogo doesn’t want to make it too
easy. After all, he has 120 hp, and he is
wearing a ring of fire resistance. If the
dragon has spells, no sweat. Our hero is
also wearing a ring of spell turning.

So Arrogo forfeits his first attack of the
round by trotting up to the dragon, who
immediately breathes a fiery holocaust right
in his face  —the same blazing inferno that
roasted those herds and flamed those vil-
lages, enough firepower to reduce even the
stoutest man-at-arms to a charcoal briquette
fifteen times over. Arrogo just shrugs and
bashes Feuerhaugh with his hammer. Ar-
rogo made his saving throw of 2 and dam-
age was -2 per die, thanks to the ring, so he
took 33 points of damage. At the end of
round one, he has 87 hp and the dragon has
no more than 63.

Second round: Arrogo strikes Feuerhauch
again, and the hapless dragon’s hit points
are now no more than 38. Feuerhauch tries
his claw/claw/bite attack routine and by
some miracle rolls three consecutive 20s. He
hits on all three attacks and, by another
miracle, does maximum damage each time.
Arrogo is now down to 41 hp. At the end of
the round, he hits the dragon again, and
poor Feuerhauch now has at most 13 hp.

Third round: Lord Arrogo hits the
dragon yet again, stifling a yawn as he does
so, and Feuerhauch is dead. Perhaps one of
the most fearsome and powerful beasts on
the Prime Material Plane, Feuerhauch has
been an “automatic kill” for Arrogo, not-
withstanding the fact that the dragon always
did maximum damage and the fighter mini-
mum damage. So our doughty lord gathers
up the treasure (including the 30,000 cop-
per pieces) into his portable hole, slips on
his ring of regeneration, and zips back to
the local inn with his helm of teleportation.
There, he quaffs flagons of the best wine in
the house while bragging about his exploits
and insisting that he earned every experi-
ence point he ever got.

A huge, ancient red dragon is not really
that tough a customer even for a more
normally equipped 15th-level fighter. So
who let this guy have all that stuff? And
who decided to match him up with so mea-
sly a beast as a dragon?

Answer: A Dungeon Master running his
first campaign.

The title of this article is derived from an
essay by Mark Twain, wherein he describes
his brief tenure in the Confederate army at
the beginning of the American Civil War.
His experiences, as he tells them, were
somewhat ludicrous. The same thing can be
said of many campaigns run by novice DMs
 — myself included.

Over the years, the pages of DRAGON®
Magazine have included many very useful
articles for the beginning DM, and the
Dungeon Masters Guide is itself chock full
of good advice. What I want to do here is to
supplement and amplify this advice with
specific observations and warnings. No one
ever told me this information; I had to find
it out the hard way. You see, in my igno-
rance, all the wise counsel was too general
to do me much good. You can say,
“Thoughtless placement of powerful magic
items has been the ruination of many a
campaign.” But what does that mean in
practical terms? Let the party have nothing
more than one potion of sweet water in ten
game years of hard campaigning? Or let
them have one of everything on the list of
magic items in the DMG but not more than
half a dozen artifacts and relics?
The end result of using my own judg-
ment  —and I confess to being soft-hearted
enough to want to see the PCs survive and
do well  —was that I was no longer playing
the AD&D® game. I was shooting fish in a
barrel.

Out of this “game that failed,” then, I got
quite a bit of school-of-hard-knocks experi-
ence, and I would now like to pass along a
few tips:

1. Feel free to fudge. The first time I
fudged a die roll, an elf character, through
no fault of theplayer, had just received a
death blow from an evil fighter. There was
nothing he could have done to avoid the
confrontation, which came without warn-
ing. I looked at the 18 on the d20 (I think
the evil fighter needed to roll an 8 or better
to hit.) and announced, “He missed!” I felt
terrible! I had cheated!

No, I hadn’t. The first rule of Dungeon
Mastering, one which includes and super-
sedes all the others, is that you are running
the game. Not the dice, not the module, not
even the rule books, but you, the Dungeon
Master. What you say goes. If you do not
recognize this fact, on the one hand you will
have characters getting killed off quite
arbitrarily and, on the other hand, the
players may try to use the rule books to take
charge of the game.

If you fudge a die roll, it doesn’t have to
be in favor of the players, you know. How
else do you think Feuerhauch rolled three
consecutive 20s? That’s an extreme case,
but just because you rolled it up doesn’t
mean you have to trot out an 8 HD monster
with only 12 hp, either.

2. Just because it’s in the module
doesn’t mean it’s so. Many beginning
DMs rely heavily on published modules,
just as I did. A common mistake is to accept
the module as written  — despite the mo-
dule’s own admonitions to the contrary.
I said to myself,“I lack experience and
judgment. These modules were written by
professional, experienced gamers. So, if I
stick to them, I won’t have to worry about
keeping game balance or having the right
amount of treasure or anything.” That was
a mistake.

No module you can pick up is going to be
tailored to your particular group of PCs.
The adventure is going to be either too hard
or too easy. The early stages may present
magic items that the author feels are neces-
sary for the PCs to complete the adventure
but which, for your party, are redundant or
needless. Most modules try to give some
guidelines as to the number and levels of
PCs for which they’re designed, but that
doesn’t necessarily apply to your group.
A party of beginning, 1st-level adventur-
ers can easily be wiped out in the very first
encounter in a module designed for levels 1-
3, particularly if they are not familiar with
or do not accept the time-tested tactic of
“Run away! Run away!” At the same time,
many of the upper-level modules are just
plain boring for a party loaded with magical
goodies, and you are very quickly intro-
duced to the old routine of “room-monster-
kill-loot-is that all?”

You must feel free to modify what’s writ-
ten whenever you feel it’s desirable to do so
for your particular party. If a (so far) per-
fectly competent 1st-level fighter in ring
mail (the best she could afford) is escorting
a freed captive to the surface while the rest
of the party recovers from the last melee,
and you roll up 20 giant rats as wandering
monsters  —because the tables in the mo-
dule and the dice say so  — the fighter and
the former prisoner have probably both had
it. With the armor, the fighter can’t even
move fast enough to get away from the rats.
If that’s how you want to play it, okay, but
it seems rather arbitrary to me.

When a party of 4th-level characters goes
through a dungeon, plays with reasonable
competence, and yet emerges with a 60-
percent fatality rate, it is a little late to say,
“Gee! I didn’t know this module was that
tough!” One way you can avoid such farci-
cal slaughters is to do a little solitare play-
testing ahead of time. You have the module,
and you should have the stats for all the
PCs you are planning to run through it.
You can’t tell what they are going to do, of
course, but you can tell in general terms
how well they will do in a given encounter if
they choose to slug it out toe-to-toe. You
may have to guess at their tactics, battle
formation, and so on, but, if you’ve had
this group before, you can make some fairly
reasonable judgment about that. Then just
roll the dice for both sides, the party and
the monsters, and see how it comes out. If
one PC gets “killed” in this testing process,
that might be a fluke. But if half or more of
the PCs get killed, the monsters are proba-
bly too tough for them.

So change the module. You will not be
committing sacrilege, believe me. You will
be using the module as intended. Decrease
the numbers or hit points of the monsters
who ran all over your party in the test en-
counter. If necessary, downgrade them a bit.
For example, ghouls to zombies, bugbears
to gnolls, and so on.

On the other hand, if, in your solitaire
playtesting, the party walks in and wipes
out all the monsters in one round without
taking any damage themselves, you will
want to upgrade the monsters  — more of
them, more hit points each, or different
monsters with more hit dice. Now the
ghouls become ghasts, the bugbears become
trolls. You can tell that you have been
overly generous with magic items and in
other ways if you find it necessary to up-
grade the bugbears to demigods, but things
should never be allowed to reach that point.
What you are looking for is a balance, a
point where one or more players could get
their characters killed off if they’re careless,
but Certain Death is ruled out. Then be
prepared to be astonished when they walk
in and snuff the monsters like a candle
flame with some ingenious tactic. Be pre-
pared to moan as they somehow bypass this
encounter entirely. Most DMs, you will
find, underestimate their players.

Naturally, you don’t want to limit this
playtesting to a single encounter in the
module, nor do you have to go through and
playtest every possible encounter. A couple
of samples
do it. The
from each dungeon level should
monsters on the first level should
not be too tough  —a few minor wounds to
the party here and there. But the monsters
on the bottom level should be no pushovers.
It’s best when the party has to use a little
gray matter to keep
but you don’t want
from getting wiped out,
to make it a sure thing
for the monsters.
Some of the authors of the modules have
attempted to inject humor into their sce-
narios to one degree or another. These
attempts range from fairly witty name
coinages, whose nature is not apparent until
you try to pronounce them, to an overall
motif of grim humor, to the lamest, corniest
“jokes” you can possibly imagine, which
succeed in totally destroying the whole
carefully structured atmosphere. Some
DMs like humor in their adventures; others
think that “This is grim business, boys and
girls!” Whatever the case, feel free to
change it. Please! The 800-foot engraven
glyphs do not have to make any reference to
chickens and roads. The succubus does not
have to be named Draino and talk like a
Valley girl.

The module may describe treasure you
want the characters to have, or that they
needs to have, or that you don’t mind them
having, but it’s hidden in such a way, ac-
cording to the module, that your particular
party has absolutely no chance of finding it.
(For example, the treasure can only be
found by using a true seeing spell or some
device that duplicates the spell, but the
party has no such spell or device.) In that
case, feel free to overrule the module. Al-
ways feel free to overrule the module, to
make it harder or easier in any given in-
stance. Usually, when the module’s author
has something very, very well hidden and
next to impossible to find, that means it
should be very, very well hidden and next to
impossible to find for your party If they
have the spells and gear to find it easily, step
up the concealment or the difficulty. If there
is no way they could possibly find it, make
it easier. But don’t say, “The dwarf stum-
bles against the wall and the Axe of the
Dwarvish Lords falls out of a hidden niche
and lands at his feet.” If it’s supposed to be
difficult, make it difficult! The point is, the
module is not holy writ.

On the other side of the coin, just because
a module includes some super-powerful
magic item as treasure doesn’t mean you
have to leave it there in your own game. It
has been my experience that most modules
are just a little too generous with magic
items. Look at the magical accessories car-
ried by the sample characters provided with
many of the modules. How does their
equipment compare with the paraphernalia
your own group is carrying around? In
almost every case, the furnished characters
will be very magic-poor compared with
your own group. This means that you have

been too open-handed, even if all you did
was give out the magic items as listed and
described in previous modules that the
party has been through. This leads to the
third point.

3. Be exceedingly stingy in handing out magic items.
Just playing through
several modules, as written, will allow the
party to accumulate so many magic items it
will scarcely be able to move. Don’t
hand it out automatically just because it’s in
the module. If you’re not using a module
but are running your own adventure for a
change, be careful. Just because you rolled
up the Throne of the Gods as part of the
treasure doesn’t mean it has to be there.
If you start letting powerful magic items
get into every dungeon, the players will be
disappointed when they’re not there. Most
players are positively greedy about their
characters acquiring magic items and will
not hesitate to point out “but the dice say
. . .” or “but the rules say . . .” or “but the
module says . . .”(Yes, players can buy
modules, too, and are highly trained experts
when it comes to sneaking a peek at your
copy.) The main thing you have to remem-
ber in this connection is the Prime Directive
 — you are running the show.

What are you going to do when you
suddenly wake up and realize that one of
your players has a character equipped like
Arrogo — plate mail +5, shield +5, girdle
of storm giant strength, gauntlets of ogre
power, hammer of thunderbolts, ring of fire
resistance, ring of spell turning, ring of
regeneration, portable hole, helm of telepor-
tation, and rod of automatic mass death?
I’ll tell you what you’ll do. You’ll weep.
Remember that whatever magic weapons
or devices you put into the hands of a mon-
ster or NPC  —so that he can be some kind
of challenge for your super-party  — are
almost certainly going to wind up in the
hands of the PCs. So, if you’re letting the
adventurers assault the kobold god Kur-
tulmak in Acheron, please do not have them
attacked by 202 ordinary kobolds wielding
vorpal swords. First of all, you will remem-
ber to your dismay (when the players point
it out  — instantly) that a rule in the Players
Handbook says that a fighter can attack
once per round per experience level when
fighting monsters with less than one hit die.
In other words, a 13th-level fighter can
exterminate 13 kobolds per round. If the
kobolds can hit him at all  — which they
can’t, in a frontal assault, if he has an ar-
mor class of -8 or better, even with a +3
vorpal sword  —it will be with a 20. Maybe
they’ll get lucky. Then the cleric will have to
trot out his regeneration and raise dead
spells. In any event, the characters are
going to end up with 202 vorpal swords.

They can add these to their stockpile that
includes Thor’s hammer, Elric’s sword
Stormbringer, and the universal weapon
they got when you let them fight and kill the
Chinese “Killer of the Gods,” Ma Yuan.
This kind of thing is just plain ridiculous,
but I’m afraid it’s not that rare.

Let’s take a look at some of the more
powerful magic items that can sneak into a
campaign past an unsuspecting DM and
send everything right to the last layer of the
Abyss.
 
 

Girdle of giant strength:	Gauntlets of ogre power:	Hammer of thunderbolts:	Cube of force:	Armor:
Ioun stones:	Carpet of flying:	Spell books:	Flashy items	-

Girdle of giant strength: In the D&D®
game, this is not a big deal (“. . . same
chance to hit as a hill giant. The wearer
inflicts 2-16 points of damage per hit (or)
damages are double normal. . . .“). But in
the AD&D game  —look out! If for some
insane reason you convert a D&D campaign
to an AD&D campaign, as I did (in igno-
rance; I thought “Advanced” was the next
step beyond “Expert”)  — and one or more
of your PCs has one of these, you’re in
trouble. The incomprehensible fact that
these things are listed in the DMG as being
worth only 200 experience points or 2,500
gold pieces is very-misleading. Maybe one
girdle of hill giant strength in five years of
campaigning-would be all right, but any
DM who even admits the existence of a
girdle of storm giant strength ( + 6 to hit,
+ 12 to damage) is going to rue the day.
Bye, bye, game-balance, You will notice
that there are very few, if any, girdles of
giant strength of any kind suggested as
treasure in any of the forty or more modules
published by TSR, Inc. If you feel you
really want to do it, you might include such
a thing if you make sure it has “charges” or
works only for a certain length of time or
until some specific task is accomplished. Of
course, the players will then point at the
item description in the DMG and cry, “But
it doesn’t say it’s temporary! Unfair! Un-
fair!” Do not give in to them, although they
may have little patience with yourexplana-
tion that you’re trying to keep thegame fun
for them to play instead of just an exercise
in bookkeeping.

Gauntlets of ogre power: One or two of
these might conceivably be all right. After
all, the strength you get with them does not
exceed maximum possible human strength.
Believe it or not, I did once see a player roll
up a fighter with 18/00 strength and do it
honestly  —once. But don’t pass out such
gauntlets like the little pieces of sausage that
the company representative wants you to
sample in the grocery store. And if you are
somehow naive enough to let a pair of
gauntlets and a hammer of thunderbolts get
into the campaign, then any girdle of giant
strength is definitely on the endangered
species list. If you allow that combination
 —the only one in the game that allows
cumulative strength bonuses from devices
 —then you’ve got Thor, Jr., to content
with, and all your giants can start lining up
at the cemetery.

While I’m on the subject of extraordinary
strength, I think I should mention some-
thing-about multiple damage. In all cases
that I can think of, it is only the number
shown on the die or dice that is doubled (or
tripled, or more, in the case of high-level
thieves doing a backstab), not strength or
magical bonuses. This fact is spelled out
very clearly in the DMG item descriptions
for such things as a giant-slaying sword or a
dragon-slaying sword, but in some other
cases, including the case of multiple damage
from a thief's surprise backstab, it is not
elucidated quite so clearly. Players will
prefer to believe, of course, that, when it
says “double damage,” it means double
everything. You should not be required to
prove otherwise to them, although it can be
done. Even the infamous hammer of thun-
derbolts with girdle and gauntlets does
2(d4) + 23, not 2(d4 + 23). When a thief
with a longsword + 2 and a strength bonus
to damage of + 1 completes a successful
backstab for “double damage,” the damage
is 2(d8) + 5, not 2(d8 + 5).

The one exception to this is when the
normal damage for a weapon has a plus
factor. For example, a non-magical foot-
man’s mace does 2-7 (1d6 + 1) points of
damage against a small or medium-sized
opponent. Twice the weapon damage would
be 2(d6) + 2. But, for a mace + 2, double
damage is 2(d6) + 4, not 2(d6) + 6.

All this explanation may seem like a
waste of time and space to people who have
been playing the game for awhile, but I
wish someone had explained it to me when I
first started out.

Hammer of thunderbolts: I’ve already
discussed this at some length, but I don’t
want to leave the impression that hammers
of thunderbolts should go on the forbidden
weapons list. As long as you watch out for
the hammer/girdle/gauntlets combination,
these weapons are perfectly all right.

Cube of force: It sometimes seems as if
cubes of force are as common as copper
pieces in the modules  — if you take them as
written. If it is at all possible and if they
have any imagination whatever, your play-
ers are going to try to misuse these things.
“Okay, I’m letting down the cube just long
enough to cast a fireball, and then I’m
reactivating it again instantly! Look, a
fireball takes 3 segments to cast, right?
That’s 18 seconds. So it’s 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-
10- 11 - 12- 13- 14- 15- 16-deactivate-cast-
reactivate-20-21 . . .” And if you let them
get away with it, the cube will be deacti-
vated only against magic during that instant
of time and remain activated against every-
thing else.

At this point, you may argue that a spell
caster can’t cast a spell and still be operat-
ing the cube in this fashion, whereupon the
players will assure you that some other
character is operating the cube and is suffi-
ciently on his toes as to be able to get the
timing right on the money. Amid groans
and catcalls, you reach for the percentage
dice. . . .

You won’t do yourself, or the monsters,
any good by relying on the fact that the
cube has charges and that it drains them
every time you activate it or move with it.
You’d be surprised at how many shenani-
gans the party can get away with long be-
fore the charges ever run out, even if you
have a couple of NPC magic-users bom-
barding them with charge-draining spells
like disintegrate, fireball, or lightning bolt.
Look at that item description a little more
closely, though. In the first place, you can’t
deactivate the cube against just one thing. It
has one face that deactivates it, period.
Also note that certain spells “cannot be
cast either into or out of the cube.” For a
long time, I thought this meant just when
the cube was up against magic or against
“all things.” But, if that’s the case, why the
list? If you can’t cast a fireball into it or out
of it when it’s activated against magic, well,
neither can you cast a faerie fire into it or
out of it at that time. This may be my own
interpretation, but the list has to be for
spells that can’t be cast into or out of the
cube at any time, whenever any force
screen is activated against anything. So
there’s no keeping it up against a hail of
crossbow bolts (non-living matter), for
example, and casting a fireball out of the
cube. On the other hand, you could have it
activated against non-living matter and cast
a death spell out of the cube, because that’s
not on the list. Perhaps these spells on the
list are a no-no because of some quasi-
material manifestation of the spell (light-
ning, fire, etc.) that falls within every
category
property
of protection, or
of the cube. But
maybe it’s just a
this limitation
does tone down indiscriminate use.
A situation I got into more than once
with the cube was a sort of stalemate. The
party would sit there in the cube (every now
and then
fire off a
deactivating it just long
spell, as described), and
enough to
the NPC
or monster would more or less be forced to
wait it out, or at least surrender all initiative
to the party. He could try draining
by casting various spells  — a long,
charges
slow,
frustrating, magic-eating process-
could watch them very closely to see
or he
when
they were going to deactivate the cube to let
out a spell. But, with the kind of timing
required to do that, what chance does an
NPC have of casting a spell  — or of jump-
ing the party  —at just the right instant?
Usually, the monster or NPC would just
twiddle his thumbs/claws/tentacles, work
crossword puzzles, or try to solve Rubik’s
cube until the charges ran out on the cube
of force. By that time, the adversary was
usually dead.

If the PCs do try this deactivate/cast/
reactivate routine, you should definitely
assign a percentage chance (or call for a roll
against one or more ability scores) that they
will mess up the timing and let the spell
loose a fraction of a second too early or too
late. One fireball going off inside the cube
should be enough to discourage them for
awhile, especially if you raise the damage
because the volume is so compressed.
Another thing you can do, if the charac-
ters’ adversary has help, is to keep up a
constant bombardment with missiles so the
PCs don’t dare let down the force screen. If
you’ve got giants throwing boulders, that
comes under the heading of “catapult-like
missiles” and drains charges. But perhaps
the best way to cope is just to start piling
stuff on top of the cube  — dirt, rocks, boul-
ders, compost, whatever you have handy.
It’s a cube. It’s flat on top. So whatever you
put up there is going to stay put, held aloft
by the force screen, until the cube is deacti-
vated or until it runs out of charges. The
party could very well end up getting
crushed under ten tons of stone if they don’t
bother to react to the situation in time by
giving up the protection of the cube.
There are a lot of things they can do with
the cube that are more or less legitimate,
such as protecting against magic, gases, and
living matter while they fire missiles at a
dragon, but that’s okay. You’re just trying
to prevent an overall situation of “We’re
invulnerable, but we can hurt you anytime
we want.”

Perhaps the easiest solution is the cop-out
 — don’t allow cubes of force in your cam-
paign. But if you can’t cope with them, or
feel that you might have difficulty doing so,
there is nothing whatever wrong or terrible
about changing the item description to suit
yourself! If you want to say that the cube
has 36 charges and that, once those are
gone, it’s forever useless, that’s perfectly
okay. If you want to say that, once deacti-
vated, the cube cannot be reactivated for 24
hours, that’s okay, too. It’s your campaign.
You can, you should, you must do as you
see fit. No one is going to come knocking at
your door to chew you out for tampering
with the rules.

Armor: Once your PCs’ armor classes
start creeping below the -5 mark, you’re
getting dangerously generous with magic
armor and shields or with magic rings,
cloaks, and bracers. Remember that mon-
sters with few hit dice are incapable of
hitting extremely good armor classes with-
out some kind of bonus. But also remember
that the character does not have the same
armor class in all circumstances. If he is
charging to attack, he gets no dexterity
bonus to armor class. If a character is at-
tacked from the flank or rear, his shield does
not count for armor class. If attacked from
the rear or rear flank, he doesn’t get any
dexterity bonus, either. From the rear, the
attacker is +2 to hit on top of that  — +4 if
a thief or assassin. Look out, Arrogo! Your
armor class against that assassin attacking
your rear is not -12, but +2! Yes, plus 2!
If it seems like a hassle to figure out all
the variations in an individual’s armor
class, do it once, ahead of time, and keep
these figures for all the characters on a 3” x
5” index card.

Ioun stones: Aside from my personal
opinion that these are unesthetic, there is
really not so much terribly wrong with ioun
stones. I do object to the pale green model,
however, that adds one level of experience. I
think that experience levels should be
earned, not found lying around. With one
of the tomes or librams that raise experience
levels, the character at least has to spend
some time using (studying) the item.

Carpet of flying: Whether you allow these
in your campaign or not depends on your
personal preferences and Dungeon-
Mastering style. If you are mainly inter-
ested in dungeoneering and do not much
care for outdoor adventures that involve a
lot of traveling and random encounters  —
and your players don’t, either  — then one
or more carpets of flying are ideal for get-
ting you out of a lot of tedious dice rolling
and encounter structuring. If, however, you
prefer for the PCs to travel by conventional
means and have to deal with random en-
counters with brigands, bands of roving
orcs, and so on, or if you have some num-
ber of planned outdoor encounters prepared
or adapted by you, or if you feel (as I do)
that the game is a little weird if nothing ever
happens except underground, then you
might want to be a little more conservative
about passing out flying carpets.
If you should happen to hand them out
all ‘round and then think better of it, hav-
ing gotten a better grasp on the game, there
are always such things as flying red dragons
with breath weapons that are very hard on
carpets. To reiterate a previous point, do
not depend on rolling up a red dragon on
the random encounter tables and forget
about it if the dice don’t come up right. If
you want a red dragon, then by all means
put one in.

Spell books: The magic-user PCs will
always be very acquisitive about new spells,
and a captured spell book is, in the words of
the DMG, “a benison beyond price.” Beni-
sons beyond price should not be as easily
found as goblin droppings. In this connec-
tion, please note that most spell-casting
creatures do not use spell books. Even
liches, who are ex-magic-users, do not have
spell books.

Flashy items: These are the savior of
many a DM. By “flashy items,” I mean
magic items that look absolutely fantastic
but really don’t do that much. For example,
a character somehow gets hold of a laser
pistol from an extra-terrestrial visitor. Hoo
boy! Dudbar the dwarf is suddenly a big
shot in the duchy!

But the laser pistol only does 2d8 + AC
points of damage. Except for the “plus
AC,” that’s the same as an ordinary
bastard sword against a large opponent.
The pistol will eventually run out of
charges, and it confers no bonus to hit.
You may find, late in the campaign when
your PCs have become the owners of lots of
magic items, that they have some stuff they
were impressed with at first, but which they
never bothered to use at all after the first
few days. A laser pistol (as described above)
would be one example. Another is a whip
that turns creatures to stone if you hit them
with it, but they get a saving throw and the
thing has no bonus to hit. Why mess with
that when you’ve got a good old reliable
frost brand sword? Especially since the PCs
probably don’t have weapon proficiency
with a whip.

4. Don’t let your players have a continuous commune spell.
By this, I mean don’t
let the players have a continuous commune
spell with you. In other words, don’t tell the
players anything that the characters could

find out only by using a commune spell or
some other informational spell, or by going
to the trouble of consulting a sage or what-
ever. Make them find out the hard way.
This is nowhere more needful and no-
where more neglected than in the identifica-
tion of magic items. As it says in the DMG,
“do not simply blurt out the properties and
powers of an item. . . .” The identification
process can be tedious at times, if players
decide to have their characters determine
the nature of an item by experimentation,
but you should not give in to the temptation
to save time and tedium by saying some-
thing like, “Oh, well, heck, it’s a pearl of
wisdom.” (If they are like most players, you
won’t have to tell them what a pearl of
wisdom is good for. They will have memo-
rized all the magic item descriptions in the
DMG anyway.)
Similarly, you can say that a suit of plate
mail glows under a detect magic spell, but
you should never let on how many “plus-
ses” it has, much less whether it is cursed or
not. Also, note that you can’t find out the
relative strength of a weapon, suit or armor,
or shield by experimentation in the form of
mock combat or chopping up chairs. It has
to be a real combat situation, a matter of
life or death.
Yes, I will admit that it is much easier to
go ahead and supply the players with a
parts list when they uncover a treasure
horde, and it saves time. But it isn’t very
plausible. The magic items don’t have

labels on them.“Warning! The Surgeon
General Has Determined That Putting On
This Cloak Is Dangerous To Your Health!”
“This is a shield +3, slightly better than
the shield +2 you are currently using.” To
paraphrase PT. Barnum, never give a
player a free ride.
The “continuous commune spell” prohi-
bition does not apply only to magic item
identification. You should also never start
reading statistics when the party encounters
a monster or monsters. You shouldn’t even
tell them what it is unless they’ve encoun-
tered such a monster before a few times.
You should just describe it. “There’s this
thing coming toward you and it looks like a
big pile of garbage,” not “You are ap-
proached by a hostile shambling mound. It
has an armor class of zero, and this particu-
lar specimen has ten hit dice and fifty-one
hit points. Its damage per attack is two to
sixteen, two such attacks per round, one
with each arm. If you get hit with both
arms . . .”And so on. Boccob knows they
will recognize it from your descripiton,
inasmuch as they have studied the Monster
Manual, FIEND FOLIO® Tome, and Mon-
ster Manual II. If you let them do so, they
will look it up then and there. But don’t
give it away. Do not say how many hit
points it has, or how many it has left after
they bash it a few times. You can say things
like, “That didn’t appear to hurt it at all.”
“That seemed to hurt it pretty bad.” “It’s
getting a lot weaker.” “You just sliced its leg

off, and black ichor oozes out like tree sap
and gunks up your sword.” But stay away
from statistics. Again, it is easier to keep up
an oral countdown of hit points than it is to
come up with descriptive condition reports,
but whoever said that being a DM was a job
for a lazy (or uncreative) person?
The players are supposed to be role-
playing characters in a fantasy universe.
What do these hypothetical characters know
about esoteric data like “hit points” and
“armor class” and “to hit rolls”?
5. Do not allow a character to become
more powerful than a chugging locomo-
tive. What I’m talking about here is ability
scores. An ability score can be increased in
a lot of different ways. In some game sys-
tems, it can be increased by training; but,
even then, it cannot exceed the racial maxi-
mum. In the AD&D game, an ability score
can be increased by books, librams, tomes,
manuals, a deck of many things (if you
draw the right card), ioun stones  — even
wishes, up to a point. In addition to this,
some of the modules have little set pieces
where it is possible to get an ability score
raised. There are a few cases where an
individual can get a score as high as 19 by
natural means; an elf with an initial dexter-
ity roll of 18, wisdom gained with increas-
ing age (DMG, p.13). But, normally, no
one should ever get an ability score as high
as 19 without going through terrific trials
and under the most unusual conditions.

And it should not be possible to raise an
ability score to 19 by means of any of the
tomes or librams; the limit on these should
be 18, even though the item descriptions
don’t say so. It is true that, in the WORLD
OF GREYHAWK™ Fantasy Game Setting,
personages such as Heward and Keoghtom
have abiity scores as high as 20, but they
are quasi-deities. Murlnyd is also a quasi-
deity, but he has no ability score over 18.
6. If they wish for the moon, don’t let
them have it. The material on wishes and
their misuse in the AD&D rule books is
very scant. The only specific rules govern
the use of wishes to increase ability scores
(DMG, p.11). Aside from that, the buck is
passed to the DM: “If the players are
greedy and grasping, be sure to ‘crock’
them. Interpret the wording exactly, twist
the wording, or simply rule the request is
beyond the power of the magic” (DMG, p.
130).

In a module, a wish ring or scroll is usu-
ally thrown in for some purpose, to cover
some emergency that is likely to have
arisen: to resurrect characters, to transport
the party out of danger, to get a halfling out
of a frog’s belly, or to undo some devastat-
ing event such as a character being turned
into a wight. If PCs can make it through
such encounters without the “disaster”
occurring, perhaps they deserve a free wish
or three.

Naturally, you are free to leave the wish
rings or other wish devices out of the mo-
dule if you think it best. Usually, it will be
best. Nor should you include them in any
adventure you yourself have designed unless
it is for a very good reason. Wishes can be a
serious problem and tax the quick thinking
and ingenuity of the DM like nothing else
in the game. Saying that something is “be-
yond the power of the magic” is a cop-out,
and the players know it. And after being
burned a few times by imprecise wording,
literal interpretations, and so on, players
will learn, unless they are profoundly stu-
pid, to be so careful in the wording of a
wish that no misinterpretation is possible.
The problem is one of free rides and
maintaining game balance. Why can’t a
fighter lord, upon attaining 9th level, wish
for a castle and save years of construction
time and hundreds of thousands of gold
pieces? A “small keep,” at least, can be
obtained by a lucky draw in the (hopefully
rare) deck of many things. Why not by a
wish? In folklore, protagonists are always
getting castles and such things by means of
a wish. Aladdin got a fancy pavilion over-
night, for example. So, aside from risking
the awful vengeance of the powerful god of
Game Balance, why can’t Arrogo the
fighter get at least a small castle just by
wishing for it?

Aside from castles, why can’t PCs obtain
large amounts of ready cash or powerful
magic items by means of a wish? The prob-
lem of wishing for material items or wealth
has never been discussed, so far as I can
discover, in any of the rule books or even in

DRAGON Magazine. I find this surpris-
ing, because I encountered the problem
many times in my “failed game.”
Water always flows downhill, following
the path of least resistance. This can be said
to represent a general law of nature. There-
fore, the magic of a wish will always operate
in the fashion that involves the least expen-
diture of power. The same rule applies, only
more so, to wish-granting creatures like
efreet. Being lazy and usually resentful at
having to grant a wish at all, such creatures
will always get whatever is wished for in the
easiest way possible. Thus, if the wish is for
a second magic item like one the party
already has among them, the wish will
simply transfer the item from one PC to the
other. If the wishing PC is careful to ask for
“another” or “second” item, the first will
vanish and the new one will appear in its
place. An analogy: If you ask for “another
beer” in Germany, the waiter will ask what
is wrong with the first one and, if there was
something wrong with it, why did you drink
it? The idiom is “Still one, please.” Who
knows what the idiom might be in the lan-
guage of the efreet?
Since it is easier to transport an item
already in existence than to make one from
scratch  —and I am assuming the impossi-
bility of creation ex nihilo for anyone but
the more powerful deities  — the item will
have to come from someone’s treasure vault
or off his person. This constitutes theft, and
such an action will endanger the alignment
of a good character.
Players will usually accept in good grace
your desperate efforts to defend Game
Balance against their relentless and inge-
nious assaults if you can give them a con-
vincing reason for something instead of just
resorting to the oft-used (and resented) last
refuge of a scoundrel: “Because I said so
and I’m the DM!”
The more powerful magic items will, of
course, be protected against incursion by
wish-granting creatures and from the power
of wishes in general. The same goes for vast
hoards of wealth. The fabrication of magic
items or coining of money (other than poor
counterfeit or illusion) is beyond the skill of
most if not all wish-granting creatures, so
there you are.
Players may have access to the DMG list
of magic items, but their characters do not.
Therefore, if they’ve never seen an item
before, they won’t even know that such a
thing exists in spite of the fact that their
guardian angels (the players) are drooling at
the mouth for the characters to have one.
But the characters’ knowledge is not the
same as the players’. And if a player does
voice a wish for some item on the DMG
list, the DM can have a lot of fun with
literal interpretations of the name of the
item.
The usual form of such a wish, at least at
first, is something like, “I wish I had a pale
green ioun stone.” A devious efreeti will be
likely to distort the meaning into “I wish I
had (i.e., once had) a pale green ioun
stone.” The subjunctive is dying in the

English language; why should an efreeti
respect it? The “had” is taken to be past
tense. So the character will remember hav-
ing once had such a stone that soon van-
ished, and he did not even know what it was
at the time. Or it appeared in the treasure
vault and the “owner” didn’t even know it
was there. Even if misinterpretation is made
impossible by the wording of the wish, the
efreeti will probably deliver something like a
pale green ioun stone that has been smashed
and is now useless (hence abandoned and
easier to come by) or a burned-out stone
painted pale green. Also note that used-up
or disenchanted magic items are easier to
come by than good ones. The possibilities
are endless. As always, the easiest way to
literally fulfill the wish will be taken.
But what about the castle? This is funda-
mentally nothing but dressed stone ar-
ranged in a meaningful pattern, so it isn’t
necessary to steal anything, and it may be
easier to cut and dress the stone on the spot
than to transport already finished (stolen)
stone.
But do efreet, for example, have stone-
dressing and castle-designing skills? Proba-
bly not. Following the “easiest way out”
rule, any castle obtained by a wish is likely
to be so shoddy and poorly designed and
built as to be virtually useless. Just so long
as it can by any stretch of the imagination
be called a castle  —a toy castle, for exam-
ple  —it fulfills and uses up the wish.
If the character says, “I wish for a pale
green ioun stone,” avoiding the use of
“had,” the efreeti will adopt a nonplussed
expression and finally say, “You wish
WHAT for a pale green ioun stone?” If it is
a wish scroll or ring that is involved, noth-
ing will happen until the character says
something that can be interpreted as an-
swering the efreeti’s question. As likely as
not, the PC will say something such as
“Garbage! It didn’t work!” Somewhere in
the world, a pale green ioun stone is cov-
ered with garbage, and the wish is used up.
Assuming that the PC is not of good
alignment and is therefore unconcerned
with theft as a danger to alignment, and
that he has been to law school, he may
eventually learn to say something like, “I
wish that I now have in my possession, on
my person and not somewhere else or inside
my body, and indefinitely retain the posses-
sion of, subject to my will as to whether to
retain possession, a working pale green ioun
stone that will increase my experience level
in the manner usual for such stones.” So the
ioun stone appears attached to the PC’s rear
end and cannot be removed without getting
rid of it entirely.
And of course entire scenarios can be
built out of incidents wherein some un-
known NPC wishes for something owned by
a character.“Hey, my mirror of life trap-
ping just vanished!”
7. No, you can’t polymorph a hench-
man into Odin. As any DM knows who
has ever handled imaginative players, poly-
morph spells can be a problem. A lot of

time is wasted explaining why “you can’t
reasons why not. You will save yourself a lot
of grief if you thoroughly familiarize your-
do that” and coming up with plausible
self with these spells ahead of time.
To begin with, the Players Handbook
clearly states that a polymorph self spell
does not endow anyone with the hit points
or combat capabilities of the creature poly-
morphed into, just the appearance and rate
of movement. This is not true of shape
change, but even then, there is no increase
in hit points.
As for polymorph other, anyone except
possibly another PC will resent being
changed so much that they will probably
attack the magic-user at once, regardless of
alignments, purposes, other foes present,
and so on. If the NPC or henchman as-
sumes the “personality and mentality” of
the creature, he may just wander off never
to be seen again or, depending on intelli-
gence, attack the magic-user.
But sometimes another PC with a high
constitution score will volunteer to be poly-
morphed, and here we have a problem.
Suppose the PC is polymorphed into a gold
dragon, an ancient one specified. All gold
dragons can use spells, right? Of course, no
change can take place unless the PC has an
intelligence of 17 or above (minimum for a
gold dragon), but suppose he does? All of a
sudden, you have a new, more powerful
spell caster in the game!
But, just because all gold dragons can
cast spells doesn’t mean that this particular
de novo gold dragon has ever had the
chance to learn any spells. It could have
done so if it had ever had the chance, but it
hasn’t, being newborn on the instant.
Assuming that the PC polymorphed has
an intelligence of 17 and is 9th level, there
is still a 30% chance, to be checked daily,
that he will take on the personality and
mentality of a gold dragon; that is, suppose
himself to in fact be a gold dragon.
If this happens, the PC will become an
NPC monster under the control of the DM.
It will almost certainly take off for more
congenial haunts and be out of the cam-
paign for good. Once this possibility is
explained, the PC may very well feel that
the risk is too great.

8. Be careful playing with fireballs.
It is the magic-user who should be careful. In
my days of naive inexperience, the fireballs
in my campaign flew thick and fast at the
slightest provocation, and many, many
monsters were baked. What you have to
remember is that a fireball is a sphere 40’
in diameter and that “the burst will gener-
ally conform to the shape of the area in
which it occurs, thus covering an area equal
to its normal spherical volume.”
The volume of a 40’-diameter sphere is
more than 33,520 cubic feet. That’s about
33½ 10' sections of a corridor 10' wide and
10’ high, the standard dungeon corridor.
Yes, that’s right: 335’ of corridor. If the
magic-user casts the spell from as far as
165’ away, he and anyone standing there

with him is going to suffer the full effects of
With the ceiling at only 10', a fireball
will fill a room 50’ x 60’) with fire shooting
the fireball.
out the doors for an additional 3,510 cubic
feet. With a 20’ ceiling, the room can be as
small as 40’ x 40’, with only 1,510 cubic
feet gushing out the doors.
You don’t need to mention any of this to
the players ahead of time (ah, but they
know it now, don’t they?), but a fireball will
have its maximum effect if it is cast as a
hemisphere against a flat surface rather
than as a sphere centered 20’ off the
ground. The radius of such a hemisphere
will be approximately 25’ rather than 20’)
and the fireball will cover an area of 1,995
square feet.
Otherwise, a circular cross-section across
the center of a fireball will have an area of
1,257 square feet, but it will only loom
above the heads of those at its edges. At a
point 6’ off the floor, the diameter (not
radius) is 28.6’ with a cross-sectional area
of 641 square feet. Assuming a mob scene
with nine man-sized creatures per 10’ x 10’
area within the area of effect of the fireball,
a hemispherical fireball will affect 179 crea-
tures. A spherical one can affect 113 in the
central cross-section, but only 65 who are at
least 7’ tall, 58 who are 6’ tall, and only 49
who are around 5’ tall.
Of course, the magic-user may have a
ring of fire resistance, or some other device
that duplicates its effects, and may choose to
take his chances with being engulfed by his
own fireball. The magic-user will usually
survive in such a case, albeit with singed
eyebrows, and there is no reason that you
should discourage such heroics.

9. Be reasonable in awarding experience points.
Aside from judgmental factors
(“If you think I’m going to award experi-
ence points for that. . . .”), the DM should
most assuredly use the “equivalent hit dice”
system explained on p. 84 of the DMG.
This is the most effective brake I know to
the problem of overly rapid advancement in
experience levels, aside from such extra-
legal measures as awarding experience
points for monsters only and not for trea-
sure. The equivalent hit dice (EHD) system
doesn’t make much difference at lower
levels and is probably safely ignored at that
point, but, around 4th level, it becomes
wise to use it. Around 8th or 9th level, it
becomes vital to use it!
What you do in this system is to take the
hit dice —the equivalent hit dice — of the
monster(s) and divide this figure by the
total levels of the PCs. If the resulting figure
is less than one, you multiply it by the
normal experience point award. Equivalent
Hit Dice are a real pain to figure out in
each and every case, and I think EHD
figures should have been listed along with
the monster descriptions in the three books,
or in the DMG, just as experience point
awards are listed. Until such a boon occurs,
you will have to figure it out yourself. The
EHD figure for a certain monster is found

as follows: “. . .each hit die balances 1
experience level, counting each special
ability and each exceptional ability as an
additional hit die, and also counting any hit
point plus as an additional hit die.” So an
orc with 1 HD also has just 1 EHD, but a
10 HD ghost has 16 EHD. The extra six
come from special and exceptional abilities,
as outlined on p. 85 of the DMG; in this
case, armor class 0, age 10 years and panic,
age 10-40 years by touch, magic jar ability,
ethereal versus weapons and spells, and
high intelligence.
What this means in practical terms is that
a 9th-level fighter who trashes a 6 hp orc in
single combat does not get 16 xp for it. The
fighter gets 16 x l/9, or, rounded off, 2 xp.
The same factor can be applied to any
treasure the monster was carrying or guard-
ing. So, if the orc was wearing a 200 gp
necklace, the xp award is not 200, but 22.
If you really want to get nasty, you can
apply the EHD system to the PCs and
assign them extra“levels” (for EHD-factor
purposes) for armor class 0 or better, missile
use, intelligence, and so on, not forgetting
another level thrown in for anyone with a
constitution bonus to hit points.
This system can be a lot of trouble and,
from what I can tell, is not much used. But
it should be used, even if you have to invest
in a pocket calculator, if you want to slow
down lightning-like advancement to super-
high levels. If you have the time (and it is
time-consuming), you can go through the
three monster books and write down the
EHD for each monster ahead of time.
And, of course, you must always feel free
to use your own judgment in awarding
experience points. One 7th-level magic-user
wiping out 50 orcs with a fireball gets full
xp under the EHD system, but, considering
how much trouble she went to and how
much danger she was in, she should proba-
bly not get the full value.
Also note that, when PCs cause a horde
of monsters to “flee in panic” — or when
clerics turn undead— all they should get
out of it is their hides saved, not experience
points. According to the rule books, the
monsters have to be killed or captured
before any xp can be awarded. In the case
of clerics turning undead, this rule makes
particular sense. Otherwise, a cleric could
rack up enough xp for the next level just by
standing in one spot and repeatedly turning
the same zombie until his arm got tired
from holding up the holy symbol.
If you want to say that the DMG super-
sedes the PH —which it does, in any case
of contradiction —and take into account
the fact that the DMG makes no mention of
“capture”as a legitimate means of gaining
xp, then the monsters have to be killed.
Unfortunately, this makes for a certain
amount of bloodthirstiness. Insofar as possi-
ble, a PC’s actions should ever be motivated
by game mechanics.
With regard to gaining levels, please read
page 86 of the DMG and take note of the
fact that advancement costs money. Experi-
ence points alone are not enough. If the

DM thinks your performance was lousy, it
could be that experience points and money
will not be enough.
A thief may need only 1,251 xp to qualify
for second level, but she also needs 1,500
gold pieces. If xp are awarded for gp on a
one-for-one basis, this means in practical
terms that the thief needs at least 1,500 xp
to advance! (Editor’s note: See “Train while
you gain” in DRAGON issue #97 for a
suggested new way of dealing with training
costs between levels.)
10. Go easy on the poor deities. When
the campaign has been going on so long
that the players are around 15th level and
are loaded down with dozens of magical
devices, forgotten artifacts rotting away in
some corner of their treasure vaults, you
may be tempted to allow them to take on
some of the minor deities from the Outer
Plaes  —on the Outer Planes. This results
in absurd scenarios such as the one men-
tioned in DRAGON Magazine a few
months ago where PCs wiped out Thor with
a push spell.
Attacking deities is ridiculous on the face
of it, as the DEITIES & DEMIGODS™
Cyclopedia (now titled Legends & Lore)
clearly states. How do you suppose the idea
ever got started that it was even possible for
a party, however powerful, to do such a
thing? Couldn’t have anything to do with
Lolth, the Queen of the Demonweb Pits,
could it?

If you use that particular module (Q1),
which forms the logical climax of a series of
other modules, my own recommendation is
that Lolth should be allowed to escape, even
if she has to teleport out. Even if you allow
her to be slain, you should make it clear
that she wasn’t really much of a deity, but
just sort of a super-demon. Just because you
can kill Lolth doesn’t mean you can trash
Kurtulmak, much less Odin.
What about awe power? Well, unfortu-
nately, anyone over 12th level is not affected
by the awe power of any deity. What about
the powerful abilities of the divine beings,
such as the 90 ‘-range geas or quest with no
saving throw? But the PCs have at least a
scroll of protection from magic to protect
them from that, if not a cube of force. If our
friend Arrogo is totally protected from
magic and if the deity in question doesn’t
do an enormous amount of damage per
attack, that single fighter can snuff the head
of a pantheon (400 hp) in eight rounds.
The most important rule should be that
the deity will always teleport out to avoid
being killed, if defeat or death is otherwise
inevitable. If the deity does so, it (i.e., you)
should not be provoked into a return ap-
pearance by cries of “Chicken!”
The best thing you can do if you insist on
letting the PCs fight deities is to make a few
logical rules of your own, even though the
players may want to challenge these rules
because they aren’t in the rule books. For
example, you can say that a cube of force or
a scroll of protection from magic is useless
against the powers of a deity. Definitely
insist that no deity can be affected by the
special properties of something like a sword
of life stealing or a vorpal sword. (“I did it!
I rolled a 20! I cut off Odin’s head!“)
11. Beware the many-headed hydra.
You may under some circumstances be
tempted to let players have more than one
character in the game at the same time, on
the same adventure. This is not a good
idea, for several reasons. In the first place,
the AD&D game is supposed to be a role-
playing game. Unless the player is Alec
Guinness or Peter Sellers, he is not going to
be able to play several roles simultaneously.
One character will get role-played and the
others will become no more than shadow
figures, henchmen who are under the con-
trol of the predominant character.
Another reason to disallow such multiple
personalities is that, when the prime charac-
ter of a player reaches a high level, so will
his secondary characters, and the individual
player will be a one-person SWAT team.
Get a couple of these together and it’s
“Look out, Valhalla!”
You must insist that the extra characters a
player may run be henchmen. This status
will hold down their experience levels, if
only because they get half experience points
for everything, and you will not have a
hydra on your hands. Also remember that
henchmen are NPCs and are thus ulti-
mately under your control, not the player’s.
Yet another reason to disallow a game

with only one or two players with multiple
characters is that you’re missing one of the
best parts of the game  — the multiple inter-
actions among players.
The best thing to do in this situation,
where you have something like two or three
players, is to tailor the adventures to them,
not to a party of six or eight. You can still
use the modules if you want to, but they
will have to be somewhat overhauled to suit
a party of 25% normal size.
12. Avoid an adversary relationship
with your players. In view of all the advice
given so far, it may seem as if an adversary
relationship with the players is inevitable.
They will be using every sneaky technique
they can think of to throw anvils on their
side of the scale of game balance, and it’s
your job to prevent that.
It would be a wonderful world if players
were so conscientious and so willing to risk
their characters for the sake of a good time
that they never looked at the Dungeon
Masters Guide, the modules, or even
“Dungeon Master advice” articles (such as
this one) in magazines. It would even be
nicer if they did not look up monsters in the
Monster Manual, FIEND FOLIO® Tome,
and Monster Manual II whenever they
confronted them. Maybe you can forbid this
sort of activity during the playing of an
adventure, but you can’t control what
players do on their own time. And never
underestimate the ingenuity of players. I
once had a player justify looking in the
Monster Manual during play by saying that
his character carried around a bestiary in
his backpack!
Also, of course, things tend toward an
adversary relationship just because you are
playing the roles of all the monsters. But
you should nevertheless avoid such a rela-
tionship if you can. Unless you rule with an
iron hand, it makes for a lot of time-wasting
arguments. Make it clear, if you can, that
your objective in being such a heartless
taskmaster is to show them a good time!
And that should be your objective. If your
players are reasonably mature, mentally
and emotionally, they should be able to
realize that getting too much too soon ruins
the game for everyone.
If you start killing off characters more or
less arbitrarily or sending the party through
60% -fatality dungeons, the players are
going to get pretty feisty (and clever) just in
order to survive. A certain amount of inge-
nuity is fine; it is altogether desirable.
Much of the fun of the game is seeing how
players can come up with something really
clever to get out of a tight spot. But this
ingenuity should not have to extend to
memorizing the rule books so they can catch
you when you make a mistake or alter the
rules in some fashion for a good reason.
In case it needs to be said . . .
Oh, yes. There is one point, a 13th rule
of thumb, that I will decline to elaborate
upon. It is simply this: Do not allow ther-
monuclear devices.