Lawrence Schick
and Tom Moldvay
| - | - | Possible Inceptions for Future Giants in the Earth | - | - |
| 1st Edition AD&D | - | Dragon magazine | - | The Dragon #37 |
(Editor's preface: The "Giants in The Earth" article printed
below is obviously not of the usual type. It is, instead, the authors'
description of the rationale behind their system of tabulating extraordinary
abilities for the GITE Heroes.
The manuscript grew out of a letter to the editor submitted by
Tom Moldvay to The Dragon shortly
after the appearance of a letter
concerning that subject. It has been amended by the authors to
include much more explanatory material, and at the end is a list
of
possible future characters to depict in the GITE feature. Readers
are
invited to express preferences for any of these or any other famous
heroes by writing to The Dragon.)
Lawrence Schick
and Tom Moldvay
To answer Craig Stenseth's question concerning Giants in the <link>
Earth from The Dragon #30, exceptional
percentages for 18's, for
all other abilities than strength, are given mainly for comparison
purposes. They are not standard D&D or AD&D.
They might, however,
be useful to DMs who run a local D&D variant which differentiates
between levels of 18 for all abilities
As far as writing up the characters from Tolkien's
Ring Trilogy,
we would love to try our hand at them. Unfortunately, the Tolkien
estate is known to be fanatically PARANOID about the slightest possible
infringement of rights (whether real or imagined). We were also
unwilling to attempt them because 90% of the Tolkien fans would be
unhappy with the results, regardless of what they were. In the end,
we decided it was simply too much hassle to write up Tolkien
characters.
We are, however, willing to attempt any specific characters
which The Dragon readers would like done,
provided we can find
the manuscript the characters appear in, and as long as the author
or
author's estate is willing..
We would also like to clarify some problems raised by comments
in the Sorcerer's Scroll in The
Dragon #30. Concerning Cugel's
wisdom rating, we wrote Cugel's statistics before the publication of
the Dungeon Masters Guide.
At the time, we weren?t entirely sure
what "Wisdom" implied. The word
has several possible meanings.
We decided to take Wisdom to mean inspiration, i.e. that force in
each individual which responds to the "god within," and which
serves to funnel godly power through a <Priest>.
We considered that
Wisdom, as defined as common sense, had little to do with clerical
abilities. We felt that Cugel was above average in inspiration, but
abysmally lacking in common sense.
As defined in the Dungeon Masters Guide, wisdom
?subsumes
the categories of willpower, judgment, wile, enlightenment, and
intuitiveness.? With the above definition in mind, we would recommend
lowering Cugel?s wisdom rating to 8.
The 2nd point raised in the Sorcerer's Scroll is more difficult <link>
to answer. Exactly how powerful is a heroic, lejendary character?
Some mythological heroes rank as demi-gods (Heracles,
Gilgamesh,
and Gwydion, for example). In particular, Gary
Gygax felt
that Kane was too powerful and advocated a reduction
in levels.
A case could be argued that we made Kane too weak. Kane has
lived for several thousands of years. It would not be unreasonable
to
assign him 50 times the experience a character would acquire in a
normal lifetime. Such experience could run to 100 million experience
points or more. Kane, as described in the article, need have
acquired only 12 million experience points in AD&D or 5 million
experience points in AD&D. If we carried out his experience
to the
admittedly absurd logical conclusion, Kane would indeed be unbeatable.
Experience points aside, a heroic character must fit into the play
balance. Few things are more frustrating to players than an encounter
where the ?monster? cannot be defeated, avoided, tricked, or in
some way placated when hostile. In our character descriptions, we
usually try to give possible ?outs? to the party if brute force is
inadvisable. We also believe that any DM is qualified to modify the
heroes to fit his particular campaign, using the guidelines in our
character descriptions.
The heart of the problem of play balance and heroic ?toughness
? is the difference between the AD&D and D&D
experience
tables. A character who has earned enough experience points to
rank as a 30th-level Magic-User in D&D would, with the same
amount of experience points, rank as only a 15th-level Magic-User
in AD&D. The other professional experience tables show similar
discrepancies. In effect, the modified experience tables insure fewer
high-level characters in AD&D than in D&D, with
such characters
being generally lower in level than their D&D counterparts.
When Gary Gygax warns readers about the generally overly high
rating of the heroes in Giants in the Earth, he is (we believe) speaking
from a strict AD&D viewpoint. We would certainly agree that
any
DM running an AD&D high-level campaign should use the heroes
in
the series with caution, and lower the experience levels if the DM
judges the dungeon party too weak to encounter the hero as printed.
The origin of Giants in the Earth goes back to a series of highlevel
adventures run in the Kent-Akron (Ohio) area before any of the
AD&D books were on the market. We needed to fill a gap between
the tougher monsters and the gods. Most of the players were raised
on fantasy and science fiction, so heroes from literature seemed an
ideal answer. At that time, of necessity, all player characters used
the
D&D experience tables. It was not unusual for a player character
to
be 20th level or higher.
The ten heroes we first submitted to The Dragon drew heavily
on
our experience from high-level D&D campaigns. These heroes
have
set the standard for the continuing series, since we prefer the heroes
to be compatible with one another.
We usually try to compromise between D&D and AD&D, and
hopefully we reach a median useful to all players. Still, a DM is
advised to use discretion before including heroes from literature in
any particular campaign. Furthermore, DMs should feel free to make
any and all changes they feel necessary to fit heroes into their
distinctive campaign, or to bring the heroes closer to the DM?s
opinion of any character gained from reading the literature.
As an aid to DMs, we have included the following table as a
guideline to the different degrees of ?high-level? in both D&D
and
AD&D. Again, we caution that the table reflects only our
opinion,
and is not ?official? for either D&D or AD&D.
| AD&D Level | D&D Level | Approximate Guideline |
| 21+ | 40+ | Equivalent to demi-god status, usually
only for a character with a magically extended life, often one who deals intimately with the gods. |
| 17-20 | 30-39 | The maximum an exceptional character
would usually obtain in a single lifetime. |
| 13-16 | 20-29 | Average for a character of heroic proportions. |
| 9-12 | 10-19 | The normal minimum for any hero. The
range usually referred to as ?mid-level.? |
| 1-4 | 1-4 | Cannon fodder in most high-level campaigns.
The range usually referred to as ?low-level. ? |
Possible Suggestions for Future Giants in
the Earth
D'Artagnan & The Three Muskateers (Alexandre Dumas)
Jirel of Joiry (C. L. Moore)
Kickaha & Anana (Philip Jose Farmer)
Modesty Blaise & Willie Garvin (Peter O?Donnell)
Kardios (Manly Wade Wellman)
Vazkor (Tanith Lee)
Oscar Gordon (Robert A. Heinlein)
Jorian (L. Sprague de Camp)
Ryre (J. Ramsey Campbell)
Taran (Lloyd Alexander)
Lessingham (E.R. Eddison)
Vanye and Morgaine (C.J.Cheryh)
Corum, etc. (Michael Moorcock)
Valeria, etc. (Robert E. Howard)
Elak (Henry Kuttner)
Skafloc (Poul Anderson)
Prince Valiant (Hal Foster)
Tiger (Ron L. Hubbard)
Sir Geros Lahvoheetos (Robert Adams)
Dracula (Bram Stoker)
Abdul Alhazred (H.P. Lovecraft)
Prospero (John Bellairs)
The above list is in no way exhaustive, representing suggestions
?off the top of our heads.? A little research (such as sitting down
and
taking a close look at our paperback libraries) would undoubtedly
reveal dozens of more possibilities.