A paladin swears to live by a code—to uphold the law, protect the innocent, and destroy evil. We must be paragons of virtue and, by example, inspire righteousness in those around us.
But that is not to say we cannot enjoy a few drinks with friends. I was tippling with a chosen few when a stranger approached us. He told us he had just been elected mayor and wished to serve a rare dwarven ale at his inauguration. When none could be found, he hired a merchant to ship the cask to town—but the merchant was due two days ago and had presumably been waylaid by monsters.
At this, I stood and addressed him. “Never fear, sir. I swear to you: If your man still lives, I will find him and bring him to safety. If he has been killed, I will hunt the beasts that committed the evil act and smite them.”
The man waved his hand in the air between us. “If you bring back the merchant, that’s all well and good,” he said. “Just go and recover that cask of dwarven ale before some kobold drinks it.”
John had a pile of equipment with him at the table—a respectable hoard of gaming accessories including a hand-carved wooden curio box full of dice, a pile of miniature figurines, and a bag I suspect contained a battle mat and dry-erase pens. He stopped the action to ask if they’d be needed.
“We’re gonna have several encounters where we might do some fighting,” Willi told us. “Some of the simpler ones, I’m gonna do the ‘theater of the mind’s eye’ thing. I’ll describe things, and you’ll tell me what you’re doing. We’ll worry about exact distances or things like that if they become real necessary. If we start doing something that’s really complicated, we’ll throw out a battle mat, but for the most part we won’t really worry about the details so much; we’ll just get into the story of what we’re doing.”
We walked north from town for an entire day and saw no tracks or signs of the missing merchant. Finally, as we entered a small valley, we spotted an abandoned, broken wagon in the distance, next to a large brown-colored mound.
Fargrim, the dwarf, hefted his axe and trotted toward the cart. “I’m going to see if I can find a barrel,” he rumbled. I joined him, and Zarlasa the wizard followed a few feet behind.
“As you approach, you see the wagon is tilted to one side because one of the wheels has come off,” Willi said. “The mound in front is actually a dead horse, and there’s no barrels in obvious view. As you’re looking and poking around a little bit, three red bugs about yea long”—at this, he held up his hands about a foot apart—“with lots and lots of little legs, come scurrying out from under and inside the horse, and head toward the three of you.”
Daniel chuckled. His warlord, Graben, had stayed behind with Angela’s fighter, Nordik, and Dallas’s rogue, Petrim. “Sucks for you guys,” he said.
Willi checked the play-test rules and continued. “As they come out from under cover, please make a Wisdom [roll] for me, to see if you’re surprised.”
John picked a d20 from the bottom half of his dice box and rolled it into the empty top—19. Mike rolled a 16.
I picked up a black d20, a nice one with sharp corners and bright red numbers, and let it tumble from my hand to the table. It came up 1. Eilora wasn’t simply surprised, she was stunned.
I’m at a loss to explain it, but I have pathetic luck when I’m not playing Weslocke. In half a dozen recent games across four time zones and two continents, I’ve rolled so poorly it’s like I’m playing with a set of weighted dice. The logical part of my brain knows that I’m only remembering my failures and that if I recorded every roll I made at every game, I’d see a perfectly random distribution. But the superstitious gamer knows Lady Luck is out to get me. Maybe I’m being haunted by a yugoloth, a corruptor of fate—a fiend for hire native to the plane of Gehenna that brings bad luck and enjoys causing suffering.4
In any case, getting surprised by giant centipedes turned out to be no real problem. Mike and I dispatched them in a couple of rounds; as low-level monsters, they only had 2 hit points, and a single blow was enough to squash them dead. Of course, as low-level adventurers, we didn’t have many more hit points ourselves. Eilora began the game with 13, so caution was warranted.
Looking around the valley, we could see trails leading to a dozen different caves. I was ready to charge into the nearest. But Zarlasa’s keen elven eyes spotted a torn scrap of lace near the mouth of a different cavern—a frippery that might have been torn from the sleeve of a wealthy merchant. So we climbed up the hillside and entered.
The cavern was little more than a shallow hole extending twenty feet into the earth. But at the back of the cave there was a stout oak door, reinforced with rusty iron. Several skulls hung from nails in the door panel, above a message that read, COME IN—WE’D LIKE TO HAVE YOU FOR SUPPER!
Petrim the rogue checked the door for traps and found nothing. So Nordik did what fighters do best: smash something. Throwing his shoulder into the door, he broke it into pieces. Chunks of oak and iron clattered onto the floor and down the tunnel on the other side. The sound echoed deep into the cavern.
“Outstanding,” Zarlasa muttered. “I bet no one knows we’re coming.”
The fifth edition simplifies and rationalizes D&D in key ways. Breaking down a door is a great example: When Angela wanted to throw her weight around, Willi asked for her strength score—and figured it was high enough to get the job done. “The idea is if you are not rushed, and there’s really no danger, we simply look at it and say anyone with a strength of fifteen or above can open it,” Willi said. “If you are being chased by a horde of goblins and it’s important to get in the door in a rush, then I might make you roll. But generally, it’s the DM’s prerogative.”
Compare that to the 3.5 edition rules, which are rather more complicated. First, the player may attempt to smash the door open with a Strength check. They roll a d20 and add their strength bonus. Then the DM checks a table5 that lists different kinds of doors (simple wooden, good wooden, strong wooden, stone, iron, wooden portcullis, iron portcullis) and determines the door’s breaking point. If the player scored higher than that number, they’re through. If not, they’ve got a long way to go. Next, the DM figures out the door’s armor class (10, plus a modifier based on its size, and minus 2 because it’s an inanimate object). Then the player has to fight the door like it’s an opposing monster. They attack, and if the attack roll is higher than the door’s AC, they do damage—but not before the DM goes back to his tables and figures out the door’s hardness. Hardness reduces damage, so if you hit for 9 points of damage against a stone door with a hardness of 8, you really only do 1 point of damage . . . and at that rate, you’ll have to hit the door another sixty times before you eventually smash the thing to pieces. Or, more likely, you toss the stupid rule book under the couch and go play video games instead.
* * *
The inside of the cave was dark but not empty. “You hear something marching down the hall,” Willi said. “It sounds like boots in cadence.” We rolled for initiative, and I got to act first.
“I’m charging in,” I announced, “and as I enter, I’m yelling, ‘Return your stolen goods, brigands!’ ” It may be the worst battle cry ever uttered, but at least it was in character. Paladins are often played as uptight and humorless, and Eilora isn’t that bright.
As I plunged into the darkness, our enemies stepped around the corner, and Willi described them: four tall, muscular creatures that looked like men, but with red-brown skin covered in coarse hair, and massive yellow canine teeth. Hobgoblins.
I was unable to get close enough to strike before one of them raised a crossbow and fired it. Willi rolled the dice. “His heavy crossbow pierces you for ten points of damage,” he said. I groaned so loudly, it attracted the attention of gamers at nearby tables. Five steps into the actual dungeon, and I was already down to my last 3 hit points.
A second hobgoblin took a shot. I held my breath. Willi rolled his dice and gave me a tiny smile. “That hits armor class twelve.” Not enough. “The bolt shatters on the wall behind you.
”
My fearless example inspired a few of my bolder companions to action. Fargrim charged, and with a bone-crunching thud he introduced one of the hobgoblins to his hammer. Graben followed with his axe but couldn’t connect with a hit. The rest of the party dragged their feet at the cave entrance, leaving the three of us to soak up the damage. Cowards.
There were two hobgoblins left, both carrying heavy spiked clubs. Neither of them cared for my war cry, and they expressed their displeasure by attempting to crush my skull. If I took one more hit, I was finished. I held my breath, and Willi rolled two misses.
That put us back at the top of the initiative, so it was my turn again. Perhaps it was time for an honorable withdrawal. “I want to get over to our cleric for healing,” I said. “So I’m gonna fight my way out. Is there a hobgoblin between me and Fargrim?”
“There is, and he just tried to hit you in the face.”
“Then I’ll attack.” I rolled a 16.
“He runs up, attempts to hit you, and you thrust your sword right through his chest, taking him out of the fray.”
That was more like it. Fargrim continued the bloodletting, and we had two hobgoblins down. Then Petrim finally made an attack. “I’m gonna move in and stab one in the gut,” Dallas said. He rolled a 10.
“His gut seems to be well armored, and your blade skitters off it.”
“Crap.”
The foul beasts may have lacked moral fiber, but they didn’t want for courage. The larger of the two dropped his crossbow, hefted a club, and charged—straight into Nordik’s sword.
Only one enemy was still standing. Nordik, Fargrim, and I surrounded him, and he growled and bared his teeth. I pointed my blade at his chest and fixed him with an icy glare. “Submit, evildoer,” I commanded. “Or face your final justice.”
The hobgoblin dropped his mace.
Our new prisoner saved the party a whole lot of trouble. Once we bound his hands and threatened him, he told us he didn’t know where the ale was, but that four humans were taken captive when it was stolen, and they were locked up not too far into the cave. He led us to their cell, where we easily dispatched a few hobgoblins and rescued the merchant, his wife, and their apparently overpaid guards.
We were hired to recover the booze, not people. But a paladin values human life over material things—and the merchant offered to pay us more than the mayor if we forgot about the ale and escorted him back to town.
So we hightailed it home. Our first mission in fifth-edition D&D was officially a failure, but nobody seemed to mind.
* * *
The following day, I returned to the conference hall for a seminar discussing fifth-edition rules and character design. Several Wizards of the Coast designers sat on a flimsy stage and answered questions from a few dozen fans about paladins and warlords and rogues.
I was only half listening when I noticed Mike Mearls sitting alone at a table in the play-test area. He was reading a piece of paper, and I watched as he studied it. After a few minutes, he put it aside, reached into a cardboard box on the table, and pulled out another paper. He was reading play-test documents, short surveys each player completed after their trip to the Caves of Chaos. He looked fascinated.
After a decade writing about businesses for a living, I’m fairly cynical. When Wizards of the Coast announced the fifth edition, they put “listening to the needs of the D&D community” up front and center—and I knew it was hype. Disaffected players had become a market liability, so Wizards needed to make them feel engaged. Play tests and customer surveys were, at some level, set decoration.
But watching Mike Mearls pore over those surveys, I knew they mattered to him—and even though the play tests may solve a marketing problem, they’ll also help shape the game. Guys like Mearls are part of the tribe; they grew up playing D&D, and the game means more to them than just some job. They want to do right by the community.
The first time I met Mearls, he talked about the responsibility he feels as a steward of D&D’s direction. “When you are in this position, you are affecting people’s lives,” he said. “It’s entertainment, so it’s not like healing the sick. But it’s something that’s really important to fans.
“We’re the caretaker of something people have put passion and energy into. You know, they could just sit and watch TV or do something passive, but they choose not to, they choose to be engaged. And the game is filling something in their lives that they can’t get somewhere else.”
* * *
1. “Lesser God (Lawful Good): Delleb, an old man clutching a white book, cares only for the accumulation of knowledge . . . his clerics quote from book after book of scriptures, but the libraries in a temple of Delleb have books on all topics, not just religious matters.” The Complete Divine, page 122.
2. “When this spell is cast, the magic-user causes an opaque sphere of force to come into being around his or her person . . . The tiny hut will withstand winds up to 50 m.p.h. [but] in no way will Leomund’s Tiny Hut provide protection from missiles, weapons, spells, and the like.” Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook, page 74.
3. Even though we call the current edition of D&D “4.0,” there have been many more major revisions: Original, Basic, Advanced, Advanced Second Edition, 3.0, 3.5, 4.0.
4. “A corpulent creature with sickly yellow skin [that] wears black studded leather armor. It is armed with a short sword and shortbow. As it attacks, a smell of brimstone emanates from its body and the faint sound of rolling dice can be heard.” Monster Manual IV, page 190.
5. “Table 3-10: Doors,” Dungeon Masters Guide, page 61.
15
THE SONG OF MARV AND HARRY
On my final night at the D&D Experience, I had a ticket to play another game—an old AD&D module, Dwellers of the Forbidden City. It’s a tournament game, first run at the Origins Game Fair in 1980; author Zeb Cook earned his TSR hire in part due to the strength of the adventure. The final module, published in 1981, is considered a classic.
I skipped it. Instead, I hit the convention center snack machine and stocked up on Mountain Dew and candy. I went back to my hotel room, plopped on the couch, and pushed everything off the tiny coffee table. Then I laid out two mechanical pencils, a highlighter, and an unused leather-bound graph-paper notebook I’d been carrying around for months.
I cracked the spine, skipped a few pages in, and sketched a map: a deep valley, a forest, and a tower at the edge of the tree line. This would be the home of Mad Marv, a powerful wizard who would serve as the antagonist for a new D&D campaign—my D&D campaign, the one I’d run for my friends using fifth-edition rules. My first campaign, my first serious attempt at being a Dungeon Master, the apex of my art. It was time. I was ready.
I flipped the page and wrote “TOWER MAP” across the top line, and then “FLOOR ONE” below. An attempt to sketch a circle freehand failed miserably, so I jumped from the tatty hotel couch and ransacked the room looking for something to trace. A plastic coffee cup lid and an empty can of salt-and-vinegar Pringles were too big and too small, but the water glass from the bathroom was just the right size: precisely seventeen graph-paper squares across, or at five-foot scale, a tower eighty-five feet in diameter.
With the external walls in place, I erased a bit to open up the bottom of the circle and closed it with a straight horizontal line, three squares long. I erased the line’s center and drew in a rectangle, and then bisected that with another line—map code for double doors, each seven and a half feet wide.
The first floor should be majestic, I figured. Anyone who entered needed to know they were facing someone powerful, not just a random encounter. So I drew a solid horizontal line across the map a few squares above center, creating a grand hall forty feet deep. Another wavy line just below that indicated a tapestry—perhaps this would depict some allegorical scene, a way to reward observant adventurers with information about the perils that lay ahead. On either end of the tapestry I drew a circle with a star in it, the symbol for a statue. Ma
ybe they were previous “guests,” turned to stone by the mad wizard?
Behind the wall, I sketched in a tiny guardroom, two squares by three, and a storeroom with a locked door. Inside that, a rectangle marked with a letter C, to indicate a locked chest: treasure, perhaps . . . or better yet, a trap. A box full of poisoned darts ready to pincushion a careless thief.
Steps led to the second floor: a lounge area, with couches and tables; a small study; and a few hidden passages, so servants could pop in and out unnoticed. On the third floor, guest rooms and kitchens. I hesitated, worried that it might be dumb to put the kitchens aboveground, and then left it.
The fourth floor started as more bedrooms, but then I had an idea. Marv built this tower before he was Mad—sure, he intended to host guests and live like a noble, but as his power grew he became alienated from society and increasingly obsessed with his studies. I imagined consecutive floors in disarray, expensive furniture piled up haphazardly to make room for inscrutable experiments.
Or maybe one big experiment? What if Marv became obsessed with astronomy, and at some point he’d gone through the tower and hacked holes in each floor with an axe, creating a multistory space where he could hang a Foucault pendulum, an apparatus that demonstrates Earth’s rotation?
I flipped back through the notebook and carefully erased the same spot on each floor of the tower. I got on the Internet, studied Foucault’s design, and calculated how much room a pendulum would require to swing freely if it hung on an eighty-four-foot cable.1 Then, on each level of the map, I drew a hole just big enough to fit the width of the pendulum’s swing—14.9 feet at the second floor, 12.8 feet at the third, and so on.
* * *
Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and The People Who Page 21