I had a funny title for this post but I forgot it

So, as promised, here's Hollow World.



Unlike the red box, this is a complete copy. The box is in fair-to-good condition. Upon removing the shrinkwrap I found the top corners to be ripped, but otherwise it's far better than the red box's bottom-of-the-bookpile-chic look.




The rulebooks, on the other hand, were fucking PRISTINE. I'm not entirely convinced this set was ever actually used, though the condition of the box tells me it must have been. I was in genuine awe--I handled these things with a care approaching reverence.




The maps were also in good shape, though they showed some basic wear and tear on the folds. They're nicely-done--I had to fight the urge to put them up on my walls! And the cat's endless fascination with all things D&D continues. I knew I should have named her "DM Kitteh".

D&D Basic didn't have too much in the way of campaign settings--certainly not the plethora offered with AD&D. Most of those it did have were set in Mystara, a campaign world which got sort of lost in the shuffle and failed to outlive D&D Basic itself.

Hollow World is one of those settings. The basic concept is that the world of Mystara turned out to be--guess what?--hollow. The problem of gravity IS explained, but this should still mean the planet wouldn't have a magnetic field, or plate tectonics, or...

*WHAM* *WHAM* *WHAM* Sorry, I just realized I was trying to inject hard science into Dungeons & Dragons so I had to go slam my head against the wall as punishment. Not getting a square peg in that round hole, not even with a lathe.

Anyway, a bunch of Immortals (i.e. deities--Mystara's gods are nearly all mortals who reached one form of apotheosis or another), led by the superintelligent turtleneck-wearing dinosaur Ka the Preserver, hit upon the idea of terraforming the world's interior and using it as a nature preserve of sorts. Over time, they also started adding communities of dying civilizations, magically inhibiting them--using the "Spell of Preservation", which I came to think of as "the Tupperware spell"--so as to make them more or less culturally static (and provide justification for the planet of hats phenomenon, for once). They can still fight and enslave one another, but they can't be assimilated or wiped out. That's where the PCs come in--probably through the huge-ass holes at the planet's poles (and I just know some pussy indie-rock band will be swiping that for an album title).

My main gripe with Hollow World is that it tries way too hard to stay 1:1 with real-world ancient history. Damn near every culture described in the DM's Sourcebook is an expy of some ancient Earth civilization--Azcans (Aztecs), Nithians (ancient Egypt), Oltecs (Mayans), Beastmen (Inuit), etc., plus dinosaurs. Because everything's better with dinosaurs, right? (PROTIP: yes) They've usually been changed around a little--to introduce a little more gender equality or to create some obvious campaign antagonists; the Azcans, for example, are so incredibly evil I'm amazed nobody complained. Personally I play D&D to "experience" stuff I can't see on the History Channel. This setting is weird even by D&D standards (it's lit by an artificial sun that never goes down and the horizon curves up, for Stickly's sake)--if they'd taken that weirdness and run with it I would've been much happier.

Unlike the red box, this set is almost all fluff. I'd heard it was renowned for its completeness (that's why I sought it out) and I can see why. The level of detail on each culture in the DM's Sourcebook is nigh overwhelming, and there are a lot of them. Sure, they're not all winners, but even the duds (the Kogolor dwarves, the Kubitts) are more hilarious than irritating. And kudos to TSR for injecting some originality into the dark elves for once.

I couldn't help but notice a surprising number of typos in both this and the red box. I didn't mention it then because I thought it was just my nitpicky side at work again, but if anything Hollow World has even more grammar and spelling errors than the red box. Who copy-edited these things, Glenn Beck? You might not think it's a big deal--Chris--but remember these things are rulebooks, where even the most obvious errors could very well attract interest from the Lollipop Guild. Even if it that's not the case, it wouldn't kill you to look these things over before you charge people money for them. Hell, I write a free blog for an audience of, maybe, six and I still try to make sure words are spelled properly and the grammar is halfway decent. And that's why you should give me all your money. Right now.

The Player's Guide is pretty much a less detailed version of the DM's Sourcebook, including rules for playing characters from the various Hollow World cultures (which weapons/armor the Tupperware spell will/won't let them use, what bonuses they get if the limitation are severe, level caps, etc.), the penalties for going against cultural biases (the Tupperware spell won't even let you DISGUISE yourself as a member of another culture), the higher requirements for learning magic, which spells don't work in Hollow World, etc. Funnily enough, the DM's Sourcebook says not to let players read this Guide the whole way through, which seems a forlorn hope to me.

The Adventure Book is exactly what it sounds--sample adventures and plot hooks both for getting into the Hollow World and keeping players occupied once they're there. There's nothing particularly wrong with this one, but I was surprised at how meanspirited some of the hooks are--the Beastmen one in particular isn't suited to D&D's style of play at all. If I were running this I'd take it in an entirely different direction. Like the DM's Sourcebook it insists on making more work for DMs by making half the damn NPCs willing to join the party's entourage.

Again, I'd play Hollow World. The ruleset is starting to branch out a bit, testing the waters of demihumans with character classes (e.g. the warrior-elf and wokai, who were originally called "wicca". That's...unspeakably hilarious) and so forth. Its own simplicity sometimes gets in its way, especially with the alignment system--it seriously expects you to believe the plainly Lawful Evil Azcan emperor is Chaotic. It does, however, flirt with the system's boundaries, including sympathetic Chaotics and asshole Lawfuls. And the basic concept is similar enough to 4th edition's "Points of Light" conceit that it's an easy conceptual leap.

Oh, and I wasn't kidding about that turtleneck. See?

Hey kid, wanna see my big red box?

So, I picked up a copy of the 1983 Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set, commonly known as the "red box".

As you can see, the condition of the box left something to be desired. I don't know if someone sat on this or if it was just at the bottom of a stack of books, but the box is more caved-in than my underboobs. As you can see, the cat is dying to play.

Here are the rulebooks--yes, they used that exact same piece of artwork THREE TIMES. It's even more lazy and shameless than 4th Edition's recycling of 3rd Edition art. Notice also how the text is juuuuuust inconspicuous enough so it's easy to start reading the wrong one by mistake. How clever of TSR. These books are in okay condition--kind of fragile, but so long as you don't go throwing them against a wall they'll be fine. Whoever owned this thing last marked one of the DM Rulebook pages with a paperclip, leaving rust stains on the tops of several pages. The box was also supposed to contain dice and a crayon (more on that in a bit), but this copy didn't have them.

By this point in its history, Dungeons & Dragons was already well into the multiple-edition-clusterfuck stage. This was no less than the third version of D&D Basic in six years. Players were supposed to start with Basic and progress into Advanced as they grew more accustomed to the game, but TSR wound up dividing into camps--Gary Gygax, working on Advanced, wanted specific rules to cover any and every situation, while Basic's developers preferred a more improvisational approach--and the two versions of D&D effectively cut ties. Further adding to the confusion, the original tan box wasn't discontinued until 1979. Stickly, it's like they WANTED their fans to dissolve into squabbling factions. There's also a bizarre rumor that Basic was a plot to screw Dave Arneson out of credit and/or royalties. If that was the plan, I probably wouldn't have thanked the guy at the beginning of the Player's Guide, or listed him as D&D's co-creator at the beginning of the Dungeon Master's Rulebook, but maybe that's just me. (To make this even funnier, I've also heard a rumor that the second edition of AD&D was a plot to screw Gygax out of credit and royalties. Can we just agree these guys were shit businessmen and move on, please?)

Of all the various editions of D&D, this one is the most like a toy. The books are written to be easy for children to comprehend, and it bends over backwards to avoid causing offense ("no, a cleric's religion ISN'T important--look, let's just not talk about it, OKAY?!")--this might be the only pre-3rd version not to have any chainmail bikinis. Perhaps the most toy-like aspect, though, would be the dice--apparently you were supposed to color in the numbers on the dice with the crayon. What the hell? Was number-paint an option TSR forgot to order? Did the little paint-in-the-numbers robotic arm at the dice factory break down? Was a few dabs of paint just some unspeakable financial hardship but that closet full of crayons was just sitting there? I wanna know, dammit!

Speaking of the art, apart from the flagrant copying it's pretty good--nothing in here looks like Erol Otus fingerpainting on a Trapper Keeper with his own feces. Sure, it mostly rips off Barry Windsor-Smith, but what fantasy artist didn't back in the 80s?

The Player's Guide introduces you to the rules in an unusual way by D&D standards--it starts you off playing solo. Naturally you play a fighter, since we're still in the period where that's the only useful class at 1st level. I played this section myself (NO, I didn't use the included character sheet--I just wrote it all out on scratch paper) and I have to admit it worked pretty well. What's really odd, though, is that the Player's Guide also plugs a few solo modules. Funny, I can't imagine those being big sellers. Also, I don't know if I would've thrown a solo 1st-level fighter up against a rust monster. I mean, I beat it, but still. Actually, since the Basic rust monster isn't capable of physically hurting you, it occurs to me that an effective strategy would be to strip naked and beat it to death with your fists.

A bit about classes--I think it's funny how the Player's Guide basically admits "yeah, you can play a party of all fighters and you'll probably be okay". 1st-level wizards--sorry, "magic-users", because why use one word when you can use two, right?--are even more useless than usual; their spellbook is very, very heavy and they don't even get to pick their own spells. Clerics are as boring and indispensable as ever, and thieves use WAAAAAAY too many percentile rolls. Also, the non-human races (elf, dwarf, and halfling) are their own classes because TSR were a bunch of cocksucking racists. They claim the demihumans are more powerful, but that only really seems true of one of them (PROTIP: it's the elf).

This edition uses the deeply, deeply stupid lower-is-better Armor Class system, with chart for what you need to roll to hit depending on AC and hit dice. I actually approve for once--this is aimed at children, after all, but why make things easy on the little bastards? Just wait 'til they see THAC0--then they'll beg for Uncle Gary's red box! BEG, I TELL YOU!!! *pant* *pant* Sorry.

The Dungeon Master's Rulebook contains the standard DM stuff--monsters, treasure tables, and a sample adventure. This set is only for levels 1-3, so it doesn't have TOO many insta-kill traps/monsters, but it can't resist putting a few in there (such as the normal poison rules, and one trap in the sample adventure involving a set of golden plates). To paraphrase Blackbeard, if TSR didn't kill one of you occasionally, you might forget who they were. It's actually not nearly as sadistic as AD&D, though--the Rulebook warns DMs that just because you can throw ten goblins at once at a 1st-level party doesn't mean you should and so forth. What's really weird, I think, is that experience is partly--hell, mostly--based on how much lewt you wind up with (1 gp=1 xp). Yes, excellent! They'll be fighting over treasure division as it is--maybe this way they'll even shed blood MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Sorry again.

So, if the opportunity came up, would I play this? Yes. It's as bare bones as D&D gets--there is pretty much no fluff of any kind in these books, even the alignment system is so abstract they might as well have left it out--but that just increases its pick-up-and-play value. This edition is almost perfectly suited to one-shots. It's a great edition for dashing off characters you have nothing invested in and killing them off in increasingly hilarious ways, and sometimes that's what you're looking for in a D&D game. I'm not about to toss aside 4th edition or anything, but yeah, I'd play this. Probably enjoy it, too.

TSR, however, were still racists. Who liked the taste of penis.

Hurrah, more useless shit

Recently I decided to start doing something bizarre--something else bizarre, that is. I've decided to start collecting material from previous editions of Dungeons & Dragons I've never played. Not that I'll be much of a collector--I fully intend to open and read everything I acquire. This is actually pretty liberating; it means I can even buy damaged stuff! So long as any box sets I find have all the books and stuff inside, I'll buy it! I was already kind of doing this--I've owned a water-damaged copy of the original Fiend Folio for a few years now.

Some exceptions: I don't plan on collecting any 3.5 stuff--in fact, I just sold off most of my remaining 3.5 books. I still have my old Player's Handbook, since the spine's damaged and I didn't think Powell's would take it. That will, in all likelihood, be the only 3.5 book in that collection.

Why? Simply put, I had so many unpleasant experiences playing that edition I've come to hate it. Every group I've played it with wound up violently hating one another after about three combats; my involvement with the last one ended so acrimoniously that not only did I not play D&D again until 4th Edition (which I like, should you wish to flame me for it), it left me hating the entire human race (well, left me hating the entire human race more). That, and I might be interested in actually playing some of the stuff I find, and I will never play 3.5 again. I know it's unusual for D&D players to despise the edition they started with, but then I also thought modrons and Spelljammer were cool.

Also, I doubt I'll be doing this with the original 1974 "tan box" D&D that started this whole female-repelling mess. Not because I'm not interested, but because it's just not economically realistic, especially if I'm not doing this for some theoretical monetary gain. There's a copy of it for sale at Guardian Games, where I picked up the stuff below. The box is in HORRENDOUS shape (it looks like someone hurled a bucket of santorum over it) and one of the three booklets is missing. And they STILL want $100 for it, leading me to conclude I'd have to take a shit directly into the box before it'd lose value.

So, yesterday I went to Guardian Games (possibly the best hobby store in the Portland area, notwithstanding its odd location) in search of an inaugural addition or two. I came home with these:


In case you can't make it out (when, exactly, did I smear my cell phone's camera lens in Vaseline?) those are copies of the 1981 "Red Box" edition of the D&D Basic Rules Set and the Hollow World campaign box set. See what I mean about damaged stuff? The Hollow World's in great shape, but the Red Box looks like Comic Book Guy sat on it.

Their overall condition can wait, though. See, I plan on reviewing each new acquisition right here in this blog. I'll be including photos, general rundowns on each piece's condition, and of course massive quantities of snark on the game material itself. My Red Box review should be up in the next day or so, right after I finish reading both booklets, with Hollow World forthcoming. I'll also be sticking in reviews of the Fiend Folio and *sigh* the 3.5 PHB somewhere along the way. I can feel my attractiveness to women shriveling as I speak. Not that I had much of that anyway.