N if for Niles: Digging for Gems in the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide

Douglas Niles, author of the DSG and author of many other fine D&D products.

I have just acquired off eBay, Horror on the Hill, filling nearly the last hole in my BECMI collection of modules.

Horror on the Hill may not have been my first D&D game but it is the first I clearly remember. The party of 1st level characters was attacking down into second level against the hobgoblins and when it looked like they would be overwhelmed, retreated up the steps to 1st level and used the tables to half barricade the stairs and lob flaming oil down onto the hobgoblins. It must have been tense as I remember it well.

That party went on to be my longest running BECMI campaign, equalled in length only to my AD&D campaign I ran for years with my younger sister (AD&D allowed us to have a greater variety of classes).

The BECMI campaign was played with two other friends and we rotated DM, and we each controlled more than 1 character. We were probably 13-14 when we played Horror on the Hill.

So I have fond memories of Douglas Niles, and also I have envious memories of my friends Battle System also by Douglas Niles. I pored over that. As anyone reading this blog will know - I love rules. I can't recall us ever playing a single mass battle with Battle System but it was one of my first purchases off eBay when I started collecting - and buying all the things I wanted as a child but couldn't afford.

One day I would love to play X10... wouldn't we all. I dream that my B2 campaign would follow onto B5, B10, X1, X?, X10....

Well one can dream.

So Douglas Niles has plenty of old school credibility in my mind and in the DSG he shares some of his wisdom and advice about dungeon mastering in a very coherent fashion. If he had blogged what he wrote it would be top of the blog pile for advice and I would have immediately placed it prominently into the Links to Wisdom house rule wiki (Don't forget to vote for the logo poll at Daddy Grognard)

Some of his wisdom:
Players are generally either adventurers (action and combat orientated), problem-solvers (who see the campaign as a great puzzle, who like plot twists) and role-players (enjoy creating details about their characters).

Most of my campaigns I have been with friends who prefer adventure, with my sister the role-play and learning more about our characters was the most important thing. Combat, especially for her, was just the steps required to develop ones's character.

Niles describes that often your players have mixed and changing interests between these three stereotypes, so a DM needs a fine art of Juggling and he offers advice.
In world setting he describes how one can add richness and detail and emphasises the importance of consistency, and how other intelligent races in a world will make a difference.

He talks about the importance of story and story telling for a DM dividing a typical story into
1. Exposition (where you capture the players attention and he says "A common mistake of DMs (and, alas, module designers) is to have a non-player character deliver a long, detailed speech to the PCs" and he offers advice - acting it out, distribute maps and documents, distribute information cards to different players
2. Development
3. Denouement - where loose ends are tied up

He then talks about running multiple story lines and using the below as motivators and enticers for ones players.
- villains
- foreshadowing
- mystery
- challenge
- reward
- magical items
- wealth
- discoveries
- gratitude
- accomplishment
- experience points
- moral

He talks about techniques of story telling and campaign design
= the linear adventure
= the Open campaign (sand box though he doesn't use that term)
= the matrix campaign (a combination of both the above)

Finally he gives advice on preparing for play, using pace and your voice and a few other gems.

14 pages in all and NO, I won't just tell you everything he says in all these topic areas after wetting your appetite

Gems we should take
1. The most coherent advice for the intermediate experienced DM ever published in the Gold and Silver
age of TSR.

D is for Deepearth: Digging for Gems in the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide

Much has been maligned about the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide but what most claim to have enjoyed and have fond memories of is the Deepearth campaign setting. Douglas Niles went on to elaborate this setting further with the High Level AD&D adventure H2: Mines of Bloodstone.

It's all there... "brave the unexplored corridors of Deepearth" to "Chapter 4: Kingdoms of Deepearth."

Not to mention "This module uses the new rules from the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide..." Plus Wilderness Survival Guide and Battlesystem (another Niles product).

Back to page 75 of the DSG: Lands of Deepearth

I'm just going to list some of the areas outlined with a hint of what lays beneath:

Upper Caverns: inhabited by creatures that like to leave their subterranean lairs to raid human settlements: troglodytes, goblins, hobgoblins...

Cathedral Caverns: the presence of stalactites, stalagmites, and draperies is so overwhelming in the huge central cavern that the overall appearance is similar to an ornately decorated cathedral.

Enclosed Caverns: These humans, numbering about 20, are mostly men. They live off the few fungi plants in the adjacent caverns, and an occasional fish. (Some of these fungi glow with a greenish phosphorescence and serve as feeble light sources.) They have a ragged collection of weapons among them. Most of them are quite mad and, although relatively harmless unless threatened, the very

appearance of the gibbering, drooling pack of castaways is cause for concern.

Caverns of the Ancients: This corridor leads to a huge, domed chamber nearly 1/2 mile in diameter. Massive stone columns support the ceiling. In the exact center of the chamber is

an elaborate temple carved with bestial shapes.

Fungus Forest: More on that when we get to F.

Caverns of Doom: The name is derived from the tales of adventurers who penetrated this region and returned to the surface to tell of its terrors. The most proliferate denizens of the region are the jermalaine.
Jermalaine first featured in D1 and then Fiend Folio
Here's a pic of the gremlin like jermalaine

Outpost of the Illithids (got to love those mindflayers)

Incidentally if you want some advice on how to DM these supra-genius opponents (that's smarter than you are) look here at the advice from Nine and Thirty Kingdoms: I meant to do that.

Mid Level Caverns: Yep, long way down. Is it getting warmer or is that just my imagination?


Steam Heated Caverns


Chambers of Fire: The temperature in the approach tunnel is so hot that creatures not resistant to fire sustain ld6 points of damage per turn. Mephits are the most common denizens here, and are represented

in all four of their forms: fire, lava, smoke, and steam.

Ok, I know these pics aren't from the DSG but hey, they're fun.


Lava Caves


Elemental Vortex of Fire: Ouch that's going to hurt.

Lands of the Deep Gnomes


I am trying to link the pic to source: this one is from Ben Hodson - click on the pic!


The Melting Pot: for the different races interacting (fighting) here not for the heat.


Realm of the Drow...


In memory of Jim Roslof - I present the Roslof "Prisoner of the Drow" And this one is from the DSG

Gems we should take

1. Deepearth

A is for Air Supply: Digging for Gems in the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide

The A to Z Blogging Challenge

How does the Challenge work?

The premise of the Blogging From A to Z April Challenge is to post something on your blog every day in April except for Sundays.  In doing this you will have 26 blog posts--one for each letter of the alphabet.   Each day you will theme your post according to a letter of the alphabet. 

You will only be limited by your own imagination in this challenge.  There is an unlimited universe of possibilities.  You can post essays, short pieces of fiction, poetry, recipes, travel sketches, or anything else you would like to write about.  You don't have to be a writer to do this.  You can post photos, including samples of your own art or craftwork.    Everyone who blogs can post from A to Z.

Okay here goes... The Dungeoneer's Survival Guide.
In 1986 TSR published the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide (DSG) by veteran TSR author Douglas Niles. Some hold that nothing good was published after 1983. Others are less harsh.

Grognardia in his retrospective has this to say,
"In the final analysis, Dungeoneer's Survival Guide was a brilliant failure and emblematic of many of the trends I eventually came to dislike about the direction of AD&D in the later years of TSR. It was -- and is, I'd still contend -- an inspirational book, one whose text often conveys the beauty and wonder and horror of subterranean locales so well. As a rulebook, though, it's less than ideal, simultaneously being too nitpicky and too easily cast aside. And its intention of adding new depths (no pun intended) to both the physical environment of adventures and to adventurers themselves was another nail in the coffin of the Old Ways. It's a pity, because, despite it all, I still have a fondness for this book, even though its publication was another step down a path whose ultimate destination I strongly dislike these days."


Delta's comment to Grognardia's retrospective is,
"These 2 books [DSG + Wilderness Survival Guide] together marked the grave of my AD&D play at the time."

Other negative comments to the retrospective
Evocative but useless. [faustusnotes]
It offered a lot of promise that it never quite got around to delivering on, and at the same time cluttered-up things with a lot of evocative inspirational stuff that was more often than not better handled via narrative than dice-rolling, in my experience. [NetherWerks]
Reams and reams of dry, dry detail on subjects like spelunking, hiking, mountain-climbing, foraging for food, etc. It's like somebody took my old Boy Scout Handbook and randomly-pasted some workmanlike but completely unnecessary RPG rules throughout. So see something so...aggressively mundane...bearing the D&D name always bugged me.  [Will Mistretta]


Not to say it didn't have it's fans and certainly more fans than the Wilderness Survival Guide.


I never owned a copy in my D&D prime. I actually always wanted to own the Wilderness Survival Guide, all those weather systems seemed exciting. I now own both, acquired about two years back in mad collecting eBay completionist frenzy. I have read neither. 


So my theme for the April 2011 A to Z Blogging Challenge, is Digging for Gems in the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide. Is there any gems (good advice, nuggets of wisdom, something cool, something easily house ruled) that is worth salvaging from the wreckage that was late 80's D&D publishing. That's my task... let us begin.


A is for Air Supply
From DSG Page 36
"Assuming no ventilation whatsoever, a human-sized creature at complete rest depletes the oxygen in 10 cubic feet of air within 24 hours. A character who is working strenuously uses oxygen four times faster than a resting character, and a moderately exercising character uses the oxygen up twice as fast as a character at rest."

"A character does not instantly die when his air supply has been used up, but serious problems arise. Each turn following the exhaustion of the oxygen, the character must make a Constitution Check. Every time the check fails, each of his ability scores and his hit point total are reduced by one. Each additional Constitution Check is made against the reduced Constitution score. Thus, a character grows more and more feeble as he gulps the last remnants of the oxygen supply. When all of a character’s ability scores have dropped to 0, he is unconscious. When a character’s hit point total reaches -10, he is dead. Even for a character with a large number of hit points, this fate becomes automatic once the Constitution score reaches 0, since all further Constitution Checks automatically fail. This system is used only for characters in an area with air; it cannot be used for characters who are holding their breath."
"A small fire (one foot or less in diameter) consumes all of the oxygen in a ten-foot cubic space in two hours (1 2 turns). A flaming torch consumes all of the oxygen in the same space in eight hours. A flask of burning oil does not burn for very long, but uses up a lot of oxygen while it burns. In general, oil in a flask or similar small container burns for three rounds. For purposes of oxygen consumption, however, treat the burning oil as a small fire (as explained above) and treat each round of burning as a full turn. Thus, an oil fire that lasts three rounds uses up as much oxygen as a small wood fire burning for three turns."


Thoughts:
Oxygen Consumption
Most standard maps are 10' squares, ceilings perhaps 10' tall, therefore 1000 cubic feet. Every square provides 100 days worth of air! Seems too much. This link suggests 388 cubic feet oxygen consumption in one day. But CO2 (carbon dioxide) production is a real killer. This link has some formulas but supports the fantasy answer: "A 10 X 10 X 10 foot space, or 1,000 cubic feet, will be filled with a lethal concentration of CO₂ by one resting human sized individual in just 24 hours. (The CO₂ level reaches about 1% in that time). Moderate activity will cut this time to 12 hours, and strenuous activity to 6 hours." 
So I think in the end, this is sort of what Douglas Niles meant to say - a 10x10x10 foot space, provides enough air for one man size person's 24 hours survival.


Breath Holding
I understand why slow oxygen starvation is not the same physical effect as breath holding, but really, can't we use a similar fantasy game mechanic. DSG page 12 says, "If a character has a chance to take a large breath of air, and does not perform strenuous exercise while holding his breath, he can hold his breath for a number of rounds equal to 1/3 his Constitution Score, rounded up." Trouble is, is one round one minute AD&D, or B/X 10 seconds. Makes a big difference here. 
AD&D 1st edition DMG or PH, has no rules that I can find (please let me know if you can). 
AD&D 2nd edition says for breath holding as many rounds as 1/3 constitution. 
Cyclopedia = 1/2 one's constitution score in rounds. (seems very short to me)

I plan to house rule for B/X as your constitution score in rounds + level. Once constitution exceeded, Save vs paralysis every subsequent round, else drown/die. 
I leave this one for you and your DM.

What gem can we take:

1. Every 10x10x10 foot space provides enough air for one man size person's 24 hours survival.

2. Any small fire consumes 24 hours of oxygen in 2 hours, and every round of flaming oil is 1 turn (10 minutes).
3. Breath Holding Rule (see above)