Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

My partner and I like to have fun with our stuffed animals. ...Okay, it's mostly me. I enjoy posing them in situations and telling stories about what they're doing, and she mostly finds it funny. Mostly. For example: hawk on her dragon's hoard of beads, hawk on a hoard of coins, Hawkes wine tasting, learning we'd mis-gendered an eagle.

We're not into just any stuffed animals, though; or even the common ones. We have a lot of hawks because they're my partner's namesake. Hawks are hard to find, though. Owls? Slightly easier. But owls suck.

Where can one find stuffed hawks? We keep our eyes open. Sometimes we find a beautiful hawk in the darnedest place.  We like to check out visitor centers at national/state parks because that's where we have a better chance of finding such toys— or "liberating a hawk", as Hawk calls it. When we visited Amicalola Falls in Georgia a few weeks ago we saw one or two hawks that we already own copies of... but we saw two other interesting stuffed animals.

For the first time ever I saw an Ent or Treant— or "Enchanted Tree" as manufacturer Folkmanis labels it. I presume they went with that generic name to avoid licensing issues with whatever global megacorps currently own the rights to Tolkien's works and Dungeons and Dragons, though a quick web search I did indicates that the words "Ent" and "Treant" are not trademarked and have been ruled by the courts to be in the public domain.

Folkmanis makes stuffed animals that aren't just stuffed animals but hand puppets. Our first hawk ever was a Folkmanis red tail hawk, a treasured gift that sadly wore out after enough years and had to be sent to the great aerie in the sky. Though we did find another copy of the Folkmanis red-tail hawk on eBay a few years ago.

I had fun checking out this "Enchanted Tree" hand puppet. I made a short video showing how, as I discovered, you can put your fingers in the branches atop the tree's head and move them around. ...And this bad-attitude Treant can give you the finger!

Now, laughing at rude poses with hand puppets wasn't the only thing we did at the park's gift shop. While we did see a hawk or two there and they were ones we already own better versions of, we did find a hawk "accessory"— a snake!

We bought the snake as gift for our hawks to play with.



Here's one of our red-tail hawk toys, "Winter", enjoying his new toy/meal as a reward for waiting patiently in the back of the car as we were out hiking. 🤣

A few weeks ago I blogged about strengthening trust between players in role-playing games, "Trust & Promises in Role-Playing Games". It was inspired by a blog I'd seen on Gnome Stew on the same topic. Well, the Gnomes wrote a sequel to their blog, "Earning Their Trust: The Rules" and it has inspired me to write on the topic again.

The focus of the Gnomes' latest article in the series is how game masters (GMs) can use game rules well— or poorly— to make or break the players' enjoyment of the game. The gist is that slavish adherence to "The Rules" generally weakens enjoyment of the game and that good GMs will think about when it's right to loosen up their interpretation/application of the rules to promote everyone having a fun time. That's pretty much in line with an idea I wrote about in a few blogs entries back in January, "What's Your Roleplaying Game About?" and "Taking it Easy with Encumbrance in D&D". What really resonated with me in the Gnomes' latest article, though, was one of their sub-headings, Punitive Parent VS “Cool Mom” GM.

Within that phrase it was the two words Punitive Parent that really resonated. ...And not because I've ever been punitive parent or worried about being one, but because it immediately struck me, "OMG, 'punitive parent' totally describes almost all the GMs I played with in my teen years!"

What's a punitive-parent type GM? It's someone who's actually more than just a stickler for the rules. Getting stuck on rules is a trap that a person with low imagination or low confidence might stumble into. Using the rules so as to be punitive, though, is different. It's more. It's not lack of creativity or courage, it's asserting your will over the players' style of play and using the rules as punishment to enforce compliance. It's being a dick.

How is a dick GM different from a mere rules-stickler GM? A rules stickler can be tedious but ultimately they're likely to be fair. A dick GM goes out of their way to use and abuse the rules, including making up new rules at the table, to punish players for not doing things their way. For example:

• One GM in high school would enforce trivial rules to slow down the game every time he hadn't prepared actual content for the game session. I remember one full-day session when we players spent the whole day rolling dice to see if our characters could avoid getting lost in the forest, forage food, cook it safely, and survive the effects of dehydration, starvation, and food poisoning. Yes, we were making Fortitude Saves to see if we puked from eating undercooked deer meat! That dick had the gall further to gaslight us into thinking we wasted a whole fucking game session rolling not to puke because we weren't playing intelligently enough.


• One of my GMs in high school would keep a ledge of black marks against players for actions he deemed to be "not in character". Each black mark was an experience point penalty, meaning it slowed your character's advancement. (Advancing characters is a huge part of RPGs, BTW.) Nominally these were judgments that you weren't playing your character "in character" and thus not eligible to advance. Except in reality the black marks were arbitrary behavior grades. If GM thought you, the player, weren't taking things seriously enough, black mark. Making a joke at the table that he didn't like, black mark. Speaking out of turn too much, black mark.

Yeah, I played with a bunch of dick GMs in my teen years. Partly it was common cultural assumption of how the game was supposed to be played back then. Partly it's because people who are dicks are often ego-driven and thus attracted to GMing because they see it as an opportunity to flex on others. And partly it's because enough of us gamers put up with dick GMs treating us poorly. (Why did I/we put up with it? I reflected on the social dynamics of speaking up about problems players/GMs in another blog after I tried— and quit— several virtual gaming groups during the Pandemic.)

And yeah, players can be dicks, too; it's not just GMs. In addition to fellow players being a big part of the reason I quit or nearly quit multiple new games I tried a few years ago, I still remember games from 20+ years ago when I, as a GM, ended a game or asked a player to leave because the player was being a dick.

It's like how when people ask me at work, "What do you look for in hiring a successful sales candidate?" My concise answer is, "1) ... 2) ... And 3) Don't be a dick." I'll start using the same Rule Number Three for deciding whom to play with in roleplaying games.

Last Sunday we drove from my sister's house to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin to visit the Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum. That was the main item on our agenda, though when we arrived around 11:15am it was closed. We temporized by skipping ahead to everything else on our list: seeing Gary Gygax's home and searching for the Gary Gygax Memorial Bench and Memorial Brick. Oh, and along the way we acted like characters in a horror movie— or would that be foolish adventurers in a D&D adventure— ignoring the peril of a monster swarm around us.

After all that we came back to the Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum. We kind of had to, as our car was parked there. 🤣 Fortunately the museum was open by then.



The museum inhabits a building, a converted old house, that was the first headquarters of TSR after Gary Gygax moved it out of his house, a few blocks aways. We dropped a ten-spot to cover the $2 admission for the 5 of us and went in.

One of the things we would've done at the museum if we'd been able to visit at the start of the day would've been to buy dice... to bless them by rolling on Gary Gygax's memorial brick!



The museum even has these gumball machines converted to dispense diceright inside the door, apparently to aid diceless travelers in their new quest! Though as my brother-in-law quipped, "For $1 they're not going to be good dice." 🤣

The museum has a lot of D&D memorabilia from back in the day, most of it dating to (in my estimate) the late 1970s and early 1980s. Though a few thngs, like copies of the Chainmail rules book, are older.



This is a "brown box" printing of the Dungeons & Dragons rules, likely printed in 1978. The dice next to are ostensibly the set that came in the box. I'm a bit skeptical about that detail as those dice look a bit too high quality for what was commonly shipped back then. It's before my time as a D&D player, though, so I can't say with certainty. But I know my boxed set from 1982/1983 came with shitty dice. 🤣



These Basic D&D boxed sets are from around the time I entered the world of D&D. The one on the right is likely the one my cousins owned when they introduced me to D&D in 1982. When I bought my own copy months later it was a "red box" similar to those in the middle— though not in Japanese or German like the two examples here.



The thing that made me ache the most with nostalgia was this mailer envelope from the Dungeon Hobby Shop (above). The art is amusing... but it's what came inside that made me the most melancholy for having missed it decades ago. This manila envelope with collectable art on it was used to send a catalog from the Dungeon Hobby Shop.

Here's the flip side of that envelope:



The flip side shows the dragon from the previous scene now under a Charm spell cast by the adventurers.

The Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum we visited is named in honor of this gaming store from decades ago. The museum also has a copy of the catalog that would've come in this, circa 1980. The manager took it out of a glass display case and gently flipped through the many pages to show us. It was beautiful and also painful.

It wasn't seeing the 1980 vintage prices that hurt. The fact that rule books cost, like, $4.95 back then, I'm at peace with. What made me ache was having missed the opportunity to shop such a huge selection. When I was getting into D&D in the early 1980s game books were hard to find in my area. There were none for sale at any store in my suburban town. I know, because my dad in a moment of real empathy, drove me around to, like, a dozen different stores looking for them. We struck out until we went to a hobby store closer in to the big city. And even there was just one shelf of D&D. Oh, what I could have bought with my money saved from delivering a newspaper route starting at age 10!

Sometimes a walk down Memory Lane is not all fond memories. It's not necessarily memories of things that were bad.... It's sadness at being reminded there were amazing things you missed out on.

But hey, enough melancholy.



As I mentioned above, the museum is in the building where TSR's HQ moved to after it moved out of Gary Gygax's living room. I mean, TSR would've been a garage-shop operation at first... except that Gygax didn't have a garage. And since this building is familiar to old-time TSR employees, those who come to visit sign one of the doors in the place. I only recognized one of the names/signatures on the door, that of Larry Elmore. He drew the drag in the upper right of the main panel.

I'll end on a high note. Behold!



Lots of people who worked at TSR back in the day were artistic. One crafted this 3D beholder. I'm not sure this is something I ever would've bought— not that this one-of was ever for sale. Where would I put it? But I would've bought a huge canvas map like the one on the wall behind the shelves. Alas that's also a one-of, hand crafted by one of the TSR employees years ago for her game.

On Sunday we drove out to the bucolic small town of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, about 45 minutes from my sister's house. Our plan for the day was to see things related to the history of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) and role-playing games (RPGs) in general.

"What does any of that have to do with a small midwestern town?" you might wonder. Well, if you're a D&D player or RPGer from way back, you know. You know Lake Geneva as the headquarters of TSR, Inc., the pioneering RPG publisher, the first location of Gen Con, the biggest boardgame convention in the US, and the home of Gary Gygax— co-creator of the concept of RPGs, co-author of D&D, founder of Gen Con, and co-founder of TSR, Inc.

The four of us adults in the group are all D&D players from way back. My sister and I first played D&D in 1982, and my spouse and I still play D&D. Visiting some of the D&D related sites in Lake Geneva was like a pilgrimage for us. Plus, it was an opportunity for a pleasant walk on nice summer afternoon in Wisconsin.

Our first stop on the day's itinerary was the Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum. Coincidentally it's in the building where TSR's headquarters was for several years. Unfortunately it wasn't open yet for the day when we arrived. (Its hours changed recently and were not well advertised aside from the small, hand-written sign in the window. 😅) Thus we proceeded to the next stop on our itinerary: visiting the house where Gary Gygax lived when he created D&D.



"OMG, you visited a guy's house," you might wonder, "That he hasn't lived in for decades. Isn't that kind of obsessive/creepy?"

The answer is No/No. It wasn't our main purpose for the trip. The main things for us were to visit the museum and to see the other thing Lake Geneva is known for, the beautiful lake. Gygax's old house is merely something that came up when we were searching for other things to do in town to help fill out a day's activities. And it was pretty much on the route for walking from the museum to the lake shore next to downtown Lake Geneva.

Learning about the Man behind the Game

I always find it insightful to learn about where and how a notable person lived. That's because people are partly the product of their environment. In addition, the things people create are also partly the product of the environment in which they're created. And sometimes the things we assume about a creator from the creation are inaccurate.

For example, when I was an adolescent D&D player in the mid 1980s I imagined Gary Gygax as being in his early 30s at the time. That image came from noting that D&D dated to 1978^* and me figuring that Gygax had created it with his buddies from college while they were in their early 20s. I made that assumption based on the types of people I saw playing D&D. Nearly none of them I'd met were older than college/grad student age. Plus, the dedication to this kind of fantasy creation just seemed like something post-college hangers-on would have the interest— and, frankly, the time— to create.

I first learned that my image of Gygax was wrong just a few years later. Friends and I saw a TV interview clip with him in the late 1980s, maybe 1988. "OMG, he's 50?!!?" we all marveled. It was revelatory that a middle-aged man could be so into RPGs. Virtually nobody over 30 in my orbit could even understand RPGs, even when it was patiently explained to them. And it wasn't just Gygax's age. In that brief TV clip we saw he was a jovial, smiling, well-spoken man; not some dweeb with a creepy laugh and poor personal hygiene— things which were dominant stereotypes of RPG players at the time.

Walking a mile in Gygax's hometown further changed my understanding of him and the environment from which he came. Gygax was not some kid dwelling in his parents' basement long after he should have moved out on his own, nor was he a college hanger-on living in a seedy apartment with empty pizza boxes stacked on the floor and posters of hard rock bands dressed in leather, spikes, and face paint to look satanic covering the walls. (More dominant stereotypes of D&D and RPG players for years.)

Instead Gygax lived in his own house, a house he moved into in 1966, in a charming small-town America spot that looks little different today from what it likely did in 1966. He raised 5 kids there with his wife. (Gygax later had a sixth child, after he remarried following his first wife's death.) Oh, and they were all active in their Christian faith in this midwestern small town— quite a contrast with the pervasive stereotype throughout the 1980s that D&D and those who played it were, at best, un-Christian and at worst satan-worshippers.

The ideas of D&D predate its first publication in 1978 as "D&D" by many years. Gygax was a table-top war gamer since the 1960s. The idea for role-playing grew out of wargaming.... It's often credited to Dave Arneson, a friend and colleague of Gygax's, who suggested, "What if instead of simulating the movements of whole armies in a battle we play out the actions of individual heroes?" (Heavily paraphrased.) That, combined with Gygax's early work on extending wargaming to medieval settings via the Chainmail game he published in 1971, led to a dungeon-delving game called Castle Greyhawk he created and ran on his dining room table in 1973. The first players were his wife and older kids.

Something I gained appreciation of Gygax for from this walk through his hometown, aside from how ridiculously middle-American the setting is, is how determined Gygax had to be to maintain all the connections with other creative people. He did not live in a big city. There would've been no local club full of fellow gamers from nearby he could find inspiration at. And with the technology of the 1960s and 70s there was obviously no Internet to stay connected with. He had to travel around to different cities, finding out about conventions and meeting other people, and they stay in touch with all those people via phone— and more likely snailmail letters as well.

As I've written a few times now, my City of the Dead D&D game sort-of wrapped on Friday night. The final piece of the evening's session, our 8th play session, was the PCs entering a fallen temple in Graymount to retrieve the dead body of an allied cleric.



Earlier in the session the group had cleared its path through town— meaning they rousted the spies and triggered the undead ambushes one day so they'd have a smoother path the next day.

Solving a Puzzle

Why did having a smooth path on the final day matter? Ah, that was because the time of day mattered. The party spent a few weeks regrouping in their home base of Durendal because they all were going up a level.

In going up a level (to 7th) the party's cleric, Terence, gained the very useful Divination spell. With it the caster obtains a short piece of advice from their patron deity on how to succeed at a relevant task. Terence asked, "How can we most safely recover Baynor's body?" I provided the answer in the form of a written clue-note:



Yes, the response is in the form of a riddle. That's kind of a trope in the game for how Divination works. It's always been part of the challenge and the fun of the game for the party to decode such riddles. But it's not supposed to be a hard riddle. So I prepared several additional clue-notes in case the group needed hints. It turned out they didn't need more hints! They figured out on their own, from things they'd already seen and remembered:

• Father Baynor was killed and raised as a wraith; therefore, presumably, he was killed by a more powerful wraith.


• Wraiths are powerless in daylight. (Terence knows this from his studies)


• Baynor's body is in the fallen temple of Morgarath. (Terence already used another spell that revealed this.)


• The temple faces due south and has large wooden doors at its front.


• The area is in the northern hemisphere, and the season is approaching the winter solstice when the sun will be low in the southern sky at midday. (Meraxes knows this via astronomy and Herran knows via nature skill.)

Thus they decoded the riddle as, "Enter the temple at noon on a clear day so sunlight spreads through the open door and helps keep the wraith guarding Baynor's body at bay."

Forming a Plan

The group did more than just pat itself on the back for figuring out they should go at noon. They scribed a few additional spells on scrolls while in Durendal, spent time buffing up with defensive spells at the steps to the fallen temple, and made a plan about who'd go where once they entered.

That all took more prodding from me than I wanted. Ideally they would've thought of more themselves. I let them sit-and-spin for a bit then prompted with increasingly specific suggestions to help them converge on a reasonable plan. Ultimately they went in with a solid plan. But you know that saying about plans & first contact with the enemy....

No Plan Survives First Contact with the Enemy

The boss wraith was not the only challenge they had to deal with inside the fallen temple. Baynor's body— and the wraith determined to destroy anyone trying to retrieve it— were in the inner sanctum of the temple, past the entry chamber. The sun barely penetrated there. And there was a trap on the doors to the inner sanctum. And there was... a vampire... sneaking around the foyer when everybody's attention was elsewhere!

But that's the other thing about plans. While even a good plan tends to fall apart upon first contact with the enemy, having that plan is crucial because it represents all the thinking about how to solve foreseeable challenges. Among these challenges was protecting themselves from a wraith's ability drain— a fearsome attack that could have resulted in TPK (Total Party Kill) if the group had fumbled their way in without a plan.

Astrin and Herran, both warded against the wraith's most feared attack, strode forward into the temple's nave. They were the strikers. The other three hung back near the door, in the light, prepared to support them with spell casting and whatever else was necessary.



The wraith was ready for them. It knew they were coming. It felt their presence as soon as they stepped onto the stones of the plaza outside. And in the deep shadows of the cursed temple's inner sanctum, they were in its demesne.

The wraith rose from the crypt beneath the main floor, its incorporeal body passing through stonework as if it weren't there. It enveloped Astrin (the first to enter) with its enormous size, wrapping its shadowy arms around her in death's embrace, fingers like tendrils of darkness going for her face to draw her life force out from her... and ⛔️ ACCESS DENIED! ⛔️

Terence's Vitality spell blocked the creature's deadly attack. Its shadowy arms still pummeled Astrin and left her bruised, but her life force was untouched.

"Oh, you wanna play?" Astrin snorted. "Let's do this." With sword in hand she called for her god's blessing and put everything into her swing. Holy Smite!

"You're Stuck in here with Us"

Herran, also in the nave by then and similarly warded, waded into the combat at her side. He had no particular god to pray to but he had preternatural familiarity with undead. Driven by a curse in his family 5 generations back he studied undead, learning how to defeat them in combat. He hit the wraith hard. Standing opposite Astrin the two of them took the shadowy horror to task, pummeling it way harder than it was able to strike them. In two combat rounds the dread wraith, an ancient horror that thought it had the advantage, retreated.

Astrin heaved Baynor's body over her shoulder, her strength augmented to that of a pro-football linebacker by Terence's Bull's Strength spell. Herran, moving with surprising speed due to another magic effect, speedily gathered Baynor's dropped possessions from the floor. The two exited to the plaza, laid Baynor down in the sunlight, then... went back in.

Yes, they went back for more.

They understood that when you have the advantage, you press the advantage.

Or as Astrin said to the lurking wraith when they went back in to its shadowy lair, "We're not stuck in here with you, you're stuck in here with us."

It was a great shout out to a classic line from The Watchmen. Alas this wraith was smarter than the criminals in the movie trying to beat on Rorshach. It knew when it was outmatched. It tried one more go at combat then retreated again the crypt. The party realized correctly they didn't have the strength to chase it deeper into the forsaken temple— where there'd certainly be traps and other dangers— so they took their partial victory. They walked out into the sunlight, loaded Baynor's body on their horses, and rode home.

In Session 8 of my City of the Dead D&D game, possibly the last session, the PCs returned the cursed ruins of Graymount. This time they weren't coming to explore, they were coming with a plan of attack. You could say they... had a bone to pick.



And the City of the Dead obliged.

The group felt like pros at passing through Graymount. They'd already been there a few times so the surprises were no longer so surprising. They knew where to watch out for collapses under the main road. They knew where undead were likely hiding. They even knew about the crows.



The crows led the city's attack. Perched ominously along the edges of abandoned buildings near the center of town they first merely watched the group approach. The group had already seen that they act with a collective intelligence, though. As if on some cue the birds dropped from their hundreds of perches and swarmed around Herran, the group's forward scout, attacking him and sickening him with their stench.

Like I said, though, the group was ready for this. They knew that Herran's two swords and multiple attacks per round would do nothing against the swarm. But Meraxes's fireball would. Herran waited for the attack, let the crows form up in a tight swarm around him, then retreated 20'. That was Meraxes's cue.



With a sudden FWOOSH! the entire width of the street where the crows swarmed erupted in flames. Birds by the hundreds fell to the ground, dead.\

...Cruelty to animals? Maybe. But the group was convinced their apparent collective intelligence was evil intelligence— that they were pawns of a vampire controlling the city. And if you've watched crows in real life, you know that when they gather in groups they basically turn evil anyway. 🤣

The crows were distraction. Again, though, the PCs knew it was a distraction. They were ready for what came next.



Undead creatures came spilling out of crumbling doorways and alleys between buildings. Human-ish in appearance but clearly no longer human, with mottled decaying flesh drew tight across clearly visible bones and hair falling out in clumps, they surged forward. Mouths opened to reveal sharp teeth. Eyes burned like hot coals in their sunken sockets.

These were ghouls. And ghasts! The latter being more powerful versions of the former.

Ghasts are not only tougher and stronger but have a more potent paralyzing touch. And they carry a powerful stench. The reek of death surrounds them. It's overwhelming. It can sicken a person and bring them to their knees.

The group was ready for this, too. They knew they'd be surrounded. They kept a relatively tight formation, minimizing chances for the snapping and snarling monsters from beyond the grave to get in between them. Astrin and Herran held the front. Duncan guarded the rear with gusto, guiding his trained warhorse with his knees while wielding his katana with both hands. Terence and Meraxes in the center stayed astride their horses to work magic.... though Meraxes soon had to dismount as her horse, the only one in the group not trained for battle, started panicking at being attacked by ghouls.

And there was still more coming. More onslaught. Remember that mule you left for dead?



It remembers you!

Continued in next entry....

After session 7 of my City of the Dead D&D game got off to a slow start with the group agonizing over simple prep choices in their home city the PCs finally hit the road to the City of the Dead. Even that went slowly. But that was partly my fault. It was my fault because instead of fast-forwarding through the journey by telling them, "You make a 3 day trek under deteriorating weather conditions of late autumn, arriving at the edge of the haunted ruins of Graymount just before noon on the 3rd day," I included an encounter on the road. A gnoll ambush!

The group was traveling the long-abandoned old trade route to Graymount in its usual formation. Herran, the scout, was out front by about 60', using his skills to watch for trouble. Trouble could be changing weather, a fallen tree, a hungry bear larding up for winter, etc. Herran, the ranger, was the best prepared to spot and triage any of these possibilities. Though it also put him in the position of greatest risk.

Herran's player is out right now, so I told what happened next most on the remote stretch of long abandoned roadl from the perspective of the rest of characters, peering ahead through the lightly falling snow to follow their scout. Astrin was heading up the rest of the party. She saw a flash of movement on the road ahead. It looked like Herran's horse suddenly jumped sideways and fell over. And Herran was yelling. The snow and the distance muffled his voice but it definitely sounded like "Help!" And... "Ambush!"



No one knew what the nature of the threat was yet. But it was obvious something bad was happening. Terence, the cleric, had the best initiative roll, thus the chance to act first. Terence's player just stared at his character sheet, unsure what to do. It was a sad repeat of the analysis tailspin from the first half of the session.

"You can delay," I proposed. Delay is an official combat move in the D&D rules and a solid choice in a case like this. It means he just waits for someone else to act first while holding the prerogative to jump in after anyone else's turn. But he objected. He wanted to go first even though he was completely unprepared to choose an action quickly. I let him stare at his character sheet, lost in analysis, a bit longer before telling him, "Terence delays. Who's next?"

Astrin, the paladin, acted next. She spurred her horse to close the distance to Herran, as clearly he needed help. Upon arriving closer she saw that Herran's horse was on its side on the ground, tangled with a rope around at least one of its legs. And Herran was hanging upside down from a rope snare in a tree! It was a trap!



Before Astrin could act further, arrows whizzed out of the forest around the road, targeting Herran, Astrin, and her horse. "It's an ambush," she could hear Herran saying clearly now. "Watch for a flanking attack!"

Indeed, the flanking attack came quickly. A frost fox bounded out of the forest and breathed an icy mist on Astrin and her mount. And from the rear of the PC group a big, beefy humanoid with brown fur and features like a hyena emerged from behind a tree.

"It's gnolls!" Duncan shouted. "And this one's big!"

Indeed it was big. Towering over 8' tall with muscular arms and a barrel-like chest, the beast facing Duncan drew a massive battleaxe in its huge right hand... and a smaller axe in its other hand.

The players knew what his meant even if their characters didn't. This was the boss gnoll. Its two-weapon attack style indicated it had NPC levels, most likely in the Ranger class. And it would have extra abilities, extra attacks, extra defense, and extra strength.

Fortunately for the PCs, unfortunately for the gnolls, this boss gnoll's tactic of attacking from the rear had just backfired. Because it was Duncan at the rear of the group. Duncan, the slow moving. Duncan the heavy fighter. Of everyone in the group, the one best prepared to go toe-to-toe with a brute, absorbing the damage and dealing it back even harder, was Duncan.

Duncan swung down from his horse in a fluid motion that belied the bulk of the plate-and-mail armor he wore, and drew his massive sword with a two-hand grip.

"Do you know how happy I am that the big guy chose to attack us from behind?" he asked no one in particular.

The boss gnoll didn't know it but his average life expectancy had just dropped to 6 seconds from now.

In the middle of the group Terence came out of the tank and cast a protection spell on Meraxes, the wizard. With the group's fighters committed to combat at both ends of the scene she'd need the protection. Staying in the middle with combat at either end worked for her, though. She stayed astride her horse and whisked a barrage of Magic Missiles at the frost fox. Nearly dead, the fox let out a yelp and retreated into the woods.

At the front of the ambush scene Herran freed himself from the trap, but not before Gnolls emerged from the woods and dropped their bows to attack him with battle axes. They had him surrounded, and he was still prone. He fought from the ground, whirling around like a turtle with two wakizashi, but couldn't connect with a blow. The penalties for fighting from the ground were too stiff.

At the back of the scene, Duncan quickly had the boss gnoll on the ropes. Before he could finish it off, Meraxes came through with another spell. Two tongues of flame shot from her fingers, scorching the gnoll. It fell to the ground, its charred body still smoking.

Meanwhile Terence cast a spiritual weapon spell. A warhammer made of pure energy sprung from his hand, flew toward the front of the group, and whacked one of the gnolls surrounding Herran. Astrin, now free of the ice fox, strode in and finished one off. The other gnoll fled, along with one of his compatriots who was still working his bow from cover behind a tree.

Running Away? Let's Get 'Em!

I mentioned that Herran's player is out right now. We're playing his character as something of an NPC. When Herran's player was in the game, though, he played Herran as a hot-head. See, for example, Fool Around and Find Out from Session 4. Thus all of us at the table agreed, "What, the monsters that set the trap that ensnared and embarrassed Herran are running away? He'd chase them!"

So off into the snowy woods Herran rushed, leaving the rest of the group behind.

"Oh, shit," Astrin said/thought, "He's going to fall into another trap. I'd better go with." And so she rushed into the woods after him.

Astrin caught up with Herran, following tracks in the snow, and talked him down from his rage. (Note: Herran's not a barbarian, so rage isn't a class feature. It's just a personality quirk. 😂) They returned to the 3 PCs on the road to at least form a group plan.

The group decided Herran could have his revenge— but with sensible limits. Herran and Astrin would go together and hunt for not more than 30 minutes. Meanwhile, the other 3 party members would stay in place on the road. Duncan, Terence, and Meraxes together would be plenty capable in case the gnolls circled around for another attack.

Astrin and Herran didn't find the fleeing gnolls but they did find the gnoll party's camp. In it was a bit of crude gear plus a small sack of coins. "Coins? What do gnolls use coins for?" they wondered. "Especially Genidian (human) coins?"

The PCs on the road checked the bodies of the two gnolls defeated there. Duncan assessed that the big guy had nice armor and one nice weapon. Both he and the little guy had coin purses, also with more Genidian coin. And one had a potion bottle with crude printing in a foreign language on it.

"I have a spell to read languages!" Meraxes's player pointed out. "Better yet," I noted, "You can use your Decipher Script skill instead of casting a Comprehend Languages spell." Meraxes rolled her skill check and BAM! 23. Success.

"Oh, this is one of those dog-barking language," Meraxes realized. "It says 'Heal'. Except it's written H-E-E-L."

Terence snickered about how the canine-humanoids have potions of heeling.

"Sit, Ubu, sit!" I quipped. "Good dog."

Spoiling Raids

The group decided to take over the gnolls' camp. Dusk was rapidly approaching, so it was a wise move. The camp smelled like wet dog fur but there was already a fire circle and a shelter made of boughs there.

The group doubled its watches for the night, concerned the gnolls might return. That was wise because indeed they did. Gnolls can see in the dark (in game terms they have Darkvision, 60') so they had an advantage. They approached the camp from outside the range of the party's lights and shot arrows at the guards, as a spoiling raid.

Meraxes was one of the guards on watch. The gnolls believed she was a weak guard because she wears no armor and thus targeted her. Meraxes cast Light on a stone and threw it in their direction. "Make an attack roll," I asked, "Just to gauge accuracy." 23 again. Damn! It didn't just land near them, it actually hit one of them. She knew because she heard the yelp. With the gnolls now bathed in light, Duncan nailed one with an arrow from his bow. Realizing they'd lost the advantage, the gnolls retreated into the night.

The gnolls came back around for another spoiling raid after things had settled down. They believed Meraxes had just been lucky with her cast-a-spell-and-throw-a-rock thing. Well, she got lucky again. And this time Duncan was more prepared. With his bow at the ready he had time to fire twice before the gnolls could flee again. He dropped one and injured the other. And this time Herran snapped awake in an instant. He leapt to his feet and got off a shot, too. The second gnoll sagged to its knees, mortally wounded. Herran strode forward and finished it off.

A Grassy Gnoll Conspiracy?

As the group tallied up what they'd found from the gnolls they realized they had as many questions as answers. There were 4 gnolls, one of them elite, with an ice fox. The gnolls had set a trap here, on a long abandoned trade road. Why here, when there's no regular traffic? And while attacking in an ambush is on-brand for gnolls— character knowledge I conveyed with clue notes— setting a trap like that was extra. Between that and all the Genidian coin the gnolls were carrying (about 600 Denarii total) the players were suspicious the gnolls were hired— hired and given instructions where to find this group.

I've written recently about making games roleplaying games like D&D more exciting for everyone by asking "What's this game about?" and then simplifying or eliminating bookkeeping tasks like counting encumbrance. Bookkeeping is almost certainly not what any game is about!

Tracking the weight each character is carrying and looking up its impact on their movement rate is definitely one of those high effort, low reward, bookkeep-y type tasks. Another is figuring out how the characters turn loot they've found in an adventure into cash they can use. A sack of silver coins found while raiding a bandits' lair is easy to spend... but what about the nice mail shirt one of them was wearing, the fancy rapier another had, and the set of jeweled drinking cups they had?

One solution, often the default one, is the players try roleplaying bargaining with various merchants to get the best possible prices. That's a time sink because as much as tracking encumbrance is not what the game is about, haggling with merchants over the value of a slightly scratched suit of armor is also almost certainly not what the game is about!

A better solution is to meta-game the trading. The GM can replace all the role-play haggling with having the players make an appropriate skill roll and telling them what they get. That makes it more of a question like, "Can I jump over this crevice in the rocks?" Roll the dice, get the answer, move on to the next challenge.

The thing is, trading takes time. Especially when there's a lot of loot, selling it takes more time that backing up a few steps to get a running start to leap over hole in the ground. That was the challenge in my D&D game last week. The characters had a lot of loot they wanted/needed to sell but they were strapped for time. Oh, and none of them actually have skill in trading. The players recognized they'd spend a lot of time on the effort and still not get great results.

"I'll bet we know someone who could help us," Hawk suggested. Her character, Astrin the paladin, is a social networker in town. It was an excellent idea— though Astrin was not the one who had the best contact.

This is where I passed a note to Bobbi, playing the prissy, nobly born mage, Meraxes:




Bobbi read the note, nodded in amusement, and in a classic Brooklyn accent— exactly the effect I was hoping for— said, "I know a guy. Tony."

Once again my technique of passing clue-notes worked beautifully. Bobbi offered the solution in-character as Meraxes, in her own voice (albeit suddenly with a Brooklyn accent 😂) instead of me proposing it directly as the GM. Otonio took a cut of the money, strengthening the group's relationship with him as an NPC, and even after his cut the group netted more than they would doing it on their own. Oh, and while Otonio was busy for a week haggling for the best prices, the group spent their week (and more) training up to the next level and resupplying to head back out to The City of the Dead.

It was a win-win-win. I hope they gave Otonio 5 stars on NPCer!

Sometimes in role-playing games like D&D funny moments arise when a newer player is surprised by one of the rules. Such a thing happened to some friends of mine years ago. I'll share the story as I've embellished it over the years.

"A gust of wind in the cave blows your torches out," the GM advised the players.

"It's okay," Phil said (I think his name was Phil), "I'll light two more."

Then another gust of wind blew out the torches. And again, Phil proffered two more.

Understand, BTW, that "A wind blows out your torches" is an old time-y trope in games like D&D. Back in the 1980s it was typical for adventures to be written specifically to foil players' preparations. The dungeon designer wanted the characters to have to face a challenge in the dark, generally because that was the one thing that made it hard, so they included something like a perpetual wind gust to exhaust the supply of torches the players equipped their characters with.

But Phil's supply was not exhausted. "I light two more torches," he said a third time.

The GM, suspicious, peered over the GM's screen. "Just how many torches do you have, Phil? Are these all written down on your character sheet?"

"Right here," Phil pointed to his equipment list. "When we were in town, I stocked up. The player's handbook says torches are 1/2 copper piece each, and I didn't want to make change for a gold, so I just bought 200."

"200 torches?!" the GM exclaimed. "They're, like, 18 inches long and weigh a pound each. You're like a walking wood pile shambling its way through the dungeon!"

Now that the winter holidays are behind us we can get back to normal things— like playing D&D! Friday night we got together for session 6 of my D&D adventure/mini-campaign, The City of the Dead.

Recall from session 5, six weeks ago now, that the heroes had fought through a phalanx of undead creatures in the ruins of the long-abandoned city of Graymount. There were zombies, ghouls, ghasts, worgs (not undead but still dangerous), and a wraith.



Worn down but unbowed they pushed further through the ruined city while daylight was on their side. They located the body of Father Terence's elder, the High Cleric Baynor. Well, a magic spell located it. They learned it was locked within a corrupted temple— and guarded by some really powerful evil thing.

As the curtained opened on session 6 the group made its final decision at the steps of the fallen temple. They would leave Graymount with the information gathered thus far, regroup in their home city of Durendal to recover and resupply, and return here with more strength and preparation to recover Baynor's body and free his spirit from its own corruption. This was a wise decision.

Oh, but they couldn't go home empty-handed. Part of their cover story to the powers that be to go on this mission was to investigate the disappearance of a merchant caravan that traveled (unwisely) through Graymount. Indeed they'd already found parts of that caravan. Several of the caravan members were among the ghouls and ghasts who ambushed them that morning! And crashed in a sinkhole beneath the street was one of the caravan's wagons, its cargo splayed out at the bottom of the pit.

Down in the Tunnel

Two of the team climbed down a knotted rope into the pit. The "pit" was actually a tunnel beneath the street. Here, as in one other spot they'd found in town, the tunnel was too near the surface and the street had collapsed into it. Anyway, Herran and Terence descended into the pit to figure out what cargo they could salvage. They'd tie ropes around it to haul up with their friends' help. Meanwhile their friends, Astrin, Duncan, and Meraxes, stood guard up on the road.

Good news! Some of the wagon's cargo was recoverable. Among other things were two small kegs of Gnomish aliantha wine, an expensive delicacy. Then Terence and Herran heard a noise.

Clip-clop, clip-clop. The sound of hooves echoing. Clippity-clop, clippity-clop, the cadence grows faster. And louder. Clop-a-lop, clop-a-lop, whatever’s coming has broken into a charge!



Terence and Herran readied attacks against whatever might emerge from the darkness. Into their circle of light charges a disfigured mule, with a broken leg swinging wildly, chunks of flesh hanging loose, and a malign glow blazing from its gouged-out eye sockets. It’s a zombie mule! And not just any zombie mule but the evil animated corpse of the group's animal Herran had left for dead at the bottom of the other cave-in. It charged straight at Herran.

The two engaged the zombie mule. The creature's charge had come so fast the pair's allies above on the street hadn't had time to react yet, but now they joined in the effort. Except as they joined to reinforce Herran and Terence, more undead creatures joined the fight, too! Two bükken emerged from behind the wrecked wagon, clawing wildly at Terence. Then a wraith emerged from the wall of the tunnel.



Recall that a wraith is a ghostly monster, a shadow in the darkness. Its incorporeal shape can pass through walls and is hard to strike— indeed only magic weapons and spells can touch it, and even those have a 50/50 miss chance. It resembles who or what it was in life before it was slain by other wraiths and raised as one of them. This wraith's wispy body it dressed in wispy armor and robes, a twisted holy symbol of Charonne still showing. It’s the corrupted soul of Father Baynor again!

Wraith Baynor hisses, “This time I will destroy your allies first,” as he reaches out to Herran. The group knows the wraith's icy touch from beyond the grave can drain a person's vitality. As few as two strikes can be fatal. But fortunately for Herran the wraith misses as today the GM can’t roll better than an 8.

Terrence, still with his holy symbol in hand from fighting the mule zombie, channels his deity's power to repel the undead. He gets a baller roll and turns as a 10th level cleric. Unfortunately the weaker undead are closest and absorb the damage. The two bükken are dusted; the zombie mule gallops away on its turn. The wraith, grinning malevolently, is unaffected.

Meraxes, from above, fires down a salvo of Magic Missiles. Force attacks vs. incorporeal foes FTW! It’s less than 10 HP damage but every bit helps.

Then Astrin steps up to turn. The wraith is strong enough that her chances of affecting it are poor, but it’s the best move she has. She holds aloft her sword and intones, “By the power of Morgarath, BEGONE!” The winter light reflects off her blade as the tunnel echoes her command. She scored a totally baller roll with her Turn Undead attack. The wraith isn’t destroyed, but it is turned.

Now the team piles on. Herran goes full-attack on the shade and slashes it several times. Meraxes fires another Magic Missile salvo. The wraith begins to flee back into the tunnel wall, but Herran gets a luck AoO strike and destroys it.

FLAWLESS VICTORY!