Solo Dungeon Crawler - Solo DnD Tutorials

I've recently started experimenting with some simple rules in my OD&D solo campaign "The Castle of the Quest". I'm trying to create an interesting mechanic regarding management of excess treasure. The intention is to contribute towards keeping the motivation of characters high in terms of seeking out additional adventures and also attempt to create a more realistic economy that reflects the middle-ages. Things to Spend Money on in an OD&D Campaign - Part 3 I came up with the following rules for "Treasure Tallage" and "Squanderage" All characters must pay a tallage to the local ruler of the parties home base for any treasure acquired at a rate of 10-30% of the overall hoard. Once this has been paid, rangers, paladins and monks must donate all excess treasure from their share to a worthy cause, holding back no more than 250 encumbrance worth. Clerics must tithe 10% of treasure from their share.   After each adventure when tallage, donations a...

I came across another interesting D&D article while pilfering old copies of White Dwarf magazine. This article appeared in the very first issue of White Dwarf. So we are travelling back to the summer of 1977, just 3 years after D&D came out and already its popularity is rising in the UK. The article in question is titled "D&D Campaigns" and was written by Lewis Pulsipher. What I found interesting about it is that it illuminates the state of play at that time in the UK and the challenges of the ambiguity of the original rules. It's also interest to imagine what differences there were in the UK approach having most likely been introduced to the game at a time when all the supplements were available. UK OD&D Campaigns Discussed in White Dwarf #1 In summary the article introduces a three-part series on running Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, aimed at aspiring or novice referees (Dungeon Masters). It provides insights into campaign philosophy, mechanics, and ...

It's no secret to most avid solo roleplay (or "roll" play) enthusiasts that enjoy old school that random dungeon generation has been around since at least the spring of 1975 and can be attributed to the co-creator of D&D, Gary Gygax himself. If you're familiar with any of my content then you'll know that from time to time I mention Gary's method as it appeared in the TSR newsletter known as Strategic Review (the first issue to be exact). What is perhaps less known is another method introduced in the Autumn of 1977. This method of generating random dungeons on the fly was published in the third ever issue of UK's White Dwarf magazine. Famous these days for focusing solely on Warhammer products, but interestingly enough at its inception it was focused primarily on Dungeons & Dragons. Roger Moores'’ "Solo Dungeon Mapping" from White Dwarf #3 Roger Moores'’ "Solo Dungeon Mapping" from White Dwarf #3 (November 1977) presents ...

There are many examples of “gods, demi-gods and heroes” listen in the final OD&D supplement written by Rob Kuntz and James Ward, but throughout the previous OD&D books there are also various clues pointing to some implied or supposed deities, belief systems, and mythologies that might be expanded upon also. It’s evident that many of these “snippets” of information will have later been fleshed out in AD&D and the official material pertaining to the world of Greyhawk. However, it’s interesting to see what was mentioned prior to 1979 and think about how these various scraps of information might have fuelled the imaginations of the early adopters of D&D. Implied, Supposed & Suggested OD&D Pantheons It’s a given that D&D was heavily inspired by various works of pulp fantasy and science fiction. We are all familiar with Appendix N, but there was actually an earlier list in Dungeon Magazine #4: “Anderson, Poul (Three Hearts and Three Lions) Blackwood, Algernon Brac...

I've recently been experimenting with 1:20 scale combat in my own solo OD&D campaign. This experiment was prompted by a few lines of text in the 1973 OD&D draft which states that when normal-types are fighting fantastic types, "It is suggested that the 1:20 Combat Tables be used." but such an approach is not so straight forward in practice due to the Post Melee Morale system that should technically apply to any melee conducted in this manner. The Post Melee Morale system is used to test whether one side of the melee will move back, rout, retreat or surrender. The problem with the Post Melee Morale system in an OD&D context is that it relies on specific Morale Ratings for individual types of creatures, i.e. normal troops (light foot, heavy foot, armoured foot, cavalry and so on), fantasy creatures such as elves, dwarves, goblins and of course the stronger monsters. The Morale Ratings in CHAINMAIL do not cover all the monsters and super-normal (character types) ...

 In OD&D's "Underworld & Wilderness Adventures" movement rates are given as numbers of hexes per day which can be travelled according to type. This is followed by a suggested scale of 5 miles per hex. So, a figure on foot who has a rate of 3 hexes of movement per day would therefore travel 15 miles in a day. This works fine when making longer journeys on a typical referee's wilderness map, but what about if a journey is being taken to reach somewhere that is only a few miles away? For purposes of time keeping you may wish to compute how much time this would take. OD&D Movement Speeds as Miles per Hour To calculate how many miles per hour a figure can move first you need to figure out how many hours are in a typical day. Presuming a medieval European setting the day would be measured from dawn until dusk, so we are really only dealing with the daylight hours between. For a temperate climate you would typically have about 12 hours of daylight in spring, 16 i...