Solo Dungeon Crawler - Solo DnD Tutorials

I recently came across a situation in my OD&D campaign: "The Castle of the Quest", where my party had defeated and apprehended half a score of bandits who were considered "subdued" as 9 had been put to sleep with a sleep spell and the remaining bandit failed their morale check and surrendered. I decided to sit down with my OD&D books and have a read through to see if I could find something that might indicate what should happen with subdued creatures. Whilst flicking through Vol.1 Men & Magic I noticed the following text in the section regarding non-player characters: "Capture of Non-Player Monsters: Morale dice can cause a man or intelligent monster to attempt to surrender or become subdued. When this happens an offer of service can be made (assuming that communication is possible) as outlined above. Subdued monsters will obey for a time without need to check their reactions, and such monsters are salable (see Book II)." OD&D Selling Monst

Construction of strongholds in OD&D, or any version of D&D for that matter, has always been quite a vague subject with just a few rules scattered around the rulebooks which mostly seem to have been ignored. Here are some quick insights I have noted to help shed some light on to the subject... Underworld & Wilderness Adventures explains that it’s “mandatory to hire an Engineer to build any major stronghold.” and an engineer costs 750 gold pieces per month, but the book gives no indication whatsoever of how long it takes to build any structure! The AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide helps. It says on page 106 “Fortress-like stone constructions take about one week per 10’ cubic section. Normal stone buildings as shown on the cost list, require four months to construct, including interior work.” Construction of strongholds in OD&D The prices of construction are incredibly confusing! There are a few discrepancies that I searched high and low to clarify. Namely, the illustration

 It probably occurs to most people when looking at the OD&D thief abilities for the first time that the chances of succeeding when using any of these said abilities at 1st level is pretty slim! At first glance it seems quite harsh on the player. Imagine a 1st level apprentice thief who is a dwarf (so gets some bonus) is attempting to follow an unlawful merchant back to their hideout to retrieve stolen goods. The thief wants to remain hidden and silently so the relevant skills would be the ability to Hide in Shadows and Move Silently. The apprentice only has a 25% and 15% chance of being successful at these things. The obvious issue is that hiding at night time behind barrels of goods, or wagons and carefully following the merchant from a distance is far easier than sneaking up on a guard without much cover and just a little shadow for concealment. So the system as presented is quite ambiguous. OD&D Moving Silently/Hiding in Shadows in Solo Gaming A quick flick through my old ru