51 Years Without Cooperative DMing

Above: Leibniz and Newton are said to have invented calculus independently of each other.

51 years.

That's roughly how long the various owners and writers of Dungeons & Dragons have had to fix the game's so-called “DM problem” in which the referee/dungeon master/game master/etc. has to do much more work than any other player in order to keep a campaign, or even a series of one-shots, alive, or even to run a single module: 51 years.

After more than half a century of this situation, D&D's corporate overlords have announced earlier this month that they'll be releasing a new Starter Set to go along with their revised 5E cash grab rules, and that this set will introduce, for the first time ever, some sort of game design which lends itself better to cooperative DMing, in which different game group members can take turns running the monsters and setting. Details are still mostly unknown, but the Bob the World Builder YouTube channel had a thoughtful video about this topic here, which is where we heard about it tonight (3/25).

That's well and good for 5E players, but for the last year, MSP happens to have been developing a fanzine for the DCC RPG which addresses this very topic head-on in the first article of the first issue and proposes its own solutions to make the game consist of less work and more fun for the judge, the DCC equivalent of a DM. Already having commissioned and received the illustrations, we had planned to launch it in January at the latest, but not being a giant corporation, personal life events got in the way, and as of right now, it probably won't be out until late spring or summer. And we really, really weren't expecting there to be any possibility of anyone thinking we might have plagiarized a megacorporation on a long-overdue idea we've put quite a lot of work into as an independent publisher on its launch, but here we are. Having reviewed countless other fanzines, rule sets, and blog posts, we've never seen this topic addressed to our satisfaction, or really at all for that matter, so we were quite excited to introduce what we felt was a needed innovation. Somehow, though, Hasbro/WotC also thought, "Hmm, why not do this now?" at the exact same time that we finally were ready to speak up about it. In any case, it's clearly an idea whose time has come.

As stated above, the specifics as to how exactly Hasbro/WotC intends to introduce some sort of shared or rotating DMing are still unclear as of this post. While we aren't quite ready to unveil our manifesto on the subject, we can tell you that our approach, which we call the IAG method (Improvised Adventure Game), combines a return to D&D's early days in terms of module design with a style of writing that's easy to access at the game table and leaves ample room for the judge to experience the adventure in real time along with the other players instead of requiring them to do excessive (or any) "homework" in advance, better separating the functions of "module writer" and "game runner." And yes, the thought was also explicitly to present campaigns in such a way that different game group members could take turns in the judge's seat from adventure to adventure -- what one might call cooperative DMing.

So, 51 years after the introduction of D&D and the start of TTRPGing as a hobby, both Hasbro/WotC and we are ready to take steps to shake up the traditional idea of what it means to be a DM -- in our case because we just recently became confident enough in our TTRPGing to produce an informed take on the topic, and in theirs because...who knows. While we're not sure exactly what Hasbro/WotC intends to present in their new Starter Set, our solution to the "DM problem" is true to our unique vision and that others out there are likely to get some  value out of it. Just let this post serve as notice that what we've been working on has absolutely nothing to do with whatever Hasbro/WotC will be publishing.

The Goodman Games Forums Are Closed (But Still Online)

Joseph Goodman scared a lot of RPG players a few months ago, when he announced that the Goodman Games fan forums would be closing due to technological incompatibilities with their new website architecture. Users of the forums (including us) immediately began using various methods to try to archive the site before it disappeared. Fortunately, however, while the forums are now closed to new posts, they're not offline. 

Hopefully, they'll stay up indefinitely are they contain thousands of interesting facts and ideas, but even if they're taken down some day, there are now private backups as well as copies hosted by the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.

Visit the now-closed forums here: https://goodman-games.com/forums/index.php

And visit the Wayback Machine's backup here: https://web.archive.org/web/20240713002131/https://www.goodman-games.com/forums/index.php?sid=1ace39e21cd06c7195a06fc6d0025f19

The Draft of Labyrinth Lord, Second Edition Undergoes Another Round of Proofreading

Goblinoid Games has recompiled their draft of Labyrinth Lord, Second Edition, and it's available here for readers to sample: https://goblinoidgames.com/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=ll_draft_5_23_24.pdf

If you read any typos or have other specific feedback on the revised draft, you can post your findings on the Goblinoid Games forums in this thread: https://goblinoidgames.com/discussion/public/d/2-labyrinth-lord-new-draft-feedback

Labyrinth Lord originally was a clone of the Basic/Expert or B/X 1981 edition of Dungeons and Dragons by Tom Moldvay, but it's now becoming more of its own game in the second edition.

Fire away!

RPG Design Essentials: MSP's Collection as of May 2024

At MSP, we've only published one product so far, the Advanced Character Sheets for the DCC RPG, but we plan to publish more, including adventures, in the near future. In the meantime, here's a post about some of the most important design/inspiration products that have served as starting points and building blocks in our process as of May 2024.

General Resources

-The Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG rulebook: Of course!

-The original Dungeons & Dragons boxed set: Having learned an actually readable version of old-school RPG rules in the DCC RPG, it's time to go back to the beginning. Know your foundations, and be prepared to take notes!

-The 1981 Basic/Expert (B/X) restatement of the basic D&D rules. Very similar rules to the three original booklets from 1974 but better-organized and with a smattering of additions from the original D&D rules supplements (Books IV-VII). Still, it would've been great for the original publisher, TSR, to have combined both volumes into one prior to the bloated Rules Cyclopedia (which also incorporated the lengthy and arguably unnecessary Companion, Master, and Immortals rules), but maybe that's what Labyrinth Lord and Old-School Essentials are for.

-The AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide, First Edition: It's filled to the brim with adventure design treasures, a true legend. You'll also need the Monster Manual for stats and descriptions unless you want to make up your own.

-The Fifth Edition Dungeon Masters Guide: Useful random generators and design tips in an attractively designed book. Again, you'll also need the Monster Manual for stats and descriptions unless you want to make up your own.

-Tome of Adventure Design: Many lengthy tables on a number of important topics, designed to get your imagination going. Incredible work!

-How to Write Adventure Modules That Don't Suck: A wide-ranging collection of essays on adventure design, each with an example scenario, from many different authors. Some of the advice in this book clashes with typical OSR adventure design values, but reading it still can be useful as a meditation on what you value in an adventure, even if it's because you realize that you disagree with some of the ideas presented here. Joseph Goodman's article in particular is strong.

Specialized Resources

With just the above books, you already have more than enough to jump in and create amazing adventures. Here are some additional resources that are more topic-specific:

-The Encyclopedia Magica: 20 years' worth of D&D and AD&D magic items, compiled from every official source (core rules, modules, magazines, etc.), and published beautifully as a four-volume set. Perusing the EM will give you many wonderful magic item ideas, and it towers over basically all other magic item books.

-The Wizard's Spell Compendium and the Priest's Spell Compendium: From the same era as the Encyclopedia Magica, these three-volume sets, as their titles imply, compile all of the wizard and priest spells from 20 years of D&D and AD&D products, 1974-1993. Why reinvent the wheel when so much is waiting here to be tweaked and customized?

-Artifices, Deceptions, & Dilemmas: Courtney C. Campbell's Empty Rooms, Tricks, and Basic Trap Design is a great resource, and this work combines that info with even more great stuff for an extremely usable and inspiring design aid.

-The Big List of RPG Plots: Many OSR players feel that exploration/setting >>> plot, but when you need help navigating plot tropes, this is a handy aid, similar to a condensed version of TVTropes.org.

-Cities by Midkemia Press: It gets into a level of detail you may or may not go for in your games, but it's a great starting point for developing your towns and cities.

-The Dungeon Alphabet: Possibly the best "alphabet" product, with a lot of really useful and inspiring tables.

-The Wilderness Alphabet: Another useful "alphabet" product, less glamorous than "Dungeon" but solid.

-The Elegant Fantasy Artifact Generator and the Elegant Fantasy Creature Generator: Both are straightforward products specially tailored to aiding with artifact and creature creation.

-The Grimtooth's Traps series: On the one hand, these design aids do offer a lot of content. On the other hand, many of the traps are overly lethal and therefore of limited use in a game situation. Also, the tone of the writing, particularly the relishing of elaborate, improbable violence is more on the juvenile-edgelord side. (It's supposed to be written from Grimtooth the Troll's POV, but still, it's overdone.) Nevertheless, there some useful trap and design ideas in here if you can stomach the somewhat cringeworthy and grating presentation.

-Lethal Legacies: Traps of the World Before: An excellent traps book, far more grounded in tone than the Grimtooth series.

-The Metamorphica: DCC RPG has a rule of "no generic monsters," and here, the Metamorphica, a large collection of system-agnostic tables for adding customized features to your monsters, is incredibly useful.

-The Random Esoteric Creature Generator: Briefer and more focused than the Metamorphica and also very useful for creating original and unique monsters.

-Random Fungi: Various tables on a wide variety of subjects. Give it a chance as there's a lot to like (and use) here.

-Wondrous Weapons

This Judge's Guild product has a lot of pre-gen magical weapons with pretty imaginative and detailed write-ups. They're usable as-is, or, even better, you can use the tables in the back (of course; it's Judge's Guild) to roll up your own. Very nice stuff.

-The DCC Monster Extractors: There are five of these, each themed differently, and they're great for coming up with usable, non-generic monsters.

-DCC Quick Monster Stats: Wham, bam

-Making Monsters for Dungeon Crawl Classics: A useful set of tips from veteran RPG writer Daniel J. Bishop

Model Modules

Here are some exemplary adventure modules. MSP started out more or less emulating the style of the official, numbered DCC RPG modules (which, in turn, emulate classic Basic and Advanced modules), but as we continued to write, we found that we strongly preferred the more raw, very early design style of some of the Judge's Guild work from the 1970s and similarly early third-party work from Wee Warriors.

-Palace of the Vampire Queen: WOW. If, as a Judge, you prefer improv and don't like having to do a ton of prep, this is the product for you: super-simple explanations of what's in the room, with space left for you to make up the rest of the details as you go. Stumbling onto this, the first officially licensed D&D module was a turning point for MSP.

-Tegel Manor: After Palace of the Vampire Queen, this is perhaps the second-best module of all time, and it's due to the same stripped-down design that makes it incredibly easy to digest on the fly when Judging. Is it a somewhat haphazard "monster condo," with all kinds of crazy stuff thrown in without rhyme or reason? Yes. Is it a good example of sensible "dungeon ecology"? No. And it's great!

-Wilderlands of High Fantasy: Part module and part Dungeon Master's Guide, WHF is an amazing resource that's chock full of amazing tables and other design aids intended to help Judges develop their wilderness campaigns on the fly. Incredible stuff. Frontier Forts of Kelnore is another one in this vein.

Other Works

These resources don't necessarily go directly into game element creation (though sometimes they do), but they're important works that have added to the TTRPG knowledge base.

-The Dungeoneer's Survival Guide: You don't have to use all the extra rules provided in this 1E AD&D work, but it does have a lot of dungeon and underworld design ideas worth perusing. 

-The Wilderness Survival Guide: A companion piece to the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide above, it likewise has some rules you might never use, but it also a lot of general wilderness ideas that should help get your creativity moving.

-Ready Ref Sheets, Volume I: Some people love this work. You may or may not think it's gold from start to finish, but especially in the back half, there are many useful tables. It's especially interesting to read from the perspective that it pre-dates the first edition DMG.

-The Campaign Hexagon System: This Judge's Guild product, along with associated products such as Castles, Caves and Caverns, Temples, and Villages, really hit the nail on the head in terms of following out the stated D&D rules and instructions into the development of actually usable game products. Recall that D&D originally was just a set of rule descriptions and design instructions with no concrete examples of what you'd actually get if you actually tried to make something using them. Now, enter Judge's Guild, who actually built the things described by D&D, and now you see what they look like. Definitely worth a look, with tons of usable tables, too. 

-A Brief Study of TSR Book Design: This work by Kevin Crawford is a great help to anyone trying to emulate early TSR D&D works (1970s though 1980s/BECMI) or just to learn more about module layout design in general.

-Level UP!: The Book of Fantasy Gaming Lists: Courtney C. Campbell's Level UP! is a collection of lists relating to various TTRPG topics. Some of the lists seem to have been written as a goof, but others are very seriously usable from start to finish. Despite the unevenness of this work, it gets a nod here because it can introduce you to some pretty rare, old-school resources you may not hear of elsewhere.

Conclusion

So, there's a brief overview of the books we hit up for tables and ideas on a regular basis and that have expanded our background knowledge of the world of classic TTRPGs and TTRPG design. In the coming weeks, we'll post reviews and more extended discussions of some of the items in the list.

Goblinoid Games' Labyrinth Lord RPG Is About to Get a Second Edition

Goblinoid Games' Labyrinth Lord RPG, which began as a clone of the 1981 B/X edition of Dungeons and Dragons, is about to get a second edition ("Revised and Expanded"), and they need our help in ironing out the text before it goes to print!

Labyrinth Lord: Revised and Expanded
(Pre-release Review Draft) cover art

According to the text, Labyrinth Lord: Revised and Expanded doesn't aim to be a "true" clone of B/X D&D, especially now that good-quality PDFs of the original game are easily accessible, but instead seeks "space to breathe" and become its own game. So far, I really like what I see here.

Check out the current, 170-page draft as a PDF at this link: https://goblinoidgames.com/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=ll_revised_current_draft_may_11_wc.pdf

After you've read the draft, you can leave comments on anything you notice that might need fixing in the Goblinoid discussion forums here: https://goblinoidgames.com/discussion/public/

Current and future generations of RPG players thank you for your service! 🫡

P.S. They also have a free LL character sheet drawn by James West: https://goblinoidgames.com/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=ll_revised_char_sheet.pdf

The Goodman Games Fan Forums Are Closing!

Oh, no! For technology-related reasons, it seems, the long-running (since 2002) official fan forums at Goodman Games will be closing in a matter of days. According to the official GG forum account, writing in an April 25, 2024 post titled, "The Goodman Games Forums Are Closing":

"Hello everyone!

"It's been a long time since I posted on here. I still remember about 20 years ago when we first started these forums!

"I'm here to let you all know that we’re migrating our comms elsewhere! Goodman Games has outgrown its web forums. The software we use for these forums is incompatible with the direction we’re moving for the rest of our site, and it's been causing problems. So we will be shutting the forums down in about a month.

"That’s four weeks to migrate important information elsewhere, stay in touch with contacts, etc.

"We still do most of our communication through our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/dccrpg/

"You can also keep up with us at our official discord site: https://discord.gg/bSR5SGg

"Thanks for all the support from the greatest fans in gaming over the many years of our forums — we look forward to seeing you on Facebook and Discord!"

The GG forums are archived pretty well on the Wayback Machine, and some forum users have said they plan to create mirrors, but if there's anything you want to see before these forums close, now's the time!

The DCC RPG is a great game, and Goodman Games is great for creating it and for engaging in all of the earlier publishing they've done which built up the company to the point where they could create it, so hats off, and thanks for all the forum posts!

"Fetch" for the Atari 2600 Now Available!

MSP's first Atari 2600 ROM, "Fetch," written using the batari Basic programming language, is now available! Check it out on the new Atari 2600 ROMs page.