 Goto [ Index ] |
Reviewing long out-of-print material has its own set of challenges. Instead of convincing the reader that said product has fresh, exciting ideas, the reviewer must explain how old, dusty ideas are still relevant. This is not an impossible task where Dungeons & Dragons is concerned. The game has enough history that it has its own niche of historians who enjoy studying it. Add “Greyhawk” to that equation and you have a rabid fanbase interested in all things Greyhawk-ian, the older the better.
Hot on the heels of the world-changing release of the Dungeons & Dragons game in 1974 was the publication of its first supplement in 1975. (The copy actually reviewed is a 12th printing, from 1979.) Its subtitle, Greyhawk, is only tenuously connected to the campaign setting of the same name. The Foreword ends with "find out what the devious minds behind 'Greyhawk Castle' have been dreaming up for the amusement of the participants of that campaigning..." (p. 3).
That will be the only obvious reference in the whole text to the original Greyhawk campaign, though this is hardly unusual for a D&D product from the 1970's. TSR's pre-1980 publications included no campaign source material aside from the Empire of the Petal Throne boxed set, and the main body of TSR publications seemed to indicate that DMs were expected to invent their own hodge-podge campaign setting based on mythology (Norse, Finnish, etc.) and popular fiction (Burroughs, Howard, Leiber, etc.).
The Greyhawk Supplement is broken down -- like the original D&D booklets -- into “Men & Magic,” “Monsters & Treasure,” and “the Underworld & Wilderness Adventures.” Each section adds to the original booklets while repeating virtually no information from them. The Men & Magic section adds new classes, ability score mechanics, the first standardized Experience Point system, a revised damage system, and new spells.
Some changes, like those to the fighter class, were done for game balance. The original D&D fighter had mostly the same armor and weapon choices as a cleric, with no special abilities, and only marginally better hit points. This supplement introduces bonuses to hit and damage for high Strength scores (though Dexterity already gave a bonus “to hit”) and the concept of exceptional strength, offering additional bonuses to fighters only (but only for players who rolled exceptionally well first). To give fighters special abilities, the paladin was introduced. The paladin, in exchange for a few requirements and restrictions, enjoys eight special abilities, culminating in being “virtually immune to all magic” should a DM let one acquire a holy sword. Whether or not the paladin was made balanced with the magic-user and cleric classes was a long-debated topic.
Ability scores were given increased relevance, with five of the six scores now affecting game mechanics besides xp progression. Strength has been mentioned already. Intelligence now affects magic-users’ ability “to know any given spell” and caps the level of spells they can employ if their Intelligence score is not exceptional. Dexterity now modifies Armor Class for the first time. Constitution gives a range of hit point modifiers and, for whatever reason, divides the original survival percentage into two columns -- one for resurrection only and one for other spell effects, like polymorphing or petrification. Wisdom is still only an “experience booster for clerics” (since Wisdom is their prime requisite and PCs with high prime requisite scores earn xp faster than other characters).
The thief class was added because its skill sets (opening locked doors, finding traps) are badly needed in any dungeon-delving campaign before magic-users acquire spells that duplicate said skills (Knock, Invisibility, etc.). Also, adding the thief class offered variety to the demi-human races, dwarf and hobbit/halfling, that were previously restricted to fighters only. The literary precedent for the thief class is almost certainly Lieber’s The Gray Mouser (hence the weak combat skills, as opposed to a Conan-based thief).
For the first time, with this edition, hit dice means something other than six-sided dice with a +1 or -1 modifier. Each class has its own hit die (though magic-users and thieves share the d4). Also introduced is variable weapon damage, with (at its extremes) light daggers doing 1d4 and two-handed swords doing 1d10 damage. The wider range of weapon damage makes sense and seems to, very loosely, have both height and weight of the weapon factored into the equation. Beyond that, there are two good reasons for these additions. One, they add variety to the game. Two, they use more dice. OD&D boxed sets came with six different polydedral dice -- not because the rules required them, but because they were sold in sets of six (the familiar d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, and d20) to the publisher. Yet OD&D could easily have been played with six-sided dice only. Variable hit dice and weapon damage were the first two attempts to retcon reasons for the extra dice into the game.
More weapons-related curiosities -- a second column added to weapon damage changes those numbers significantly vs. larger opponents, with daggers doing 1-3 points of damage and mounted lances doing 2-24 points! Larger monsters generally have more hit points, so the effect of increasing damage against them must have been intended to even the playing field for weaker foes. In a larger sense, ecologically, it works. Mobs of villagers have a chance of defending themselves from rampaging monsters because of this. Pity the poor dragon, though, whose hit points are suddenly one-third their relative value vs. a fighter with a two-handed sword as opposed to a spear. In a similar vein, weapon attack modifiers vs. specific armor classes are introduced here. They do add variety, though whether the modifiers were created to keep all the weapons relatively balanced in effectiveness or to offer some semblance of historical accuracy is hard to gauge. The number of modifiers (ranged weapons get three, one each for short, medium, and long range!) is so large, the system so cumbersome, that its implementation is impractical. In its defense, it is presented as an “alternative” combat system.
Previously, all monsters also did 1d6 damage upon hitting, regardless of the monster’s size and strength. There is a four-page list of monsters with revised damage for each, as well as a varying number of attacks per round based on the natural weaponry of each monster (claw/claw/bite, as opposed to always one attack per round). The new damage listings, unfortunately, are amazingly random. A large manticore’s claws do less damage than a dagger? A giant roc’s claw does as much damage as a pegasus’ hoof? Griffons, bigger than a pegasus and smaller than a roc, do half as much damage as both with their claws? At least some monsters become, in comparison, much more deadly, such as the cloud giants who now do 6-36 damage per hit. Quite an upgrade from 1d6!
There is an assortment of new spells, comprising the second largest section of the supplement. Such popular low-level spells as Magic Missile and Web are introduced in this book and this is the first book to have any seventh- through ninth-level spells in it -- a total of 50 new magic-user spells. For the most part, they are all solid, useful additions for either dungeon-crawling (like Shield) or dungeon-stocking (like Magic Mouth). The most powerful is obviously Wish -- a spell that lets characters do virtually anything (and the subject of many, many magazine articles over the years on how to manage Wish spells in a campaign). The least useful of the lot is probably Extension, an absurdly high fourth-level spell that only prolongs the duration of another spell. Clerics again get shorter shrift for spells, though there are two new ones for both second- and third-level spells and the first sixth- and seventh-level spells for clerics. One of the new spells, Silence 15’ radius, is an extremely versatile and useful spell, while some of the high-level spells, like Blade Barrier and Earthquake, were no doubt intended to put them on par, offensively, with magic-users of similar level. With only 20 new cleric spells, though, clerics still fall far behind in versatility.
In the Monsters & Treasure section, 31 new monsters take up eight pages. The statistics are as bare-boned as those found in the original Monsters & Treasure volume. In many cases, the monsters are simply more powerful versions of monsters previously seen -- ogres become ogre magi, cloud giants are topped by storm giants and then again by titans. Some are iconic monsters curiously missing from the game previously, such as vampires, harpies, shadows, lizard men, and golems. Others are curious creations invented to fill niches that might exist in dungeons but never in nature, such as the displacer beast, the beholder, and the rust monster (indeed, these unsubtle attempts were the first efforts to explain a fantasy ecology for the game). The vampire description specifically mentions the cross, revealing that religion in D&D is merely Christianity concealed (nor would later editions do much to move away from that model). Druids, who would become a Player Character Class in 1976, are here introduced as monsters. Ogre magi are “properly Japanese Ogres,” suggesting that the orient was to exist relatively unchanged in the fantasy setting (indeed, the original Greyhawk campaign visited China). Tiamat, queen of chaotic dragons, debuts (but went unnamed for now).
Equally enticing additions were made to the hoards of magic items awaiting PCs. Vorpal swords, maces of disruption, potions of extra-healing, rods of lordly might, cubes of force, portable holes, figurines of wondrous power, decks of many things, and spheres of annihilation all debut here, among over 100 others. Obviously, some only receive one-sentence descriptions.
Though a cornucopia of new material back in 1975, one may wonder what value the Greyhawk Supplement has for today's gamers, or those sages who study the World of Greyhawk setting. Today's gamers will most likely be woefully disappointed. Almost every scrap of information in the supplement would later find its way into the AD&D Monster Manual of 1977, the AD&D Players Handbook of 1978, and the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide of 1979. Much of this has, in turn, been adapted to every edition of Dungeons & Dragons published since. The only glaring exception is the final section, an addition to the Tricks and Traps section of the original Underworld & Wilderness Adventures booklet. There are 52 suggestions for traps and monster combinations -- some of which have never been used in another source. Some are odd (giant exploding bubbles), some are puns (the “ogre jelly”), and some are just plain mean (a balrog riding a red dragon), but many are likely to spur a DM to creative thinking. Most of them have since been credited to co-author Rob Kuntz as encounters actually used in his home campaign.
The last oddities of note are some of the illustrations. The first is found on page 30, entitled "The Great Stone Face: Enigma of Greyhawk." Gary Gygax has confessed to having drawn the image himself, and relates the tale of the Enigma in Dragon #288 (and other sources earlier). The drawing itself has been scanned and made available online before on fansites, so the supplement is definitely not worth purchasing for this lone sketch. The first drawing of a bugbear in D&D (found on pg. 67) depicts this monster as it typically appears in English folklore, as a pumpkin-headed giant. With the publication of the Monster Manual in 1977, the bugbear would permanently be changed to a large, hairy goblin. The rest of the artwork is of poor to above-average quality, with the better works by Gregg Bell being a swordsman vs. a beholder (front cover), a horrific Japanese ogre (p. 24), and a nice-looking bear (pg. 60). The first all-nude woman in D&D art appears on pg. 50.
For those interested in studying the history of the World of Greyhawk, the supplement is of greater interest. Much, if not all, of the material in the supplement was first playtested in the original Greyhawk campaign, run by Gary Gygax from 1972 to 1975. There is no better source of information on what game mechanics are "canon" for Greyhawk than this supplement. By "canon," I mainly refer to spells available, monsters likely to be encountered, and magic items that exist. These are major components of the supplement.
The value of the Greyhawk Supplement as an historical document is also in the glimpse it gives of the originally intended "modular" nature of the D&D rules. Insteading of reprinting all the rules each time a new edition was needed, supplements would only add to the features already present in the core books. This format was discarded in a few years for both AD&D books and even the further editions of D&D. Still, it would be an interesting mental exercise to think of what the 2nd ed. AD&D books might have looked like as supplements to 1st edition.
