Game Viet Nam

Solely for curiousity's sake over to the right I'm asking folks familiar with 1st edition AD&D to vote on the most obnoxious subsystem in those rules.  If you click on "Other" please leave a comment here explaining your choice.

EDIT: I feel like a moron for omitting both gender-based stat limits and unarmed combat.

Gameblog reader and all around cool guy Jeremy Deram sent this to me. I showed this to my sister-in-law the feminist theologian and she immediately said "Hey! It's two out of every three guys at Pennsic!" For those of you not in the know, the Pennsic War is an annual conflict between two kingdoms of the Society for Creative Anachronism.  The loser of the war is stuck with the realm of the Pittsburgh until the next annual get-together.

My criminally under-used FLAILSNAILS pc is a 1st level fighter of no particular talent named Donnal MacDonnal (called Young MacDonnal back home, since his dad is also Donnal MacDonnal).  Donnal's first adventure was as a zero level farmer run under the Dungeon Crawl Classics rpg beta rules.  Since then he's had in his possession 1 ounce of mithril he found on a dead dwarf or something. There's not much else for Young MacDonnal to do with this stuff but sell it or trade it, so I've been trying to figure out what it might be worth.

If the value is in the DCC beta rulebook I can't find it, so I've been looking at some other sources.  The first place I turned was the AD&D Dungeoneers Survival Guide, recalling a mention of mithril in the mining section.  Unfortunately, this otherwise exhaustive tome only details how rarely you find the stuff, not what its worth should you actually find it.

Mithril Pieces are the high end coin in MERP and Rolemaster, replacing the platinum piece of D&D.  Mithril Pieces are rare and unlike other coins their value tends to fluctuate.  Intended to be worth 100gp each, mp are often traded at less than 'face' value, typically 50gp each but sometimes as low as 10gp each.  MERP coins are one quarter of an ounce each, so if Young MacDonnal visited Middle Earth he could probably get 40 to 400gp for his mithril.  That's a crapload of money.  MERP/RM money through me for a loop as a kid, because standard adventurers start out with 2gp, but prices for normal gear are normally in silver, bronze and copper.  Platemail costs 50sp, for example.

My last source is the Hypertext D20 SRD.  To purchase a miscellaneous item out of mithril costs +500gp per pound.  A pound of gold pieces is worth 50gp (fiddy coins to the pound), so 50gp made out of mithril would cost 550gp.  Yes, I know there's no such thing as gold made out mithril.  Therefore one mithril piece costs 11gp (Is that the same value as Impervium in Encounter Critical?  I'll have to check.).  Normally a coin weighs a third of an ounce, so I guess that'd mean Donnal owns 33gp worth of mithril.  That get's us within spitting distance of the bottom of the MERP valuation.

Of course the real answer is that the mithril is worth whatever the GM says it is.  Anyone care to toss out what they think 1oz of mithril is worth in their campaign?

By the by, the more I think about it, the less I am inclined to sell this stuff for cash.   If Donnal is dirt poor and needs to eat, that's one thing.  But otherwise, I'm thinking the better bet is to hold onto the mithral in hopes of trading it to some fantastic being for a non-monetary boon of some sort.

This scan is a page from the 1981 Heritage USA sales manual/catalog, the kind of thing meant for the hobby stores rather than the consumer.  Has anybody played the Heritage fantasy system Knights & Magick, mentioned in the last paragraph?

"Finally, we held the ultimate playtest - eight people each designed their own armies, using the recently developed "Creating Armies" rules. The TSR designers are a sneaky, underhanded bunch, and they all pored through the manuals trying to create the nastiest, most powerful, most outrageous armies they could find. The final battle took place on three planes (Ethereal, Astral, and Prime Material) with about 40% of the total forces invisible when the game began. There were devas, planetars, mezzodaemons, galeb duhr, and 10,000 gibberlings - each with a sword and a girdle of storm giant strength. There were catapults firing mirrors of life trapping that contained powerful monsters. There was a force of 220 invisible shadow dragons. There were three hundred-handed giants (see the Legends and Lore volume for details). There were drow cavalry on nightmares (they didn't last long). It took 8 hours of playing time (and 4 large deep-dish pizzas) to get through two turns . . . but it was an incredible amount of fun, and a lot was learned.

That led to the sixth draft . . . and eventually to the seventh."

--Michael Dobson, describing his work on the original Battlesystem supplement, Dragon #100 (August 1985), p96.

These freaks have been generated for use with the Summon spell from Lamentations of the Flame Princess Grindhouse Edition, using the procedure on pages 143-148 of the Rules & Magic booklet.  The demons below should hopefully be enough to cover the ref's ass for a session or two should a PC start with Summon in their spellbook.

Fang-Fronded Frog, HD 0 (d6 hp), AC 12 (9[10]), 1 attack d6 damage, Move 120' (leap 150'), Morale 10, no additional powers

Prehensile Machine Seaweed, HD 0 (d6 hp), AC 12 (9[10]), 1 attack d6 damage, Move 120', Morale 10, no additional powers

Thorn-Winged Transparent-Feathered Canine with Incomplete Genitals, HD 1, AC 21 (0[19]), 1 attack d6 damage, Move 180', Morale 10, no additional powers

Seaweed with Running Teeth, HD 1, AC 12 (9[10]), 1 attack d6 damage, Move 120', Morale 10, Stone Shape at will

Gossamer-Eyed Slime with Adhesive Shell, HD 2, AC 17 (4[15]), 1 attack d6 damage, Move 60', Morale 10, immune to normal weapons, Phantasmal Force (at will, one at a time)

Excrement with Adhesive Feathers, HD 2, AC 12 (9[10]), 1 attack d6 damage, Move 120', Morale 10, Cloudkill (at will, one at a time), vulnerable to electricity (+1 damage per die)