Give ’em what they want. Then give ’em Skaven.

The recent reblog about Gary Gygax got me to thinking about my personal history with Dungeons & Dragons. I guess this is where Moby’s inner nerd shines through, and unless your really interested in D&D this is not likely to be very interesting. At all.

Moby learned to play ‘Advanced Dungeons & Dragons’ years and years ago with a bunch of acquaintances who were of course a bit older than I was. Just for fun I pulled out all the old books for a picture, those are my actual books above. Sure they can be replaced; I looked on amazon and you can get about any book you need, in used condition, for under $10 (including shipping), but these are the very books I have had for about 20 years now. They are the D&D version I learned (first edition), so of course they are the version that is best and all others suck. So there.

Then there are two other ‘books’, stuff I put together myself to help expand the choices available to the players. More races, a few more classes, and so on.

I put these two ‘books’ together after hearing too many complaints from players about the lack of choices available to them, they wanted more. While looking into what to do about this (entirely nonexistent) shortage of character choices, I came across some articles in Dragon Magazine. Be a Dryad, or a Nymph! Barbarian Cleric? Why not. But the one I really latched onto was ‘Hey, wanna be a Kobald?‘. Why yes, I do. And I thought the players in my group would like to as well.

I turned to many sources including Warhammer (Snotlings, Skaven), original D&D box set ‘The Hollow World’ (Brutemen, Kubitts, Beastmen), Dragon Magazine (Half-Satyrs, Half-Dryads), and of course I even just made shit up, because that is basically what the whole game is about. Plus it was cool to have a race of aardvarks a la Cerebus running around being led by ‘Most Holy’. Yeah, good times.

So eventually I put together two binders representing the two new player handbooks. The regular Players Expansion for ordinary play, and a second binder for playing what were usually the ‘bad guys’ (goblins, kobolds, orcs, etc). I called it the ‘Rodent Handbook’.

Here’s a pic from the Players Expansion that shows us a few things: First, the available number of races more than doubles (and this is not including the ‘Rodents’). Secondly, Moby has terrible handwriting. This chart gives you an idea of the time that was put in, making it all look a bit like the original so players could jump right in and feel at home with their new choices.

The players in the group were impressed. They said it was way cool. They did not want to use the new races at all.

I was a bit shocked and confused. How many more options did they want? How could someone pass up the chance to play as a Half-Satyr Musketeer! You sound like the cavalry running into battle and you have a gun!! Clop Clop, Bang Bang Bitches!!!

Turns out the ‘lack of choice’ was really just ‘I only want to play as a half-elven cavalier…just like my last 8 (or 20) characters’. But still, the homemade Handbooks have gotten some use over the years, and if nothing else it has helped Moby to be more familiar with goblins and kobolds while running the occasional game.

The Skaven in particular have become a common enemy for players to encounter. With their disease and serrated swords they can be quite a dangerous foe to run into. And I make sure they are run into quite often…sort of my revenge for the reception the new handbooks got.

So give ‘em what (they say) they want. Then give ‘em Skaven. Lots of ’em.