I recently lucked into the
opportunity to start a new campaign with a group of (relatively) new players
who have little prior experience with tabletop RPGs. I love starting campaigns
with inexperienced players. Their enthusiasm, creativity, and sheer excitement
for the game make them a joy to play with. The things that might be seen as an
“old hat” by experienced players are new to them, as they’re seeing everything
for the first time.
As I prepared to GM this
campaign, I faced the choice of which setting to provide the players with. I
decided on the Duchy of Aerik from Greg Gillespie’s Barrowmaze, as I think the
setting does a great job of evoking the nostalgic “old-school” feel that makes
me love tabletop RPGs.
However, I did not simply
want to dump a bunch of inexperienced players into Barrowmaze or the town of
Helix and tell them to “have at it.” For one, I feel like the size and scope of
Barrowmaze might intimidate them for a first session. Secondly, the players at
the moment aren’t committed to continuing. Our first session will be a “test”
session, and very well might wind up being a one-shot. If that is the case,
then I would rather not go through the trouble of all the prep-work I would
need for Barrowmaze if it won’t pay off.
So, I needed a self-contained
adventure I could use as an introduction to Barrowmaze. I thumbed through my
mental file of all the adventures I have access to, and eventually my mind
settled on one: the first one. T1, the Village of Hommlet.
I think the best word to
describe T1 is “prototypical.” As one of the original modules published by TSR,
T1 provided many icons for early D&D. Hommlet is the iconic D&D
village. Its Welcome Wench is the iconic D&D tavern. Its moathouse is the
iconic D&D dungeon. Creighton Broadhurst from the Raging Swan, whose work I
admire greatly, devoted several articles venerating both the village of Hommlet and its accompanying moathouse. James
Maliszewski from Grognardia also “adores” Hommlet.
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| This road leading to Hommlet has been the first sight of many newly-created D&D characters. |
So what makes Hommlet hold
such prestige in the hearts and minds of D&D players? Some of it,
certainly, comes from nostalgia. Aside from that, I think Hommlet earned its
“classic” status because it introduced several ideas that became staples of
D&D. High-level adventurers in the village let rookies deal with problems
beneath their purview. Members of an undercover cult and spy on the villagers.
The moathouse’s vermin-infested surface hides a more sinister plot underneath.
In essence, T1 provided themes and tropes replicated time and again in
published modules and the homebrew adventures of GMs.
The legacy of T1 invites
many present-day GMs to run it - including myself. However, as I sat down to
prepare the module for players at my table, I felt stymied. Though I think the
overall core or foundation of T1 remains compelling, some parts of it -
particularly its presentation - don’t seem to have aged well. At the risk of
sounding irreverent or stepping on some folks’ rose-tinted spectacles, I think
there’s some ways a GM could supplement T1 to improve the experience for their
players.
Considering T1’s original
release came in 1979, this year marks its 40th anniversary. Both players and
the game have changed substantially since then. Take, for example, how T1 lists
the location and quantity of the villagers’ life savings alongside descriptions
of their homes. However, it fails to provide names for many of them and much
description of their personality or appearance. I think most players today talk
to villagers more than they steal from them, though your players might be
different. The beginning of T1 suggests this was intentional so the GM could
detail the NPCs themselves - but why not provide detail and allow me to change
it, if I like? For today’s game, I think something like Ggnore’s Religious Flowchart for T1 provides much more interest than the pocket change of villagers
(though, if you plan on using that flowchart, I might add a few steps between
“grafitti” and “vengeance” - things seem to escalate very quickly to
murder).
Besides the village itself,
Hommlet also leaves out important information about its dungeon. For example,
in its description of area #10 beneath the moathouse, T1 provides a paragraph
of detail about the bugbears there and their tactics, but nothing of the room
itself. What exactly is the oddly-shaped room #10? A barracks? A shrine? A
restroom? T1 leaves it for you to figure out.
When T1 does provide
the information a GM needs, the module hides it in Gygax’s flourishing prose.
For example, the tidbit that the traders sell regular water as holy water is
buried in the section on the church of St. Cuthbert, not in the section on the
traders.
Some GMs might view
Hommlet’s “unfinished” nature as a feature, rather than a flaw. They might
think its lack of detail provides more room for GM creativity. If that’s the
case, then good for you. I’m glad you like it. For me, I find it means I have
to do more work to make it work, which is the antithesis of why I
run modules. I’d prefer a module to provide me with more content and allow me
to change it, rather than give me less and force me to generate it.
My hope is that I can make
this module easier and more enjoyable for a GM to run. There’s a lot of good
things about Hommlet and a lot of reasons to bring it to your table. I hope to
eliminate some of the obstacles GMs face in doing so.
Speaking of Ggnore, in their
review of T1, the they identified two
issues with Hommlet: one of user interface and another that I will call
“monster condo.”
The user interface problem
stems from the fact that T1, being one of the first modules, came as an
experiment in how to present information for GM’s. As a result, T1 hides
important information in dense paragraphs. Gygax, in his signature way, writes
with loquaciousness. Ggnore did some work annotating maps of the moathouse and the church of St. Cuthbert, but
these amount to little more than stat blocks connected to the rooms of occupant
monsters. We can take this a step further by including room descriptions and
other relevant information on an annotated map. In other words, we can try to
convert T1 into a few one page dungeons.
The second problem, which I
have dubbed “monster condo,” refers to the disconnected and somewhat
implausible inhabitants of the moathouse and its dungeon level. Consider that
the surface of the moathouse contains six giant frogs, a huge spider, a giant
snake, a giant lizard, a giant tick, thirteen giant rats, and nine bandits
living within its confines. How exactly do those bandits co-exist with those
dangerous denizens living less than a hundred feet from them? T1 mentions how
the giant snake ate a bandit already, but provides little further evidence of
how these creatures interact with each other. It’s hard to imagine those giant
rats surviving very long with both a giant snake and a giant lizard next door.
The lower level is even
more cramped, with two green slimes, twelve zombies, an ogre, six bugbears,
nine gnolls, four ghouls, twenty-one brigands, an evil cleric, and a giant
crayfish (which I love, but find hard to explain). T1 makes little mention of
how the bandits upstairs have interacted with Lolth and his crowd down below,
beyond the fact that they’re unaware of the secret door leading downstairs. T1
also describes how the gnolls and ogre were hired and the green slimes “placed
and fed” on the stairs, but little explanation of what the zombies are doing
locked in cells or what on Oerth the giant crayfish is
doing, besides being “held at bay” by the brigands.
To help fix this “monster
condo” problem, I think we can apply an idea called “Gygaxian naturalism.” Gygaxian naturalism refers to the ecology of monsters outside
the sphere of the player characters. In other words, it means the inhabitants
of a dungeon have routines, ecologies, and habits that exist even when the
player characters aren’t there. Monsters don’t stand around in rooms and wait
for the PCs to come and beat them up. They go about their monstrous lives until
the PCs come and beat them up.
Although Gygax himself
developed T1, it seems to have come before Gygaxian naturalism had fully
developed coherency. I think we can attribute this to the fact that Gygax allegedly tested the random tables from the DMG to stock it. The result is that the moathouse, rather than feeling grounded
and “real,” strains verisimilitude when the players encounter incongruous
monsters from room to room with little reason for being there or evidence that
they do much beyond stand around.
We now have a second goal
to improve T1: apply some logic to the inhabitants of the moathouse and
strengthen their relationships with one another. The challenge lies in
retaining the character and “classic” feel of T1 while still making
modifications to (hopefully) improve its experience.
As I prepare to post my
notes for this module, I feel the need to disclose that I will change some
aspects of T1 to fit my personal preferences. Particularly, I’ll try to connect
T1 and the splendorous Barrowmaze by Greg Gillespie. When I publish my notes on
T1, they will not be completely faithful reproductions of T1 as written. Instead,
I intend to “riff” off the source material - which I think was intended,
anyway. All that being said, I just wanted to tell you (the reader) to change
absolutely anything about my notes you don’t like (as if you needed my
permission).
I say this because, when I
first started running modules as a new GM, I sometimes felt constrained to run
the module as-written because that was the “way it was supposed to be.” But
it’s your table, so run it your way. I will do my best to provide an overview
of the changes I made with each document, so you can get an idea of where my
content my diverge from that of the original.
Oh - and if you’re a player
in my campaign or in one that will feature The Village of Hommlet, you probably
shouldn’t read the next few posts.
