🏰Gary Gygax’s Solo Dungeon Crawler From 1975 - The Strategic Review Volume 1(OD&D)
🧙🏼♂️What I’m Up To: Changes In The Newsletter & Video Games I Played These Days
🏰Gary Gygax’s Solo Dungeon Crawler From 1975 - The Strategic Review Volume 1(OD&D)
The Strategic Review Vol.1, No. 1 - Banner
As you may have read in my last newsletter, I’m learning to play OD&Dalong withChainmail. It’s fun, very different from modern stuff because of Chainmailrules, yet quite challenging to understand. I’m mostly trying it solo at the moment, and I already got one of the perfect tools for this game: Gary Gygax’s very own Solo Dungeon Crawler.
Some months ago, I stumbled upon rules for OD&D coming from a newsletter written by Gygax himself: The Strategic Review. This zine was published by Gygax’s company: TSR (originally Tactical Studies Rules), which he used for editing the very first edition of Dungeons & Dragons in 1974 (So yeah, OD&D). This newsletter provided D&Dand Wargame stuff like OD&D monsters, Chainmail clarification rules etc.
But what drove me to this particular release, the very first edition of the very first volume of The Strategic Review, released in Spring 1975, is that it contains solo rules for dungeon delving. And I love solo dungeon delving (Heck, I’ve made a tiny game about it called GrimRogue). Simply called “SOLO DUNGEON ADVENTURES”, those rules were written by Gary Gygax with a special thanks to George A. Lord. They were thought to be a “uniform method of dungeon exploring”, arguing that wilderness adventures were already played solo by enthusiasts. And that’s true, OD&D book 3 The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures is already pretty simple to be played “as-is” for outdoor hexcrawling.
It all starts with an “upper level”, above the dungeon. Gygax encourages the use of OD&Doutdoor encounter matrix to see what stands in that place. The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, page 15, with its “Castles” section added with the “Construction Of Castles And Strongholds” got everything needed for designing the upper level. Personally, I preferred to go down directly, and start delving.
Extract from The Strategic Review
As seen below, the dungeon crawling is made with various tables, like modern solo Dungeon Crawlers. You start with a room, check its size, then the exit. Concerning exits, they are linked to a dice roll but also to the room size, adding one exit when the room is bigger. Also, if there’s 0 exit, you can still search for secret doors. Then you roll for what is behind a door and that is basically it!
Of course, this is more than just rooms after rooms. You can find chambers that lead to passages instead of doors. Passages make a huge difference against more modern takes on dungeon crawling procedures. They can be diagonal, T shaped, Y shaped and even X shaped. There’s also curved passages to add to the coherence of the whole dungeon.
Unusual Shape and Size table
Rooms, also, can be different than just rectangles or squares, they can get an “unusual shape and size” (See above). It can even go to 3,400 square feet and further if you throw a 12! It’s pretty uncommon to stumble upon those shapes though, as they only happen on a 12 when you check the shape and size of a room/chamber.
Like many other dungeon crawlers, there’s also a room/chamber content table. It’s pretty simple:
DieContents 1-12empty 13,14 monster only (determined with OD&D Book III) 15-17monster and treasure (determined with another table) 18special or empty 19Trick/Trap (determined with another table) 20Treasure (determined with another table)
As you can see, nothing fancy here except for one thing: the roll on a 18 “special or empty”. Gygax noted under the table: “Insert a sealed envelope indicating room contents which can be prepared for you by any willing person, and open the envelope when indicated above.”. This whole idea is pretty unique and interesting, even if it was written in a time where Gygax was playing among a lot of other friends who were in the hobby. He also added that regarding this solo dungeon procedure: “After a time I am certain that there will be some sameness to this however, and for this reason a system of exchange of sealed envelopes for special rooms and tricks/traps is urged.” As a solo player today, you may not have any family or friends to design a fully special dungeon room for you. That’s why I used Atelier Clandestin’s Sandbox Generatord100 Special Rooms for dungeons when I stumbled across these rules. Since it’s system-agnostic, it works well. But I can imagine the fun designing a room for a friend knowing he/she’ll be struggling against it while solo playing!
Table I. Periodic Checks
When you get nothing after some feet on a passage, you roll on the “Periodic Checks” table (see above). The most keen eye amongst you may note something here: an error. You got results for 1 to 10, then nothing for 11, 12 and 13, then results again for 14 to 20. AND there’s another weird thing in the whole dungeon procedure: there’s a “Table IV. Turns”, that handle turns within passages, which seems to never be called anywhere in the generator. Weirdly enough, 11 to 13 seems to be a perfect number of results to get, and passages’ turns are probably a good idea to check on that “Periodic Checks” table. That’s why I decided to call the “Table IV. Turns” on a roll of a 11, 12 or 13 on the “Periodic Checks” table.
Otherwise, you have stairs to climb to the upper level or to descend even further (up to 3 levels in a row). Then, if you descend as far as you like, you can change the standard room/passage/chamber dungeon to a cave system with pools and lakes. There's a few tables about that for those who want to spice up their delves.
One dungeon I made with those procedures
I had a blast playing this. I used it as my introduction to OD&D + Chainmail and it was fun! It’s pretty basic in terms of content, even if the overall dungeon shape is more organic than in some other solo dungeon crawlers, but it gives a real doors, monsters, treasures vibe that I love. It reminds me of the original Rogue video game, released in 1980, which I truly love and was indeed inspired by D&D.
The first appearance of The Mind Flayer
In addition to the solo dungeon procedures, it’s fun to add that this edition of The Strategic Review got the very first occurrence of a special D&D monster: The Mind Flayer. This beast is now very popular even for non-D&Dplayers, as it is one of the greatest enemies in the Stranger Things show and in the Baldur’s Gate III game, so it is fun to read the text where it all started.
I would love to read a further edition of The Strategic Review, but it’s kind of hard to find on pdf (or I’m missing something to properly search them on the internet).
🧙🏼♂️What I’m Up To: Changes In The Newsletter & Video Games I Played These Days
As you may have previously read on my Substack, I’m now releasing this newsletter every two weeks. Even if I’m always trying/playing/creating things, I often feel overwhelmed by finding stuff to say every week. That’s why the next newsletters (including this one) will be more driven by one core subject and by things I’ve done in the past two weeks. More digests to read, more space to get ideas if some weeks are empty, more time to write.
Otherwise, I’m more playing than creating these days. But, hey, I released two projects in one month:
Weak, Lost & Alone: a one-page survival game where you try to find your tribe 200.000 years ago.
Breakless: a 30-pages adventure zine for Fari RPG’s Breathless where the characters try to escape a prison. 🧟
As you read above, I’m learning OD&D with Chainmail, and it wasn’t planned but I’m also learning BECMI (So Mentzer’s 1983 Basic D&D) which will be the subject for the next newsletter 😉
Also, I converted a van and made a 2-week road trip across the French Alps, rehearsed bass for my Surf Rock band and played some live shows. So that was quite a time!
Top left: Golden sun, Top Right: Fire Emblem The Sacred Stones, Bottom left: No Man’s Sky, bottom right: Baldur’s Gate 1 Enhanced Edition
If you read me for some time now, you already know that I’m a huge video game player.
And, fun fact, I rarely finish games because I always crave to play something “new” or re-play games I love. And these last two weeks proved, again, that I play too many games at once.
Golden Sun (Game Boy Advance): A fantastic JRPG with astonishing graphics for such a tiny console. A must-play for any JRPG enthusiast and a great game for beginners to the genre.
Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones (Game Boy Advance): A tactical battle game with a great story and an easy to learn / hard to master combat system. Note that if a character dies, he dies for the rest of the game. There’s a cool vibe that binds war, politics, and dark fantasy into one big story.
No Man’s Sky (Xbox Series): After a harsh beginning and a lot of free upgrades, this game is now an amazing space exploration game. The vibe is pretty cozy, with a true sandbox feel. It feels like you can do whatever you want.
Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition (Switch): An AD&D 2E experience on a video game. One of the greatest RPG series of all time. I just started but this is incredible, even after playing the 3rd one (which is truly amazing btw, but based on 5E with a different combat system). The French voice over is kitsch AF but with so much charm. The game is quite difficult though and I’m not familiar at all with AD&D2E.
That’s it for this week!
Let me know if you enjoyed this article, if you played/read/watch any of the stuff I mentioned this week 😀
See you!
Cheers !
Sleepdrifter
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