Ryth Chronicle Cover-to-Cover #2

Player Activity Record

                                            Player Activity Record

The topic for this post is the initial Player Activity Record, compiled from the "archives" of the first nine months of the campaign. At this point, participants are identified by player name, not character name (this changes later on.)

The first thing to notice, of course, is that 23 players are listed! This includes John and Len---since both were DMing, both also got to play. The top paragraph gives a peek at what the tone of the whole campaign will be like:

This is the first report of the D&D campaign along the Ryth, published as a public service by the Yggdrasill papermill, and compiled by John Van De Graaf from the recent archives of Rythlondar. Please report any inaccuracies to your friendly referee so that he can feed you to a ravenous purple worm, thereby cleansing his records.

I doubt anyone in the hobby at this time was taking themselves too seriously...though they were very obviously having fun!

Even though nine sessions are notated (third week in Nov. of '74 - the third week of March '75), November has no details (I'm assuming that covered expedition A), so it really starts with Session 2 (game week 3). It looks like the "campaign time scale" mentioned on the first page was decided upon: one actual week = one game week.

Some quick math yields the following tally:

• Eight expeditions over 17 weeks of real/game time
• Several weeks had two adventures going on
• Total fatalities: 21
• Highest XP total: Two characters in Expedition B received 4999 XP!
• Lowest XP total: One character in Expedition M received only 115 XP (though it looks like he collected 360 GP, so I'm not sure what happened there...)
• Highest GP total: 1462, in Expedition E
• Lowest GP total: Three characters in Expedition C walked out with only 26 GP.

Interesting here is the overall low GP totals. I'm assuming it's for total treasure gained, though I guess that could be  wrong. It looks to me like the vast majority of XP in these first expeditions were gained by killing ye olde monsters, especially given some further rules clarifications on the next page (covered in the next installment!)

Current Questions for John and Len

1. How were you determining treasure amounts?
2. How much experience were you giving for monsters killed?
3. Do you remember what date you bought the White Box?

I ask the last question in particular, because the closest to exact publishing date I can find for the White Box is Gen Con, 1974. Assuming Gen Con has always been in the summer (which may not be the case), that means the Ryth Chronicle began only (approx.) three months after the game was published...

Ryth Chronicle: Cover-to-Cover #1

                     Bookletized version, complete with my scribbled notes...

And so it begins--my most ambitious blogging project to date. I've recently been blown away by The Ryth Chronicle document that recently surfaced. It's an amazing source of insight into the earliest days of the hobby, and it really deserves a thorough discussion. My plan is to go through it cover-to-cover, usually covering a few pages at a time. I'll be posting images from the document that connect to the main point of the given post--the document is, of course, approaching 40 years old, and is, I believe, a scan of a photocopy, so don't expect sterling resolution. If anyone can offer insight about how to clean up the jpegs I'm snapshotting out of Reader and editing with Photogallery, I'd appreciate it!

Front Page

We'll start out with the introduction, right on the front page. This is a thing of beautiful utility--it sets up the whole framework for play in four short paragraphs, including all those things that many DMs (well, okay, me anyway) hand-wave:

• Class-specific lodging
• Taxes (based on your status, i.e., XP!)
• Immediate adventuring destinations

"...murky Fenmarch, where few men travel these days."

"Overlooking the road lie the ruins of the once-proud Tar Morgard, a fortress built by the Great Kings long ago. Now the ruins hold only the dread Weir burrowed into the mountain by generations of evil beings. Minstrels sing of vast wealth and powerful treasure hidden in the dark depths of the Weir, but few dare venture there, and fewer still return."

Alright. I know exactly how to set up my Adventurer, and where to go from there. Plus there's an echo of the famous "...vast, ruined pile" quote from the LBB. Oh, and has been pointed out elsewhere, it's called a "Dragons and Dungeons Campaign". :)

Houserules
Next, logically, come the houserules for this particular campaign. The most fascinating thing to me is the Combat Hit Matrix:

It's a bit hard to read, but it first adjusts AC targets by weapon used. I don't think these guys had Chainmail, nor do I think (given the details of the first character report on the next page, and the fact that the Hit Die Roll Adjustment doesn't include thieves) that they had Greyhawk. It's a fairly logical extension of the combat system, especially if you know anything at all about how weapons and armor actually work, but I'm curious where it came from .

Next is the really interesting part, the "Hit Die Roll Adjustment for Degree (Level) of Attacker". It appears they immediately de-matrixed the combat matrix into a simple hit bonus dependent on level. Sound familiar? So much for the innovations of the d20 system! (okay, that's an oversimplification, but still...) They tinkered a bit by letting everyone increase in smaller increments over levels (as opposed to the combat table which only grants bonuses every three/four/five levels), but that's a pretty common houserule even these days. I'd use this table as it stands.

Current Questions for John and Len

1. Did you guys have the Chainmail rules?
2. When did you start using Greyhawk?
3. Why did you decide to make these particular changes?

If anyone else has questions, just add them to the comments.

Old School Archaeology: The Chronicle of Ryth

                        Chronicles of Ryth pdf at risusmonkey.com


Run, do not walk, to Risus Monkey and download this document. Now. Do you have it? I'll wait...

Okay, what you are holding is an ORIGINAL CAMPAIGN CHRONICLE FROM 1975-6. And it's 80 pages long. Published as a series of newsletters by John Van De Graaf and Len Scensny, these guys bought their white box straight from the hands of Gary himself. They concocted (of course!) a few house rules, and then began running and fairly exhaustingly, well, chronicling their multiple-GM, 40+ player campaign.

Yeah. You read that correctly. 40+ players.

I'm going to begin doing a cover-to-cover of this historic text in the next few days here on this blog. Until then, do yourself a favor and read it. No, actually, don't just read it--experience it.