Dungeons & Dragons White Box 19

The version of the White Box set that I'm using is available from the Internet Archive, at this link. I have every reason to believe that it's an original copy of the original version. It looks like the version that I owned once, that I sold in aid of my travelling to Toronto in 2014 to sell my book, How to Run, at the Toronto Expo.

I thought I should just toss that out there, in case someone should wonder if their version isn't matching mine.

Slow Spell: A broad-area spell which affects up to 24 creatures in a maximum area of 6" x 12". Duration: 3 turns. Range: 24".

Hilarious, isn't it? Not one clue what the spell does. I mean, at all. Sure, of course, we know what it means, because someone in another publication told us. But seriously... how is this "run as written"? And if other writings can be invoked, then what's the rule on what other writings are allowed to support this writing according to RAW philosophy? And no, by this link, the spell isn't listed in Chainmail (I refuse to use all caps, there being no precedent other than Disney for writing a title that way).

Haste: This is exactly the opposite of a Slow Spell in effect, but otherwise like it. Note that it will counter its opposite and vice-versa.

And this, in these rules, is a remarkable example of a rare consistency occurring. Slow applause, please.

Protection from Normal Missiles: The recipient of this charm becomes impervious to normal missiles. This implies only those missiles projected by normal (not above normal) men and/or weapons. Duration: 12 turns. Range: 3".

It's kind of awe inspiring, really. No definition of "normal." No definition of "above normal." Exactly how is a missile projected by a weapon by not by a man? Also, does the spell protect against missiles fired by elves, orcs, ogres, whatnot? None of which are "normal (not above normal) men", even if they're non-magical. Though, to be sure, we have no reason from the description to believe that "magical" is in any way less "normal" than, I don't know, a camel that spits... which it doesn't do like a normal man, trust me.  Range 3" from what, exactly? The missile? The man projecting? Etymologically, to "project," as in "to throw out or forward," is from the 1590s... but I still had to look it up because, well, what a weird word choice.

If "protection from" mean "impervious to," why wasn't the spell called Impervious to Normal Missiles? I suppose because then it would be defined as "The recipient of this charm becomes protected from normal missiles." Duh.

Water Breathing: A spell whereby it is possible to breathe underwater without harm or difficulty. Duration: 12 turns. Range 3".

I suppose that's fair. I'm just getting a little punch drunk at this. Imagine if the definition of fly were to say, "the user is able to fly without harm or difficulty." Or maybe if read languages read, "by which directions and the like are read without getting a headache." It seems a trifle specific to this spell, like it's saying, "really, we wouldn't kid you." But at least we know what the spell does. Win! For once, we can breathe easy.

4th Level:

Polymorph Self: A spell allowing the user to take the shape of anything he desires, but he will not thereby acquire the combat abilities of the thing he has polymorphed himself to resemble. That is, while the user may turn himself into a dragon of some type, he will not gain the ability to fight and breathe, but he will be able to fly. Duration: 6 turns + the level of the Magic-User employing it.

See, this is clearly written by someone other than whomever wrote the previous four spells. The spell is directly and clearly defined without caveats, we don't get the four things we can't polymorph into, the details are dense and seem to know something about game play. Semiotically, it's not the same. It sounds like someone who actually plays the game.

But... polymorph itself, as a concept. This one has always had it's troubles. Here, compare this defintion from Chainmail:

Polymorph: This allows the user to change himself into the semblance of anything of from his own size to something as large as even a giant. It lasts until the user changes himself back or it is countered.

(again, sounds like someone else again, someone whose read Fowler's English Usage, who picks a way through Emersonian speech patterns; but skipping that).

Something has gone very wrong with the Chainmail version. The spell, as written there, is just too damn powerful. It needs a limit. You can't fire breathe just because you can shape yourself like a fire-breathing dragon. Why? Well, doesn't say. Presumably, if you polymorph into a cow, you'll have the organs that will permit the translation of grass to milk... and therefore, if you're a dragon, presumably you'll have the organs that allow you to breathe fire. But no, nix, not, absolutely, drawing a line there! We don't need a good reason, just a reason.

Look, if the spell is so powerful, why is it 4th level and not 5th? If it can't be rated at 5th, why does it exist at all? And if we have to limit it to dragons that can't fire-breathe, can't we argue that it takes a couple years of practice for actual young dragons to do it, without framing it as a failure of the spell? Because by the definition here, "he will not thereby acquire the combat abilities of the thing he has polymorphed himself to resemble," it also means I can't swing my limbs as a treant, or set things on fire as an elemental (even though I'm actually ON FIRE), or presumably gallop as a horse or kick with my hooves. Seriously? If this is taken to the obvious grammatical definition, what's the use of the spell at all?

It's not that the designers meant this, it's that they panicked, realising that their worst fears needed some kind of pullback; but the example of dragons does not cover even the minamalistic set of monster options that exist in the second volume. Do I polymorph into a medusa or don't I? Am I less ugly? If I mutate into a wight, am I undead or not? And if not, than what does this fourth level spell slot give me? The chance to be an orc? I guess so, but that's a pretty expensive spell slot so I can weave my way among the other orcs... whom I can't punch with my orc arms, by the way, because combat ability limitations.

When I had to come around to rewriting the spells for my wiki, polymorph other and polymorph self, I got a very good idea of how very, very difficult this spell is to provide as an option without seriously risking the game's logic. Let's say I turn into a basilisk. I'm not a basilisk, but I turn into one. Am I immune to the look of my own eyes? Well? Am I?

Anytime I think of polymorph in game terms, I come back to the quintessential example of it in film and literature (extra music for obvious concealment from youtube necessities). I don't condone allowing the same spell to be used multiple times per day, or ignoring of casting times, but we should at least try to produce the sort of drama displayed here.

Polymorph Others: Unlike the spell to Polymorph Self, this spell lasts until it is dispelled. The spell gives all characteristics of the form of the creature, so a creature polymorphed into a dragon acquires all of the dragon’s ability — not necessarily mentality, however. Likewise, a troll polymorphed into a snail would have innate resistance to being stepped on and crushed by a normal man. Range: 6".

Better. And because it doesn't involve strengthening the players, but rather the non-players, whom the DM runs, the gloves are allowed to come off. We have to ask if snails have an "innate resistance" of that kind... I know of no way to test it. Certainly, whatever their innate abilities are, they suck at it. However, most of the time, you have to really work to squish a snail. They're quite rubbery. Why not pick an earthworm? Way easier to crush. Don't know if they have innate abilities or not.

If, on the other hand, it's a wry joke, that "trolls turned into snails" can't be crushed because they're still actually trolls... well, that opens a WHOLE can of worms... er, snails.  Can dragons turn into snails still breath fire? Can you turn a wraith into an undead snail, leave it on a pillow of an enemy and wait for it to drain an experience level? Does a basilisk-snail still turn things to stone? Maybe just little tiny things; might be hard for us to actually pick out its eyes on that scale. Perhaps we can find basilisk-snails by the ant-shaped pebbles they leave behind.

Either you keep the nature of the thing being the transformed thing, or the spell is meaningless. Which are we playing at? A game or metaphysics?

Remove Curse: A spell to remove any one curse or evil sending. Note that using this spell on a "cursed sword," for example, would make the weapon an ordinary sword, not some form of enchanted blade. Range: Adjacent to the object.

Now, look, see... this is written by someone else again. It's not the examples of polymorph above, and it's not the first four spells. This one feels that, in a spell list, it needs to mention that this is a spell... twice, in case the first sentence didn't make it clear. It actually tells you what it does, then goes out of its way to say what it doesn't do, lest you think that "remove curse" does what it does not say on the tin. There's absolutely nothing here to suggest the spell's "secret name" is "make magic swords", but it has to be said anyway. Presumably, if the curse is taken off a man, he doesn't become an "above normal" man (maybe that's what protection from normal missiles meant); and a house doesn't become a magic house, either. Why would anyone think it would? Because this specific writer apparently has had someone he plays with try this gambit. And he wants to protect you from doing it also. Too, it's a small thing, but none of the other spells have used words next to the Range.

I've read a lot of Gygax. He's a doof, but this really doesn't read like him to me. Gygax would include at least two extra lines using MATH about how a "-1" sword can't be turned into a "+1" sword, and then he'd include a formula for the DM to prove it. And he either would have listed a range of 1" or 0". The words are really not his style.

Anyway, again... we can see what the spell does. Two for seven. We're way above average!

Wall of Fire: The spell will create a wall of fire which lasts until the Magic-User no longer concentrates to maintain it. The fire wall is opaque. It prevents creatures with under four hit dice from entering/passing through. Undead will take two dice of damage (2-12) and other creatures one die (1-6) when breaking through the fire. The shape of the wall can be either a plane of up to 6" width and 2" in height, or it can be cast in a circle of 3" diameter and 2" in height. Range: 6".

There, that's Gygax. Punchy sentences, numbers numbers numbers, really detailed necessity to give the exact shape of the wall in two different ways (because you can't measure a circle as a 6" perimeter ring, that's mathematically impossible). Also, note the lack of the "length" of the thing though we know it's "width." That is so Gygax. Any human person looks at a wall that's 60' feet from one end to the other and says, "that wall is 60 feet long." Not Gygax! Oh no. The orientation to HIM is what defines how "wide" it is. Go ahead. Find me a reference to the width of a wall that isn't about its thickness.

It's a little hilarious that an ochre jelly (5 HD) can go through this thing but a grey ooze (3 HD) cannot. I don't know, I've always thought of the first as having a consistency like a raw egg, while the latter was more like liquid playdough, but who am I to argue the physics of something that everyday trainee fire fighters go ahead and walk through?  I know, I know, D&D fire doesn’t burn oxygen or require combustion; it’s a solid, opaque, moral entity. It decides who is worthy to pass based on hit dice, not thermal conductivity. But since "fire" isn't defined or explained anywhere in these books, it looks like just fire on the page.

But we know what the spell does. 3 for 8. Almost 50%.

Wall of Ice: A spell to create a wall of ice six inches thick, in dimensions like that of a Wall of Fire. It negates the effects of creatures employing fire and/or fire spells. It may be broken through by creatures with four or more hit dice, with damage equal to one die (1-6) for non-fire employing creatures and double that for fire-users. Range: 12"

How much damage can the wall sustain, Mr. Gygax? Hm? Thank you for telling me how much damage to the ice wall the soft-bodied ochre jelly can do to your wall, but without something to measure the damage against, you're bleating again, aren't you? I know, I know... years and years later you'll do it again. Thank gawd I can count on you.

Seriously. An incorporeal wraith  (4 HD) can bash its way through this thing (though it would just waft through, I'm sure), but a heavy war horse (3 HD) cannot. Uh huh. But pray, tell me... did it ever occur to you to define how much anything in your game system actually weighed? That seems like an important statistic to add to your monsters. Oh well, I'm sure you'll get there someday.

4 for 9. Stunning.

Confusion: This spell will immediately affect creatures with two or fewer hit-dice. For creatures above two hit dice the following formula is used to determine when the spell takes effect: score of a twelve-sided die roll less the level of the Magic-User casting the spell = delay in effect, i.e. a positive difference means a turn delay, while a zero or negative difference means immediate effect. Creatures with four or more hit dice will have saving throws against magic, and on those turns they make their saving throws they are not confused; but this check must be made each turn the spell lasts, and failure means they are confused. The spell will affect as many creatures as indicated by the score rolled on two six-sided dice with the addition of +1 for each level above the 8th that the Magic-User casting the spell has attained. Confused creatures will attack the Magic-User's party (dice score 2-5), stand around doing nothing (6-8), or attack each other (9-12). Roll each turn. Duration: 12 turns. Range: 12".

Hold on. It's going to be a bumpy ride.

Could this thing be more of a nightmare for a DM to run in the middle of a mass combat involving more than 12 combatants on a side, with creatures that had 1-2 HD, 3 HD and 4 or more HD? You have three different rules for three different levels of creature, for... reasons apparently. We couldn't just have everyone roll save, no, that would limit this mass effect spell unnecessarily. I'll see if I can write this a little better.

Creatures with less than 4 HD don't get a saving throw. Creatures with 3 HD roll a 12-sided and subtract the level of the mage; the end sum describes how many turns pass before the spell takes effect (0-5, since the mage must be 7th level to possess the spell). Creatures with more than 3 HD get a saving throw — if they do not success, they're affected as any 3 HD creature, determining how many turns pass. However, every turn they still have to make saving throw again, even if they would not normally be affected that round.

Or, you know, instead of using the d12 minus the caster's level, which is always the same for any given combat, we could just start by having every character effected roll a die between 12 minus the present mages level. The mage is 7th level? Roll 1d6 ignoring sixes (because 1d5 is way too complicated for 1974), and that's how many turns.

Or, alternately, we could just tell Gygax to FUCK OFF, because this is an extremely insipid, needlessly complicated piece of crap that ought to be inscribed on his fucking tombstone.

Hm? Too soon?

Ah, I get it. The spell is supposed to cause confusion to the enemy, but in fact it recursively confuses the DM. I see the light now. I was so wrong about you Mr. Gygax. You are a genius!

Gygax, in his eldritch cunning, conjured the first meta-spell: a charm that doesn’t just bewilder orcs — it radiates outward, entangling the referee’s executive function in a shimmering haze of contradictory subclauses. The goblins stand around drooling, the DM cross-eyed over a table of hit dice and the players stare into the abyss of the 12-sided die, wondering why it hates them.

After all that, how the creatures are affected is its own headache, but at least it's clear. Still, I'm not going to give the spell half points.

Score? 40% comprehensibly written spells. Unheard of.

That's enough for today.

Dungeons & Dragons White Box 18

I think it must be said, and this goes to the decision in Basic to specify the fly spell at 120 ft. per round, and the round at 10 seconds, that most probably the White Box set is using "rounds" and "turns" interchangably throughout, having not yet decided that there are a set number of "rounds per turn." It's the only rational way that the fly spell works, and the levitation before it. "Turn" was thinking in "combat turns," as nearly every war game calls the game metric, and "rounds" just happened because Gygax & crew were incapable of being disciplined. Then later, Gygax, probably in one of his delusional fever dreams of "brilliant" game design, thought "Hey, we can't have people counting things in number with more than one digit... that would make this way to hard for them.  Let's insert "turns" as separate from "rounds" so that they'll have to learn two measurements where only one would make this easier!  It's genius!

I don't know this is the case, but it feels it probably is, so going forward lets just assume rounds and turns are the same thing. There's nothing in the White Box that defines either one, nor distinguishes one from the other, so this is a reasonable assumption. And it only took me 18 posts to get there.

Hold Person: A spell similar to a Charm Person, but which is of both limited duration and greater effect. It will affect from 1-4 persons. If it is cast at only a single person it has the effect of reducing the target's saving throw against magic by -2. Duration: 6 turns + level of the caster. Range: 12".

Charm person was poorly defined. It also said that those influenced would "come completely under the influence" of the mage. So, if this is just a "charm person" with a limited duration, then it's played very, very differently from the later version of the spell, which assumed "hold" means exactly that, a person held in place and rendered helpless. As far as "greater effect," since charm person has no listed limits of any kind except that it excluded monsters and undead, are those limits now off the table? Or are we saying that it will let the mage charm 4 persons at a time, enabling complete influence over them (a player could absolutely, from this, argue as much). Since we're saying "persons," I assume monsters and undead are still exempt, but it doesn't say so here. Since "hold", in the sense of, "hold others under our sway" can mean charm, the way is open to assume this is a mass domination spell.

Dispel Magic: Unless countered, this spell will be effective in dispelling enchantments of most kinds (referee’s option), except those on magical items and the like. This is modified by the following formula. The success of a Dispel Magic spell is a ratio of the dispeller over the original spell caster, so if a 5th-level Magic-User attempts to dispel the spell of a 10th-level Magic-User there is a 50% chance of success. Duration: 1 turn. Range: 12".

So much to unpack. Why is the duration 1 turn/round? I assume, because the spell already has dispelled the magic it intends to dispel, the duration assumes the spell is active and can be applied to other things after it's initial use. The language does say "enchantments," though that's probably a reference to it being able to dispel different kinds of things in general, not different enchantments the moment it's cast. But does it sweep the area like a vacuum cleaner, dispelling every persistent effect that it touches?

And, with respect to the earlier discussion of turns/rounds, then this is one action that can be taken in one round, so another action can't be taken, since there isn't another turn/round to take it in. But then, why list the duration at all? Why not just say, "it can only dispel one magical effect"? 

Then, if the spell can be used in one turn/round, we assume I've taken my turn and then my enemy takes theirs. How, then, is dispel magic "countered"? Says plainly, "unless countered." Countered by what? A dispel magic on my dispel magic spell? But then, hasn't my spell already passed... but then, is that what's meant by the 1-turn duration? So that the actual dispelling happens over a sufficient period of time that someone can step in and say, "Oh no, dispelling your dispelling... sorry!"

And why leave it up to the DM what kinds of magic it can dispel? Doesn't that introduce plot armour into the DM's more favoured features and persons, that can't just be dispelled because it "ruins" the adventure? And what does "and the like" mean with respect to magic items? What things in the game are "like" magic items but in fact are not magic items. I've been playing for 46 years and I can't think of an example. Seems like text space that could have been used for something else.

The formula is... fine I guess. If you're a higher level than the caster, then your success is guaranteed. Still, there's something in it not just dispelling, regardless of the caster, that rubs me the wrong way. The concept works, so far as it goes. But it does mean, a lot of the time, if you take this spell at 3rd level, it's going to be Hail Mary pass compared to just grabbing a mook and tossing him into the space, letting him take the heat. I mean, it's just one time a day. And presumably, if you're entering a dungeon or a designed lair, that won't get you far. It'd be nice if the one time you wanted to use it, it worked.

Clairvoyance: Same as ESP spell except the spell user can visualize rather than merely pick up thoughts.

Visualise what, exactly? The opponent standing right in front of me, that I've decided to cast ESP upon? Oh, right... the one whom I know about, in advance, before casting the spell, behind something. Can I hear conversation, or only thoughts? That is, unless we assume it doesn't work like "ESP," which requires a mind to read; that, in fact, I can just see behind the wall, whether there's a person there or not. Which, in fact, is what "clairvoyance" actually means, which allows the entire extremely short description tell you nothing about the spell that the actual name of the spell tells. The could have used that space to, you know, tell us how far it reaches. There's actual space on the page (the second line is only about 1 quarter used of the white space available) to tell us range, duration... even how much mass I can see through. You know, the stuff that's been said to define other spells. If you're on the next continent, can I see you?

Heck, we are in 3rd level spell territory, right? I mean, your slot can include "fireball." I assume we'd like this one to have a little gravitas.

Clairaudience: Same as Clairvoyance except it allows hearing rather than visualization. This is one of the few spells which can be cast through a Crystal Ball (see Vol. II).

Point-in-fact, not all crystal balls include the ability to hear or read the minds of what you're seeing. However, other than a carnival mindreader's tent, I've never seen such a ball depicted in a film or a story where the user couldn't both see and hear. But then, there are very few examples of this that I can name occurring in films prior to 1973, so perhaps the geniuses of the White Box had seen more Hammer Films than I have. In either case, it suggests that the clairvoyance spell doesn't work like ESP, since that's also a characteristic that only some crystal balls have, but not all.

Does it not seem a little strange that a magic item is being used to define how a spell works? For the record, though, the crystal ball appears on page 36 of Monsters and Treasure, volume 2 as stated... and what it does or how it works isn't explained there, either... except a bunch of stuff to explain what spells can be cast through it, and how it relies on "attempts" to succeed... a thing that isn't actually defined. But we'll get there eventually. But heck, we know how a crystal ball works, right? It's not like we need a game rule to tell us.

There's a lot of this throughout the books. The reader is trusted to come to this thing preloaded with enough pop-mythology to fill in behaviour, ecology, morality, diet, tactics, whatnot, regardless of a lack of range increments, time constraints, the meaning of "attempts"... it's game design by dangling participle. "Go on, you'll figure it out. You don't need us."

Fire Ball: A missile which springs from the finger of the Magic-User. It explodes with a burst radius of 2" (slightly larger than specified in CHAINMAIL). In a confined space the Fire Ball will generally conform to the shape of the space (elongate or whatever). The damage caused by the missile will be in proportion to the level of its user. A 6th-level Magic-User throws a 6-die missile, a 7th a 7-die missile, and so on. (Note that Fire Balls from Scrolls (see Vol. Il) and Wand are 6-die missiles and those from Staves are 8-die missiles. Duration: 1 turn. Range: 24".

To start, "proportion" here is not the word the writers think it is. "Quantified" would have been more accurate. It's a malaproprism. "Elongate" is wrong also, since we must assume the writers did not intend it to exceed the spell's radius. "Narrowed" would have been more accurate. Language. It's like words mean things.

Since the rule about wands and staves occur, I presume, in the section that describes wands and staves, why is space taken here to repeat it? And, if not repeated, why is this information not included under wands and staves? It's one of those things that obliterates the argument, "There was no space available to better describe this spell... they did the best they could with the limited space they had." Right here are two whole lines on the page, one of which could have been given to "clairvoyance" and one to "clairaudience." There is no excuse.

So, the "fireball" (at some point we stopped using two words and I'll embrace that) is a "missile." For readers who have lately recognised that they've grafted rules written at a later time upon this system, this is a glaring reveal. The text plainly states that the spell travels from the mage's finger to the target. If that's the case, can the spell be obstructed? And if not, then what's the point in describing it as a "missile." In fact, since the spell happens entirely in the caster's turn, and an obstruction can't be interposed while the spell is being cast, then why specify that this spell — unlike, say, any other spell, since magic missile hasn't been invented yet — is a "missile"? For the glitz? How come my dispel magic has no glitz? Huh?

Since line-of-sight is assumed for most spells (even clairvoyance, which doesn't dictate in the rules that it can be cast behind things), that can't be the reason. And if it is, then why not say, "it needs line of sight"? Though the spell does reveal the earlier argument I made about spells being bullets in the mage's gun. Here, the fireball is actually using the language we'd use for a tank shell. Fire, BANG!

Again, why is the duration 1 turn/round? How slow does this missile move? Fireball has a duration and clairvoyance/clairaudience don't? Huh?

Once again... this was written by different people and then slapped together. One writer would not have worked down this page, in order that the spells were written, and produced work this disjointed. These things were handed to a person that compiled the page, who had no say in the text, who set the type for the printing from the things he/she was given, squeezing them in however they fit (which is why the spells are NOT listed alphabetically, for reasons that surpass all understanding), probably without the least idea of what was being typeset or why. Typesetters very rarely question or even care what the work was. In that day and age, they sat morning 'til night, setting selected work in order, compiling their way through page after page that was given them, sorting it, fitting it into shape on the page, willy nilly, like a modern day film editor hired by a studio who does not care what the director's vision was. And most likely, the creators of the White Box had no say in this, given that they likely, with their skimpy $2,000 ($12,000 thereabouts in modern money), had to rely on the skill of other people.

When I made a zine in the 1990s, I knew how to design and I knew how to phyical lay out pages because I learned that at the University of Calgary Gauntlet, where every Thursday meant thirty students digging in, for free, without pay, until midnight, to get the thing ready for the printer, who did not need to do any of the work for us. Because that's what the business had become in 1988, when I joined the Guantlet's staff. But in 1973, this crew, plainly, had zero control over how things looked on the page, and zero ability to sit and establish templates for what each spell would include, in what order, in the rational way it was done later, when they had money to hire someone competent, who they could control. It's very clear that when these books were assembled, when this sausage was made, the writers were not in the room.

It is, incidentally, one of the reasons I feel I'm uniquely in a position to criticise this thing. I'm not just another D&D writer. I've spent 30+ years in the business, I've designed my own products (which is why The Lantern does not look like a mess) and I know the amount of work it takes after writing to make it look both efficient and pretty. And sorry, it does aggrieve me to see these amateurs succeed when so many people in this business — the far more competent J. Eric Holmes, say — did not become the sun around which this game spun, instead of the gas giant we got.

Those two Gs can't be coincidental.

Lightning Bolt: Utterance of this spell generates a lightning bolt 6" long and up to 3/4" wide. If the space is not long enough to allow its full extension, the missile will double back to attain 6", possibly striking its creator. It is otherwise similar to a Fire Ball, but as stated in CHAINMAIL the head of the missile may never extend beyond the 24" range.

Generates a lightning bolt from where? And why, precisely, is there a "double back" effect? Is this a characteristic of lightning bolts? I know it's not, because a Tesla coil will make "lightning" in a very tiny, tiny space. Moreover, lightning doesn't "travel" towards an object, it's electricity ionising in tiny branching feelers, sniffing for a path of least resistance, then erupting with incredible speed along a conductive path that suddenly exists, like a newly-formed channel in space. It has no physical quality. Even if "magical lightning" is distinct from "natural lightning" (ideas that did not exist at the time of this set's writing), it would make no sense to ascribe substance or mass to lightning that would allow it to "double back" or "rebound" against a fixed object.

Thus, it's clearly a jerk move, a design intended to make the caster favour the fireball over the lightning bolt. There are no other effects of magic that "bounce," or act anything like this in a constrained space. Only lightning bolt demands spatial accommodation like a petulant yardstick, and only lightning bolt punishes the caster for daring to operate in three-dimensional space.

Plus there's the "similar to a Fire Ball" note. It's not an area spell, this may mean it comes from the caster's finger... but yes, like most readers here, I take this to mean only that it causes 1d6 per level of the caster. Unlike the fireball, there's no clear reference to the area of effect, not to how many persons are affected. Does the lightning fork? No idea. Can it be made to arc in an unstraight line, as lightning often does naturally?  No idea. Does it prioritise metal armour and wet surfaces, like lightning also does? Does it cause more damage if it interacts with conductive material? Can the spell reach further if it touches water? If you're in water and the water is hit, and you're in that deadly circle lightning affects, are you absolutely dead? No idea.

And being a DM who has had these questions disrupt a session, as players who are educated enough to know how lightning works, only to find the spell called "lightning" doesn't work that way, want answers that I'm not willing to shut down as a dick because, well, I respect my players. I want to know too. Why doesn't lightning work like the actual physical phenomenon, and if not, why is the spell called "lightning"?  I suppose "light burst" had less chutzpah.

Protection from Evil, 10' Radius: A Protection from Evil spell which extends to include a circle around the Magic-User and also lasts for 12 rather than 6 turns.

I think we can leave this alone. We don't have to go through protection from evil all over again. Point in fact, briefly. Spell doesn't say the radius moves, or what it's wrapped around if it does move. I'd run it like AD&D, but that's only because I've seen AD&D. Who knows what it was run like among strangers who knew none of the makers, lived nowhere near them and had never seen the game played.

Invisibility, 10' Radius: an Invisibility spell with an extended projection but otherwise no different from the former spell.

So, makes everything, objects, people, the ground, other living things, invisible as well? Since the original (forgot the underline under the referred-to spell here) transformed whatever. That's quite the effect. Useful. Lean against the wall of a tower, building, whatever... cast, make a 10-foot visible window in the side of the edifice and then get out of the way. The physical wall is still there, of course, but if you can see, a charm person will work fine. Pick a corner in a dungeon and poof, the walls are bubble-glass. While the monsters freak out, as they can see you, they can't reach you, because the wall's still there. And you and you're party are invisible anyway.

Infravision: This spell allows the recipient to see infrared light waves, thus enabling him to see in total darkness. Duration: 1 day. Range of infravision: 40-60'.

Sorry, am I reading that right? Is that a single tic after 40-60?  Did they just use actual feet instead of writing 4-6"? Wow, who knew it could be written that way.

Get ready: this is the only instance in the rules that explains what infravision is. This is it. Not under The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, where it's referenced. Here. Interesting choice, don't you think? As such, the spell description here becomes the de facto definition for every creature in the game that has infravision, even though most of them gained it through anatomy, not magic.

The issue, of course, is that "infra-red" is understood by most persons, today as well as then (though the average person was less informed about science, which I've discussed), as merely a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. At the time, engineers were building early heat-seeking missiles using IR signatures. Astronomers were mapping stars using IR telescopes because IR penetrated cosmic dust differently. Meanwhile, popular media talked about “infrared goggles” as though they worked like flashlights or night-vision binoculars. An article in Popular Science from the era might describe "heat seeing" in a single paragraph that glossed over the physics entirely and emphasized the effect as "seeing shapes in darkness." Spy fiction when to town with this, pointing light cameras at objects at night in James Bond films with an overlay that dubbed it, "night vision," giving the impression that this is what it looked like when using infrared goggles. D&D seized it, slapped it on various monsters and humanoids as "perfect night vision," and sparked off a hundred thousand arguments around game tables about "if this is ice cold, how does 'infravision' see it?"

But we don't need to talk about it's presence in the game. That's another subject for another day, and I think this blog has already done that. I know the wiki has. And no, it doesn't make everyone happy. That's impossible.

The above is a screen-shot of page 25. Tell me if you notice anything odd about it.

I'd lay money the typesetter looked at what was provided, shrugged, then typeset this exactly as provided. Given how sparse the White Box is, there's a whole chunk of available real estate on the same page to give clairvoyance and clairaudience a range.

Yes, gawdammit, I am gonna dance on the laurels of this sacred relic. Get used to it.

Dungeons & Dragons White Box 17

Sadly, there are 11 pages left of spells to do. And I have done... two.

Sigh.

Continual Light: This spell creates a light wherever the caster desires. It sheds a circle of illumination 24" in diameter, but does not equal full daylight. It continues to shed light until dispelled. Range: 12".

This is almost, but not quite the "light" spell. Now, instead of "a spell to cast light" this "creates a light." This one "sheds a circle."  The stumble here is that while a lamp (or the moon, or a fire) sheds light, it does so in the sense of "to radiate or fall from," as from a place of origin. The spell is an act, it's performed, and once created, it doesn't continue to fall. But still, this is a quibble.

The larger problem is, again, the unrestricted, unending presence of the light. While mages are busy using dispel magic getting rid of all the wizard locks in the world (see previous post), there are third level and better mages littering the world with eternal glowing spheres, obviating the need for torches in towns, villages and large structures throughout the world, while two or three shifts are ongoing in guild houses who now are able to conduct business around the clock. Large cities can be seen ten or twenty miles away, while residents find it difficult to sleep and stress/insomnia is killing people as it was in the 70s and 80s, before most cities began replacing mercury streetlights with sodium. Groups of 30+ mages are touring the continent, light-bombing granary and garner outposts with light, or literally spreading lights along the roads, from end to end. The gods in space can identify Paris, London and Venice just as astronomers can today. It's not the D&D world you thought it was.

"That farmer's field over there? It's been lit up since 1127, when Nathan the Proud thought he was being funny. We've asked and asked for someone to come dispel it, but still no one's available."

And still, what does "not equal" to full daylight mean?

Knock: A spell which opens secret doors, held portals, doors locked by magic, barred or otherwise secured gates, etc. Range: 6".

This is not so bad. The "etc." is more or less the same lack as found in hold portal, but in fact there are a few more examples here, and it lacks the word "like" these things. One word makes an enormous difference.

There really isn't a need to mock these spells for the time period. In most cases, the duration counted only the single combat or one-session attitude that the game held for the majority of the participants. The issue arises where the White Box itself tries to be the other thing, talking about a campaign as though this set of rules could also be applied to that, when it's self-evident that this is the designers writing cheques their rule system couldn't cash.

It's also worth the mockery for that present day set who, like wannabe hipsters, portray themselves as the smug players of "real" D&D, "as written." When, obviously, they're not playing it that way. They're making up their own boundaries and "it actually meant this" mechanics, to cover up the failings that are obviously here.

Fly: By means of this spell the user is able to fly at a speed of up to 12"/turn. The spell lasts for the number of turns equal to the level of the Magic-User plus the number of pips on a six-sided die which is secretly determined by the referee.

Okay... sigh.  12" = 120 feet underground, but 120 yards in the wilderness...

(How the spell knows, don't ask me. If I'm in a huge cavern, does that count as the outdoors; and at which point does the cavern become large enough that the spell knows to propel me forward... oh, never mind)

You've cast the spell and you're travelling 120 yards per turn in the outdoors, which is 12 yards per round, which is 10 seconds in basic, so you're travelling at 1.2 yards per second if you use that system. But if you're using AD&D, you're travelling at 0.6 feet per second... which is 7.6 inches per second, or just double the speed you're levitating upward.  And this is funny: AD&D did not fix this. The spell description on p.73 says: "12" per move," the last word not being defined at all in the book. Just a minute, I've got a wall for my head right here.

Meanwhile, the average airspeed velocity of a European swallow is 32.3 feet per second, which is pretty close to that of a falling rock (for the first second).  Since there is no such thing as an African swallow, we just don't know.

By the time the mage has crossed a distance of, say, the length of a tennis pitch (we'll use the 15th century number of 78 feet), which would take 2 minutes, 10 seconds, the swallow would have circled the entire pitch (perimeter 216 ft.), allowing for a 5 foot buffer around the outside to be sure no corners were cut, 17.8 times. That's not flying. To put this another way, if I'm walking, just loafing along, 2½ miles per hour, I'm moving at 3.67 ft. per second. It only takes me 21.25 seconds to walk the pitch. Anybody besides me see the problem here?

I suggest changing the name of the spell to "Hover."

The secret die roll?  The early dungeon master was encouraged to be a fucking dick. It's right there in the rules.  If Gygax wrote this, and I think he did, this alone justifies any ill feeling I have ever had toward the man for my entire life time and the rest of his.  

Any person capable of codifying a rule like this in a game set is, by definition, the kind of person who would take advantage of someone in real life if the opportunity arose. This is ungentlemanly behaviour, which is the reason when it used to be revealed that you could portray this sort of behaviour, you were banned for life from decent culture. This is the person I conceive Gygax to be.  You want to know why this past-time is thick with assholes? There. There it is. A mentality that believes it's acceptable, even fun, to build a system where the players are constantly at the mercy of an arbitrary power, cannot be one I ever respect, no matter what other accomplishments he may have achieved.

I am not a fool.

That's not even half a page from the book, but I'm going to have to stop now.

Dungeons & Dragons White Box 16

Let's move on.

Levitate: This spell lifts the caster, all motion being in the vertical plane; however, the user could, for example, levitate to the ceiling, and move horizontally by use of his hands. Duration: 6 turns + the level of the user. Range (of levitation): 2"/level of Magic-User, with upwards motion at 6"/turn.

Of course I understand the spell, because I've played it, starting with others explaining it to me and then me explaining it to others, and rewriting it several times for my game world. Read through the eyes of an AD&D player, it makes perfect sense.

But AD&D did not always exist. And if we were talking about the value of a medical study printed in 1973, we wouldn't use an example of a later medical study done in 1979 to discuss the value of the first study between those years. And if the later study advanced and improved the earlier study, we would never refer to the earlier study at all. But we have D&D players who are out there shouting that AD&D is crap, and that this is the "best" version of D&D... so it's fair game to discuss what these rules say without those lagter interpretations.  Ready?

Some parts of this are laughable. Later iterations clarified that the caster's gear and equipment are included, and limited; here, we must assume this is true, that the caster is not literally lifted out of his or her clothes and forced to rise naked upwards. That would be quite the limitation on the spell, but it if did work that way, I imagine a number of players would just roll with it.

It doesn't explain why there is a "range" associated with the spell, but again, we know from later iterations that we mean that the spell can be used to lift objects and other persons, not just the caster. Still, the spell plainly specifies the caster and does not explicitly state that anything else can be moved.

Point in fact (and that's a pun), the caster does not levitate in a "plane" but in a "line."  A plane is a two dimensional expanse, which if taken literally would mean that the caster can move both vertically and horizontally, so long as it's on that imaginary flat plane without an zed-axis. Planes have an x- and y- axis, so it's clearly the wrong word used here. That is, clear to us. To anyone who actually knew the meaning of the word, this spell write-up is a complete fuck-up. Beware the geometry major who tries to run D&D in 1974.

Just an aside: the absence of horizontal movement was imposed to limit levitation so that it wouldn't compete with fly as a 2nd-level spell. But given the actual speed with which one moves when levitating, and if all movement was forced to maintain either a pure vertical or pure horizontal motion each round — up, over, up, up, over, down and so on — would the effectiveness of the spell really be increased by that much?  Outdoors, it's 6 yards a round (60 yrds/turn). That's hardly flying.

Since a "round" isn't defined in the original set (Basic went with 10-seconds, AD&D went with 60-seconds) we don't know how fast this actually was. AD&D specified levitation at 20 ft./round. That's an amazing 4 inches a second. If we use that length of round and the White Box speed, it's 18 ft./round, or 3.6 inches per second; that's the speed of a 19th century elevator. The Basic round increases this to 21.6 in./s. An elevator in the 1950s could do 70 in./s. Modern high rises offer double that. In any case, there's just no way a speed like this can compete with the third level spell. So why the limitation at all?

But, yeah... "We've just always done it that way." Sure. That's okay.

Phantasmal Forces: The creation of vivid illusions of nearly anything the user envisions (a projected mental image so to speak). As long as the caster concentrates on the spell, the illusion will continue unless touched by some living creature, so there is no limit on duration, per se. Damage caused to viewers of a Phantasmal Force will be real if the illusion is believed to be real. Range: 24".

I'd love to know the reason way per se is underlined.

Honest, I personally have to see this spell as a sign of my "growing up" as a DM. For a long, long time, I honestly gave the benefit of the doubt to things like the above, trying to run them in my games and struggling with back and forths between players as we struggled through spells that included no mechanics at all in their design. Likewise with the "belief" attached to illusion. We can all think of examples of the "if you believe it, it's real" trope — culminating in this. For ages I blindly obeyed these incredibly not-fleshed out "rules," telling my characters to make saving throws to see if they "believed" in the dragon... until I smacked myself hard enough in the face that I was finally able to stop being this stupid.

Sorry, sorry... if you still follow this rule, then yes, of course, it's a brilliant idea. Don't believe the writer of this post, he's just an illusion.

When I ceased trying to squint hard enough to make the spell work, I abandoned it. D&D does not work nearly as well when it has to resolve epistemology as a rule set. And that's why I'm not going to deconstruct this line by line. 

Locate Object: In order for this spell to be effective it must be cast with certain knowledge of what is to be located. Thus, the exact nature, dimensions, coloring, etc. of some magical item would have to be known in order for the spell to work. Well known objects such as a flight of stairs leading upwards can be detected with this spell however. The spell gives the user the direction of the object desired but not the distance. The desired object must be within range. Range: 6" + 1"/level of the Magic-User employing the spell, i.e. a “Necromancer” has a 16" range.

The exact dimensions? Are we talking about sixteenths of an inch? 32nds? 64ths? Are we talking about the number of atoms? By colour, do you mean, "green"? Or does the object being chartreuse in colour mean that specific shade has to be mentioned? I just don't want to be accused of making a magic item too easy to find. After all, spells shouldn't be useful like that. Picture it... a necromancer capable of raising the dead must apparently pause, cast the spell and say... "I can sense the stairs — within 160 feet!" as an act of mystical genius. Meanwhile, the rest of the party is standing beside the stairs, waiting.

It's easy to feel the insecurity here — that the players might, gasp!, use the spell to solve the puzzle the DM laboured so hard upon. "You find yourself in a room with three doors... One of the doors leads to the object you seek, the other two, near certain death!"

Mage casts spell. Points. "It's that one."

In a way, it's like how cellphones spoiled so many traditional horror story structures. Early D&D was written for the same 1950s/60s landscape... and just like we had to cripple the phone so that "no signal" became the trope that enabled all tropes, there are certain logical spells in the game that spoil the standard D&D set-ups. So, likewise, we have to cripple the spell. "you can only find it if you know what you're looking for... exactly, when it really matters, but no, you don't need to know the colour of the stairs." That kind of thing.

The spell doesn't actually say what happens if the object isn't in range, but I suppose "no signal" is a fair enough equivalent. Or maybe the mage's magic 8-ball reads, "Reply hazy, try again." Presumably after moving ten feet ahead.

If I cast the spell and there's no reply, is the spell wasted? I suppose probably yes. Doesn't exactly make it a spell you want to fill a slot with. I mean, if you know the thing exists, but not the colour, the spell is no good, and if you know where the thing is already, the spell is no good, so...

Invisibility: A spell which lasts until it is broken by the user or by some outside force (remember that as in CHAINMAIL, a character cannot remain invisible and attack). It affects only the person or thing upon whom or which it is cast. Range: 24".

Raise your hand if you've read the H.G. Wells novel.

Ah, apparently, in my last post I was wrong. The spell does say it can affect a person or thing. My mistake. I'll try and do better.

Things can't attack, so they have to be detected, and to be made to reappear, the magic has to be dispelled or else it lasts forever. Presumably, the spell's effect on a person isn't the aforementioned novel, in which the character had to be naked in order to be invisible, since otherwise his clothes could be seen. And presumably no recipient will be affected long enough to go insane like Griffin does... perhaps. Since the spell is so easily cast, however, and has no time limit, there's nothing whatsoever to stop the mage from simply living this way all the time. Or at least until attacking someone. Griffin had to worry about rain outlining his body, or footprints appearing in mud or dust as he walked, or the food he ate not disappearing at once, while living in constant fear that his invisible body would be tripped over or beset upon by rats... but then, again, Griffin had to be naked to pull it off.

Point in fact, if I cast invisibility on myself three weeks ago, and only today attack someone, that means I can immediately become invisible again, right? Because I haven't used that spell slot today.

Hm. As an afterthought... can the mage make everyone in the party invisible... recasting the spell each day?

Wizard Lock: Similar to a Hold Portal, this spell lasts indefinitely. It can be opened by a Knock without breaking the spell. A Wizard Lock can be passed through without a spell of any kind by a Magic-User three levels above the one who placed the spell.

Changing the name of the spell from "portal" to "lock" creates some issues. The spell doesn't define what constitutes a "lockable" surface or whether the thing must even have a mechanism. The assumption of a door comes from players importing real-world logic and dungeon architecture into the rules, not from anything stated in the spell.

Which brings us back to the original interpretation, that the spell could be cast on any kind of barrier — a cave mouth, a gate or even an open passage. But it doesn't need to be a passage because there's no "moving through" a space as there is with hold portal. As such, feasibly, a trunk, a scabbard, a scrollcase, even a privie, virtually anything that can be closed could be effectively "locked."

How many things? Well, if cast once a day, hundreds of things a year. Once the wizard is three levels higher than at the point when the spell was put in place, everything in a wizard's home could be so locked. In fact, if you're 6th, it's worth it to have a third level mage come around every day and just lock things. You can ignore the locks, while everyone lesser than you can't. It's a great way to manage the servants.

Just imagine if this has been going on for two or three hundred years, with vast parts of the world so locked up, while the upper class of wizards are free to go as they please while everyone class has to ask some mage's permission (and knock spell) to pump water. We'd end up with a whole civilisation quietly suffocating under the accumulated locks of hundreds of wizards creating ten thousand such locks per lifetime. And when they die, having failed to undo their magic, it just lingers, waiting to be dispelled somehow.

Detect Evil: A spell to detect evil thought or intent in any creature or evilly enchanted object. Note that poison, for example, is neither good nor evil. Duration: 2 turns. Range: 6".

 "Evil" is such a fascinating negative space in the books. Evil men, evil monsters, "arenas of evil," the word proliferates like a virus through the books... but naught a single word is given regarding what it is or how it's defined. Presumably, as ordinary individuals living in a materialist world in the 1970s, we just know what it is, don't we?

I, of course, know evil when I see it. Usually, it's connected to my computer, it begins with "G", ends with "E" and there's no protection against it. I mean, at all.

In the end, evil in D&D isn’t a metaphysical principle or a moral law — it’s a referee’s ruling. The DM is the world’s conscience, the cosmos’s final arbiter, the invisible judge who decides whether a thought pings as malignant or merely inconvenient. The rules hint at theology, but what they really describe is authority. "Evil" is whatever the person behind the screen declares it to be. Of course, since the DM, unlike a priest, doesn't have to suffer the consequences or resolve personal behaviour based on what's actually said about evil, or what holy writ says, it's really a matter of extreme convenience, isn't it? Thus, the spell's detection of what you can't see pretty much relies upon a DM's interpretation that you also... can't see.

The effect of being told what's evil and what's not by an individual whose directives are "make the game happen" is that the spell becomes "Detect Narrative." By locating the evil, we learn that "the story is this way," which tells us what to do next... conveniently for the game runner.

It also has the side-effect for murder-hoboism by clarifying, clearly, that it's okay to kill all these creatures because they are, by definition, "evil." The game's logic really doesn't need this universal solvent — a game can just be a game, it doesn't need to self-justify — but most likely there were a number of early participants who viewed the game's structure and thought to themselves, "Wow, this really is just fun based on slaughtering a lot of people, isn't it?"  Which awoke a trigger in them that said, like a premature quoting of a later Schwarzeneggar film, "Yes, but they were all bad."

Then, however, the thing got turned on its head when a subculture of D&D got into the, "We're evil and we're killing the good guys" cult, which parents overheard and then, in the 80s, we were off to the races. But that's something for another day.

ESP: A spell which allows the user to detect the thoughts (if any) of whatever lurks behind doors or in the darkness. It can penetrate solid rock up to about 2' in thickness, but a thin coating of lead will prevent its penetration. Duration: 12 turns. Range: 6"

Anybody want to guess how many times "a thin coating of lead" turns up in an archeological or historical site prior to the 20th century?

In a word, never. Certainly, lead could be used — melted, beaten, or alloyed — but it couldn't be used to coat anything until electromagnetism, and then only very small objects. Plus, liquifying lead tends to produce a horrendously toxic gas, which when encountered tends to drastically shorten one's expected lifespan. The idea of anyone deliberately coating an area underground with molten lead would have been suicidal... and before someone suggests a humanoid that's immune to lead poisoning, we'd still run headlong into physics. Immunity doesn’t solve the engineering problem. Even if some hypothetical humanoid could shrug off lead’s toxicity, they’d still face the practical impossibility of producing and applying a uniform metallic coating without modern tools. You can’t just melt lead in a cauldron and slather it on like paint; it solidifies too quickly, cracks when it cools unevenly, and flakes from stone or wood. So you still could "read thoughts" through it.

On one level, I can forgive the authors for this. The 1970s didn't really offer much in the way of reliable and wide-reaching educational television or documentaries, or even magazines to any large degree, so that many people raised on the cultural imagination of the 1950s to 70s were at the mercy of pulp science leaking into comic books and Cold War pop physics. In 1969, it was possible to consider yourself an "educated" person while yet lacking any real knowledge about the emergence of electricity or magnetism, computers, space or any number of hard sciences unless you were personally a part of that field.

The post-war decades turned science into a kind of modern mysticism, where scientific literacy and scientific "aura" were hardly distinguished from one another. I grew up in that culture, just as it was breaking free from the bullshit... and my 20s and 30s were filled with "tin-foil hat" people, who resisted hard against the growing dissention that systematically made former "prophetic intellects" like Wilhelm Reich, Carl Jung and even Freud far less influential on advancing, less fuzzy thinking. Presently, when we hear people speaking about the cosmic mind or spirits speaking through "vibrations" and such, we know they're nuts... but in 1974, there were enough people who believed it that you could go on television, be interviewed and come away respected. It was a quirky time.

Thus, we have to question why "ESP" is even here. The idea was an entirely a twentieth-century idea, born from the fusion of late-Victorian spiritualism and early modern psychology. The term itself was coined by the American psychologist J. B. Rhine at Duke University in the 1930s. Rhine and his wife, Louisa, tried to study telepathy, clairvoyance and precognition under laboratory conditions, using those famous decks of Zener cards with circles, stars and wavy lines. Their experiments were meant to give psychic phenomena a scientific veneer — controlled tests, statistical analysis — though their results never held up under scrutiny.

Reading minds doesn't have a precedent in medieval folklore or theology.  The concept of one person directly accessing another’s private thoughts simply didn’t exist in that framework. That entire architecture of the mind — the notion of hidden motives, repression, unspoken thoughts — is a Freudian inheritance, or at least a modern psychological one. Medieval people certainly believed in temptation, sin, conscience and divine inspiration, but those all assumed a moral soul, not a psychological self. The soul's secrets were between a person and God; they weren't "buried thoughts" to be decoded by another human. A confessor didn't read your mind; he guided you to confess what your soul already knew. The very premise of mental privacy, of thought as an internal stream with content separate from speech, is modern.

Thus it appears in D&D as a cultural hitchhiker... with "extrasensory perception" being one of those tin-foil hat belief structures. For a long time it had been a fringe obsession, turning up in films and books, especially science fiction — Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, even Beneath the Planet of the Apes. It's position in a medieval fantasy wargame is highly suspect... they couldn't even think of a suitably period-type name for it.

Yet, weirdly, I still include it in my game. I guess it sort of fits. As presented here, its effectively indistinguishable from a very strong hear noise ability. Funny that "use it to discover rumours about adventures that could be pursued" never came to anyone's mind.

That's enough.

Caveat

A caveat, if you will... I spent some time discussing this with a friend and there are some points I'd like to share about these posts, why I write them and what I expect to accomplish.

First, let me start by saying that probably, as a reader, you're never going to like me — or, at the very least, you'll never quite be comfortable liking me. That's because my concern is never with breaking things to the reader gently, or withholding my opinions because I know it will hurt someone's feelings, or suspend the feeling that others have of my intentionally saying something that makes them "feel stupid." That is probably what's going  on as I work my way through these White Box posts. Likely, you've read these passages a hundred times and it's never occurred to you that the light spell, for example, is as badly written as it is. And now that it's pointed out that it's barely English, that it looks like it was written by an 8-year-old, now you feel stupid for having not noticed it.

And your knee-jerk response is to think, "Fuck you Alexis for pointing it out. It was fine until you did that." The reason it was fine wasn't because you were stupid... in fact, you know that. The reason it was fine was because the rule itself was a placeholder for how you used it in your game — which was never what the rule said anyway. But since now you know the rule is written badly, you're questioning everything, and thinking to yourself, "Well fuck. How did I miss that."  To which the common response is, "I didn't miss anything, the rule's fine, fuck you Alexis." It kind of comes bang-bang-bang like that. And I'm willing to put up my hand and own that, because I don't actually give a fuck about your game. I'm not here for that. I'm here to educate. And if you don't like education, well... that's fine for you. But that doesn't affect why I write this blog.

My interest in writing stems from the desire to take things apart and examine them for what I think they are, based on subjects I've spent a lifetime studying — D&D for example, or game design, or history, or writing itself, and the various aspects of life related to these things. My process in gathering knowledge has included hundreds and hundreds of times of my "feeling stupid" because it was explained to me in not nice detail why I fucked up a print run or why the article I wrote was shit, or what a player felt about my DMing or any number of times that I've had to take stock of what I thought I knew and accept I didn't know as much as I thought I did. And while yes, those moments made me feel like shit from time to time, and brought me down, and often humiliated me, such that I didn't want to face again the person who took me to task or paraded my mistakes in front of others... on the greater whole, those moments have better shaped me for the things I want to do now. In a manner that I actively seek out content that is very, very hard to watch or listen to, because I know that looking the horror in the eye will transform me a little more each time, for the better. I want to be made to feel stupid. It's my thing.

Unfortunately for the reader, however, I'm not made to feel stupid when what I get back is self-evidently wrong. Now, I get it, the writer doesn't realise it's so; the writer thinks they're absolutely right.  I quote this from this book:

Sleep: A Sleep spell affects from 2-16 1st level types (hit dice of up to 1 + 1), from 2-12 2nd-level types (hit dice of up to 2 + 1), from 1-6 3rd-level types, and but 1 4th-level type (up to 4 + 1 hit dice).

And I say,

"The other obvious problem is, of course, that the spell assumes homogeneity among the targets. If I'm fighting an enemy human character party comprised of two 2nd-level, three 3rd-level and 2 4th-level, what dice do I roll?"

This clearly shows that I, at least, am confused about the language. In my 45 years of playing D&D, no table I ever played with, no player who ever employed this spell (and the same basic premise is repeated in AD&D), ever, ever, tried to argue with me that it meant this:

"In regards to your question about Sleep and who it effects in a mixed party: the description of who is effected is an "and" statement, meaning you roll all the dice for each level, not pick one."

Since no one ever proposed this in a game I played (and I've run the sleep spell in a combat hundreds of times), again, whether the interpretation is right or wrong, there's clearly doubt about how it's interpreted, which is the fucking point of the post. The post is not a discussion on what the interpretation ought to be, but upon the fact that interpretations are not consistent, which is a fault of the language, not a fault of mine for failing to understand the writing exactly as everyone else understands it.

This is why I am getting pissy now after writing 15 of these posts, because I have said, again and again, that the writing is the failure here, not my interpretation of it. And I have said how you interpret it is not relevant to this discussion, again repeatedly. And still regardless of this repeated point, I'm still getting people who are rushing forward to say, "I interpret it thusly." 

I'll take a breath now, because if I don't, I'll lose my temper.

You don't have to read these posts. They don't need to affect how you play your game. I am not God. I can't decide how you wish to interpret these spells. But if I were going to write it so that it clearly gave the interpretation that was offered as a correction to mine, I would have written it,

A sleep spell affects, collectively, 2-16 of any 1st level creatures in a group, plus 2-12 of any 2nd level creatures in a group, plus 1-6 3rd level creatures in a group, plus 1 4th level creature that might be in the group, should there be more than one type of hit die present.

But it doesn't say that. Which caused the people I played with to interpret it as, 

A sleep spell affects 2-16 of any 1st level creatures in a group, OR 2-12 of any 2nd level creatures in a group, OR 1-6 3rd level creatures in a group, OR 1 4th level creature that might be in the group, should there be more than one type of hit die present.

Because the original doesn't make this perfectly clear, these are but two of the possible interpretations that might exist throughout the zeitgeist. And this is the argument I'm making. NOT, as is the want of people who read and comment about D&D, "which is right," but "it's impossible to know which is right."

And the fact that a lot of people leaving comments on this post can't fucking understand this? Yes, that makes you stupid. Because you're arguing against an argument I'm not making.

This is why you're never going to like me, because I don't "fit" into the universe of your debate style. What you think these conversations are about are not what these conversations are about — and that is exactly why in my answers I have trouble not treating you like a stupid fucking child. Read all the fucking words. Not just the ones that fit with your compulsion to make a point that aren't relevant here.

Or don't read this blog. You obviously don't belong here, you don't want to learn anything and I'm not here to confirm your ignorance about D&D. If you want that, go read Maliszewski. He writes every day and he'll never challenge a thought you have. There's plenty over there to give you something to scan while you drink your coffee.

I don't want you here.

Dungeons & Dragons White Box 15

Light: A spell to cast light in a circle 3” in diameter, not equal to full daylight. It lasts for a number of turns equal to 6 + the number of levels of the user; thus, a 7th-level Magic-User would cast the spell for 13 turns.

And thus the danger of "rules as written," complimented by the DM who resents a player who points out grammar and language as evidence that the rule says something very different than the DM supposes. The above would make an excellent example of bad grammar if ever we need to write something brief and interesting on the blackboard for students to deconstruct. As written, it clearly specifies that the light is cast into a circle, and not that it creates one.

What circle is it, to begin, that light is cast into? The spell does not read, as it should, "A spell that creates light as a 3-inch diameter circle." Cast is a verb, here in present tense, whereas it plainly references something that is already accomplished. A six-word phrase somewhere in the book that simply said "all circles are measured by diameter" would have saved the need to keep including the explanation over and over. Moreover, like the need to use gold pieces as a unit of measure, why is it that "inches" must be used for distance, always? Yes, I understand, this was the measurement used on the battle map, but surely that could also be stated once somewhere in the document, allowing us to use "30 ft." throughout the book, which would have been clearer. In fact, I do think it is mentioned somewhere, though I haven't encountered it yet, which obviates the use of inches here.

What is "not equal to full daylight"? Is that a measurement of some kind? Night is not equal to full daylight, as is dusk. The definition of "full daylight" is the natural light of the sun and sky during the day from sunrise to sunset, so this includes light during storms, light under overcast, light during fog and so on... since it's not a measure of illumination. When we say, "the crime was committed in full daylight," it means "during the light of day." A newspaper is not apt to specify if it was cloudy or sunny at the time. I know, I know, you think it's a quibble, but it's not. I have zero idea from this how much illumination is involved... if the spell caused "full daylight," instead of "not equal to," it would be clearer. As written, it provides no real information at all. We might as well say, "not as hot as a fire."

Turns again imposes the ridiculous measuring approach that inches and gold pieces do. Here it says 6 turns + the number of levels of the user. The example helps, since otherwise we'd be stuck adding "turns" to "levels" which are not math terms. In any case, the reader is forced to calculate, (6 turns = 60 rounds = 60 minutes = 1 hour) + (7 turns = 70 rounds = 70 minutes = 1 hour, 10 minutes) = 2 hours, 10 minutes. Whereas the spell could say, 1 hour +10 minutes per level. The alternative language is just baffling... especially when you consider that in terms of a wargame conflict between units represented by miniatures, a battle is almost never going to last more than 30 rounds... which means that the only reason to keep track of the light spell is for non-combat simulation purposes. So why measure it in combat simulation terms?

I take the time to speak about this at length here because it comes up throughout the book, quite stubbornly, like a dumb-ass mule-headed asshole that won't let go of something that plainly isn't working. This is the prime, number one bit of evidence I have to show that Gygax (for this is absolutely his baby, it shows because he was still espousing this crap 10 years later in text) wasn't a genius. I'd argue he probably wasn't housebroken. The reader may take umbrage — but stripped of the need to worship the man's memory, this is the same critical discipline we'd apply to any work that was more than 40 years old, about a writer who didn't know how to edit himself. It's egregious and there is no justification, nor is there a justification of any present-day individual who feels that "rules as written" makes sense as an approach to any sort of writing.

Charm Person: This spell applies to all two-legged, generally mammalian figures near to or less than man-size, excluding all monsters in the "Undead" class but including Sprites, Pixies, Nixies, Kobolds, Goblins, Orcs, Hobgoblins and Gnolls. If the spell is successful it will cause the charmed entity to come completely under the influence of the Magic-User until such time as the “charm” is dispelled (Dispel Magic). Range: 12".

One small thing... what does the spell do? We see who it affects; we are told the individual "comes under the influence" of the caster. Exactly what does that mean?

Influence to what extense? Does the target obey direct orders? Does it interpret those orders literally or contextually? Does it retain self-preservation? Does it act of its own will but with shifted loyalties? Does it remember what's happened while influenced? How does it react therefore when dispel is imposed? While obeying, does the subject retain self-awareness? Can it give warning? Can it express remorse? Can it swear and rail against the caster? If the spell allows the monster to suicide, how is this spell in any way different from a much more powerful "death" spell?  Isn't that pretty much a far too powerful spell to be counted in the same breath as "light" and "read languages"?

None of that is answered, and without those answers, the spell has no defined behaviour.

I have found defining "Charm Person" as one of the most difficult spells to include in the mage's arsenal. Culturally, it's most likely the foremost spell associated with myths and legends, reaching back to Greek mythos and continuing forward through Le Morte de Arthur, Grimms and virtually everything else. That said, why 1st level? In rebuilding my own spells, I included it as such, but drastically winnowed down to the level of power a spell of that level should have — in no way equal to a traditional fairy tale. It's an awful conundrum of a spell... yet the above is written as though the participants are blissfully unaware of the power here.  Perhaps within chain mail there was as assumption that they only purpose to which the spell would be put was to force the affected creature to change sides, to fight for us rather than against us, in a battle without stakes, personalities or history. But the spell completely breaks down in a campaign setting, if the players give just that much thought to what it means.

Also, how many can be charmed? Since it lasts until dispelled, what's to keep the 1st level caster from piling up an army equivalent to a 9th level lord (no limits on the target's level listed, you'll notice), kept in train for whatever dungeon awaits? There’s nothing in the rules to prevent it, and nothing in the culture of the time that treated that as a moral issue. That silence says more about the authors’ blind spots than their intentions—they were thinking in tokens, not people.

Naturally, any high level caster can come along and cast dispel magic and end the horde... but again... do they remember their enslavement? And if so, does it make any sense not to immediately have the creature self-execute first? Suppose I have 30 humaoids in train (is a giant "mammalian" the way that a human is?), and I get a whiff of a mage. Can't I just immediate cast the blanket order, "Kill yourselves," and have them all do it at once, before they can be freed?

As written, the spell is a mess. It's a relic of a rulebook that hadn't yet realised it was modeling a world instead of a skirmish.

Sleep: A Sleep spell affects from 2-16 1st level types (hit dice of up to 1 + 1), from 2-12 2nd-level types (hit dice of up to 2 + 1), from 1-6 3rd-level types, and but 1 4th-level type (up to 4 + 1 hit dice). The spell always affects up to the number of creatures determined by the dice. If more than the number rolled could be affected, determine which “sleep” by random selection. Range: 24".

Once again, we assume the spell puts the recipients to sleep... but it doesn't provide any more details than charm person. Can the affected creatures be murdered in their sleep? When I played this game in 1979 and 1980, we certainly thought it meant that, playing it as written, because we were 15 or 16 and we knew no better. About the end of that conversations began along the lines of, "This spell is ridiculously overpowered and a little stupid, since it obliterates an enemy force way too easily." There's no hint that a saving throw against sleep is present, so we used to play without one. In a wish to make our games better, we went against the spell, rewriting it for ourselves, as teenagers. Why grown adults didn't do the same, before publishing the rule, I have no idea. As written, it's the game's death spell, and remains so right into AD&D. Why wait for the 6th level spell, Death?

The other obvious problem is, of course, that the spell assumes homogeneity among the targets. If I'm fighting an enemy human character party comprised of two 2nd-level, three 3rd-level and 2 4th-level, what dice do I roll? I'm sure the reader can figure it out themselves instantly... but ask yourself... is it the same way someone else will figure this out? Can you rely on your answer being "as logical" as another person would see it?

Quite a number will say, it doesn't need to be. It only has to be consistent for my party. That's fine, but I watched a lot of sessions break down over the interpretation of this one rule, with casters wanting every inch they felt they were due against DMs who did not want to give that to them. The badly written rule is a session wrecker. Consistency without clarity breeds resentment because the next party will interpret it differently. That kind of vagueness metastasises. Players internalise their house rulings as the "real" rule, and suddenly half the community is arguing over which childhood misreading of Sleep is canonical.

2nd Level:

Detect Invisible (Objects): A spell to find secreted treasure hidden by an Invisibility spell (see below). It will also locate invisible creatures. Durations (sic): 6 turns. Range: 1" x the level of the Magic-User casting it, i.e. a "Wizard" would have a range of 11", more if he was above the base value.

I adore that in 47 words, we first identify that the spell detects objects and then that the spell also detects non-objects. Real genius there. I appreciate that we are given a range of effect; the language "1 times the level" has always been odd since English includes the preposition that fill this in, "per"... as in "1 per level." But never mind. Not everyone's vocabulary is replete with such rarely used three-letter words.

Two inherent issues emerge, of course: first, how do we know when to cast the spell? Well, of course, in a Gygaxian universe, in every room. You just never know, right? Which is fine, since the spell lasts so long, we might just as well always cast the spell upon entering a dungeon, so it's always up and running. On the other hand, that is a spell-slot we could be using for a spell like levitate or phantasmal force. There really aren't any attack spells of the 2nd level for the mage in the White Box set, which means that the first four levels are thick with discovery spells until the character reaches 5th. Overall, charm person and sleep are your ONLY attack spells until then. Magic missile, shocking grasp, strength, web, even push, are all in later versions of the game. It's a bit sad, really, how ineffectual a 1st to 4th level mage is. If the DM is the sort to make treasures invisible, it may seriously be useful to blow the slot on this spell.

Course, that "invisible treasure" thing is really old school silly. It takes a third level spell to cast invisibility — and point in fact the spell on the next page does not include "objects" in its description. But assuming it does, the casting of it assumes the lair has someone in it whose able to cast the spell. Otherwise, the DM is just randomly and for no reason reaching into the campaign to make things invisible out of either spite or the will of practical joking gods (also not in the rules of the White Box set).  Which, of course, gives cause to question the motivation of the DM behind such shananigans.

But let's handwave that off; let's skip over the fact that early dungeon design often consisted of the DM as "trickster" antagonist whose joy lay into screwing parties out of well-earned treasure as the purest expression of make a dungeon as a gotcha machine, and just assume that the 3rd level mage does exist and can cast invisibility on a treasure. Does that make sense? Imagine that you have $45,000 (or £ or €) in a pile in your room, or in a box, or whatever. You can't have it in a bank, they don't exist. And to keep it "safe," you make it invisible. Now, whenever you come into the room, you can look at where it is and not know if it's there or not. Seriously. You know that "detect invisibility" exists in the world, so every time you leave for any extended period of time, you can't know if someone has entered your room, cast the detect spell, found your money and taken it. To know if they have, you have to bend down, feel around and see if it's physically there. But then, if that's all that it takes, then why coudn't a party member just carry a broom with them to "sweep" the corners and see if there's an invisible chest there?

To be really sure your miserable sister hasn't felt around for your money and moved it three feet to the left, just to mess with you, you have to use the detect invisible spell, just to be sure.  How in the hell is this a good idea?

It's what happens when magic is treated as an arms race instead of a system. Every new "defense" spell creates a counterspell, which creates a counter-counterspell, until the world is full of mages living in invisible houses surrounded by "detect" wards and still patting the floor to find their invisible chairs. It's stupid. Detect invisibility does make sense as a spell: but only for the purpose of identifying a danger that happens to make itself known somehow by visibly knocking over an object in the room or leaving footprints on the floor. As a location device for treasure, it's just silly.

I should do another, but these are very trying.

Preview of the Lantern, December 1635

A month late, or rather I've skipped a month, but I have the lantern available to be looked at for those few of you who contribute $10 or more to my patreon each month.  As ever, the Lantern will be available for $7 come the 21st of this month.

This image is of the back page, since I posted the front page a few days ago.

P.S.,

Upon request of a reader in the comments, I'm adding this post.

Dungeons & Dragons White Box 14

One last business before we can move onto spells. The turning undead concept was good — a small bridge between combat and faith, permitting a solid bullet in the cleric's arsenal under specific circumstances. There are game issues with it — overall, the randomness is troublesome, especially at higher level, where the effect either works as a dead fizzle or a machine of the gods, without nuance. And the latter is too powerful in game play, too often, especially with lesser undead. But... there's no fundamental problem with the rule appearing here, as an early construction where few undead existed. Later, as more undead emerged and the game deepened, the swinginess of the mechanic became harder to justify. No need to go into this now. We can move forward, as this, like other recent metrics, is perfectly servicable.

A full explanation of each spell follows. Note that underlined Clerical spells are reversed by evil Clerics. Also, note the Clerics versus Undead Monsters table, indicating the strong effect of the various clerical levels upon the undead; however, evil Clerics do not have this effect, the entire effect being lost.

An odd insertion, oddly written. We introduce the spells for seven words and the comment on the table above. Writing this in the opposite order would be more typical. But meh.

From here, I must adjust how the content going ahead is deconstructed. With regards to the spells, none so far as I'm concerned were badly conceived. Thus there's less need to criticise the writing or their intent. If written by Gygax, these are his better work, more careful to be sensible and with a greater consciousness in their application to game play. Perhaps because these were more firmly established in game play than the earlier part of this book. In either case, I think my focus here has to be upon those present-day persons who might be trying to play these rules "as written." Holes for game play proliferate throughout, as I shall try to outline. Get ready to be bored.

EXPLANATION OF SPELLS:

Magic-Users:

1st Level:

Detect Magic: A spell to determine if there has been some enchantment laid on a person, place or thing. It has a limited range and short duration. It is useful, for example, to discover if some item is magical, a door has been "held" or "wizard locked," etc.

As the later Players Handbook identified, matters such as range, casting time, duration, area of effect and such were either ignored or rendered inconsistent. For example, how far out from the self can the caster detect magic?  Not line-of-sight, the spell says so, but still, "limited" is hardly definitive. I live in Calgary, where on a clear day I can see the Rocky Mountains sixty miles from here. Every now and then we get a particularly effective atmospheric refraction, so that without editing a picture like the one shown can be experienced live. I've had incidents where I was walking in some part of the city towards the mountains during a weather change, where the distance peaks were visibly receding as I watched. It's a profound effect.

As the game moves from tabletop mechanics to the imagined setting, where the application isn't just applied in combat but in any situation that might come up through prodecural operative party actions, firm limits had to be imposed. But this need not be discuss further here. That can be left to another time. For the moment, let's just discuss the individual spell functions.

Issues bound to come up with detect magic here include the kind of magic, the strength of the magic, whether or not the magic is dangerous and even whether or not it's a spell. The door is opened to these things because I can identify, specifically, if the door is "held." That's a specific spell I'm identifying; so why shouldn't I be able to specifically define the presence of others I find? Does it include the presence of an invisible person? If a person is charmed? Whether someone is presently engaged in ESP with a member of the party? Or either clairvoyance or clairaudience? How about if an opponent is protected from normal missiles, or is confused, or protected from evil? These details matter, and a "rules lawyer" is going to want to know why hold portal or wizard lock are special among other spells that have active, continual components that are also magic. A "ruling" here isn't definitive — an issue that many DMs refuse to understand... because a ruling, like any enactment of legitimacy, must logically apply, and not arbitrarily.

Rules are a contractural arrangement between players of a game, regardless of the DM's presence. In monopoly, we agree to pay each other, we agree to throw two dice, we agree that jail occurs on the third double and so on. This largely unspoken agreement is something we learned to accede to at the age of five or six, when we found ourselves playing games with siblings or friends and grew tired of these things always ending in fist-fights. "Fairness," we understood, enables shared expectations among the participants that enables "fun" that doesn't collapse into chaos. This principle applies to the presence of the DM, just as it applies to everything humans do cooperatively. The position of the DM does not contradict this.

Arbitrariness breaks this contract. It transformes the DM from interpreter into a despot, opening the door to cronyism among the players, an entitlement to abuse players, to channel and affect play so as to serve the DM's purposes and not the general welfare... the result is a toxic atmosphere where those who play enjoy the privileges bestowed upon them by the DM, while others quickly find themselves driven out.

This distinction isn't a point of view that's universal within role-playing any more than it is within business culture, the legal system, politics or world governments. Many, many, many persons in all fields practice arbitrary approaches to their purposes all the time, from parents to believe firmly that "because" IS an acceptable answer to every query, to D fucking T who has weaponised the ineffectiveness of the judiciary branch to impose ridiculous, nation-destroying actions upon a helpless minority. Arbitrariness is widespread; it's going to happen in D&D and those who pursue it will be loudly vocal, aggressive, abusive and conceited in their embrace of it. And because they make up a substantial part of the audible community, there will always be some jackass who points out other such fucknards as a justification of bad actions. But within this tiny space of this tiny blog, no. If the spell will recognise the footprint of a held door, that it should likewise recognise the footprint of a person affected by charm, invisibility, confusion or any other like spell.

If that's not wanted, than the spell must be defined more exactly. The above says "for example," indicating plainly that the examples given are not the only possible cases. If they should be the only possible cases, than the wording of the spell must reflect that. Loose language creates problems in rule-making. And as we process through these spells, we're going to see repeatedly how they can be re-interpreted perfectly fairly based on nothing other than their attempts to fix something as complex as this in less than 50 words.

Any time the words "for example" appear in a rule book, it's an open wound inviting queries about the mechanic. Think of it as rainwater finding every crack and groove upon the ground: arguments and hard feelings about a game campaign will accumulate in such spaces and strive to erode the ground beneath, until the structure collapses. Thus, never trust anything that's been written about game codification — language is hard and words are never without colloquial interpretations that only multiply when words are placed next to each other. Rewrite every spell description of every spell you use in your game to hammer down how you want them to work in your campaign. And then do it again each time your ruling is challenged in a way you didn't expect. Rewriting a law is not an "arbitrary" practice, not so long as the rewriting, once done, is fixed. So long as everyone can see the rule, and count on it over time, it's no longer a "ruling." It's a rule. And that's our goal. Not to replace rules with rulings, but to codify rulings into rules that the players can read, examine and act upon.

It took 1500 years of human civilisation possessed of writing to codify laws in stone (Hammurabi); it took another 1700 years before the practice of laws evolving through precedence became a consistent practice in the most civilised of places (Greece, Rome). The effort, once begun, inevitably failed about 800 years (4th century Rome) thereafter... and was not rediscovered for 800 years (early Renaissance) after that... about 700 years ago from when I write this. So in all, it's taken us 5,500 years to get to the level of legal behaviour we practice now. It's no surprise that a great many DMs believe that Hammurabi knew the best approach... and they don't hesitate to run their games that way, assuming that the DM is fucking god or something. But that is not what we call "civilisation."

Having set the precedent for discussing these rules, then, let's continue.

Hold Portal: A spell to hold a door, gate or the like. It is similar to a locking spell (see below) but it is not permanent. Roll two dice to determine the duration of the spell in turns. Dispel Magic (see below) will immediately negate it, a strong antimagical creature will shatter it and a Knock (see below) will open it.

Much like "for example," "and the like" does not hold the portal, it opens it. A quick examination of a thesaurus searching the word "portal" quickly reveals that no actual obstruction is necessary for a thing to be defined as that. Technically, anything that is a "way in" or a threshold, including from one room to the next, is a "portal," and by use of the words, "and the like," we've now let all of them count. And since dungeons and ordinary sized constructions do not define "portal" as a thing, an entrance as large as the egress of the Colosseum of Rome, also a portal, can be held by the spell. The same can be said of cave mouths, curtains, a street between two walls... if, in fact, I throw a blanket across the middle of a corridor, by definition it becomes a threshold, and I can cast hold portal over it.

Correction would require stating that the portal must have hinges, or a obstruction that must be physically opened using muscle power. Otherwise, other interpretations are absolutely on the table. Still, arguably, the spell as it occurs in the game IS pretty weak. Why would the blanket-on-floor option necessarily be a bad thing? If we accept it, we're not breaking the game... we're turning an anemic, almost decorative spell into a flexible field tool. That Gygax and crew anticipated this is immaterial — the anticipation of new uses for a spell are always present.

The fault in this occurs when the player or DM choose to expand the spell to things that are not a portal, a way in or a threshold: a bottle, say, or the buckle of a belt, or any other thing that happens to "close" but shares no other charactistics with a passage through. If language exists as an expansion of a rule, it also stands as a boundary to that function; for portal cannot be reinterpreted to describe things that are not that, unless the DM chooses to ignore language as the principle being respected.

Conceivably, a large enough box or perhaps a coffin can be physically entered. If a cleric in my campaign, inside a coffin, were to cast hold portal on the lid, I'd likely allow that. Arguably, if there is a vampire within the coffin trying to egress, again, the argument holds. But to keep liquid from emerging from a bottle? No, I'd probably call it there. Another DM can disagree, and that's fine. BUT WRITE IT DOWN, so the same argument can be applied at another time. Don't just suppose it applies in this one situation — and remember that once it is written down, you as DM are as subject to that rule as the player. That's the contract.

Read Magic: The means by which the incantations on an item or scroll are read. Without such a spell or similar device magic is unintelligible to even a Magic-User. The spell is of short duration (one or two readings being the usual limit).

It's not quite perfectly so, but nearly so... the spell permits the reading of the magic language, that by which "spells" are written. This isn't defacto stated however; does it include a glyph, which is not part of this language? The door is open because "an item" isn't strictly defined. I do not know of what item to which the description refers; I know of no other magic language that is included in a magic item outside of scrolls. And if such language does occur, how is it separated by definition from a rune or glyph — which is immaterial, of course, since neither are mentioned in these rules. But if we're running a game with these rules in the present day, we must state whether such things exist to our players, since they know what these things are and that they're normally associated with D&D. It is hard to separate "standard" D&D concepts from this rule set, given that some of them don't exist yet.

Read Languages: The means by which directions and the like are read, particularly on treasure maps. It is otherwise like the Read Magic spell above.

Quite straightforward. My sole point to make is that its not clear if I can cast the spell upon other persons who can then enjoy the benefits. Presumably, it is, but it does not state as much. Reasonably, if the spell is cast upon a person who cannot read at all, the spell should still function normally.

Now that I think of it, the spell doesn't specifically state that only one language can be read per casting, so I assume I can read however many languages I can fine within the spell's duration (which isn't stated). I did have a player once ask if when the language was "read," did that mean translated into the character's comprehensive language, or if the recipient's thought process was reconfigured in order to recognise the specific nuances of the language being comprehended. In other words, if I were able to read Russian, would I merely understand what was being said, or would it mean I was "thinking in Russian." The player had a reason for this, but it was ages ago and I don't remember; I do believe I granted her the latter interpretation.

Protection from Evil: This spell hedges the conjurer round with a magic circle to keep out attacks from enchanted monsters. It also serves as an "armor" from various evil attacks, adding a +1 to all saving throws and taking a -1 from hit dice of evil opponents. (Note that this spell is not cumulative in effect with magic armor and rings, although it will continue to keep out enchanted monsters.) Duration: 6 turns.

Technically, the spell does not specify "evil" enchanted monsters. The wiggle room here is the question, "enchanted."  The strict definition of the word (none occurs in the White Box) is, "put someone or something under a spell; bewitch." Suppose then that in a battle in a dungeon far from any sort of water, I cast "waterbreathing" upon a perfectly ordinary non-magical enemy. The range is 30 feet; in the White Box, no save is specified. Thereafter, that enemy is by definition "enchanted" and cannot enter my circle, even if that enemy is 20th level or a 16 HD monster. Food for thought.

Not saying this is how the spell should be interpreted, but it's plain that "enchanted" MUST be better defined. Nor is another word, like "evil" or "supernatural" sufficient. Every single monster the spell protects against should be recorded and made available to the player. It's a finite list. There's no reason why this work can't be done inside an hour.

All right, I need a break. That's enough.