These are going slow because they are brutal to write. I keep thinking I'm just going to "skip the rest, you get the idea," and then I think that would be cheating, so I start in. But I don't know how much left I've got for spells. I'd like to get past them.
Charm Monster: The counterpart of a Charm Person spell which is employable against all creatures. If animals or creatures with three or fewer hit dice are involved determine how many are affected by the spell by rolling three six-sided dice. It is otherwise identical to the Charm Person spell.
By definition, a "creature" is a living, animate thing. It's ontological, not categorical. By not using the word monster in the definition of the spell, it winds up admitting humanoids into it's effect halo. If it didn't want to include humans, it should have retained "monster" throughout and not assumed that "creature" and "monster" are effectively the same word. The problems with charm person have been earlier discussed. Since the effects of this spell are the same, it needn't be addressed further. One has to appreciate the doubled underline of the Charm Person spell, as the editor hits you over the head with it.
Growth of Plants: This spell causes normal brush or woods to become thickly overgrown and entangled with creepers, vines, thorns, briars and so on, so as to make the area virtually impassable. It will affect an area of up to 30 square inches, the dimensions decided by the caster of the spell. Duration: until the spell is negated by a Dispel Magic. Range: 12".
Interesting, it is not, that this spell gets renamed "plant growth" later. A shame no one noticed before hand that the spells are not named "Location of Object" or "Charming of Person" or "Dispelling of Magic." It's a quirk and no, not letting it slide. It's merely the continuing autopsy of a game text that never knew what "editorial coherence" meant.
"Brush or woods" are not distinct singular plants that are being affected, they are ad hoc descriptions of a kind of vegetative pattern... so the question must be asked, what of areas of plants (grasses, gardens, scattered shrub that would not be called "brush," a single tree as opposed to "woods") that do not fall into these specific "growths"? Are they not affected by the spell? And if they are, why make the distinction. Why not just say, "This spell cuases plants to become..." The baffling approach to language in all of these descriptions surpasses the ordinary mistakes a high school student might make. It appears that an effort was made to be more obscure, to appear "richer and more specific" in ways that were in no way helpful to the game. It's a bit tiresome when seen over and over, as has been pointed out.
Why make any distinction at all? Why name "creepers, vines, et al" at all. Point in fact, "thorns" are not plants, they're the spike of a plant, and briars have thorns, so... thorns can't be made to "overgrow" in the sense of plants. Just saying. It's a foot in a bucket is all.
Then we have this "30 square inches" thing. Is it really so HARD to say "30 ten-foot square areas." Even if we are playing the war game, the "inch" is what we use the ruler to measure, but we understand it to mean "10 feet." So why don't we just say that? We have the time to nitpick about what kind of plants we can grow, but we can't replace two ticks with "ft."? The space on the page is available for that, the space-saving of " offers us really nothing! It just aggravates me so.
Incidentally, and I haven't mentioned it before... to this point in the book, " = 10 ft. hasn't actually been explained. You're just supposed to know. Secretly, I think we have to argue that D&D was invented by freemasons.
Hand up, Mr. Teach: when dispel magic is cast, what happens, exactly? Does the plant retreat? If so, doesn't that mean that a state of magic must still remain in the plants after they've been affected? If not, how does "dispel magic" affect them? And if magic remains, that doesn't correspond to any other spell I know of. Can this magic in the plants be detected with that spell? Are the magically affected plants useful in any form of magical research? Inquiring minds want to know.
Dimension Door: A limited Teleport spell which allows the object to be instantaneously transported up to 36" in any direction (including up or down]. There is no chance of misjudging when using a Dimension Door, so the user always arrives exactly where he calls, i.e. 12" upwards, 32" east, etc. Range: 1".
This messes me up a little. Is it a "door" or is it a "teleport"? If it's a door... and it seems to be, since that's the title of the damn spell, then why does the spell description make it sound like the transition "just occurs"? If it isn't a door, since it states specifically "the object", not "the object or person," why isn't it "dimension object"? But then it states "the user always arrives," so that now sounds like a PERSON. And it sounds like teleportation. What dimension is actually involved? Any?
And if it is a door, how long does it last? Can more than one person go through it? Can it be "held" or "wizard locked" or "knocked"? What exactly is going on here?
No matter how the spell is interpreted, it can be seen that another interpretation is just as legitimately sound and reasonable. That is just bad rule writing. Again, let me just stop the reader: don't tell me how YOU interpret it, or how your old game world DM used to. That's irrelevant, and not the point of the inquiry here.
Wizard Eye: A spell which allows the user to send a visual sensor up to 24" away in order to observe the scene without himself moving. The "eye" is invisible. It moves 12" /turn. Duration: 6 turns.
Once again, as per the fly spell, the speed given is 7.6 inches per second in AD&D (that's actual inches, not game inches), and 1.2 yards per second in basic. Unless you're underground, and then it's 2.533 inches per second (AD&D) and 1.2 ft. per second (basic). That means it takes 20 minutes to get to the spell range in AD&D and 3 minutes, 20 seconds to get way out there in basic. More than enough time to run out there and just have a look. But hey, it's a 4th level spell. You have to be 7th level to have this kind of power in your hands.
I like to think of it as a floating Roomba.
Further, while you might think that the "eye" (sorry, sensor?) that's magic can pass through walls or something, but that not actually stated; there's no reason at all to think that it does. Since the eye is "invisible" — which seems to stipulate it has mass and substance — would suggest that it's not ethereal. It could be both, of course; though an ethereal eye could be assumed to be invisible more easily than the reverse. In any case, it doesn't state any sort of ethereality... which means we have to wait for the Roomba to go around corners, rather than a straight line. We could end up with time to make dinner by the time it gets there.
Since teleportation gets use there instantly, dimension door and all that, can't this be applied to wizard eyes? Why does there have to be a speed setting on this thing? It too is a 4th level spell. Incidentally, "clairvoyance," which this spell duplicates, is not a Roomba and it's 3rd level. But then, clairvoyance doesn't have an actual spell description, does it? We discussed that already.
Massmorph: This spell is used to conceal up to 100 men (or creatures of near man size] as a woods or orchards. The concealed figures may be moved through without being detected as anything other than trees, and it will not affect the spell. It will be negated by a command for the caster or by means of a Dispel Magic spell. Range: 24".
Language time. I'm quoting this exactly: you can refer to "the woods" as a single object, but you wouldn't say "as woods" in this context, as that would seem to suggest that every man becomes a forest. As evidence, we would never say "the orchards" to refer to a single object; that would always mean a bunch of different orchards. So why take the time to make sure both words are plural? That's not a typo, that's a stubborn grade three error. (Sorry, I mean, a grade three errors).
If we mean "creatures of near-man size" anyway, why not just SAY that? We're using the space to say it. We could have just written, "...conceal up to 100 creatures of near-man size..." Sorry, I felt compelled to include the hyphen. But then again, what exactly is "near," precisely. I know a man who weighs about 112 lb. and is four-foot-eleven, and I know a fellow who is six-nine and weighs above 280. I assume, too, that women are included here, since the text is in that lovely time when "man" referred to the whole human race, regardless of the number of your ovaries (usually, above zero is enough not to be a man; I was born in 1964 and much of this shit was going out the door by the time I graduated high school — though with much gnashing of teeth by some).
Are there forests of rooted victims who were never freed from the spell because the mage happened to get an arrow in the throat after casting? How long do they last? Do the trees age? Grow? Do the victims inside age and die in a normal time frame, or are they driven mad by the centuries passing?
Over centuries, their bodies might obey the physics of their new form — cell walls thickening, bark replacing skin, the slow petrification of nerve into xylem. Their minds might persist, half-aware, stretching across seasons, dreaming in sapflow and root pressure.
Maybe this is how treants are made. By botched massmorphs, their consciousness leaking into vegetal eternity. And not just once, either. Can the spell be cast every day? Are there wizard forests that extend over many square miles. A hundred trees covers about one-third of an acre. That one Pooh-forest (this is D&D, so we're not allowed to say "hundred acres of wood") per year, assuming holidays and a square mile every six-years. Three or four such woods are more than enough to cloak a wizard's tower.
I know the D&D mind... and a lot of you are going, "cool." Only, remember, because it's a spell that any mage of 7th can take, there's no reason to think all of them aren't going to do this. One off, it's cool. Every mage, including your own players, just ignoring the rest of what makes this silly, creating a horticultural apocalypse, where monarchs insist you show up for your "tree time," for the good of the kingdom? As a DM, you don't want a piece of that.
Hallucinatory Terrain: By means of this spell, terrain features can either be hidden or created — an illusion which affects a large area. Thus a swamp, hill, ridge, woods, or the like can be concealed or made to appear. The spell is broken when the magicked area is contacted by an opponent. Range: 24".
First off, this is window dressing, not power. You can make your castle appear to be the forest, true enough. But a first level spell, detect magic, disarms it, as does your walking at it. Plus, funny thing about most landscapes — they get passed by many intelligent creatures, who tend to notice, "Hey, didn't that used to be a hill?" True enough, it can be used to make your castle on the hill look like the hill without your castle... but um, what about all those people who built your castle?
Okay, forget about that; you just want your campsite not to look like a campsite. Fair enough. We're here, we're hanging around, we've set up tents and poof, not visible to outsiders. Is it visible to us? Doesn't say. If the dog chases a rabbit, does the dog know where we are? If I get wood, and I don't happen to be the mage... or my servant gets wood...
Okay, I'll fall back again. A certain number of people and attached animals can still see the camp (though it's not written specifically in the rules how the spell is in fact applied at all), if my follower gets mad at me and decides to engage in fisticuffs (people are people, after all), or if I yell at the mage for again putting green wood on the fire, though we've told him about that a hundred times... does that dispel the spell? Says "opponent," not "enemy." How exactly is "opponent" defined. I don't know that definition in D&D.
Arguably, it's made for a wargame board. "You can't see what my mage is doing behind this screen until you intrude on this space." And in-combat, I can see that working... the mage hiding in a tiny area that's "terrained," being invisible while able to cast spells, or an archer nearby firing out of it. As that kind of screen, it's great. But as a means to hide a swamp? I don't see it.
Also, if I have a castle, don't I need people to deliver to it? And live there? And if not everyone especially likes their jobs, don't they likewise "oppose" the place? I've certainly worked in places I didn't consciously support.
I'm going to get comments for this where people give advice and tell me to think about it this way and that... and that's fine. I'd like some acknowledgement here, though, that as a 4th level spell, it's awfully fragile as written. It's sole purpose, hide an ambush, presumes the DM's going to keep setting up ambush opportunities for the players to exploit. Otherwise, the DM is going to be the primary user, no?
5th Level:
Teleport: Instantaneous transportation from place to place, regardless of the distance involved, provided the user knows where he is going (the topography of the arrival area). Without certain knowledge of the destination teleportation is 75% uncertain, so a score of less than 75% of the percentile dice results in death. If the user is aware of the general topography of his destination, but has not carefully studied it, there is an uncertainty factor of 10% low and 10% high. A low score (1-10%) means death if solid material is contacted. A high score (91-100%) indicates a fall of from 10 to 100 feet, also possibly resulting in death. If a careful study of the destination has been previously made, then the Magic-User has only a 1% chance of teleporting low and a 4% chance of coming in high (10-40 feet).
Jeez.
Again, this is one of those Gygaxian descriptions that employs creative grammar designed to explain a thing in the most convoluted manner possible. Rewritten:
If you don't know the destination terrain, chance of death is 3 in 4. If you so-so know the terrain, there's a 20% of one of the following happening (50/50): appear below the plane of intended arrival (death if solid material present, no rules provided otherwise) OR a fall of 10 to 100 feet. If you know the destination very well, there's a 5% chance of the above happening (20/80).
All three states are ill-defined an arbitrary — and all three feature a common aspect of Gygaxian thinking: "It is fair for the game to dick-fuck you if you take this spell. You may think you're entitled to this spell, having earned it through game play, but you're wrong; in fact, the DM is entitled to do so because it's a very powerful spell and we're not going to rewrite it or design it more considerately or reasonably." Signed, "Fuck you... the management."
Is it any wonder this bred a lasting culture of morally entitled shit-eating assholes who felt empowered by their DM badge? The game's rules enshrined that behaviour, granted carte blanche, while Gygax himself was the gawd-king to these people. We've never gutted them from the populace... the best we've done is try to hamstring every DM with X-cards and other cultural apparati that assume every DM is guilty... while never naming what we're supposed to be guilty of. For a game that invented the "DM as Function," it did it so badly right from the start that we're still breathing the after-toxicity of it.
It's a sanctification of sadistic cruelty. The DM wasn’t merely "empowered"; they were licensed to inflict. The texts equated suffering with authenticity, as if misery proved devotion to the game's imagined realism. "It’s fair if it hurts" became the creed. Every impossible saving throw, every random death table, every untelegraphed trap whispered the same thing: the Dungeon Master’s job is to make you bleed for your fun.
And then, if that's not enough vitriol for the fire, this:
I've been working though page 27; teleport is at the top of page 28. And I'm going to be careful about the above. I'm no Mrs. Grundy.
[fun fact: the name long pre-dates Archie comics. Mrs. Grundy first appeared not in comics but in a late 18th-century play: Thomas Morton’s Speed the Plough (1798). Interestingly, she never actually appears on stage. She’s merely talked about by the characters, particularly by one Mrs. Ashfield, who constantly frets over "What will Mrs. Grundy say?" That single line was enough to turn her into a symbol. By the 19th century, "Mrs. Grundy" had come to represent the spirit of prudish social conformity—the meddling, easily scandalised neighbour who polices everyone’s morals. The term passed into common speech in Britain and America to describe excessive propriety or moral censorship]I quit discussing the images because they were getting worse and because of the whole "they ripped it off a comic" thing. I am not qualified to comment on comic-book art; when I cared about Marvel comic-books, I was twelve at the outside, that was 49 years ago and I was not studying them for their artistic quality. But this above is worth a note or two.
In 1974, it's not even unusual. It's poor taste, it's predictably prurient and suitable for teenage boys, it would be better if the nipples had not been included. But Amazons, amirite? Fits right into that mid-20th century iconography when a whole host of things had an assigned cultural "truth" that in fact was invented way after the fact by, um, "scholars": Pocahontas, Columbus, Amazons, Johnny Appleseed... I grew up in a world that really did think Amazons were naked from the waist up, despite zero evidence from classical history to show Amazons existed outside of Homer. But heck, if it was good enough for 3rd century Greek sculptors, by damn it's good enough for the White Box set.
The image's presence here reflects that "boys club" mystique... which really was becoming very, very bad even in 1974. Private clubs were being smashed in the courts, the future failed 1977 Houston meeting for the ERA was generating heat everywhere, mainstream publishers were backing off from this kind of story because BOTH the feminist left AND the conservative right were screaming about why pictures like the above were "offensive" (for different reasons)... and here these blind-minded college points cheerfully dropping nipple-porn into their rule set.
At least we can say from the start that the game never had been written for children, right? It was written by and for men who were old enough to drink, smoke, and still believe that cheesecake illustrations were harmless fun. The tone of the art, the language of the rules, the smirking references to “beautiful witches” and “amazons” — all of it was coded for a very specific demographic: wargamers steeped in pulp adventure, sword-and-sorcery paperbacks, and postwar hobby culture. The game only became "for kids" later, when commercial success required sanitising it.
So to be clear, I'm not offended. I draw a line through a level of porn I'll download but I'm not "offended" by imagery. I don't even understand that concept. BUT... the world is very offended by that imagery, and if you're going to publish something in the world, you can bet that not paying attention is going to have consequences. And it did. You all call it the "Satanic Panic."
Arguably, we could also call it "They were asking for it." Because I'm quite sure, when the panty-knotted Mrs. Grundy's of the 1980s decided to "look into this thing their children were playing," they found this exact picture. And went nuts.
Wave your tiny red flag in front of a lot of overanxious freaks and see what happens.
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