Hidden in Shadows

 Arneson's works, like his life, is largely obscure to the D&D community. His best known writing credit is no doubt the TSR DA series starting with Adventures in Blackmoor a series so heavily re-worked from the Blackmoor Chronicles adventures Arneson wrote that his voice is largely lost and replaced by that of Ritchie. No shade on Ritchie, of course, as TSR had their plans and Ritchie's job was to conform the Blackmoor setting to that vision.

I imagine that folks who know a little about Arneson or are familiar with the DA series might expect any other adventures he released to be weird dungeon crawls or perhaps an epic MacGuffin quest.

The Garbage Pits of Despair is neither of these things. It represents a sort of side quest, written during approximately the same period as Blackmoor Chronicles before the Chronicles drafts (or at least the first 3/4 adventures) was reworked by TSR into the DA series. Thus GPoD is a fascinating and unvarnished but all too brief look at Blackmoor as Arneson intended it to be.

The adventure was published in Different Worlds magazine in 2 installments in 1985. Arneson wrote a semi-regular column for DW under the pen name Gigi D'Arn, and served as an editor. GPoD likely was intended as a teaser for Blackmoor Chronicles.

I wont spoil all the details, but the adventure breaks as follows, The PC's randomly come across a caravan under attack by slavers, which leads to a request from a Blackmoor official to chase down the raiders. The PCs end up in a dragon den in the Dragon Hills, and agents of the Temple of the Frog are involved.

It is a bit railroady although allowances are made for differing outcomes of encounters and more than half takes place out-of-doors (or out-of-dungeons, if you prefer).

There is a lot more to say about the content of the adventure, but for this post I want to concentrate on some of its quirks.

Monsters

Arneson introduces three (or more?) new monsters in this adventure.

Watchwings: basically spy birds

Maggotmen: think the Michelin tire guy as an ant colony. It gets weirder though since there is also a zombie form!

Carcass Critter: this is Arneson's version of the Carrion Crawler, basically. That makes me wonder if the carrion crawler was a monster he invented and didn't care for how TSR presented it, or if he just thought it needed some changes. Who knows?

More: so there are known monsters that have some different qualities (more on that below), but the most outstanding to me was the Black Pudding, because it occupies a huge space and gives off a toxic gas.

Unknown Place Names

Walworth (Gary Gygax played the Earl of Walworth in the Castles and Crusades Society)

Stone Brook 

Dinsbury 

Fenstien

Weapons

Although Arneson seems to have been following the BECMI rules, some of the magic weapons have non-standard effects. 

War Hammer +1 against all opponents, additional plus one against undead; permanent spell effect: Deceive.

Pole Axe +3 strength against all non-magical opponents;  permanent spell effect: Defend.

2-handed flaming sword (sword of legend) 25% bonus, 8 Ego, 9 Intelligence. Primary powers – Detect Metal, Find Secret Doors, and Find Traps; Extraordinary power – Teleportation.

Magic Weapons seem to come in three stripes

1) Common with only a normal bonus

2) Rare with a bonus to strength in one case and an extra bonus against specific creatures and one “permanent spell effect”  These seem to come from the Marsh/Cook Expert rules.

3) Extraordinary swords – these swords are the standard swords generated with the D&D sword creation rules except the terminology is a little different.   The one listed is also interesting and unorthodox because it gives an unspecified (?) 25% bonus.

Magic Items

These have custom effects not in the BECMI or B/X rules, including an interesting failure rule I've long used now in my own games.

Staff of Lightning Bolts – effects an area 60 feet long, starting at 0 to 300 feet from user.  Victims must make a saving throw or take 6d6 points of damage.  There is a 5% chance per use of malfunction.  User must roll successfully against intelligence to repair.

Wand of Fireballs – Contains 6 charges.  Recharges in three minutes provided the owner is at rest.  The wand will recharge 5 times total.  The fireballs range 0-100 feet and do 2d6 damage.  Victims who make their saving throws take no damage.  There is a 15% chance per use the wand will malfunction.  The user must forsake all other activity and must roll successfully against intelligence to repair.  

Rules

Peppered throughout GPoD are what one might call general house rules.

Arrow counts for Archers are always noted (10-30), same with slingers (20 stones), and crossbowmen (40 bolts).

Percentile based tracking skill noted for one of the fighters (Long Bill Jordan).

NPC’s always have their ability scores listed.

Armor is described and helmets are noted, including whether or not they have cowls.

The Dragon, like AiF Dragons, has a mixture of animal like features.

Fatigue rule: movement reduced by 1/3, -1 on Strength and Dexterity.

The lead Orc isn’t given stats.  Instead he is described as a level 2 fighter.

Its interesting that Arneson seems to be tracking ammo for shooters, using percentile based skills, rolling against ability scores, and making variant magic items, based on his old standby’s of fireball and lightning bolts. 

Setting Details

Lastly, and perhaps most intriguing of all, are the hints regarding the Blackmoor setting as Arneson saw it. I mentioned placenames above, and we have hardly a clue about them since they are associated with a person, such as Monica of Dinsbury. 

There are some other interesting place clues however, such as the reference to the rulers of Ten as "Sartraps" and the fact that the leadership of Blackmoor is under a King and a council of Co-regents. The wild west of the north vibe also comes through in the prominent role of marshals, appointed by the council to provide some measure of law and protection across Blackmoor. The people from the Temple of the Frog too, reveal something of their organization, from Fins of the Frog to Teeth of the Frog.

Further fascinating details can be gleaned from the random encounter tables and the potential wilderness encounters. Garbage Pits of Despair gives us a glimpse of the Arnesonian Blackmoor we almost had, before TSR put their stamp on the setting in the DA series.

 Back in July of 2022 I made a frivilous post on my thought regarding how many editions of D&D there really were. I came up with 8.

Since then I have entirely re-thought the matter, realizing that I, along with everyone else practically was mixing chocolate with my peanut butter.

More to the point I was counting AD&D as an edition of D&D, because everybody knows its the same game. But I've realized that is not really true. AD&D is a derivative game variant.  D&D was published as D&D side by side with the variant AD&D.

So if we aske the question, "How many editions of just D&D are there?", here is my two cents:

1) Alpha edition - 1974 OD&D - the 3 little brown books.

2) Beta edition - Supplements 1-4.  Supplement 1 significantly changes core rules in OD&D, adds new classes, and creates a more complex game. It wasn't seen as a new edition by the players, but it is a significant change. 

3) Gamma edition - Basic D&D (Holmes, B/X, BECMI, Rules Cyclopedia, Black Box)

The Holmes Bluebook rulebook largely adheres to "Supplement" D&D and it is tempting to lump them together.  However Holmes notably introduces new movement and time rules that are carried into the rest of the Basic line.  While all these editions of Basic continue to grow the rules base, the core rules are in substantial agreement throughout.

4)  Delta edition -  3.0 D&D and 3.5. This edition merged features of AD&D and Basic D&D into one system. Previously I separated 3.0 and 3,5 because the changes between 3.5 and 3.0 were quite substantial. However with 5.5 out now and it being very specifically not a new edition we might as well lump these two together. The changes 3.5 brought are mostly tweeks and fixes to the 3.0 system much like D&D 2024 is to D&D 2014, only maybe more so.

5) Epsilon edition -  4th edition D&D. This thing is so different it isn't D&D IMHO, but the publisher called it that so...

6) Zeta edition - 5th edition and D&D next and now D&D 2024.  I've put these together since "Next" was a free playtest that led to 5th and WotC insists D&D 2024 is also their 5th edition. It's mostly the same so I guess they are one "edition" of the game.

So there you have it IMHO D&D 5th edition is the 6th edition of the game, lol.

BUT WAIT, maybe 5th edition really is the 5th edition.

I break OD&D into two editions, the 3lbbs only and the 3lbbs+supplements becuase Supplement II added so much to the game. However many folks wouldn't do that and nobody at the time considered the supplements to be a new edition.

If you wanted to consider OD&D as one edition, that is that the 3lbb's + Supplements are but a single edition and not two as I have it, then 5th edition really would be the 5th edition. YMMV.

 If you want to find the details for one of the characters that Gary Gygax made and played as a PC, perhaps to use as an NPC in your own game, it isn't terribly difficult. Likewise for the characters of Rob Kuntz, David Megarry Greg Svenson  and others among the early developers and players of D&D.

Perhaps surprisingly though, finding a player character sheet by D&D's co-creator Dave Arneson is not an easy exercise. Sure you can find NPC's and pre-gens Mr Arneson rolled up, but that's about it.

I'm not saying there aren't any which have yet to see the light of day, but at present none are publicly available or even privately circulated to my knowledge. Except maybe one.

 Boot Hill has a list of Fictional Non-Player Characters and their stats. In the second edition (1979) the character creators are anonymous, but by the third edition player names had been attributed to each, and the character of Ben Cartwheel, Rancher is attributed to Arneson.

 Here are the stats:

  Ben Cartwheel (Dave Arneson)

Now I want to point out that we have no way of knowing, as far as I know, if Arneson actually rolled up this character or if someone else did. We also don't know if he actually played the character. I asked David Megarry, who also has a character attributed to him in Boot Hill, and he said that, at least in his case, he didn't remember making the character and thought maybe Brian Blume had made it for him.

All I can say for certain is that this Ben Cartwheel character was attributed to Arneson and may or may not have been made by him. The name is certainly right in Arneson's wheelhouse, so I think the odds are good that it really was Arneson's player character. In any case, unless you are familiar with Boot Hill the stats probably don't mean much to you, but if you are like me, you immediately wonder if they will convert to D&D. Luckily there is a conversion guide published in the 1e AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide. 

Most of the stats don't in fact convert to anythin in D&D because they are derived from Speed (spd) and Bravery. Per the AD&D conversion guide we are told the Strength score stays the same and a method is given for converting Speed (spd) into Dexterity. We also are told to determine the character level by adding 2 to the EXP score and that Rancher would translate to a Fighter. The DMG suggests the Bravery scores can be derived from the wisdom score when converting an AD&D character to Boot Hill but not the reverse - there is no D&D Bravery equivalent. However Arneson's Bravery score is quite high in Boot Hill - the near equivalent of rolling a 17 on 3d6 - and I think we should convert the Bravery score to something, but Wisdom is probably not the best choice - perhaps Constitution or maybe Charisma. Lets go with Constitution for now and see what we have so far for Ben Cartwheel D&D Fighter:

That leaves Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma. AD&D suggests the player simply roll for these. That’s a bit of a problem now, but we could potentially steal these score from an NPC Arneson had already created, preferably of similar class and level. Such an NPC can be found in the Pregens he rolled up for the Origins convention in 1977. In fact there is a character that lines up well  - #5, a tenth level lord with the following Stats: Str: 14 Int: 12 Wis: 13 Con: 16  Dex: 12 Chr: 17

Conveniently, this character matches exactly Ben Cartwheel's Strength and Dexterity scores, so this is a good match to fill in the blanks. We could translate the Bravery score of 17 to Charisma, but I like the idea of swapping the stats and giving Ben a 16 Charisma and 17 Constitution so Ben is a little less of a clone of character #5. Also, one of the roles of Bravery in Boot Hill is giving the character a "steady hand" in a gunfight, and that seems more in line with Constitution to me. Here is the result:

Ben Cartwheel                                                                       Level  12 Fighter, Hit Points 60                                                    Str: 14 Int: 12 Wis: 13 Con: 17  Dex: 12 Chr: 16