CalTech and early D&D?

[tavis]

My friend Nick Mizer came across the following line in Paul Crabaugh's Random Monsters article from Dragon #10:

“This table is suited for the local group's dungeons, and I should warn you that we around here fall somewhere between Lake Geneva and CalTech in philosophy. These tables are therefore geared to a 20-level dungeon, with each level being typically populated by monsters of the same level....If you're running a five-level dungeon...you'll have to compress the tables somewhat. If you're running a 60-level dungeon -- I don't want to know about it.”

I think I know that the Lake Geneva style ran to the 60-level end of things, if what I hear about the original Castle Greyhawk is true. Is the philosophical divide Paul references here that CalTech was known for smaller (or more laterally extensive than deep?) dungeons?

Any pointers to other known info about CalTech in the old days would be welcome - I found this old thread, which references others.

[aldarron]

Not much help here Tavis except to say that J. E. Holmes was exposed early on to the Warlock system and says in his Fantasy Role Playing Game book that he first started playing D&D using the combat system from Warlock because he found it easier to understand. I think I've read a thread or two that basically indicated that Warlock was an early response to the confusing bits of the 3LBB's and itself grew into something confusing and complex. I dunno, but it seems to have been a pretty strong undercurrent in west coast D&D in the '70's.

[Finarvyn]

Seems like the search function is gone at the moment.

This link might lead to a thread on this, but I think it's the same one in the OP.
odd74.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=4462

(I'm pretty sure I saw another thread on this, but I can't recall where.)

[Zenopus]

I agree with everything Aldarron said above. I have Spartan magazine #9 (Aug 1975), which has the earliest published version of the Warlock rules, and the Complete Warlock (1978). Tavis, unfortunately there's no answer to your question in these rule sets, as they focus exclusively on the material from Men & Magic. There's no monsters, treasure or campaign info.

We were actually just discussing these rules on the Acaeum a few weeks ago. Vault Keeper (also a member here) resurrected an old thread to ask about the rules. Here's my response:

I have Spartan #9. I bought a copy from Noble Knight last year for $50; it's one of the more expensive collectibles I've bought. I was interested in seeing it b/c J. Eric Holmes mentions in his FRP book that he used the combat system from it when he started playing, because the OD&D combat system was confusing. (The irony here is that I find the Warlock combat system to be overly complicated; it actually says "the numbers involved in our combat system may look a bit frightening").

The Warlock article takes up most of Spartan #9 (pages 4-37 of 50 pages). It's not an article about the creation of the Warlock rules - it's the rules themselves - an earlier version of the same material found in the Complete Warlock. (For comparison, I also have a beat-up copy of the CW I picked up on the cheap in a lot, thanks to lokiwookie here). There is a brief introduction, three paragraphs, that describes the development of the system, but it's found in almost identical form in the CW.

The Spartan Warlock rules are a very early (Aug 1975!) clarification & expansion of Vol I of OD&D - Men & Magic plus the M&M additions from Greyhawk, though there's a lot of (IMO) unneccesary complexity added to the rules, which gets worse in the CW (for example, a quadruple magical-fighting-cleric-thief class). Echoing the change in OD&D, the Spartan Warlock rules refer to hobbits whereas the CW refers to halflings.

By the way the picture shown for the "draft" copy on afterglow2 looks identical to the first page of the magazine article. It's also the same length (34 pages). Is it possible this draft is just a photocopy or cut-out of the article?

* * * *

I'll also add that I found Holmes mentioned a few of the particular spells from Warlock in a short story in Alarums & Excursions:
The Adventure of the Giant Chameleon

There, now we have almost all of the info on the internet about Warlock in one place.

[Finarvyn]

Zenopus, as usual you are awesome!

Thanks for collecting this, and have another EXALT on me!

[geoffrey]

Jun 21, 2011 13:29:27 GMT -6 tavis said:

I think I know that the Lake Geneva style ran to the 60-level end of things, if what I hear about the original Castle Greyhawk is true. Is the philosophical divide Paul references here that CalTech was known for smaller (or more laterally extensive than deep?) dungeons?

I'm understanding this in a different manner:

Gary and Rob's dungeon was not "60-level" in the sense that PCs of up to 60th level could adventure in it. In fact, the Greyhawk Dungeons had accommodated characters only of levels 14 and lower. It was the boys at CalTech who had ramped the game up to the point where 40th-level characters could adventure in their dungeons. Here is a quote from "D&D Is Only as Good as the DM" by Gary Gygax (and published in The Strategic Review #7, p. 22):

It requires no careful study to determine that D & D is aimed at progression which is geared to the approach noted above. There are no monsters to challenge the capabilities of 30th level lords, 40th level patriarchs, and so on. Now I know of the games played at CalTech where the rules have been expanded and changed to reflect incredibly high levels, comic book characters and spells, and so on. Okay. Different strokes for different folks, but that is not D & D. While D & D is pretty flexible, that sort of thing stretches it too far, and the boys out there are playing something entirely different — perhaps their own name “Dungeons & Beavers,” tells it best. It is reasonable to calculate that if a fair player takes part in 50 to 75 games in the course of a year he should acquire sufficient experience points to make him about 9th to 11th level, assuming that he manages to survive all that play. The acquisition of successively higher levels will be proportionate to enhanced power and the number of experience points necessary to attain them, so another year of play will by no means mean a doubling of levels but rather the addition of perhaps two or three levels. Using this gauge, it should take four or five years to see 20th level. As BLACKMOOR is the only campaign with a life of five years, and GREYHAWK with a life of four is the second longest running campaign, the most able adventurers should not yet have attained 20th level except in the two named campaigns. To my certain knowledge no player in either BLACKMOOR or GREYHAWK has risen above 14th level.

To quote Crabaugh's article: "[W]e around here fall somewhere between Lake Geneva and CalTech in philosophy. These tables are therefore geared to a 20-level dungeon, with each level being typically populated by monsters of the same level. (Goblins on first level, Gnolls on second, and so forth.)"

Thus Crabaugh's group was more high-powered than the 14th-level guys in Lake Geneva, but less high-powered than the 40th-level guys at CalTech. Crabaugh's group presumably had gotten up to around 20th level. And the 20th level of their dungeon held monsters that were suitable challenges for 20th-level characters. Of course this does not mean that their dungeon did not have many more sub-levels than that. It simply means that the most dangerous parts of the dungeon held dangers appropriate for 20th-level characters.

Forgive this post if it is rather stream-of-consciousness. It's almost bedtime for me.

[Zenopus]

Thanks, Fin!

Geoffrey's analysis fits with the Spartan Warlock rules. I just checked and the Magic-User table has every level up to 40th listed. 40th requires 5.2 million EXP, and the wizard has 15+2 HD and the following spells: 21x1st, 14x2, 11x3, 10x4, 7x5, 6x6, 4x7, 3x8, 2x9, and one 10th level spell (gained at this level). The Cleric and Thieves tables likewise each go up to 39th level. One interesting variant is that Thieves abilities are treated like spells, with slots and lists for 8 levels of abilities. The Fighter table only goes up to 13th level, but HD appear to continue to go up with a new dice per every two levels.

[talysman]

Jun 22, 2011 5:24:03 GMT -6 Zenopus said:

Thanks, Fin!

Geoffrey's analysis fits with the Spartan Warlock rules. I just checked and the Magic-User table has every level up to 40th listed. 40th requires 5.2 million EXP, and the wizard has 15+2 HD and the following spells: 21x1st, 14x2, 11x3, 10x4, 7x5, 6x6, 4x7, 3x8, 2x9, and one 10th level spell (gained at this level). The Cleric and Thieves tables likewise each go up to 39th level. One interesting variant is that Thieves abilities are treated like spells, with slots and lists for 8 levels of abilities. The Fighter table only goes up to 13th level, but HD appear to continue to go up with a new dice per every two levels.

Interesting... as far as HD/XP goes, the LBBs do mention how to figure out very high levels, and a 40th level Wizard would, in fact, have 15+2 HD, but would only need 3.2 million XP and would have 17 spells of each spell level through level 6. So Warlock boosted 1st level spells, lowered the others, and increased the XP requirement.

[tavis]

Great work, all! I originally thought this quotation was evidence of how dungeon level and character level used to be synonymous, but it seems like it's instead evidence of how they were already disjointed - so that the Lake Geneva group has Castle Greyhawk with more dungeon levels than Crabaugh even wants to think about, but only has PCs going up to 14. I wonder if:
- the full extent of the Greyhawk levels was known at the time?
- the Greyhawk PCs went down further than level 14, but didn't earn enough XP to level up as a result?

[DungeonDevil]

What are these 'Warlock' rules? I've never heard of them.

[Deleted]

You can download them from here DD.

[DungeonDevil]

Thanks! How different are the rules in that link from the original Spartan rules?

[aldarron]

Jun 21, 2011 23:58:04 GMT -6 geoffrey said:

Jun 21, 2011 13:29:27 GMT -6 tavis said:

I think I know that the Lake Geneva style ran to the 60-level end of things, if what I hear about the original Castle Greyhawk is true. Is the philosophical divide Paul references here that CalTech was known for smaller (or more laterally extensive than deep?) dungeons?

I'm understanding this in a different manner:

Gary and Rob's dungeon was not "60-level" in the sense that PCs of up to 60th level could adventure in it. In fact, the Greyhawk Dungeons had accommodated characters only of levels 14 and lower. It was the boys at CalTech who had ramped the game up to the point where 40th-level characters could adventure in their dungeons. Here is a quote from "D&D Is Only as Good as the DM" by Gary Gygax (and published in The Strategic Review #7, p. 22):

It requires no careful study to determine that D & D is aimed at progression which is geared to the approach noted above. There are no monsters to challenge the capabilities of 30th level lords, 40th level patriarchs, and so on. Now I know of the games played at CalTech where the rules have been expanded and changed to reflect incredibly high levels, comic book characters and spells, and so on. Okay. Different strokes for different folks, but that is not D & D. While D & D is pretty flexible, that sort of thing stretches it too far, and the boys out there are playing something entirely different — perhaps their own name “Dungeons & Beavers,” tells it best. It is reasonable to calculate that if a fair player takes part in 50 to 75 games in the course of a year he should acquire sufficient experience points to make him about 9th to 11th level, assuming that he manages to survive all that play. The acquisition of successively higher levels will be proportionate to enhanced power and the number of experience points necessary to attain them, so another year of play will by no means mean a doubling of levels but rather the addition of perhaps two or three levels. Using this gauge, it should take four or five years to see 20th level. As BLACKMOOR is the only campaign with a life of five years, and GREYHAWK with a life of four is the second longest running campaign, the most able adventurers should not yet have attained 20th level except in the two named campaigns. To my certain knowledge no player in either BLACKMOOR or GREYHAWK has risen above 14th level.

To quote Crabaugh's article: "[W]e around here fall somewhere between Lake Geneva and CalTech in philosophy. These tables are therefore geared to a 20-level dungeon, with each level being typically populated by monsters of the same level. (Goblins on first level, Gnolls on second, and so forth.)"

Thus Crabaugh's group was more high-powered than the 14th-level guys in Lake Geneva, but less high-powered than the 40th-level guys at CalTech. Crabaugh's group presumably had gotten up to around 20th level. And the 20th level of their dungeon held monsters that were suitable challenges for 20th-level characters. Of course this does not mean that their dungeon did not have many more sub-levels than that. It simply means that the most dangerous parts of the dungeon held dangers appropriate for 20th-level characters.

Forgive this post if it is rather stream-of-consciousness. It's almost bedtime for me.

Nice one Geoffrey. Exalt for that. Note that Gary's offhand comment gives the start year for Blackmoor as 1971 and Greyhawk as 1972, which is pretty much in line with other accounts.

[arcadayn]

I could not get the links on the site to work.

[paulg]

The file links are indeed dead, and archive.org doesn't have copies. You might try the Yahoo Warlock group at groups.yahoo.com/group/Warlock-D_and_D/files/.

[Deleted]

Jun 23, 2011 9:38:41 GMT -6 arcadayn said:

I could not get the links on the site to work.

Sorry about that, I didn't recheck the links to make sure they were still active.

[Falconer]

Try this: Go to members.fortunecity.com/caltechwarlock/ and then go to members.fortunecity.com/caltechwarlock/Warlock-Word.zip

My membership at the Yahoo! Group has been pending for several days now.

[Deleted]

Hmph ... one never knows what one may find hiding underneath the internet in dark places.

[akooser]

I am curious about the differences between Spartan #9 Warlock and the one from the CalTech website. Does anyone know if there is a pdf of the original rules. Some of the text I saw quoted from #9 is the same in the 1999-2000 Warlock but the more recent version has a much larger page count.

I am getting material together for a blog I am starting up on dungeons and such.

thanks,
ara

[Zenopus]

Jun 22, 2011 22:45:17 GMT -6 DungeonDevil said:

What are these 'Warlock' rules? I've never heard of them.

Here's the introduction from the Warlock rules published in Spartan (Aug 1975):

"A little over a year ago, the first copies of a new game called Dungeons & Dragons appeared on the market. Fantasy fans and gamers in general were entralled at the possibilities. Most of them became hooked on the game.

When our group first started playing it, our overall reaction was that it had great ideas, "but maybe we should change the combat system, clarify the magic, and redo the monsters". Warlock is not intended to replace D&D, nor is it intended to interfere with it. All we have tried to do is present a way of handling D&D without the contradictions and loopholes inherent in the original rules. We spent a considerable amount of time working out a solid combat system, a coherent magic system, and a more flexible way of handling monsters. We have been (rightly) accused of making D&D into a different game altogether, and we think a slightly better one.

We recommend that you at least have access to a Dungeons & Dragons game, for the simple reason that we lack the space to go into some of the detail used in their three volumes. The D&D books are a good place to get ideas from. They are not a complete set of rules. We have completed them in our own fashion. We hope you enjoy it"

The 1978 Complete Warlock rules start with the same three paragraphs, although they are revised/expanded a bit. Despite the 1978 rules being "complete", they still don't include anything beyond Men & Magic rules. They do add a lot more complexity, such as more character classes. Two further Warlock rulebooks appeared in 1979 and 1980 and finally had some Monsters & Treasure (I haven't seen these).

So, Warlock was one of the first (first published?) attempts to take post-Greyhawk Supplement D&D and "get it right". The intro sounds a bit arrogant, and laughable in retrospect, but it's a natural impulse that has led to innumerable other rpgs. Warlock started as a supplement to D&D like Arduin except that it's been largely forgotten. Probably because it's mostly rules with very little flavor text. I think it deserves a little more attention due to the very early publication date and the connections with Holmes. California seems to have been a very active place for these variants between Warlock, Arduin and the Perrin Conventions.

I came across this quote from Dragon magazine yesterday, posted on Grognardia:

"In the Good Old Days, the days of the original three books of the Dungeons & Dragons game, the number of variants on the rules was roughly equal to X, where X was the number of players in the game. Alas, we all get older and more conservative, and with the publication of the more detailed, more structured D&D Basic Set, variant rules tended to become one with history." (Paul Crabaugh, Dragon #109, Paul's the same guy quoted by Tavis in his first post, so Paul may have been thinking of Warlock when he wrote this)

The irony being that this rule set may have been one inspiration that led to Holmes offering to edit the D&D rules to make them more clear, leading to the Basic Set, which then helped confine variants like this to the dustbin. Except for at CalTech itself, where the gaming group(s) seem to have carried on the Warlock tradition.

[Zenopus]

Jun 23, 2011 3:57:31 GMT -6 DungeonDevil said:

Thanks! How different are the rules in that link from the original Spartan rules?

I'm not sure, because I haven't seen these newer rules, but I would imagine they are different in many details. There's a lot of differences between the 1975 (33 pages) and 1978 rules (56 pages). The 1978 rules add more complexity across the board. A quick look at those Mike Riley files and it seems they are greatly revised/expanded.

[Zenopus]

For the record, here's Holmes' quote about Warlock from his 1981 FRPG book:
"At Caltech in Pasadena, students Cowan, Clark, Shih, Smith, Dahl and Peterson put together a set of rules with what they felt to be an improved combat and magic system: Warlock. I used their combat table when I first began playing D & D, because I could not understand the one in the original books” (page 65).

Looking around at the comments by Brunomac on Grognardia, I see that Paul Crabaugh frequented Aero Hobbies in Santa Monica. Holmes also had connections with Aero Hobbies and its owner Gary Switzer. A number of minis painted by Switzer appear in Holmes' book.

[DungeonDevil]

I joined the Yahoo group, but it may take a while for the Mod to okay my membership. I'll ask around for more infos.

ADDENDUM (7.6.2011): I am still waiting for the Warlock group to grant me entry. I pinged the group mod, but still no word.

[Deleted]

Jun 22, 2011 21:45:27 GMT -6 tavis said:

so that the Lake Geneva group has Castle Greyhawk with more dungeon levels than Crabaugh even wants to think about, but only has PCs going up to 14. I wonder if:
- the full extent of the Greyhawk levels was known at the time?

Robilar explored all of Greyhawk Castle, for which achievement Rob was made co-referee of Greyhawk. It had, IIRC, 12 or so levels.

Jun 22, 2011 21:45:27 GMT -6 tavis said:

- the Greyhawk PCs went down further than level 14, but didn't earn enough XP to level up as a result?

I'm not sure what this question means. A 12th level character did not have to explore the 12th and 13th levels to get experience.

[badger2305]

Jun 21, 2011 13:29:27 GMT -6 tavis said:

My friend Nick Mizer came across the following line in Paul Crabaugh's Random Monsters article from Dragon #10:

“This table is suited for the local group's dungeons, and I should warn you that we around here fall somewhere between Lake Geneva and CalTech in philosophy. These tables are therefore geared to a 20-level dungeon, with each level being typically populated by monsters of the same level....If you're running a five-level dungeon...you'll have to compress the tables somewhat. If you're running a 60-level dungeon -- I don't want to know about it.”

I think I know that the Lake Geneva style ran to the 60-level end of things, if what I hear about the original Castle Greyhawk is true. Is the philosophical divide Paul references here that CalTech was known for smaller (or more laterally extensive than deep?) dungeons?

Any pointers to other known info about CalTech in the old days would be welcome - I found this old thread, which references others.

Actually, Tavis, you're incorrect about that relationship. Lake Geneva dungeons were of fewer levels and lower power than the CalTech versions of D&D - what Gary once referred to as "Dungeons & Beavers" in one of his editorials in The Dragon. It was mostly a power issue than a depth or design issue. While I am not sure about the specifics, I do recall that the CalTech gaming paradigm was related to that found in Warlock as published in The Spartan.

...and if I had read through the rest of the thread, I would've seen everybody else explain it much more succinctly and accurately than I have. *wry grin*