Quote from: jrientsI've never played 1st edition AD&D as written.  My group and everyone that I've ever encountered had all started with either BD&D or OD&D.  When someone introduced the AD&D books people cherry picked the rules they liked and fell back to the earlier version wherever AD&D seemed more cumbersome.  It wasn't until 2nd edition that my group attempted to play by the rules exactly as written.  Even then we skimped on a few things, like material components.

I'd say we were exactly the same.  We ended up with an unholy mishmash between the basic/expert/companion/master set and AD&D by the end of things.  I know we loved our weapon mastery.

-O

Quote from: Settembrini;23249How much adventure can be made w/o further prep out of this entry:

2410 The City of Ash (EL 12+): An ash-covered city
almost burnt to the ground lies in a blackened clearing. A young
adult red dragon (CR 12; hp 218) lives in a huge cistern in the
middle of town holding 6 virgin maidens (Com1; hp 2 each;
Cha 14+) captive. Twenty flame jet traps (CR 2; 1-ft. wide, 50-
ft. long stream of flame; 3d6; DC 13 Reflex save avoids; Search
DC 25; Disable Device DC 26) and 10 20-foot deep pit traps
(CR 1; no attack roll necessary; 2d6; DC 20 Reflex save avoids;
Search DC 20; Disable Device DC 20) are set about the ruins to
alert the dragon. In addition to the maidens, its lair contains
41,200 gp, 36,000 sp, 22 gems worth 11,000 gp total, a +3
animated shield, a +2 dragonbane sword, and a bracelet of friends.

Show me, I really wanna know, why this is more than an encounter with an adult red dragon. Show me how the Wilderlands work!

Quote from: Settembrini;23253My gripe with it is the following:
but And I don't see it.

What's the Dragons motivation?
What does he do with the maidens?
Where do they come from?

The most important, non-wingable questions:
Why has nobody killed him yet?
Where did he take the gold from?
What plans does he have?
How far have they grown?
Why hasn't he cleared out all inferiour hexes in his surroundings and claimed their vauluables?
How does he interact with other dragons?
cool thoughts coming out of it, but they mean more work!

City of Ash
"Ash" is what the dragon has made of the city, and "Ash" is what the survivors call the dragon, who kills those that mispronounce his draconian name. Being a young adult, he was recently kicked out of his home by his parents who don't want the competition. "Ash" was the first city that the dragon came across when he had judged that he'd flown far enough to escape his father's territoriality.

Ash torched the town, but let a number of the citizens flee with their lives, he enjoyed the thought of his reputation and legend spreading across the land. This may be how the PCs have heard of him. He made the town his lair, pillaged the treasury, and set about fortifying his position with traps. In combat he will try to knock PCs into one of the traps with a flick of his tail, grabbing them in his claws and throwing them, or dropping them from flight. He will also try to fly over, or settle close to traps to lure the PCs in to them. If a PC falls into a pit trap, Ash will drop a boulder or section of wall from a demolished building over the pit to seal the PC inside for later eating. He refers to the pits as "tupperware".

One of the pits conceals his treasure. He will try not to drop a PC into this one, but there is a 1-in-10 chance that he may forget in the heat of battle.
His 22 gems are assorted rubies, garnets, jacinths and flamedance worth 500gp each that caught his eye because of their fiery color. He's eaten all the gems of inferior colors.

The animated shield and dragonbane sword he stole from his father's hoard in revenge for being kicked out of his home. He plans to groom a black knight as his rider, and equip him with sword and shield and slay the other dragons in the area, trying to earn his father's respect...but more likely his father will soon see Ash as a threat to be eliminated.

Ash has began the work of every dragon: demanding tribute from the surrounding villages and towns. Since he wants effortless profit without resorting to combat, he insists his tribute be delivered by virgins, no others are allowed to enter "Ash", all others will be eaten. Ash is a virgin-detector, and devours any who don't meet his standards.

Ash also has a bracelet of friends- each of his treasure bearers have touched a charm on the bracelet, and may be called to service at a later time of Ash's choosing. He has a number of plans that may call for instant virgins- human shields, hostages, entering places Ash can't fit. Of course, all his virgins have been charmed, and their trips to bring tribute also bring news of the outlying areas, so Ash gets early warning of any plots against him.

*****

What Settembrini calls "work" I call the fun of being the DM.
I think the only "unwingable" questions are: what does COM1 stand for?
What are the Wilderlands? And why do virgins only have 2 hit points? Talk about some flimsy virgins. Didn't Worf say something about "Earth women are too fragile?"