Some Character Like Conan to Bring Matters into Line

 "Anyone who has viewed a horror movie is aware of how dangerous angry villagers are. Whenever the referee finds that some player has committed an unforgivable outrage this rule can be invoked to harass the offender into line. Within the realm of angry villagers are thieves from the 'thieves’ quarter,' city watches and militia, etc. Also possible is the insertion of some character like Conan to bring matters into line."

This is the "Angry Villager Rule" of OD&D. I just wanted to muse on it, I don't have much of tremendous insight to say. It goes to show that some issues really have been the same since the start of the hobby, though today the advice would usually be to simply talk to the problem player. I suppose that might show a difference in maturity (of the hobby, not of individuals), but I can't help but miss this kind of off-hand, conversational advice. It feels less like I'm reading a rulebook, and more like I'm receiving advice from some guy in a game store, in a good way. Lots of OD&D feels that way. It also evokes a  kids smashing their action figures together sort of zany fun that I think maybe we need more of.

Maybe you should consider, if needed or desired, inserting some character like Conan to bring matters into line or, for that matter, out of it. After all, who is to say how the scenario will react to such an entrance. I guess if there's something to take away from this post, it's this: go read OD&D if you haven't. It's a quick read and whatever ways you're expecting it to be strange and intriguing, it will surprise you in a different way than that.

A Monster Conversion Key for Chainmail's Man-to-Man Combat Table

I'm a big fan of Chainmail's Man-to-Man combat system, see above. In addition to being a fascinating artifact, it's a surprisingly elegant system. With different chances to hit based on specific weapon and armor type, it's more tactical complexity than you usually get from D&D. At the same time, it avoids the feature bloat that many modern approaches to differentiating weapon types take. Moreover, it makes the uniform d6 damage die make so much more sense.

The system has one major problem, however, it doesn't cover monsters at all. If you want to run combat with monsters in Chainmail, you have to use the very different Fantasy Combat Table. This list is going to be my attempt at assigning weapon and armor equivalents to every monster presented in Booklet 2: Monsters and Treasure. The criteria is based on a combination of AC presented in OD&D and AD&D's composition tables for monsters, as well as common sense. It's not the most polished thing in the world and is meant as more of a starting point for someone who wants to run OD&D with Chainmail combat than anything else. I fully admit that in doing so, one will likely need to make rulings to their taste to replace the decisions in this list. Any particular effects of attacks (increased damage, petrification, etc are as presented in Monsters and Treasure).

The List