FMC Alpha Errata

Just released my 1974 remake Fantastic Medieval Campaigns on November 11! Here, I wanted to answer some frequently asked questions and feedback. Some of them are mistakes I want to correct, and others are things I want to clarify about the text and its approach. I owe many of them to comments on this blog which I cannot reply to because my computer is broken! I felt bad about not being able to respond, so I hope all y’all see this.

Update 2022-11-18: Updated once again with respect to the issues below!

Update 2022-11-16: Thank you to lvp0s93 for noticing that some spells have not had their descriptions written! I will update this page when I have updated the PDF again. Below is a list of more issues I want to resolve:

• p. 20: “lord” should be capitalized.
• p. 49: The spells “Bless” and “Find Trap” have missing descriptions.
• p. 177: “Light horse” should be renamed to “light cavalry”.
• p. 188: Replace “italicized” with “underlined”.

Update 2022-11-15: Many of these issues have been fixed in the latest file update on Itch!

Pronouns & Gendered Language: I refer to singular players or characters using the single-number pronoun of indeterminate gender, “they”. However, I retain the gendered titles of character classes (e.g. “Lord” and “Patriarch”) because they are illustrative of the male-centric setting of the game (which has been one of my angles of critique for a while). I do not want to foreclose the game from being player by non-men or from allowing players to have non-male characters—especially since I myself am a woman—but I think the maleness of the setting is central to its character, much like it was or continues to be in the real patriarchal world. That being said, there is a solution in the phrase “High Priest(ess)” which was used (in its masculine form) as the original term for chaotic equivalents of Patriarchs (“Evil High Priest”), but I would rather maintain the strictly patriarchal character of the original text so it is preserved for understanding and analysis.

Illustration Compression: Some of the art has a semi-transparent background, owing either to image compression or to issues with removing the background from the image (which is difficult for images drawn by hand). I will try to figure out how to resolve this! It seems to mostly affect readers with high-definition displays.

Percent in Lair (p. 58): This was a description I forgot to edit after realizing that others had different interpretations of the column (my own favorite now is that it is a % chance that a wilderness encounter is a monster lair). The most recent PDF has already changed the description to be tongue-in-cheek about its unobvious meaning, but later I will change it to echo the language with which Gary describes robots, golems, and androids in M&T page 22.

Robots, Golems, and Androids (p. 93): Nothing has made me happier than seeing people not only catch this little bit, but also recognizing what it was that I was trying to both satirize and “translate” into the new text. I hope it’s every bit as weird and unhelpful, though not as dismissive.

Magic Item Descriptions (pp. 108-16): I did not define magic items whose effects are one-to-one with spells of the same name, but I regret this being unclearly stated. My hope is to find space somewhere to state that more upfront. I do mention it on page 110 about magic rings, but that is not the first category of magic item so it does not help clarify the earlier pages. Thank you to kenco for pointing this out!

Wands & Staffs (pp. 112-3): kenco also pointed out that my understanding of the cone-shaped effect is incorrect, so I will revisit that description. Sounds more like a triangle! I also realized that I did not mention how much damage wands and staffs do—which is six or eight dice, respectively.

Variable Hex Costs (p. 135): I have seen some people unaware of the variable costs for moving through difficult terrain, such that this has informed some people’s analysis of OD&D. However, terrain costs are described in U&WA on page 17, based on those found in Outdoor Survival. I am glad that people are happy to see them in FMC, but I want to be clear that this is not an invention on my part (or an import from Outdoor Survival on my part)!

Healing Wounds (p. 166): Thank you to Canyon who pointed out that I misread the text! Characters heal 1 hit point every other day, starting on the second day of healing. Something I think is interesting is that this rate becomes 3 or 4 hit points per week depending on the day you start resting. Therefore, one could approximate this rate by rolling 1 six-sided die per week of rest—although this becomes more of a gamble, I like how it feels more abstract and chunky.

Weapon Class (p. 181): Canyon pointed out that daggers and hatchets have the same weapon class value. I checked my edition of Chainmail, though, and found them to be listed the same way. I do think it’s kind of unintuitive and that it would make sense for a hatchet to be between a dagger and a mace as far as length goes, but even if it is a mistake I’d rather keep it as-is. It may be worth a footnote in the future (see below)!

There are some formatting issues I look forward to fixing! The next proper release, though, will have new “features” like stats for the “balor” (in both Chapter II and Appendix A), an ascending AC table, and an adaptation of the weapon-versus-armor table for d20 rolls based on Appendix A as a substitute for the standard attack rolls [1]. Gus L. is also graciously drawing a wonderful level map of the example dungeon, where I currently have an ugly placeholder. Any content which is not original will be offered in the appendix, to avoid confusing the main body of the text which I use personally as a reference for the original (it’s just so much easier to flip through). As I mention on the Itch page, since this project was originally a personal reorganized of the original text rather than a remake, I will also work on revising passages which pull directly from the original.

Somewhere down the line, I also want to work on an annotated version of this text. One of the immediate benefits for some is that it would become A4/letter-sized rather than square, with the bottom portion of each page being dedicated to footnotes or personal notes. But in those footnotes, I’d like to offer page numbers for the original text and also commentary to clarify decisions made there or in my “translation”. This will probably have to wait until the main content of the book is done, to avoid having to edit multiple versions of the same thing. I also want to avoid covering the same ground that the annotated version of Delving Deeper has (albeit only for the first volume).

Thank all y’all so much for your feedback, and I hope to continue developing and improving Fantastic Medieval Campaigns into the most convenient guide for reference and modern players as possible!

Footnotes

[1] See a digital version of this table on my earlier post, “Chainmail’s Weapon Statistics for OD&D’s Alternate Combat System” (2021-10-08). Gygax attempted to make a similar table for Supplement I: Greyhawk but, as discussed on Delta’s D&D Hotspot (“The Big Mistake in Weapons vs. Armor Adjustments”, 2021-03-15), his math was misguided.