General Game Guide

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Welcome to Dragon Mountain!

This thread is where I explain some of the approaches I will take to running the game. There are several factors at work that make things different to running a game around the tabletop. Some of you will be familiar with play-by-post (PbP), some of you will not. All of you can learn something about what to expect from DraMo by reading this thread.

I will add new material as time permits, and as I decide to explain certain things.

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2nd Ed. AD&D

I decided to run DraMo with 2nd Ed. AD&D rules because that's the edition the original boxed set was written for, and I do not have the time or inclination to port the game to another edition.

I was going to continue my homebrew campaign, which started with Of Masks and Men (OMaM), in 3rd Ed. However, with limited time, but the ever present nagging desire to run an adventure, I decided a pre-written module would be a better idea. I went for Dragon Mountain. I dreamt of getting this boxed set for years, and now eBay has made it possible!

2nd Ed. was also a good choice for me because I'm not good at remembering, or sticking to rules. Running a game in 2nd Ed. should solve that problem and let us concentrate on having a good time, because I have the rulebooks, and you most likely do not. This should lead to you thinking in terms of what you want your character to do, instead of how you are mechanically going to do it.

We will use enough rules to orchestrate the game, and no more. I promise you will never die because of some skipped rule, I promise - so you should never feel the need to halt a thread in its tracks over a couple of hit points, or a missed NWP check, or anything else.

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Style and Writing

Dragon Mountain is not the most literary of modules. A lot of the dialogue, as taken from the book, is pretty awful, and the locale descriptions are quite clinical and sterile.

I will be writing more atmospheric description text (you will never hear me say 'the room is one hundred feet by one hundred feet and twenty feet high' etc., like the original module text does so often), but I may well take flavour text right from the book at times. When I do this, it will be in a quote box to indicate as such, so you can read it with a bitten lower lip. People talk funny, real funny, I expect at times you will laugh, it's almost Order of the Stick in places, but without meaning to be.

Anyway, so you know - there is some cheese in DraMo, and I do not have time to remove much of it as I will be making game updates at the end of my working day. Not the time for re-writing rubbish plot developments or character motivations.

Don't worry, it's a fun module, and has its dark drama in places, but look out for the cheese! ;D

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Combat and Pace

I request that you sacrifice a small amount of PC autonomy in return for faster gameplay. PbP can go *too* slow if you do not keep a close eye on it. When I ran OMaM, I expected it to take six months to run, and it took closer to two years. With Dark Matter I began to experiment with ways to speed up the game, and made some progress, but that game did not run for long, so DraMo is my next attempt.

We will do some things with combat that speed up the game, and that should not detract from your having fun.

1. Tactical Maps

We will use a tactical map for combats where you are either in a reasonable amount of mortal danger, or where I think you should have the chance to make clever use of space/tactical positioning. For something like a quick skirmish with a couple of dozen undead, I am more likely to assign you four ghouls each and resolve combat quickly in that way. Anything else means we spend two weeks at a time running what should be only mildly challenging, Flash Fun encounters (I hereby trademark the term "Flash Fun").

2. Flash Time

I will often ask you, when a combat starts, to give me two or three rounds worth of player actions. As above, if you are in danger, or if the situation is more complex, we will go one round at a time, but when fighting a foe you have a good chance against, let's see if we can get enough info to push the combat on quicker. More fun, less time.. My reply to such a situation will use your instructions to run three or four rounds at a time, if even so many rounds are needed. Yes, you lose some autonomy, but the game moves faster, and I promise we will go slower if there is any real danger. Your PC is safe, trust me, just steer it, let's not micro-manage. When we move into three rounds at a time game speed, we will say we are in 'Flash Time', because it sounds neat, and we will know what the deal is.

3. I, Automation

In the same vain as 2, I will try to make rolls for your characters regarding other things as I deem suitable. Why wait for you to tell me you want to make a certain NWP check. You can remind me, but if there's no harm or side effect to me automating things for some of you, I will do it. Loosen the grip man, go with the flow.

4. Wait, I need to...

It's fine. Sometimes I'll move you right out of one interesting encounter and into the next with one post. What if you had something you needed to do. No problem, just let me know in your next post, I'll never say you can't do something just because I've moved the game on. Remember, I just want to keep things moving, I'm not trying to catch anybody out.

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Spell Components


Your characters are of a high enough level not to worry about access to material components costing 100gp or less. For components costing more, you must seek them out in advance.

For items of unclear value, PM your DM in good time, do not assume it's worth less than 100gp and does not to be tracked down explicitly.

Lists of agreed values for oddball components will be listed here as needed:

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Ammunition (Arrows, Bolts, etc.)


At 10th level play and above, it's more effort to book-keep normal ammunition than to keep track of it, so we will assume the PCs always have access to normal bolts, arrows, stones, etc.

Characters must keep track of special ammo though, such as +1 arrows, or silver crossbow bolts, and similar.