John Carter is a beta male (and so is ERB)

   When John Carter first meets Dejah Thoris, he is instantly smitten by her, but is unaware of the social customs of Barsoom and acts awkwardly and ends up disappointing her. Actually, she is kind of disgusted by him.  The second time he sees her, she is struck across the face by a Thark, and this causes Carter to leap into a blind rage and beat the offender to death with his bare hands. Note that he hadn't spoken a word to Dejah Thoris before this feat. He gains possession of her, in an arrangement where she is given without a choice, but she still treats him coldly and indifferently. Essentially, he follows her around as a simp trying to win her favor. Through several more feats of heroism and grand displays of chivalry, she eventually breaks down and warms up to him, and then remains madly devoted to him for the rest of their lives.

    These are not the fantasies of an alpha male, who is at ease around women. These are the fantasies of a beta man, chasing the "one true love" of his life, who believes that grand displays of heroism and chivalry are the keys to a woman's heart. Edgar Rice Burroughs, through John Carter's narration, frequently refers to Dejah Thoris's beauty, and nothing else. He places her on a pedestal, groveling at her image.

    Compare this to Robert Howard's Conan, who has his way with women but communicates with them first, and we get an idea of their motivations and character as a person before any relationship forms. There are also more kinds of women in Howard's stories and not all of them exist for Conan's pleasure, they have their own goals and act of their own accord, and most of them are actually out to trick or use him in some way.

    The whole point of the Dejah Thoris character is to be an unobtainable prize for John Carter. Even though she is physically his slave in the early part of the novel, her emotional distance fulfills that criteria. Once the prize is obtained and she falls in love and marries him, her character has nothing left to do, so all she does in the later novels is get captured and wait to be rescued. This conveniently takes her out of the plot and restores her unobtainability, giving Carter back a prize to chase until the end of the book.

    In A Princess of Mars, we are told that Barsoomian women are always armed with at least a dagger, as life in Barsoom is violent and dangerous. We are also told that Dejah Thoris is a princess, leader, and was in command of a scientific expedition. The image of Dejah Thoris is completely at odds with what she actually does in the novel. I don't think she even fights Phaidor, but only manages to survive a catfight.

  John Carter is not a fully formed character - he is a self insert for the audience. Nobody reads the novel for John Carter. Burroughs knew this and that's why the first novel is titled A Princess of Mars. He is the closest to the ideal of a chivalric knight that was contemporary to Burroughs's society - a Confederate Cavalry Officer.

    The audience wants Dejah Thoris to be a kickass warrior woman from a far off planet, but she has no space to be so in the context of the story. This is actually an issue for the later novels. Once John Carter has established himself as the Warlord of Mars and taken Dejah Thoris as his wife, what is left for either of them to do?

   The later novels introduced the adventures of John Carter's children, but none of them are as exciting to read about. They also do not have the colonial fantasy that the original Barsoom trilogy does. This is evidenced by all modern revivals, such as the Marvel Comics run from the 70's or the current Dynamite Comics ones, which return to creating more adventures for John Carter and Dejah Thoris to be in. In Dynamite Comics' case, John Carter is ancilliary to the story. Several of their miniseries have him disappear completely and the focus is placed squarely on the adventures of not-quite-single Dejah Thoris.  Unfortunately, it seems like their writers have no idea what to do with her, either.

   I can suggest two methods of driving interest back into the character. The first, cheap method, is to just do what shonen anime does, and turn Dejah Thoris into a fanservice character that hangs around the main character while he gets into fights and does cool stuff. If you look at the covers to the comics, you'd be forgiven for thinking that this isn't already the case. All the covers are just pinups of Dejah Thoris.

    The second, better method is to give the audience what they want, and revert the emotional dynamic of Carter and Dejah Thoris's relationship to what it was in the beginning of the original novel. Make Dejah Thoris the unobtainable warrior queen that the fans want her to be. As a royal scion of Barsoom, she will always be the thing that Carter could never have, and as an accomplished warrior herself, mere acts of bravado are not enough to impress her.

   Even if the stories take place later in the timeline where the two of them are married, Carter will remain in awe of her, and will constantly be trying to prove himself to her. This will actually return Carter to being relatable to the audience. Nobody relates to the warlord of an entire planet.  It also gives Dejah Thoris the freedom to act in her own stories. As leader and warrior, she can have her own adventures.

To make Barsoom stories interesting again, make Dejah Thoris an alpha female.

I think the fan perception that John Carter is a manly man amongst men, and Dejah Thoris is an empowered woman, is completely false. I wish someone would write that story, though. It sounds kickass.

New classes for BX BECMI

 I like Races-as-Classes but players prefer to play archetypes that they're familiar with, such as the Halfling Thief, and no amount of explanation can satisfy them that such a distinction is unnecessary. AD&D's race and class separation solves that issue, but at the cost of making the races generic and unbalanced. I thought it would be a good experiment to address this problem by merely expanding the race specific classes available to player characters. Here's what I came up with:

Humans

    The four archetypes of Fighter, Magic-User, Cleric and Thief remain unchanged

Elves

 

Elven Ranger

    The elven martial archetype, the ranger gains all the racial bonuses of the elf but cannot cast spells. Advancement is that of Human Magic-User.

Elven Sword-and-Sorcerer

    The standard Basic Elf, he can use both martial weapons and cast spells. Does not have access to every weapon, instead gains "elf weapon proficiency", and cannot wear metal armor when casting spells. Advancement is equivalent to a Fighter/Magic-User, the XP requirements of both classes are added up per level for one elf level.

Elven Druid

    It's a druid

Dwarves

 

Dwarven Shield-Brother

    The standard Basic Dwarf. Abilities and XP advancement is unchanged.

Dwarven Engineer

    Equivalent to a Fighter/Thief, the Dwarven Engineer does not use two-handed weapons and cannot wear metal armor when performing skill based tasks, as it would be too cumbersome and interfere with delicate movements.

Gnome

    Gains all the abilities of the dwarf race as well as the ability to cast spells and use Thief abilities. Cannot wear armor and restricted to the weapon list of the Magic-User class. Equivalent to a Magic-User/Thief

Hobbits

 

Hobbit Burglar

    The standard Basic Hobbit. Abilities and advancement unchanged.

Hobbit Ringbearer

    A hobbit mysteriously in possession of a magical ring. The hobbit is able to cast magical spells as well as gain hobbit racial bonuses. Cannot wear armor or use weapons besides daggers and staves. Equivalent to a Human Magic-User.

Hobbit Fool

    A hobbit with Thief abilities. Cannot use weapons larger than a short sword, or any bows. Equivalent to the Thief.

Hobbit Bard

    A hobbit that can "cast" druidic spells by singing. Cannot use weapons longer than a short sword, or any bows. Equivalent to the Druid.

Random encounters shouldn’t feel random

 They should feel like they’ve been there the whole time.

Final Fantasy like random encounters are annoying and boring, don’t be like Final Fantasy.

Even though you, the GM, have randomly determined an encounter, the result of that encounter is now a permanent fixture in your world. If it was a monster that your PCs have killed, it’s corpse now stays in the location where it fell, and could lead to further complications in your game world.

Don’t make monsters just jump on the players at random intervals, make it seem like the monsters were just on their way and were going to cross that area all along, and the player characters just happened to run into them.

Wilderness encounters should not be like dungeon encounters. When I make wilderness encounters, they are a full dungeon or of a scale such that they cannot be resolved with a single RP instance or combat round. You can call my wilderness encounters “wandering dungeons.” 

If you don’t want to do that, and want little wandering encounters in the wilderness, then make multiple encounters per day. The AD&D DMG has a very tight method of rolling an encounter check multiple times per day, depending on area terrain type and population density. Any other method can be used as well, for example rolling a check, selecting an encounter from a table, and then rolling another die to choose the number of encounters. Space these encounters out during the day or place them apart in distance, and then describe how the players travel into them. Your map does not need to be that precise in scale, as long as you can believably narrate your players traveling from one encounter to another until they make it out of the hex.

Healing

 Potions of healing are properly Potions of Magical Healing.

Natural healing in D&D is accomplished at the rate of 1 HP per day. Binding a wound or setting a broken bone does not have the same effect upon a character as magical healing.

The effect of a potion is identical to a spell of Cure Wounds. Cure Wounds does not cure disease, remove poisons, unclog arteries, or reverse aging. If every spell was free and every priest knew Cure Wounds, that would still not stop death from natural causes. (There are spells to reverse those other debilitating conditions, though).

A wealthy person with high level priest spells on tap could conceivably prolong his life through magical means. This happens today in the real world with people who live on life support. In the real world, some life support procedures are especially painful, and are not guaranteed to work. D&D magic is always reliable and not especially painful, so the real cost of using magic is the Vancian casting system. Magical healing in the D&D world might prolong the life of a character and improve its quality beyond what it was for actual medieval citizenry, but the high cost and low availability is the only reason it’s not available to everyone all the time. Even the highest level Patriarch cannot heal, cure, and reverse the aging of every infirm person in the city.  That service is reserved for the privileged.

interesting chainmail combat rules

When two figures are within melee range (3"), one or several blows will be struck. The order of striking depends upon several factors. The man striking the first blow receives a return blow only if he fails to kill his opponent.
1st Round:
    First blow is struck by —
        a) the attacker, unless
        b) the defender has a weapon which is two classes higher, or
        c) the defender is fighting from above (castle wall, rampart, etc.).
2nd Round and thereafter:
    First blow is struck by —
        a) the side which struck first blow previously, unless
        b) the opponent has a weapon which is two classes lower, or
        c) the opponent is fighting from above.

A man wielding a weapon four classes lower (1 vs. 5, 2 vs. 6, and so on) strikes two blows during every melee round . If a man has a weapon eight classes lower, he will strike three
blows during every melee round.

a. For any weapon 2 or more classes higher than the attacker the ability to parry does not exist.
b. For any weapon 1 class higher to three classes lower than the attacker the defender may parry the blow by subtracting 2 from the attacker's roll, but he has no counter blow.

"Weapon Class", as defined in CHAINMAIL, corresponds to Weapon Speed Factor in AD&D

It's clear from these rules that should a dagger wielder fight a two handed sword, the swordsman will get the first hit but the dagger will be able to strike back multiple times a round. However, two people fighting with daggers would not get multiple attacks per round.  This is probably where the multiple attacks rule from Holmes' Basic came from, but those rules weren't clarified by the explanation from CHAINMAIL.

Heroes (and Anti-heroes) need never check morale, and they add 1 to the die or dice of their unit (or whatever unit they are with)...Heroes (and Anti-heroes) may act independent of their command in order to combat some other fantastic character...When meleed by regular troops, and combat takes place on the non-Fantasy Combat Tables, four simultaneous kills must be scored against Heroes (or Anti-heroes) to eliminate them.

The rules for heroes is interesting. They're a special unit that can be added to an existing rank and file, to give them a bonus die, such as the leader token from Advanced Squad Leader or a hero unit from Warcraft 3 or some MOBA. In mass missile fire, all the other figures in a unit must die before the Hero unit can be killed, but other Fantasy Creatures can attack heroes directly. The Hero's vaunted 4 consecutive hits to be killed protection only applies in standard, mass combat. In a wargame scenario with a large dice pool, scoring 4 hits is not hard, but it does afford the Hero unit plenty of protection, just not as much as you would assume coming from an RPG/D&D perspective.

The Man-to-Man and Fantasy Combat rules of CHAINMAIL are a mess. Every rule has a number of conditions and special cases to bear in mind while playing, and constant cross-referencing and page flipping is required in order to synergize them. As expected of Gygax.

The mass combat rules are actually a simple IGOUGO war game that is easy to remember and play, but has some funny balance issues between units.

Notes on Lareth the Beautiful

 In the original T1 module, Lareth is only presented as a Chaotic Evil Cleric. No justification was given for his appearance in the module, requiring the individual DM to invent one.

In Mentzer’s T1-4 rewrite, Lareth is apparently allied with Lolth, and the players are warned not to brag about his defeat in her presence. Maybe there is more explanation of their relationship further down the module, but I didn’t get to it.

In the ToEE 3e video game, Lareth is a full-blown Drow and Cleric of Lolth. 

My personal setting is monotheistic, and as such Clerics do not function according to “Spheres” and do not have a pantheon to worship. Lareth has an obvious fit into the setting though, as an Anti-Cleric, a man who learned the teachings of the Church but reversed its methods in order to attract the powers of the lower planes. The Anti-Clerics would be cavorting with demons and devils and creating beings of supernatural horror, which to me, is a more sinister character than a worshipper of the queen of spiders. 

Advanced Heroquest prep

 I've decided to try and give Advanced Heroquest a run solo. Since the game is long out of print, I'm doing a DIY job using leftover RPG minis, dungeon tiles, and paper cutouts. I even made custom character sheets. I'm only using the stats from the original 4, but decided to use different portraits for the different miniatures