TEXT: Jeffs Gameblog
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  Why did you become an adventurer? (d30)
  1. Early one morning you saw the sky crack, then break, revealing strange worlds behind the sky.  You haven't
  been able to live an ordinary life ever since.
  2. You came home one day and the sister you buried a year prior was alive and well.  No one else in the family
  remembers her illness or death, yet her tombstone still stands in a nearby graveyard.
  3. You used to work as a computer technician in a futuristic domed city, but woke up one morning the idiot child
  of the village blacksmith.
  4. One day the bucket of the village well brought up blood instead of water.  No one else seemed to mind, but
  you sure as hell did.
  5. After the eclipse everyone else spoke a different language.  You're pretty sure the folks back home thought
  you'd been possessed by a babbling demon.  You've only now just picked up the basics of your new native
  tongue.
  6. Returning from a visit to a distant kinsman, an ancient forest covers the exact spot your village used to
  occupy.  You turned around and the trail you followed was gone.
  7. You were caught up in a war between shadowy angels and titanic metal gods.  At the final battle you took a
  blow to the head.  When you came to you were still on the same charred and bloodstained field, but everyone
  and everything else was gone.  None of the locals remember the war or its combatants, yet you have a dozen
  scars from it.
  8. One night you came home after a long day in the fields.  The womenfolk wailed and the menfolk cowered.
   Your own brother drove you out of the house with a cleaver in one hand and a holy symbol in the other.
   Later you found your own gravestone.  According to it, you've been dead 3 years.
  9. You worked up the nerve to ask the elder of the clan what had happened to the shadows.  Why were they no
  longer a luminous rainbow glow, but instead dark and spooky?  Without answering, he had you driven out of
  the community.
  10. On the day after midsummer everyone you knew started calling you by a different name, as if it had always
  been your own.  They also began blaming you for a wide variety of petty crimes.  Then you realized your face
  had changed as well.  Who are you?
  11. You used to live by the sea until one night a brass galleon with a skeletal crew slid into the harbor.  A skeleton
  prince wearing a flaming crown blew a silent note on a bronze horn.  Everyone in your village marched
  aboard the galleon, as if in a daze.  It sailed away, leaving you alone forever.
  12. In all your dull life you never expected to see an aerial battle right above your village.  Dragons and demons
  and flying ships exchanged strange fires and multi-colored lightning.  One of the dragons fell.  Only then did
  you realize how far up and how huge the combatants were.  The dying dragon crushed everyone and
  everything you ever cared about.
  13. You used to be a dog.  Slightly smarter than most dogs, but just a dog.  Your young owner treated you cruelly.
   Then one day you and your owner swapped bodies for no discernible reason.  The dog ran away--no doubt
  fearing revenge--but you had to run too because you couldn't successfully imitate your former owner.
  14. One day you awoke in a mass grave.  It was only after you climbed out of a pile of rotting corpses that you
  realized you had no idea who you were or how you got there.
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  15. No one else back home can see the hole in the sky or the baleful gaze of the hideous cosmic beast that
  watches us through it.  You couldn't work in the open fields any more, knowing it was always looking over
  your shoulder.  You had to flee.  It still watches.
  16. You used to be the whole universe, one vast ecstatic cosmic consciousness.  But then more and more of your
  all-body became numb and alienated.  Now you're just this tiny lump of ambulatory meat and you don't know
  what  happened or why.
  17. You don't know on what strange battlefield it received its wounds or whether it was a giant or a god or
  something else, but it stumbled into the village green and promptly died.  Everyone else in the village entered
  into some weird frenzy, gleefully tearing the corpse apart and devouring it raw.  As you fled in horror they
  started to change into unhuman things.
  18. Twice a year every year you had taken the old ferry, for as long as you could remember.  This time when you
  reached the far bank of the river it was a totally different place.  You turned around and the ferry was gone.
   So was the river.
  19. You used to be a professional circus freak, the Hideous One-Headed Four-Limbed Abomination.  Then one
  day the sky flashed a weird color and suddenly everyone else was deformed just like you.  The poor bastards
  don't even remember their former three-headed, six-limbed glory.  You're not a freak anymore, but you're out
  of a job and still kinda feel like one.
  20. One day you started growing at a prodigious rate--or perhaps everything else shrunk--until your head cracked
  open the sky.  You grew and grew until you were normal size in a much bigger universe outside your old one.
  21. You were born with a special gift: You can dimly remember your past and future lives, as if your
  consciousness were a tangled thread in the weave of time.  People back home thought you were a witch.
   Maybe they're right, but the whole burning-at-the-stake thing they tried was still super rude.
  22. One day the earth shook and the land shifted.  Your home and all your kin sunk beneath the waves, which
  was surprising seeing as how you lived a hundred leagues from the sea.  You'd have drowned, too, if not for
  that log you clung to.
  23. One day cracks opened in the sky.  You suddenly fell upwards and landed someplace else.
  24. One day you noticed an extra door in your home.  From the darkness beyond a gnarled green hand
  beckoned.  You're still not sure why you followed or who that goblin was.
  25. You used to be an astronaut.  Your single seat orbital spacecraft passed through a strange energy field and
  you lost all contact with mission control.  You splashed down in a world that doesn't seem to be Earth.
  26. The block of ice you were frozen in thawed out.  Apparently your home civilization has been gone for a whole
  ice age.
  27. Back in the day you were a glorious 7-dimensional hyperbeing.  Then the war in heaven came.  An omega
  angel wielding a meson blade sliced off a 3-dimensional appendage, which fell down to ordinary spacetime.
   You may look like an normal person, but you're really a living amputation in a fallen world.
  28. The glowing blue rain turned everyone else in your home village into hideous snake people.  They told you
  they still loved you, even though you're now the local freak.  But you couldn't cope and fled.
  29. You were a footsoldier in the last of the Psychic Wars, but an Oblivion Bomb has scrambled most of your
  memories of the conflict.  Your not even sure how you ended up on this particular planet.
  30. You used to be a god.  Your whole pantheon fought in Ragnarockaggedon, but your side lost.  To escape the
  Cosmic Regulators and the inevitable trial for Crimes against Divinity, you dispersed your god-power and
  implanted your essence into a mortal body.
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  The Dungeoneer #19/Judges Guild Journal #22 is an odd duck of a magazine.  The Journal was the flagship
  periodical of the Guild, while the Dungeoneer began life as one of the early D&D fanzines, this one launched by the
  great Jennell Jaquays and friends.  Jaquays et al. produced six issues before they sold to Bob Bledsaw.  (JG also
  reprinted the first 6 issues as a single book usually called Dungeoneer Compendium, though the cover says its The
  Dungeoneer: The Adventuresome Compendium of Issues 1-6.  Whatever you call it, I rank it right up their with the
  first 3 Arduin Grimoires as one of the best supplements from the good ol' days.)
  The Guild decided to merge the two publications and this is the first issue of the merger, hence the two half-covers.
   Take a moment to enjoy the cover art.  I don't know which I like better, the spell lady magic missle-ing the hand that
  created her, or the party looking up into the hole in the ceiling, not knowing some red gobliny dudes are waiting up
  there for them.  (Extra nerdy note:  The character sheet in the top illo is clearly from an OD&D game that used
  Supplement I: Greyhawk.  Score an extra nerd point in the comments by explaining how I know that.)
  After this weird hybrid, the next three magazines put out by Judges Guild would be issues 23 through 25 of The
  Dungeoneer Journal, followed by issue one of Pegasus.  The latter magazine ran 12 issues.  An issue #14 came out
  in 1999 and #15 was, I believe, a PDF only from around 2004.  Did Pegasus #13 ever get published?  I honestly
  don't know.  What I do know is that while I've never been a collector of Judges Guild campaign installments or
  Journals, I've never been disappointed with issues of Dungeoneer, Dungeoneer Journal, or Pegasus.  As a whole, I
  give these periodicals two hearty thumbs up.
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  I'm not going to run through everything in this issue, because I intend to focus on one article.  But here are some of
  the other cool things inside.
  "Critical Hits and Funbles on Non-Humans" by Glenn Goddard.  Two functional looking percentage charts,
  similar in many ways to Dave Hargrave's charts.  My fave result for sheer gruesomeness is probably "spine
  ruined."
  "Dungeons Diseases" by the great Lewis Pulsipher.  I'll admit this one disappointed me intially.  I was hoping
  for disgusting fungal infections, orc rot, rectal bees, etc.  Instead it's a comedy piece commenting on certain
  kinds of players.  Example: Mapitis in which the "victim becomes more interested in maps than monsters.  He
  incessantly asks questions about angles and distances."
  "Jewelry" by the also great Steve Marsh.  One page of charts of various things that can be jeweled.
  The regular Monster Matrix column includes a nifty critter called the Balloon Beast by Gregg and John
  Pittenger.  It's a shame that this monster has not been folded into the umpteen varieties of beholder variants.
   The Waldweibchen by Kurt Smeby is a great example of the kind of grumpy and mercurial fairy that D&D
  needs more of.
  "Mac's Packs" by Thomas A. McCloud is another example of the "fast pack" concept.  4 pre-packaged sets of
  adventurers gear in a container (backpack or sack) sold at a discount.  Personally, I lean towards charging
  more than regular because of the premium on convenience.  Still, neat stuff.
  "Adapting the Book of Demons" also by Lew Pulsipher.  I can't leave something with the words "Book of
  Demons" off this list, but it's about making a demonology game product work better with bog standard D&D
  assumptions.  I'm not certain, but I suspect the work in question is the same Book of Demons that ended up
  bundled into Gamescience's The Fantasy Gamer's Compendium.  At the moment I can't locate my copy of the
  latter to confirm, but, as I recall, one of the reasons I've never made much use of this Compendium is that all
  of its components seem written for a fairly idiosyncratic campaign.  Pulsipher seems to be dealing with that
  exact issue in his article.
  "Metallurgy and FRP," also by Steve Marsh, is a one column piece on considering how the rise and fall of
  demand brought on by new technologies can impact the relative value of metals in your campaign.
  "Dungeon Generator" by Charles L. Evans is exactly what it says on the tin.  It resembles the one in the
  Gamescience product The Book of Tables, but I can't confirm if they are the same just now.  My guess is that
  both Gamescience products are sitting next to each other on some bookshelf or another.
  "Traveller Rumors" by Bill Paley is one page with 13 adventure seeds for any campaign.  I'm pretty sure that
  the planets mentioned in the text (Pickering, Salivarius II, Credosh III, Bendex III, Krestmast, Samelos XII) do
  not appear in any known canonical sector.
  "The Old Hill" is an adventure by Steve Marsh written for Chivalry & Sorcery. It is set in a pocket universe
  called a Garden World, one of "a series of interlocking planes of existence... They were the lesser hearths of
  each of the Vali or Star Powers summoned by the Norns when they wove the world... Then came the blight of
  Upharsin and many things changed."  This isn't the first time I've really grooved on Marsh's sense of cosmic
  history.  In the adventure itself PCs can be struck by the literal Wrath of God as well as fight an angel, a
  daughter of Lilith, and a really grumpy tree.  I also live this bit from the introduction: "Some of the inspiration
  for this came from Ed Simbalist and from William Glenn Seligman.  An Erol Flynn movie ran as background
  for the typing and mapping.  I especially want to thank Lee Gold for her helpful comments."  Lee Gold is the
  matriarch of Alarums & Excursions, the long-running D&D apa-zine.  Ed Simbalist is one half of the team that
  created Chivalry & Sorcery.  And Bill Seligman is the author of one of the best Dragon articles ever written,
  "Gandalf was Only a Fifth Level Magic-User."
  None of those articles or the ones I haven't mentioned are why I started this piece.  Instead I want to talk about
  Kevin Fortune's "Using Klutz Factors."  This is a short piece in the long tradition of making magic-users roll dice to
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  cast spells.  I've tackled this sort of thing before myself, as have many others.  What I want to give to you today is
  NOT a simple transcription of Fortune's system, but a slightly spruced-up version.  My two main objects with the
  system as presented are 1) too many percentile rolls and 2) some multiplication of percentages.  By switching to
  mostly d20-based rolls and adding an extra chart to remove the math, I feel like the result preserves the spirit of
  Fortune's system while trimming the fat considerably.  I've also limited myself to the first 14 levels of experience and
  6 levels of spells.  Gandalf may have been higher than 5th level but I don't care much about anything higher than
  Expert level anymore.
  Revised Klutz Factors
  after Kevin Fortune, Dungeoneer #18/Judges Guild Journal #22 pages 7-9 (Aug/Sep 1980)
  I. What You Gain
  No magic-user likes limitations on their power and this system, which requires a casting roll for every spell, is pretty
  limiting compared to a lot of versions of D&D.  However, it comes with one big advantage for MU's: you may keep
  casting the same spell but the Klutz Factor doubles each time, until a Klutz effect (a fumble) prevents you from
  casting again.  This system actually sounds like it would work well for those BX referees who stick to the hard
  version of the spellbook rules, which say that if your MU can cast 2 first level spells a day and 1 second level that is
  the maximum number of spells allowed in your book (see page B16).  Some DMs might even want to forbid players
  from doubling up on spell memorization under this scheme (e.g. no 2nd level MUs memorizing 2 sleep spells).
  II. What You Need to Track
  Each MU has a Klutz Factor for each level of spell they can cast.  This is a three variable factor, so in a 2-d
  presentation like this screen, it'll take two charts to get to.  Every time your MU changes INT or their level, you'll
  need to look this back up.  Use Tables 1 and 2 to find your character's Klutz Factor.
  Table 1: MU Level versus Spell Level
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  The A's in parentheses are spells someone of that level shouldn't be able to cast.  They don't figure into Fortune's
  original tables, but I added them in case you wanted someone to fumble a high level scroll under this system or
  something like that.
  Once you have the letter code for each spell level you can cast, cross index the result on Table 2 to find the Klutz
  factor for each level of spell your MU can cast.  You should probably record this number adjacent to the spells/per
  day indicator on your character sheet.
  Table 2: Intelligence to Klutz Factor
  This Klutz Factor is a d20 thing.  When an MU fails to cast a spell you've got to roll over this number to avoid a spell
  fumble.  Every subsequent time you cast the same spell in a day, this number doubles.  That looks absolutely
  disastrous for low-INT magic-users, but you need to blow the casting roll to even reach this point in the process.
  One of the downsides of this system, probably the one that trips me up the most, is that you need to look this stuff up
  for NPC magic-users.  Since I'm super lazy about such things, here are all the Klutz Factors for an MU of 11
  Intelligence.
  Table 3: Typical MU Klutz Factors
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  Example: Andrigal of the Weeping Beard, a 3rd level MU, attempts his second web of the day.  His normal Klutz
  Factor, as a default Int 11 NPC, is 6 for second level spells.  Since he has attempted web once today, his Klutz
  Factor is doubled to 12.  His chances to cast are the same as always (see below), but if he fails the casting roll then
  he will fumble the spell on a second d20 roll of 1-12.  Note that his 3rd and subsequent web spells of the day are all
  going to be fumbles IF he blows the spellcasting roll, but he can risk it as many times as his shriveled heart desires.
  III. The Casting Roll
  Before the Klutz Factor comes into play, Fortune's system calls for a casting roll similar to that employed in
  Chainmail, but d20 based and expanded to cover a wider range of levels.  On the chart below an I indicates
  Instantaneous success (the spell goes off), a D indicates a Delay, the MU must keep chanting and gesticulating for
  d3 rounds before the spell goes off (d3 turns for non-combat spells), and an N indicates No Effect.  According to
  Fortune's system only when a No Effect occurs is the Klutz Factor check made.  Though I'd also consider using
  Klutz Factor rolls for when someone took damage while working through a Delay effect.
  Table 4: Spellcasting Chart
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  For many campaigns, it would make sense to allow the players to record these numbers for their character.  But
  when I've tried a similar system before I kept this sort of info behind the screen because I like to keep some of the
  workings of magic a mystery to the players.  Note that a system like allows for a campaign where high level casters
  don't necessarily reshape the world in their image.  Wizards know that high level spells are unpredictable enough
  they should only be used in emergencies.
  I've added the numbers that are highlighted/in parentheses for situations like a low level MU casting a spell directly
  out of some higher level character's spell book.
  IV. The Klutz Effects
  Okay, so your favorite pet magic-user has rolled an N effect
  on their casting roll and then rolled high enough on the
  follow-up d20 that a fumble has occurred.  Throw a d10 and
  consult the chart below to see what actually happens.
  Table V: Klutz Result Chart
  1. Spell has normal effect, but on the wrong side of the
  conflict.
  2. Spell has reverse effect on target.
  3. Spell has normal effect, but only on Magic-User who cast
  it.
  4. Spell has no effect and caster Mind Blanked, unable to cast for rest of day.
  5. Spell has normal effect but Magic-User drained 1-4 points of Intelligence for rest of day.
  6. Spell has no effect and Magic-User drained 1-4 points of Intelligence for rest of day.
  7. Spell has reverse intended effect on wrong side of conflict.
  8. Spell has reverse effect, but only on Magic-User who cast it.
  9. Spell negated and Magic-User loses ability to cast a random spell for 1-4 days.
  10. Spell klutzed so badly that Magic-User is scared to use it again.
  Obviously once you have the whole system in place this last chart is the sort of thing that can be added to and/or
  modified to suit the spirit of the campaign.  Also, Fortune includes a few lines about overcome the fear effect of
  number 10, but it references the mechanics "Bravery," "character roll," and "Conversion Chart" without explaining
  what those things actually are.
  So there you have it.  Another system for making MUs more complicated and a bigger pain in the ass to play.  I'm
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  normally pro-MU and anti-complication, but I'm also pro-rolling more dice and anti-magic is as reproducible as a
  grade school science demonstration.
  Hey, remember me?  The semester is over and I have half a minute before my summer class begins, so I decided to
  write about a little something.  This is an idea that’s been brewing since January when that venerable institution the
  Guardian ran a story titled “Fairytales much older than previously thought, say researchers.” Yeah, I read the
  Guardian sometimes.  I usually treat inflamations of my chronic anglophilia with a bottle of Newcastle and old Doctor
  Who reruns, but sometimes I need stronger medication.
  Any, these researchers da Silva and Tehrani did some big data type analysis to a corpus of international fairytales
  and basically built a family tree.  Here’s the key chart from their paper:
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  The three columns at the bottom look like they’d make pretty sweet band names.
  What you’re looking at is a family tree of fairy tales grouped by language family.  The thing that blew me away about
  this chart is the small box at the top, which suggests that humans have been telling and retelling the same four
  stories since French and German and English and Spanish and Slavic and a whole bunch of other tongues were all
  the same language.  That puts the origin of these fairy tales around 2500 to 4500 BC.  Some folks identify the
  original speakers of this Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language as the kurgan (barrow)-builders living in the region
  between the Black Sea and the Baltic.   You know, like the villain from the one and only Highlander movie.
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  “I have something to say: It’s better to burn out than fade away!”
  The kurgan fairy tales then spread with the Proto-Indo-European language as
  it migrated and diverged into the dazzling array of linguistic variety we see
  today.  Here’s a map of the initial movement from the center:
  Back in 2010 (when this blog was still a daily thing) I wrote a five part series on D&D set in this long lost era called
  Imperishable Fame.  Today I want to talk about incorporating the four Proto-Indo-European fairy tales into a typical
  faux European vanilla fantasy setting.
  First, let’s talk about the tales themselves.  They’re identified in da Silva and Tehrani’s research paper like so:
  328 - The Boy Steal’s Ogre’s Treasure
  330 - The Smith and the Devil
  402 - The Animal Bride
  554 - The Grateful Animals
  The Smith and the Devil is bolded because the researchers are flagging it as an even more likely component of the
  PIE corpus than the others.  My basic idea here is that we should be mining these tales for plot elements to our
  games.  After all, they represent our joint heritage in the exact sort of mytho-poetic imaginative nonsense we engage
  with in D&D every day.  I’ll get to some ideas of how to do that at the end of the post.  For now, I want to give some
  details on these four tales.
  The numbers for each of the fairy tales on da Silva and Tehrani’s are what is called their ATU number.  That stands
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  for Aarne-Thompson-Uther. Folklorists  Aarne and Thompson put together a huge ass taxonomy of hundreds of
  structurally similar stories and a cat named Hans-Jörg Uther later revised it into a four-volume work called The
  Types of International Folktales: A Classification and Bibliography.  For a similar work on a smaller scale, see S.
  John Ross’s The Big List of RPG Plots.
  I spent the better part of this semester getting my hands on Uther’s book, so I could get the details on these tales
  beyond their names.  About the only library in Illinois that has a copy is at the University of Chicago, and they are not
  very good sharers.  My school is part of a consortium of 84 schools and academic libraries in Illinois that allow for
  easy inter-library lending.  I get books shipped in from all over the state quite regularly.  UC’s library is conspicuously
  not a member.  I finally ended up having to get Iowa State University’s copy shipped to me, which is slightly
  embarrassing.  As a native inhabitant of Illinois, I have been inculcated from birth to look down with disdain on
  neighboring midwest states that lack a Chicago.
  Anyway, let’s look at these tales.  Or rather, you might call them meta-tales.  They’re the raw plot elements out of
  which fairy tales are built.
  328 - “The Boy Steals the Ogre’s Treasure”
  In this ancient tale a group of brothers (numbers vary) arrive at the house of an ogre, or possibly the devil.  For some
  reason they stay the night.  The ogre/devil decides to murder them in their sleep, but the youngest brother
  (occasionally the kid sister of the brothers) somehow foils the plan by swapping caps with the daughters of the
  monster.
  Later the brothers take service in the king’s court.  The brothers, jealous of the young hero, claim to the king that the
  youngest sibling can steal the ogre’s/devil’s treasure.  (Some versions dispense with this intro and instead start out
  with the youngest sibling seeking out the ogre for revenge of past mistreatment or to help a friendly king.)  Possible
  treasures include a magic horse, bedspread, carpet, parrot, lamp, sword, musical instrument, or some sort of
  poultry.  The magic treasure may be made of gold and/or silver.  The youngest sibling acquires the treasure by
  cunning and guile.
  Later the brothers, now presumably more jealous than ever, claim that the youngest sibling can kidnap the ogre or
  devil.  The hero puts on some sort of disguise and somehow persuades the monster to lie down in a coffin to
  measure it.  The youth nails the coffin shut, trapping the monster.  The youth is given a princess for a wife.
  As you can see, there is a lot of room for variation here as these tales mutate over time to better fit local needs.  For
  instance the classic English tale of Jack and the Beanstalk is considered a major variant of ATU 328.  Incidentally,
  Jack and the Beanstalk is one of the key inspirations (along with its RPG successors, the Against the Giants series
  and the more obscure Judges Guild module Under the Storm Giant’s Castle) for my adventure Broodmother
  Skyfortress.  Last I heard that project is finally going to  be printed just in time to not make it out for GenCon.
  330 - The Smith and the Devil
  In this tale a smith sells his soul, sometimes because he is impoverished.  The buyer of the soul is typically the devil,
  but it could also be death itself.  Later this smith gives shelter to Christ and St. Peter as they travel the earth in
  disguise.  [Obviously these characters would be different in a pre-Christian telling.]  As a reward for his kindness, his
  divine guests grant the smith three wishes.  St. Peter warns that the smith should use one wish to get his soul out of
  the devil’s clutches and into heaven instead, but the smith ignores him.  Instead, the smith wishes up three magic
  items.  The first two are a tree and a bench/chair to which people stick like glue at his command.  The third item is
  usually a knapsack that can draw people into but sometimes it is a pack of cards with which the owner always wins
  and occasionally it is something else entirely.
  When the devil or death shows up to carry the smith off to his eternal doom, the smith tricks him into sticking to the
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  bench/chair and the tree.  In order to be released from this trap, the devil/death agrees to terminate the contract for
  the smith’s soul.  In some versions trapping the devil/death like this results in a period where no one can die.  After
  freeing the smith’s soul, the devil/death winds up inside the knapsack, which is placed on the smith’s anvil.  The
  devil/death is pummeled with the smith’s hammer.  Later, the smith discovers that he cannot die.  Neither heaven nor
  hell will admit him.  He grows tired of life and eventually tricks his way into heaven using the knapsack or cards.
  In some versions of this tale the hero isn’t a smith, but an allegorical figure such as Misery, Envy, or Poverty.  These
  versions focus on the intentional gaining of immortality by tricking the devil into trapping himself inside a tree.
  402 - “The Animal Bride”
  A father, possibly a king, cannot choose among his sons (usually three of them) to inherit his property/kingdom.  He
  sends all of them on a year-long quest.  In some cases the quest is to learn a profession.  In others it is to bring back
  a special object, such as textiles (yarn, linen), fine chain, a ring, a horse, or the smallest dog they can find.  At the
  end of the year, the father will name as his heir whoever best succeeds at the task.
  The youngest son, who is sometimes explicitly a fool, goes into the forest and enters into the service of some sort of
  animal.  Cat, rat, frog, and mouse are the common options.  As payment for his service he is given the most beautiful
  example of the object that the father requires.  Owing to the jealousy of the older brothers, two further tasks are set.
   The final task is to bring home the most beautiful woman or to bring home the most beautiful bride.
  For each subsequent task the young fool returns to the animal, who promises to help.  Some event disenchants the
  animal (burning, mutilation, decapitation, or simply crossing a river) and the animal resumes its original form of a
  beautiful princess.  In most versions the young fool and beautiful princess return to the father to win the final task.  In
  some variants they first trick the parents, either the son returns in rags and is ridiculed or he returns dressed as a
  prince and is not recognized until a mole identifies him.  Or else the trick is that the princess arrives in animal form
  and yet wins the tasks assigned to the brides to determine which is best.  The last (third) bride task is to attend a
  feast, where the animal turns back into her human form.
  In some versions the son renounces the inheritance and goes with his bride back to her realm.  In some others the
  young fool burns the animal skin in hopes of preventing his bride from resuming animal form.  She is offended and
  abandons him.  He must go out on a final quest to win her back.
  554- The Grateful Animals
  This tale appears to have atrophied over the millennia and now tends to appear in the record as part of another story.
   
  In it a traveller meets three animals.  One is avian, one aquatic, and one terrestrial.  Each of them is in trouble and
  the traveller aids them.  In some versions it is the traveller’s brothers, who accompany him on his journey, that are
  the source of the distress.  The traveller either prevents woe of some sort befalling the animal or compensates for
  the misdeeds/carelessness of his brothers.  Each animal promises to help the traveller later.  
  The traveller falls in love with a princess.  Her father sets three impossible tasks that must be accomplished before
  he will permit their marriage.  The traveller calls upon the aid of his animal friends, who help him complete his task.
  So here we have these four echoing voices from the linguistic dawn of Western civilization.  What can we as DMs do
  with them?  As much as I am onboard for the “here’s a dungeon, stop asking stupid questions” mode of D&D, a little
  bit of backstory to hang a campaign on can be really helpful.
  13/26
  
  Oops!  There goes my anglophilia flaring up again.
  If you need a little raw material for your campaign, why not start with the oldest stories we have handy and build
  from there?  These stories possess that oddly familiar strangeness that undergirds many fairy tales, that sense of
  the uncanny that Freud discusses in his essay Das Unheimliche.  Below are six thoughts per story, thumbnail
  sketches of what they can do in your campaign.
  The Boy Steal’s Ogre’s Treasure
  1. If nothing else, you can introduce one or more treasures into your campaign, magic items in the form of a
  golden/silver horse, bedspread or carpet, parrot or poultry, lamp, sword, or musical instrument.  With the
  exception of the sword, those are some pretty out of the ordinary magical treasures.  On top of that, you know
  at least two previous owners, an adventurer who married into royalty and possibly the devil himself.  Sure the
  Golden Chicken of King Koraz is the best magic item in the campaign world, but it’s annoying as heck all the
  people who want it back.
  2. The devil apparently has several daughters.  What is their deal, anyway?  Do they want dad’s magical silver
  lamp back?  Did one or more of the brothers sleep with one or more of them, leading to a race of half-devils?
  3. The brothers may have made off with the caps belonging to the devil’s daughters.  What strange properties
  are possessed by diabolic sleepytime headgear?
  4. Somewhere out there is a coffin that has been nailed shut.  Inside sleeps the devil himself, or some campaign
  equivalent thereof.
  5. If the devil has daughters, who is their mother?
  6. Are the brothers still in the service of the king?  Are they even more annoyed now that their kid brother (or
  sister) has married into the royal family?
  The Smith and the Devil
  1. Like the previous story, having the devil stuck somewhere seems like a fun opportunity.  Can he trick the PCs
  into chopping the tree down with a magic axe or maybe a herring?
  2. Who is this smith?  What has he made?  Perhaps he is one of the great artifact-crafters of your campaign
  world.  He traded his soul for magic smithing powers.  Maybe he made the magic item(s) in the previous
  story.
  14/26
  
  3. If the story is over, what happened to the smith’s magic items?  Maybe his knapsack or pack of cards made it
  back to earth.
  4. What kindly divinities go about your campaign world giving out wishes in exchange for a little hospitality?
  5. What other strange events might have been triggered by the day/month/year when nobody died?
  6. The PCs need some critical magic item made or repaired and only the legendary Wandering Smith, unable to
  die and unwilling to live, can do the job.  Can they find him and convince him to assist them?
  The Animal Bride
  1. Hey, man.  Have you heard?  The new king’s wife is a lycanthrope!
  2. If everyone thinks something like the One Ring or the Ring of Gaxx is in your dungeon, then all the brothers
  might be leading or sponsoring NPCs parties to get it.
  3. On the other hand, a bunch of pain-in-the-asses princes scouring the campaign world for the smallest dog
  they can find is a really funny concept.  Maybe one of them wants to hires the PCs for an expedition to the
  fabled Isle of Minimals?
  4. I’m fond of the ending where the hero tells dear ol’ dad where he can stick his stupid contest and goes to live
  happily ever after in his wife’s magic animal person kingdom.  Maybe the old man wants the PCs to track
  junior down to deliver a royal apology?
  5. Then there’s the endings where the hero pisses off his new bride and she leaves him.  Could the PCs help
  locate the Hidden Queendom of the Swanmays?
  6. How is this band of brothers related to the ones that visited the ogre?  Is the king here the hero of that tale
  grown old and somewhat silly?
  The Grateful Animals
  1. Even if he possesses no other powers, surely there’s some hash to be made of an NPC who is friends with a
  bear, an eagle, and a shark.
  2. Ordinary animals talking may be a step too far for some groups.  It might held to make the three animals into
  magical semi-divine rulers, like the King of Snakes, Duchess of Eagles, and Mayor of Fiddler Crabs.
  3. The three animals of three types theme lines up a bit with the shapeshift powers of some versions of the
  druid.  Perhaps the animals taught shapeshifting to the hero, who is now the Druid King.
  4. If we’re in shapeshifting animal territory anyway, we might as well posit the animal bride of the previous story
  as one of the animals.  Does she whisk off to aid her totally platonic adventuring buddy at the drop of a hat?
   And how do their spouses feel about that?
  5. Seriously, what is up with all these douchebag older brothers?  Is it a natural consequence of the fact that it’s
  the runt of the litter that must rely on social skills like storytelling to survive, thus all older brothers are
  memorialized as envious bullies?  Maybe every bard in your campaign needs a couple of mean older bros.
  6. We’ve got three stories with three beautiful princesses.  Are they sisters?  Are they the same princess?  What
  are they up to while all this crazy stuff happens around them?
  So, off the top of my head, those are the ideas I can squeeze out of the fragments of these old, old stories.
  Fairy tales may come and go, but Clancy Brown is forever.
  15/26
  
  Idea #1 - XP for rescue and assistance
  Maybe rescuing someone from the clutches of the bad guys ought to be worth some XP.  100xp per level of the
  person rescue might be a good starting benchmark.  Count low level but important people as higher level for
  purposes of this calculation.  (E.g. the richest merchant in the land might be a 1,000 point rescue, even though he's
  a 3 level chump.)  Whether this XP is in addition to or in lieu of XP for reward money is up to the stinginess of the
  DM.  If the PCs mistreat or further endanger the poor wretches, XP ought to be reduced.
  "Assistance" is worth half as much as rescue, and could be interpreted broadly.  Help a treant find the missing piece
  to the 5,000 piece puzzle he's spent 150 years trying to complete would be worth treant HD x50.
  Idea #2 - XP multipliers by Alignment
  Lawfuls - Double XP for rescue and assistance, double XP for chaotics defeated (suddenly, a reason to be lawful!),
  half XP for lawfuls defeated
  Neutrals - Double XP for treasure, double XP for any monster defeated by non-combat means
  Chaotics - Double XP for Lawfuls defeated, double XP for any treasure not split with other party members
  Obviously all this doubling is going to speed up advancement.  More importantly, by giving characters different goals
  it forces the party to negotiate over why the heck they are even in the dungeon.
  This is one of those ideas so simple, I'm certain someone else came up with it.  Maybe I read it and forgot about it.
  So in many D&D versions, both official and house-ruled, there's this weird thing when you roll one number to see if
  you hit the orc and another to see if you chop its fool head off.  This means you can end up with a range like this:
  1 ... Miss! (maybe it's a fumble if the DM is cruel)
  2-11 ... Miss!
  12-17... I hit!  Alright!
  18-19 ... Argh!  So close to a critical!
  20 ... Yeah, baby!  This orc is toast!
  That 18-19 range is my concern today, or really any number that's less than a critical but well in excess of the
  minimum needed to hit.  Tom Moldvay tried to smooth out the transition from normal hit to uber crit by adding in a
  chart of extra effects.  What I'm about to propose here gets you an extra effect for a better hit while dispensing with
  the rigamarole of tracking who is carrying what penalties to their actions.
  In BX all standard weapons do d4, d6, d8 or d10.  That's a 2 point jump in max damage for every die size increase.
   So here's my basic idea: for every 2 points you exceed to to-hit target, bump your die up one size.  If applied
  to the monsters as well that's going to make it easier for high hit die monsters to mangle the PCs.
  16/26
  
  Before trying this one would need to set the maximum die size.  You could cap it at the largest die actually in use for
  weaponry, the d10.  That means under the right circumstances a dagger is as lethal as a polearm, but nothing is
  actually more deadly than the normal standards of BX play.  Alternatively, you could use this rule as a low-
  complexity, high-damage alternative to crit rolls by allowing the max die size to get ridiculous.  There are many more
  possibilities once you decide you're not bound by the notions of propriety held by mere mortals:
  d10 becomes d12 becomes d20
  d10 becomes d12 becomes d20 becomes d30
  d10 becomes d12 becomes d20 becomes d30 becomes d100
  Or use some funky dice like the DCC rpg folks. The sequence d10 -> d12 -> d14 -> d16 follows the +2 max damage
  progression, but you could always tack on -> d20 -> d24 -> d30 -> d100 for extra insanity.
  Easy to implement (if you can subtract the actual roll from the target roll) and your players will love it (until it kills
  them).
  (I will readily admit to not actually knowing the technical definition of the term
  "overclock.")
  Over on the Google Plus fellow traveller Paul Schaefer asked me an interesting question and with his permission I'm
  going to answer it here rather than in a private discussion:
  As a Basic D&D DM, since it has race as class, what do you do if a player wants to play a race but
  also wants to use a weird class from another source such as Arduin, Field Guide, Arcanum, or what
  have you?
  17/26
  
  Do you just sort of eyeball it, try to balance the race and class abilities?
  There are several strategies a BX Dungeon Master can employ when a player makes this sort of request.  Which
  one you use depends largely on your comfort level and your vision for the campaign.
  Option 1: Just Say No
  As I was just discussing with Jeffro Johnson, there's nothing wrong with insisting that this is a game with a specific
  ruleset and all dwarves, elves, and halflings follow the same simple rules. You've got to run the darn thing, so you're
  responsible for deciding when the rules as written will bend. Rather than go the typical route of class/race editions,
  where you hang your hat on being a Halfling Sewer Assassin or Dwarf Poisonmage or Elf Tree Idiot, the way one
  distinguishes oneself in such a game is to play the Best Damn Halfing Ever, The Most Memorable Dwarf We Ever
  Encountered, That One Elf Who Didn't Suck, etc.
  Option 2: Add Race to the Class
  Under this scheme the class is the basis for the rules pertaining to the character.  Adding the race selection only
  grants the character two things, 1) the items listed under the relevant SPECIAL ABILITIES on pages B9 and B10
  and 2) the race-based saving throws.
  Modify they experience needed for second level for the class using the chart below, then recalculate the rest of the
  chart.
  Demi-Human Costs for Weirdo Classes
  Halfling ... +150xp
  Dwarf ... +250xp
  Elf ... +250xp
  Elf would be little higher than dwarf, but I'm assuming the level racial caps (H9, E10, D12) are in play.
  You can use this for the standard classes as well, if you need something like a Dwarf Cleric or Halfling Thief.  In fact,
  since it's so popular an option, here's my proposed chart for the latter combo.
  Halfling Thief XP chart
  1st level ... 0xp
  2nd level ... 1,350xp
  3rd level ... 2,700xp
  4th level ... 5,400xp
  5th level ... 10,800xp
  6th level ... 21,600xp
  7th level ... 43,200xp
  8th level ... 80,000xp
  Note that I rounded the XP amount for 8th level down slightly, as in the original chart.
  This option ought to work well if you've got a clear understanding of the new class and how it will impact your game.
  Option 3: Add Class to the Race
  So you've decided you're going to allow a Halfling Techno or a Dwarf Alchemist or Elf Bounty Hunter.  In this option,
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  you start with the Race-As-Class as your basis and layer on freakish class abilities. Keep the hitdice, saves, special
  abilities, and attack progression of the default race.  Look at whatever the weird class needs to get to level two. 
  Subtract 1,200 from that amount.  Why 1,200?  That's what thieves need for second level, the canonical BX class
  with the fastest progression.  (Because they suck.)
  Add this amount to the figure for the dwarf, elf, or halfling in question and recalculate.  For example, say you got a
  player who wants to be a Halfling who is also an Arduin-style Merchant.  According to the original Grimoire, a
  Merchant needs 2,250 XP for second level, or 1,050 XP over the thief horizon.  The XP chart for a Halfling Merchant
  would look like this:
  Halfling Merchant XP Chart
  1st level ... 0xp
  2nd level ... 3,050xp
  3rd level ... 6,100xp
  4th level ... 12,200xp
  5th level ... 24,400xp
  6th level ... 48,800xp
  7th level ... 97,600xp
  8th level ... 200,000xp
  The result is a character that follows all the Halfling rules and gets all the special abilities of a Merchant.  Note I used
  a little judicious rounding for 8th level, just like the normal halfling chart on page X6.  Only I rounded up because I'm
  a jerk.
  You may also want to drop some features of the base to bring down the XP totals a bit.  I'm thinking particularly of
  curtailing the ability to wear heavy armor (halflings in plate mail have always irked me anyone), the wide weapons
  choices, and possibly elvish spellcasting.  Do the math for second level as above, then modify according to this
  handy-dandy chart I just made up:
  Discounts for Surrendered Abilities
  No Plate ... -50
  No Plate or Chain ... -100
  No Armor ... -200
  Restricted Weapons ... -75
  No Spells (elves only) ... -1,000
  By "limited weapons" I mean something comparable to the cleric's lame selection.  If it's more like a magic-user's
  lame selection, double the discount.  Note that those numbers may seem small, but they will really add up as the XP
  needed doubles from level to level.
  This option will probably end up costing the PC more in terms of XP needed for progression.  But if its a weird class
  and you aren't sure how its going to interact with the BX demihuman rules then it may be a good thing to put the
  brakes on a little bit.
  Option 4: Build it From Scratch
  19/26
  
  Paul Montgomery Crabaugh's article "Customized Class: How to Put Together One-of-
  a-Kind Characters" from Dragon #109 (pages 8, 10-13*) is my go-to source for puttering
  with BX classes.  In recent years at least two people have put work into improving
  Crabaugh's method.  One is my buddy Nick on his blog Of Dice and Djinn.  He's also
  built a crapton of cool classes using his system.  Perdustin over at Thoul's Paradise has
  also written at least four articles tackling the subject.  Both those blogs have great titles,
  by the way.  (True fact: I almost called this blog "The Half-Orc's Lair," quoting from
  Uncle Gary for the tagline "Half-Orcs are boors.  They are rude, crude, crass, and
  generally obnoxious." (DMG 16)  But then I realized that would only encourage me to
  act like a jerkbutt on the internet.  So I put my real name at the top instead.)
  Option 5: Go Find Your Class
  This option eschews fiddling with XP and instead turns the whole problem into a quest.  "You want to be a dwarf
  alchemist?  Fine.  You start out as a regular, well-adjusted dwarf.  Now find an alchemist who will take you on as an
  apprentice."  This option works really great if you're playing in a big sandbox.  Just pick a few places where the PC
  might be able to get the training they want, then sprinkle the map with a few more places that have leads for the PC.
   Then once they find an alchemist (or whatever) willing to take them on, the PC has to finish another adventure to
  Prove They Are Worthy.
  At that point, award the PC with the abilities of a first level whatever-it-is.  Then every time they gain a new level in
  their regular gig they also have to complete a side quest assigned to them by Master Yoda to also level up in the new
  class.
  Option 6: Ignore the Problem
  Not a terrible option for games with a good PC body count.  An elf with berserker abilities/berserker with elf abilities
  isn't that much harder to murder at 1st level than an elf or a berserker.  At least if you try hard enough.
  *Page 9 of Dragon #109 is a full page ad for the global throwdown simulator Supremacy.  Never played it, but I
  always loved the fact that it came with tiny plastic mushroom clouds.
  One of the things I’ve always found interesting about the BX/AD&D1 split is that the monsters aren’t quite the same.
   A few iconic D&D monsters don’t appear in BX, such as the beholder, while the BX lineage has a few weirdoes of its
  own, such as the thoul.  Then there are the cases where the monster looks the same, but there are striking
  20/26
  
  differences if you look closely.  One example of this case is the shadow.  In AD&D a shadow is an undead.  In BX it is
  not.  With its ghostly creepiness and Strength drain attack it sure as hell looks like undead, but the damn thing can’t
  be turned.
  Another case where first edition AD&D and the 1981 Basic/Expert rules diverge is the way giants are described.  I
  don’t use a lot of giants in my D&D games, except for the two or three times I’ve run the classic module series G-1-
  2-3 Against the Giants.  But today I want to attempt to nail down the differences, particularly the non-mechanical
  ones.  I don’t care that much that an Expert set Hill giant has 8 hit dice while the Monster Manual version has 8+1-2
  points, or that an MM fire giant has a point better AC.
  HILL GIANT
  Expert rules p. X32
  Monster Manual pp. 44-45
  Height
  12’
  10½’
  Description
  stupid, hairy brutes
  reddish brown skin, brown or black
  hair, red-rimmed eyes
  Equipment
  animals skins, clubs, spears
  hides/skins, any weapon but favor
  clubs
  Allies
  none
  dire wolves, giant lizards, ogres
  Other
  no mention of stone-throwing
  throws stones like all other giants
  In my mind Hill Giants have always been oversized neanderthals, and I think much of the art in the hobby (illos and
  minis) bears this out.  I’d be more inclined to paint a hill giant honky white rather than reddish brown, but that has as
  much to do with Ringo Starr in Caveman as it does to any hard data.  The MM line about hill giants using “any form
  21/26
  
  of weapon available” makes me want to give one a laser cannon sometime.
  STONE GIANT
  Expert rules p. X32
  Monster Manual pp. 44-45
  Height
  14’
  12’
  Description
  grey, rock-like skin
  grey to grey-brown skin, dark-grey to
  blue-grey hair, metallic silver-steel
  eyes, rock-colored garments
  Equipment
  stalactite clubs
  stone weapons
  Allies
  cave bears
  cave bears
  Other
  May live in crude stone huts.
  Why are these guys bald, anyway?
  Seriously, have you ever seen a stone
  giant with hair?  What is the deal with
  that?
  Uncle Gary’s MM description includes greyish or bluish hair, but I can only think of maybe two cases where I saw a
  stone giant that wasn’t a chromedome:
  I think that’s from a Forgotten Realms product, but what I know is that
  those giants are BAD ASS.  
  Here’s the only other stone giant I know who doesn’t suffer from male
  pattern baldness.
  You can check out that adventure here, by the way.
  Final thought on stone giants: If you run BX and your overland map
  lacks a quaint pastoral village of 14’ tall rock people living in stone-
  thatched huts then you need to rethink your life decisions.
  FROST
  GIANT
  Expert rules p. X32
  Monster Manual pp. 44-
  45
  Height
  18’
  15’
  Description
  pale skin, light red or
  blue hair, full beards
  dead-white or ivory skin,
  blue-white or yellow hair,
  pale blue or yellow eyes
  Equipment
  furs and iron armor
  as per “northern
  barbarian”
  Allies
  polar bears, regular-
  type wolves
  winter wolves
  Other
  live in castles
  live in castles or caverns
  These guys are my favorites, because they are totally Giant Sized Marvel Hella Vikings #1.  What is not to like?  The
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  only thing missing from the official description is the known scientific fact that in midwinter these guys ride giant
  longships to plunder villages along the southern coasts.
  Here’s my alltime favorite depiction of frost giants:
  Awww, yeah.  That’s the stuff.  My love for the work of Erol Otus is
  undying, but who’s betta than Frazetta?  NO ONE THAT’S WHO.
  Here’s a neat alt-version of frost giant coloration, unsupported by
  the canon.
  Gotta say I’m digging that pale blue skin.  (Warning: Do not read
  any D&D books by Rose Estes unless you are a fan of stuff that
  sucks.)
  FIRE GIANT
  Expert rules p. X32
  Monster Manual pp.
  44-45
  Height
  16’
  12’
  Description
  red skin, dark black
  hair & beards
  broad like dwarves,
  coal black skin,
  flaming red or bright
  orange hair, deep red
  eyes, yellow orange
  teeth
  Equipment
  copper, brass or
  bronze armor
  armor or dragon hides,
  huge swords
  Allies
  hydras, hellhounds
  hellhounds
  Other
  dwell in low thick-
  walled castles of black
  baked mud reinforced
  with iron
  dwell in castles or
  caverns
  Here’s another spot where the Expert rules provide a
  thumbnail sketch of an adventure locale you totally need to be
  using.  More importantly, the Expert and MM versions of Fire
  Giants seem to be totally different species.  One is 25%
  shorter than the other, the taller ones have red skin and black
  hair, while the shorter, stocky ones have black skin and red
  hair.  Additionally, I assume all dragons hate the shorter
  dudes, since they prance around in dragonhide armor.  And
  neither of them look like the cool blue-skinned version on the
  cover of G-1-2-3:
  23/26
  
  CLOUD GIANT
  Expert rules p. X32
  Monster Manual pp. 44-45
  24/26
  
  Height
  20’
  18’
  Description
  white or grey skin or hair
  pale blue white to light blue skin, silver
  white or brass colored hair
  Equipment
  pale robes
  jewelry, great clubs
  Allies
  giant hawks, dire wolves
  spotted lions
  Other
  neutral aligned
  neutral good or neutral evil
  Man, I just can’t get worked up about cloud giants.  Maybe that’s why I wrote a module that reinvented them as
  horrible slobbering beasts.  I’m crossing my fingers that thing ends up published before the year is out.
  So this is the third giant species in a row that could be blue-skinned if you wanted them.  Maybe frost, fire and cloud
  giants should all be branches of the same bluish family tree in your campaign world.  PCs could get involved in giant
  family poilitcs, like fights over inheritances when a giant king dies without an heir, or a frost giant Romeo running off
  with a fire giant Juliet.
  STORM GIANT
  Expert rules p. X32
  Monster Manual pp. 44-45
  Height
  22’
  21’
  Description
  bronze skin, bright red or yellow hair
  pale light green skin w/dark green hair,
  emerald green eyes OR violet skin
  w/deep violet or blue-black hair,
  silvery-grey or purple eyes
  Equipment
  none specified
  none specified
  Allies
  griffons, giant crabs
  rocs, griffons, sea lions
  Other
  lightning bolt attack
  lightning bolts
  These guys are just weird.  I’ve never used one, though I did have a PC fried by a wrathful storm giant back in the
  eighties.  Ah, to be young and piss off creatures with more hit dice than your entire party.  Aside from fiddly spell
  mechanics and skin color they are basically identical.
  Since storm giants are among the good guys, a fun way to draw them into the campaign might be via unintended
  consequences.  For example: the giant crab infestation the PCs cleared out happens to be the breeding grounds for
  the storm giant’s pets.
  Finally, I wondered how all these giants should look standing next to 1/72 figures, like the 11th century crusaders my
  folks just bought me for my birthday (thanks folks!).  As a reminder, at 1/72 scale, a 6 foot tall dude is represented by
  a 1 inch tall figure.
  Giant
  Size
  1/72 scale
  MM Hill Giant
  10½’
  1¾” ~44mm
  25/26
  
  Expert Hill Giant
  12’
  2” ~50mm
  MM Stone Giant
  12’
  2” ~50mm
  MM Fire Giant
  12’
  2” ~50mm
  Expert Stone Giant
  14’
  2⅓” ~59mm   
  MM Frost Giant
  15’
  2.5” ~64mm
  Expert Fire Giant
  16’
  2⅔” ~68mm
  Expert Frost Giant
  18’
  3” ~76mm
  MM Cloud Giant
  18’
  3” ~76mm
  Expert Cloud Giant
  20’
  3⅓” ~85mm
  MM Storm Giant
  21’
  3½” ~89mm
  Expert Storm Giant
  22’
  3⅔” ~93mm
  I wonder if anyone ever made a dwarf with a sword and platemail in the 2” to 2⅔” range?  That would make a great
  fire giant.
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SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Tables & Charts/Character Creation/Why-Did-You-Become-an-Adventurer-d30.pdf