Tome of Magic

 

I bought a copy of the AD&D2e Tome of Magic in PDF from DriveThruRPG. I would have preferred a PoD hard copy, but they don't offer one for this volume, and I figured that at least I could print the PDF and bind my own physical book.

For those unfamiliar with it, the Tome of Magic is just a collection of additional spells and magic items for AD&D2e, and it also expands the clerical spheres and what-have-you. 

However, the scans from which the PDF has been assembled are not great — they're rather soft, and they're washed out. I could print it, but the results wouldn't be fantastic.

I also have it in RTF format, I think from a CD-ROM that was published some time back in the Dark Ages, so I thought I would just reformat that in LibreOffice and print it that way. I wouldn't get any of the graphics, but to be frank the illustrations in the original weren't all that great anyway, and it's the information I'm primarily interested in.

So I did that, and a mighty labour it turned out to be. Maybe not a mighty labour, as such, but a labour nonetheless. 

I thought that I would do all the basic text styling in LibreOffice and then the final layout in Affinity, but Affinity's collaboration with word processor output is erratic, to say the least. It doesn't believe in LibreOffice's .ODF format at all, and it crashes instantly if I try to import .DOCX. It will accept .RTF, and it also imports all the text styles information, but doesn't actually apply it to any of the text, so I'd have to go right through the whole document and reapply styles to everything.

At that point I lost the will to live, and decided to just print straight from the LibreOffice output.

 Once that's done, the actual binding will be pretty straightforward. I've done a few books now, and I know more or less what I'm about there.

Later... (2026-05-08)

I got the loose A4 printouts assembled and bound, using some of my (not very good) home-made book-cloth. 

The binding is not great, to be honest, but it'll do the job.  I'm in the process of putting together a proper A5 layout in Affinity, including a bunch of illustrations snarfed from here and there, which I could bind properly in signatures if I can ever be bothered.

 This layout is functional, but not terribly attractive, and includes no illustrations at all. I printed it direct from my LibreOffice word-processor output.

The Book of Artifacts

 

This just arrived for me, a print-on-demand product from DTRPG.

It's pretty much what it says on the cover: a whole bunch of magical artifacts for AD&D2e. It also includes some notes on the use of artifacts within an AD&D2e campaign, and a bunch of tables with which to generate the various random powers the artifacts are supposed to have.

I like the concept of these artifacts in a campaign. They tend to be ridiculously powerful and unbalancing, but at least they're each unique. I'm not a huge fan of the vast number of generic +1 swords and Potions of Healing and what-not that tend to give player characters their superhero powers.  I think magical doo-dads should be a bit special, or else they just become a stand-in for modern or sci-fi technology.

Plus, I like the idea that magical things should be just a little bit perilous to the user. Knowing that using an object of Mighty Arcane Power™ might make your legs fall off means that employing it becomes a meaningful action, not just a handy deus ex machina. 

Will I actually use any of the contents of this book? Probably.  They're a hoot.

The key is to make sure that they don't stick around long enough for a character to make them the major part of their personality, or else players will get quite upset when they're taken away, one way or another. Unless that would be amusing to me.... in which case, we'll see. 

DM Screen for AD&D2e

 

I've printed out and assembled my new DM's screen for AD&D2e.

Structurally, it's 2mm grey-board covered with some of my home-made book-cloth. I didn't have enough of a single pattern to do the whole lot, which is why it's in two different patterns.

The most useful in-game charts are on the two centre panels. The outer panels are less likely to be needed day-to-day, and I've added some hinged smaller pages (to the left) with other less important information. If I find there are other charts I feel the need for instant access to, I'll put other hinged panels on the right.

The main thing is to learn where everything is, so that I minimise searching time and garner a wholly undeserved reputation for omniscience.

The pages on the outside are more or less temporary; that's where I'll put any player info. In this case they deal with how I'm handling saving throws and critical hits / fumbles.

NOTE: I laminated the sheets before I glued them to the panels, and in hindsight I think that was a mistake. The glossy surface makes the content more difficult to read due to annoying reflections.

AD&D2e DM screen redesign

I've been redesigning my DM shield so that its table contents aligns better with those presented in AD&D2e. The old one was a bit of a mish-mash of OSRIC, AD&D1e, and my house rules — this one still includes a little idiosyncratic content, but not much. Pretty much just accommodating Ascending Armour Class, really.

• I've put the PDF (approx. 4.5MB) on my Google Drive, at https://drive.google.com/file/d/12rM7SYIBZ3WpQLH4ZaTIOkmAN7M3jkAl/view?usp=sharing

I originally designed it in Serif PagePlus IX, but when Serif abandoned that software and went over wholly to the Affinity suite of vector, pixel and layout apps, they elected (for some incomprehensible reason) to devote absolutely no effort at all to creating any sort of import filters for their own old software. It caused a degree of discontent in their clientele, I can tell you.

Anyway, it's done now, and updated not only in content, but in format, so I can edit it in the new and shiny Affinity 3 software. And I've learned a bit more about how to handle the software, which is all to the good.

Until they change their minds again and abandon this one as well. 

Page 1

Page 2

Page 3

Page 4

Page 5

These last two pages are smaller, just A5, and they're intended as flyouts mounted on the folds between the main pages. If I find there's something more I want to include with the screen, I can add pretty well as many of these as I like. And, in fact, it would probably be a good idea to transfer all of Page One's content to these sub-pages, and leave the main fold-out screen at four panels — five is a bit wide for our table.

[Edit]  In fact I did that. All of the Page One info is now duplicated on these smaller flyout pages, so you can choose which ones to print.

Sub-Page 1 

Sub-Page 2

 

Sub-Page 3

Sub-Page 4

Aid to DMing Laziness

 

There aren't any random encounter tables in the AD&D2e core books, as there once were in, for example, the AD&D1e Monster Manual II.

However somebody, and I don't know who that somebody is, put together a whole bunch of tables from a whole bunch of AD&D2e sources:

• Monstrous Manual
• Forgotten Realms Appendix
• Fiend Folio Appendix
• Monstrous Compendiums, volumes 1-4

I think, though I don't remember for sure, that I grabbed the PDF via Dragonsfoot*. But maybe somewhere else; I don't know.

 The main issue with this excellent piece of work is that it included no Table of Contents, or page numbers, so a bit of page-flipping was necessary to find anything.

I laboriously copied and pasted the whole thing, column by column, from the PDF into LibreOffice, and applied styles to everything so that a ToC could be generated. 

Then I printed it in 16-page signatures, stitched it together, and gave it a simple wraparound card cover, itself covered in my home-made book-cloth. In the process, I gave it a classy ribbon bookmark and a cover graphic I whipped up in CorelDraw, printed and laminated, and glued to the front.

'Tis a small thing, but mine own. Sort of. 

 

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* I did get it from Dragonsfoot. From here, in fact: https://www.dragonsfoot.org/php4/archive.php?sectioninit=SE&fileid=400

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Size of Money

 

In one of our ancient D&D sessions, it actually became relevant exactly what size were the coins the characters were carrying. Thanks to the internet, and especially to the miraculous Wolfram Alpha, I can now give a categorical answer to that age-old question.

The assumed weight of coin in AD&D2e is 50 to the pound, which means that any coin, regardless of its metal, weighs 9.07 grams. With that information, and knowing the density of the three primary metals for coinage (gold, silver, and copper), Wolfram Alpha gives us the respective diameters for cylinders 2mm high (or thick, if you prefer) of 17.3279mm, 23.421mm, and 25.419mm respectively.

So, there you are. That's how big your coins are.

DTRPG Loot

 

These just arrived for me today from DriveThruRPG.

They took about a week to get here, much faster than used to be the case, as DTRPG now has PoD resources being fulfilled from Australia rather than the USA — also quite a lot cheaper in postage, as the US postal service charges an arm and a leg and your firstborn child to deliver anything outside the continental USA.

Neither of these volumes is really essential for my needs, and I really bought them on a whim. I've been interested in the Dark Sun milieu for many years now, and although I'm highly unlikely to run a DS campaign, it's nice to have a copy of my own. And as for the Undermountain book: who doesn't want more megadungeons? My only regret is that the first volume, the prequel to this sequel, isn't available as a PoD hard-copy. 

Dark Sun (AD&D2e)

 

I've been indulging my curiosity about this TSR-era AD&D2e campaign setting from back in the day. It was originally published in 1991, and it was later updated in 2010 for use with D&D4e (shudder). WotC have stated that they have no intention of adapting it for 5e, due to its "problematic" elements.

I've known about it for a very long time, but I've never actually looked at it in any detail. So I got a PDF from DriveThruRPG and took a flick through it, and watched a video about its development on th'YooToobs.

From what I see of the original AD&D release, it looks like a very interesting setting, and I may well steal bits and pieces from it. However, I'm unlikely to ever run a dedicated Dark Sun campaign, for two reasons: 

1. It's pretty fucking bleak and depressing. It's like they said to themselves "lets make a new D&D world, but make everything absolutely awful" 
2. And also, I doubt very much that our roleplaying group would enjoy it very much. They humoured me for a while with a brief Call of Cthulhu campaign, but then indicated that they would prefer not to repeat the experience. 

Dark Sun has a lot going for it; it's a magnificent piece of world-building. But it's not a setting that encourages being very heroic. 

Stirrings

 

A few years ago, in 2021, I bought a set of PoD reprints of the core AD&D2e books from DriveThruRPG.

Many, many years ago, when it first came out, I bought copies of the Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide. I introduced some bits and pieces from them into our existing AD&D campaign, but we never ever played a "pure" 2e campaign. We ended up with a sort of AD&D1.5e mish-mash.

Now I'm getting those old familiar stirrings again, to run another AD&D game, and I was thinking why not do a completely 2e campaign? I've got the books after all, and it would be good to get some use out of them. And I'm kind of curious to see how far the changes they made to AD&D back in those far distant days alters the feel of the game. Not that much, I suspect.

I might even go as far as using the ridiculous descending AC system. We'll see.