Back in the days of AD&D 2e they dealt with cantrips in a completely different way from all of the other editions. I loved it but it took a long while to work out just how powerful a spell it was.

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The spell Cantrip was a 1st level spell that allowed you to do almost anything as long as it was small and didn’t cause any damage to anything and anything created only lasted something like an hour. On the face of it you might think it was useless for anything other than a full on roleplay session. You couldn’t be further from the truth however.

Before we realised just how useful this spell was our mages tooled up with blatant offensive or defensive spells and that was it. Occasionally they would get their books out when they had to research some magic items for the group but usually it was ‘how many fireballs and hastes are we going to need today?’

Then one day one of our clerics died and the player decided completely against character to bring in a mage. His daily allowance of 1st level spells were always completely taken up by cantrips. It took us around an hour to work out what he was up to.

In our first encounter upon entering a hamlet was a crowd of young kids. We had asked for directions from everyone passing by but as we were armed to the back teeth and strangers to boot noone would talk to us. Our new mage wandered over to the gang of street kids and got talking to them. He ended up casting cantrips to allow him to perform a brilliant card trick and then finished it off with some mini-fireworks from his wand. The kids loved it and after a few moments we were on our way armed with the information we needed.

Now you might think that is exactly what cantrip was for but it gets better.

We arrived at the tavern we were looking for in order to track down a certain rogue that could help us fence some stolen art work. He didn’t want to deal with us and decided to hit our remaining cleric out of the way and make a run for it. One cantrip later and just as the NPC goes to barge through the cleric the holy symbol around his neck shines like it had caught the sun at high noon. Blinded by this the NPC stumbled and was easily caught by the hands of the warriors.

From that moment on I loved that spell. From pretending to burn treasure maps to get other interested parties off of our tails to magically tying the shoelaces of the guards together to aid in our escape. Every single thing the spell done was minor but it had a huge impact on the game and on our party.

I really wish they had kept the spell like that rather than find ways to limit it. I understand why they did that but it’s nowhere near as much fun now.

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I’ve long said that my main reason for not ‘upgrading’ to the latest version of a system as soon as it is published is money. I horde my old books and still use them for running games. It’s not just that I like them but it’s because I have them as well. So with that in mind I was wondering what everyone’s favourite books were. The kind you bought to either add something new to a game or a new campaign setting and just can’t put down.

As a group we never owned AD&D 1e as we’d been playing Rolemaster beforehand so we hit 2e just as it was new to the shelves. The problem with that though is that as a young kid our pocket money only went so far and so we were forced to improvise. In a pre-edwardian shopping gallery called the Virginia Galleries off one of the major shopping streets in Glasgow there was a gaming store that did a vast amount of second hand books. With everyone changing over to 2e there were literally thousands of 1e books available for pennies. I think we picked up Dragonlance Adventures for something like £1.50. Now obviously we were using 2e so things had to be fudged and this was probably around the time we first started creating our own house rules to match the setting with the 2e game books. If you look in the margins of my copy you can just about make out the house rules in pencil from 18 years ago.

I was amazed that within it’s 128 pages there was everything you needed to get started on playing in the setting. My amazement was probably misplaced but I think it stemmed from all the new settings coming in boxed sets with multiple booklets, handouts and maps. The tone of the setting fitted exactly with the novels that had been released for obvious reasons and the novels themselves were written in such a way that it felt like every gaming session we ran. The characters all returning home and meeting up in the tavern to start a new adventure. In fact I seem to recall somewhere saying that the first few books were really just cleaned up transcripts from the initial games they ran.

So as I asked earlier. What source book do you keep going back to for inspiration or to actually play in this day and age of old and new school gaming?

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The inaugural Scottish RPG Bloggers Network Meetup occurred last night. We all met up in Chinaski’s bar in Glasgow city centre for a few drinks and discussion on our history with D&D. Just how old were our books?

OK so the meetup only consisted of myself and Seumas from Games of State and in all honesty it was actually a joint meetup to have a few drinks for a friend who had recently flew in from Las Vegas and a few drinks to see another friend off on a two and half month trip around the world. But it got me thinking.

I know there are other Scottish RPG bloggers out there. I’ve stumbled upon a few of their blogs in the past and there is a few conventions up these neck of the woods so I’m sure there is a readership base there somewhere. So how best to get those blogs under the RPGBN’s wing and does it make sense to get them under the Saltire and march forth to conquer the internet?

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