Lerrad of the Black Company
Darrell's Desk Blotter
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3 book set box cover 
Book 2 Monsters & Treasures 
Supplement 1 Greyhawk 
Supplement 3 Eldritch Wizardry 
Supplement 5 Swords & Spells 
Expert Set |
Before I had played Lerrad of the Black
Company I had surely played a number of other D&D characters and even
a couple "Empire of the Petal Throne", (EPT, Tekumal) "Western Gunfight",
and "Boot Hill" RPGs. But Lerrad was the first long term character. Now we
are talking about "Dungeons & Dragons" and not AD&D edition 1, 2,
or 3. "Greyhawk" and "Blackmore" had both come out in that digest sized booklet
first edition of D&D, also "Gods, Demigods, and Heros" as supplements
to the three booklet set of D&D, but it was before that blue covered
"Basic D&D" came out or the newer version of "Basic D&D", "Expert
D&D" and whatever the third higher level version came out. Judges' Guild
products were the really great D&D friendly products that had come out.
TSR hadn't come out with any "modules" as of that time. I'd already
been playing D&D a few years out in Calgary, but most of the games were
dungeon crawls from the days when they were more common than any city or
wilderness adventure. I'll probably talk about the exception to that when
I talk about another character who was the longest run character I had before
Lerrad. (I'm still trying to recall that character's name.For some reason
the name "Nobody" or "No One" comes to mind. He was an elf, I remember and
perhaps a fighter.) (Actually Lerrad was not the actual
name of this character. At the time the GM had a policy of the character
names being that of the player, so Lerrad would actually have been Darrell
of the Black Company. Since Lerrad is a name I might have used at the time
for a character and never had, I chose that for the character for my writing
about him.) Anyway Lerrad started out as an Elven Fighter - Magic
User and this was quite novel as until this time dual class characters were
only allowed using optional rules from "The Dragon" Magazine which was at
the time in it's first year or so. It was fall of 1977. I was playing at
UBC Wargamers Club and had many long periods during the day without classes
and not feeling like studying the whole time, so there was plenty of time
to play D&D. About the second game in, the Dungeon Master gave me the
option of adding one of the "new" classes to my character. That new class
was "Illusionist"! Anyhow basically it gave me a new list of spells I could
choose from and some snazy ones came at earlier levels than for a pure magic
user. As a first level fighter magic user I got into the habit of tossing
in a sleep spell and then wading into the fray. With the newfangled illusionist
spells I had great fun including that spell "Phantasmal Force" in creative
ways. I can remember the first time I created a Phantasmal Force of a Cleric.
The party was deep in the dungeon and in tatters after having defeated a
force of monsters that had almost defeated us and we had no cleric capable
of healing anyone. They needed healing themselves. So I said to the DM "I'm
going to cast a phantasmal force of a high level cleric and he's going to
cast healing spells on party members." The DM was thinking about it and I argued
that if an illusion of a monster using a phantasmal force can cause damage
to a character through belief in the illusion, then why not healing? The
DM bought it and a whole new aspect of illusionist was born in that campaign.
Of course when we were playing in those early days phantasmal forces included
sound and other features that now just aren't included in the the spell today.
Anyhow it got the party out of the dungeon and marked the beginning of some
of my creative play with an illusionist character. Now the Black Company was on average very Lawful
Good in alignment, but there already was another Lawful Good gaming group
with that same DM in the same city the "City State of the Invincible Overlord"
that called themselves "The White Company", so that name was taken. One of
the members of our party went out on a one man monster killing and surveying
expedition dressed all in black with a black mask and became known as the
Black Rider. Well after that from time to time members of our party would
do the same and nobody really knew that there was really more than one Black
Rider. So we became known as The Black Company". "The City State of
The Invincible Overlord" was a Judges' Guild product and other than the city
of "Tekumal" the main city in Empire of the Petal Throne was the only city
out there for RPGs. Anyhow, in this rather large city was that other White
Company and although both were Lawful Good parties, each group followed a
different God. Ours was Norse and followed Odin and the White Company followed,
I believe, Athena. One of our party's slightly less lawful
good members did something unfortunate in the fountain in the temple of Athena
and friction ensued. This was to be alleviated with a formal duel. The two
gaming groups got together for a massed game with the duel at the centre.
I can't really remember much of that game session, but I think we won. As
I recall no magic was to be used during the duel, but I believe a number
of spells were cast before the duel like blessings and such. They were interesting times. I gamed during the whole
semeter at UBC and that meant virtually daily games 5 days a week. The other
group met evenings and Saturdays. I think most of our characters went from
1st level up to 10th during that time. I do think that the secret behind
these early games was the Dungeun Master, the person who was running things
and interpreting the rules rather than the rules themself. The original set of three books eventually
became 3 books plus 5 supplements plus assorted articles from TSR's Magazine
"The Dragon". In addition there were game supplements put out by a company
called Judges Guild which was created by one of the creators of D&D with
Gary Gygax. He didn't stay with TSR but could still put out products with
the D&D label on them. Judges Guild put out many interesting things and
had, for the time, excellent maps and such. I think the next time I really played much D&D
it was with the Advanced D&D 1st Edition though I did play around a little
with the Basic and Expert sets of D&D that came out before AD&D was
popular. The Expert set that I had did not quite match up with the Basic
book as they had made changes and brought out a slightly modified version
of the Basic set at the same time the Expert set came out. The Basic set
covered levels 1 - 3 while the Expert set covered 4 - 14. Though I never
had them and don't know anyone who used them there were also The Companion
Rules for levels 15-25, Master rules for levels 26 - 36, and Immortal Rules
from 37 on up. It was with the Basic set and Expert set that I played I guess what was my next major character, Karak the 1/2 Orc - 1/2 Halfling Cleric. It wasn't anywhere near the 4 months I played Lerrad. Then came AD&D and another of my long term characters, Gnorman the Gnome. More about Karak and Gnorman on their respective pages. |
Book 1 Men & Magic 
Book 3 The Underworld & Wilerness Adventures 
Supplement 2 Blackmoor 
Supplement 4 Gods, Demingods & Heros 
Basic set 
Earlier version of the box cover |