On Diseases in Orginal D&D
One small project I’m working on is writing out rules for handling disease in old school D&D. My general goal is to craft some mechanics that can work, with minor tweaking, for most any TSR era edition of D&D. Whenever possible, I want to use existing rules published by TSR. It’s not a hard requirement, and I’m willing to tweak any rules I find, but I’d at least like to start with something "official". And I thought I was onto something, but now I don't think so at all. In doing some research on this, I found this post from Delta’s D&D Hot Spot, where he points out that the earliest rules for Diseases in D&D actually appear in OD&D supplement 2, Blackmoor. Alas, despite Delta’s endorsement and his general enthusiasm, I don’t think these rules actually work. Let’s take a look at why. The Effects of Being Sick Here's a portion of the rules in question: Fatality The most straightforward effect of contracting a disease un...