The Monstrous Civilizations Of Delos

I Wasn’t Sure About This Until I Saw The Chapter on Succubus VD

Now You Get To See It, Too

Cover of the Second Edition

I tend to not care about setting information in my RPG material, preferring to write my own. OTOH, I love collecting any “old-school” books from the early eras of gaming. The Monstrous Civilizations of Delos from Dragon Tree Press is actually a bit late in the period – my copy was printed in 1989, around the time of AD&D 2e and a few years shy of when Vampire: The Masquerade would signal a cultural shift in TTRPGs, from “undateable math nerds sitting in dim basements rolling Euclidean dice” to “undateable theater nerds sitting in basements rolling 10-sided dice”. The world turned upside down, surely! 

Where was I?

Ah, yes. The Monstrous Civilization of Delos. This was a “little brown book” style product, square-bound, which means I am going to be using a low quality scan for screenshots, as there’s no way I’m cracking the dried glue on this to press it to the scanner (90 frickin’ bucks for a copy at Noble Knight!). While some other Dragon Tree books, such as the Dragon Tree Spell Book, the Handbook of Traps and Tricks, and the Book of the Dead, were more mechanical, this one is mostly fluff and worldbuilding. But is there anything “mineable” in it (other than succubus VD)? We’ll see!

Opening Up

OK, the first page is… huh.

Very unusually, there seem to be significant differences  between the Second Edition I own, and the First Edition I have a scan of. Huh.

Might as well discuss them first. 

The Second Edition has a layout that is cleaner, more professional: The hard-to-read cursive font is gone, headings are more distinct, supplementary text is boxed. The actual content is mostly the same, though I’m sure I’ll stumble on discrepancies. One notable difference is the “Adventurers vs. Alcohol” chart. In 1E, it uses a series of letters (“MISED”), for Mild, Intoxicated, Severe, Extreme, and Dead Drunk. In 2e, for reasons unknown to me, they replaced these with dingbats: Deltas, triangles, arrows, pink hearts, green clovers, blue diamonds.. no, wait, that’s Lucky Charms. Anyway, it’s an odd choice that reeks of “Because we can”, a constant element of the early DTP (that’s “desktop publishing”, pervs) era.

But I am ahead of myself. Let me get behind myself. Erm. As it were. And speaking of were, where was I? Ah, yes. Starting out.

We start out with intoxication, which is odd, as that’s usually how things end up. Badum-bum. I’m hilarious. Anyway, there’s a chart cross-indexing race and level, and please not, “Level” goes to 50. This ain’t not “kobolds and copperpieces” fantasy fucking Vietnam. This is real old school, which means, “Over the top”.

Yes, It’s A Crappy Scan. You Want Better, Buy Me A Second Copy And I’ll Scan My First

The text after this notes that Wampyrs, which seem to be what Elmer Fudd calls Dracula, are “cheap drunks”, while dwarves hold their liquor well. Good to know for some kinds of games, I guess.

The next chart (which I’m not going to copy) cross indexes weight (as adjust above) by drinks/hour to give a value on the MISED scale. Your place on this chart also determines how bad your hangover will be. You know, between the hangovers and the forthcoming… eventually… magical VD rules, this book is practically a WW2 Training Film!

Then, we get to “Preventions, Cures, and Other Remedies”, which has a very Hargravian feel to it, particularly the later Arduin books, which I haven’t covered. It’s not clearly explained what these do, but reading carefully, I believe they counteract alcohol for the specified duration. As usual, a few highlights:

Carter’s Little Livelier Pills: Take 1-3 pills per 200lbs body weight, they work for 20+1d10 minutes but induce (5% chance) hiccups. Among the cheapest items.

Noralin’s Crinis du Canis: I think that’s a pun on “hair of the dog”? Doesn’t prevent the effects of alcohol overall, but prevents drowsiness and lessens hangover effect, though by how much is not specified. 

Rovarian’s Emetic: You take it and you vomit up everything in your stomach, including any unabsorbed alcohol. It doesn’t do anything for your current state. “The taste will not be described here.” Yay.

A Brief Ending

This is shorter than usual, but I need to get back in the habit of posting something. It’s possible I will write more tomorrow, and equally possible I won’t, so, I’m going to post this, and if I’m inspired, extend it tomorrow, in which case, you won’t see this.