Lit-Up Drow

You know something about the dark elves, the lost race, the Drow? They've adapted over millennia to an underground environment. Through melanism?

Really?

Here's the real story. Those glowing fungi that light up the Underdark? That are distilled and concentrated by the dark elves for their witch-lamps? They illuminate in reverse.

Black turns to white under that light ... orange to blue ... green to red. Early Underdark explorers glimpsed the Drow under those conditions and leapt to conclusions. But out of their element -- say, if one of them were to become all broody and alienated because his society like totally didn't respect his alignment choices, and skip town -- the Drow are pale, dark-haired ectomorphs styling the very finest in white and yellow apparel. Not that different, really, from the regular kind of high elf.

Well ... it's a good story, anyway.

One Page Exploration

And without further ado ... the exploration rules.

"Search" is the action, "Notice Detail" is one of the skills.

Bashing doors, climbing, lock picking and the like get a separate page called "Obstacles."

Like A (Stumbling) Thief in the Dark

So this weekend I kicked off a new campaign using Matt Finch's Tomb of the Iron God as the starting adventure. Last year it was recommended to me and it definitely delivered on the old school funhouse-plus-meaningful exploration front. My players are fellow psychology students and researchers, seasoned online gamers all.

No wall sconces down here...

Because of the tactical mindset, one issue came up during play that I'd like some feedback on. My wife played a rogue character, as she'd been wanting to do ever since the RPG bug hit our household. But in practice, a rogue/thief/whatever under the Basic D&D or OD&D dispensation is very limited as a dungeon scout explorer. With race-as-class, a human thief can have no infravision, and sneaking around a dungeon with a shiny light is not very practical.

Of course, in race-plus-class systems like AD&D this is one big reason to take a nonhuman thief (plus all the racial skill bonuses) and in thiefless systems like true OD&D it's a non-issue.

So, have any players or DMs come up with creative solutions to let the thief-type take point in a dark, dark dungeon?