Search for the Nile Revisited:

Designer’s Notes, Addenda, Clarifications & Response

by David Wesely
ED. NOTE: As soon as he had finished his article on Search for the Nile, & direction of rivers when it became obvious that the only playtesters who
(Published in TD last month) Gary Gygax mailed a photocopy to Dave. wanted us to include these diagrams were the computer-trained ones who
Because of press-time, the inherent delays in using the U.S. Mails, etc., Mr. could read them!
Wesely's reply was not in time for the last issue, and it came in the form of a The “main sequence” format breaks down when there are topics that
letter. However, it makes an excellent follow-up article and provides some must be referred to from several other rules, e.g., NATIVES:
fascinating ideas and insights. Having been infected with “SftN Fever" by POISONING EXPLORER could follow NATIVES: NEGOTIATION,
my publisher, I am now among the ranks of admirers of this fascinating EXPLORER SPECIALTIES: EVANGELISM or EXPLORER
game. SPECIALTIES: MEDICINE. To handle this the rules do have a TABLE
Length OF CONTENTS which gives the location of any rule to which one is
As we say on page 2 of the rule book exploring the whole of Africa at one referred.
sitting is a marathon task. Our playtesters found it to take about 8½ hours. Completeness of Rules
Of course fans of Drag Nach Osten will find this to be nothing - but for As you remark, the rules are reminiscent of the original D&D@. In part
people with more moderate gaming tastes, we recommend a 20-turn limit. this is because both attempt to leave room for imagination and creativity
That is, each player is given 20 turns to get organized, get into Africa, make on the part of the player. This similarity also arises from the fact that both
some significant discoveries and (if he survives) to publish them. (Knowing sets of rules had to be cut down to be published, with the hope of releasing
when to quit is the most important skill in the game. The greatest killer of further material as suppliments. Our first suppliment, called “Tributary” is
expeditions is STUPIDITY. In a 20-turn game one is forced to pick an being prepared for release around December 1, '78 and will answer a good
objective that can be accomplished in a reasonable time - e.g. finding the many questions that other people have asked us.
source of the Benue, not the Nile.) A 20-turn game, with a full six players
( 120 turns in all) can be played in about 2 hours, once the players are used to Clarifications
the rules. While some turns can be much longer-with mapping, discovery
DISASTERS: O.K. I’m game. Although I prefer to make retribution
of natives, negotiations, battles, more negotiations, trading, and hunting
for being too stingy to hire a guide more certain, your suggestion is more
all happening in a single turn - the average player turn will run about 1
realistic.
minute in length.
EXPLORING: MOVEMENT. As you point out, through a
I wish we had been more specific in our recommendation as to time-limit
combination of rules, Jungle Swamp hexes are impossible. They were
games. In the rules we left limits to players’ discretion; this has evidently left
intended to be impassible. However, there are two exceptions. First,
a number of players with the impression that you have to try to explore the canoes can follow the coast thru a jungle-swamp hex (or any other kind of
whole map in each game.
hex, for that matter). Secondly, where guides can be hired in a jungle
After playing a 20-turn game, we recommend that the players leave its
swamp hex, they know ways through the hex that may be used by either
results on the map, and treat the unerased, published hexes from the first
canoes, men or horses.
game as preprinted, known territory in the next. If effect, while the map as
A related question is what happens if an expedition moves into an
printed shows Africa as known in 1821, and the players first game will start
unknown hex and finds terrain it cannot enter (i.e., an expedition on
in 1821, the next game will start at some later date, say 1831. As a result,
camels finds jungle or one with no canoes finds a lake). Basically the
starting with the first 20-turn game, every player’s mapboard will develop
expedition either reorganizes to eliminate the conflict (e.g.,
its own unique history which will be passed on from game to game, and the
abandons/sells/shoots its camels) or goes back to the hex it came from.
exploration of Africa becomes a “campaign” rather than a “monster
Even if the latter choice is made, however, the expedition will poke around
game”.
on the border of the new hex for the rest of the turn - long enough to
Survival
“explore” it. i.e. map it, find natives, etc. For hunting purposes, the
It is important to note that players, not explorers, score points, while expedition gets to hunt in the better of the two hexes. If natives are found,
explorers, not players, die. the expedition may succeed in negotiating with them, hiring guides and/or
Of course the explorer must survive each expedition to score points for canoes, camels, etc., needed to enter the hex and thus overcome the
his player but the death of an explorer will only prevent the player from obstacle. If the expedition is attacked and takes prisoners, it cannot find
scoring points for the expedition in progress; he will not lose points already the native village if it cannot enter the hex. If the explorer is taken prisoner
scored for previous expeditions. by the natives, however, and eventually escapes, he will know the paths
Thus the players are immortal; you can think of them as being through the hex.
newspaper editors or heads of scientific societies sending out expeditions EXPLORER SPECIALITIES: We developed each of the explorer
while they stay safe at home, or you can assume that each player is specialities as branches off of the basic explorer stock. Each would have its
“reincarnated” as the heir of the deceased explorer, ready to pursue the advantages in terms of enhanced opportunities to score points (e.g., the
family tradition of African exploration. Rationalization aside, we found Zoologist or Geologist who can score points by doing research in any
that “bang, you’re dead and out of the game” rules discouraged vigorous unpublished hex. He does not have to take chances with Unexplored
play and made sheer cowardice the best strategy. Thus, players are hexes; he can just slide into nice safe (well, less dangerous, as least) hexes
encouraged both to stick their necks out and to “retire” dud explorers in with lots of rocks or bugs and flowers that someone else has mapped and
favor of new ones as the game goes on. rack up point). Each would have its disadvantages in the terms of
Organization of Rules demanding a certain devotion to one’s calling (the Geologist has to risk
We debated the layout of the rules, being familiar with the Strategy & death by thirst to stop and look at rocks in the desert. Knowing this, his
Tactics/ Moves discussions of narrative versus outline versus order of play player had better have him take plenty of water to avoid possible desert
versus grouped by subject, etc., formats. After six drafts of the rules we hexes. “Neither rain, nor sleet, nor Waziri’s on the warpath will keep us
settled on the present set as being the most acceptable to playtesters who from knockin’ rocks”). Thus the basic explorer has quite a few advantages
had previously not seen the game. over his specialized competitors in the simple matter of STAYING
In so far as possible the rules are written in a “main sequence” format. ALIVE. You propose several “bennies” for non-specialist explorers,
That is, everything a player could conceivably do in one hex in one turn is explorer-explorers, etc., but I would be a little afraid that these (especially
covered in the order it would occur. Alternate activities that would branch in combination) would make the other specialities unattractive Most
off of this pattern are listed after the main sequence and the reader is playtesters settled in non-specialists as it was (of course, most D&D@
directed to them by title. Within each major activity, i.e., Natives: a similar players would rather be Conan than Gandalf, too, so this may have more to
pattern is employed. We deleted a graphic “decision tree” representation of do with the Macho image than with one’s chances of winning with a given
these relationships along with a “flow chart” for determining the presence character type).
3
 NATIVES: AMBUSH Hey you caught us here! We edited out the the good doctor fails to hald an epidemic. The natives are (understandably)
line that stated “Natives deciding to attack an expedition which is disappointed by this phony, and the tribal attitude (which influences his
following policy number 2 will only be able to catch it if they take it by chances of escape, if he is a prisoner and of friendly relations, in any case)
surprise”. The effect of this rule is to make it nearly impossible for the goes down one point.
natives to catch the explorer if he runs for it at first sight. The second part of the question arises from a confusion between
NATIVES: REACTION to EXPLORER POLICY You add SCORING POINTS for medical success and ADJUSTING ATTITUDE
together the following factors: LEVELS. In short it says that the doctor gets 1 or 2 points for every disease
EXPLORER POLICY NUMBER he can report a cure for (when he gets back to Europe) but that he doesn’t
BONUSES FOR GUIDES BEING UNARMED, etc. lose SCORE just because he failed to cure somebody* and made the
DISTANCE FROM COAST natives unhappy**. He also can sit at one tribe and keep treating them
TRIBAL ATTITUDE (initially zero) rather than having to find new tribes after every success, the way a
And compare the sum to the roll of three dice. The natives are hostile if missionary does.
the sum is less than the die roll. Therefore, an increase in the ATTITUDE *(a comment on 19th-Century Medicine’s success rate).
LEVEL will make it more likely that the tribe is friendly, as we said. **(and/or racial attitudes).
MAXIMUM NUMBER OF NATIVE WARRIORS PER HEX The PRESERVATION OF RATIONS: Playtesting revealed that the
system given in the rules to generate size of tribe can give anywhere from 1 game is surprisingly sensitive to changes in the food supply. Allowing
to 216 warriors-however, with the adjustment for distance from the nearest players to save some or all of the food they shot made it too easy to live off
port of entry (slave trade) the maximum and average number of warriors is the land. However, if this was coupled with a requirement to sit still for 1
significantly reduced. Since minimum and maximum sized tribes (rolling turn while the meat was being smoked and cured, maybe it wouldn’t get out
triple ones or sixes respectively) are quite uncommon, the average number of hand.
of warriors per tribe is the most significant factor: Naming Tribes
2 hexes from PoE average 16 max 72 I am really taken with your native tribe facts sheet and your TRIBAL
3 23 108 NAME GENERATOR. We thought about using real tribal names on our
4 31 144 countersheet, but abandoned it as too expensive and/or confusing to the
5 38 180 players and just used numbers. Ideally, one could give a chart showing
6 or more 43 216 what tribe was in each hex in 1821. However, your table serves admirably
This produces fewer warriors than the system you propose. Actually to dress up the game. Being attacked by the 19’s or trading with the chief of
neither our system nor yours comes close to reality (the Zulus were largely the 37’s just doesn’t hold a candle to encountering twelve heavily armed
confined to one hex of our map but they could easily field 6000 warriors). Ru’ug at an oasis or preaching to the YoGowauku deep in the heart of
However, the typical native nation was not so centrally organized and the darkest Africa!
explorer would have only had to deal with it one village at a time. If we did
this “realistically” with one-day turns and ten-kilometer hexes. . . So what
we are doing is giving the explorer bout one encounter per week with a
typical village of the tribe in the hex and letting this take the place of a lot of
dull, repetitious, encounters with every village in the hex.
Although we have generally played that one can wipeout a tribe (remove
it’s marker) by capturing or killing all of it’s warriors, this is really not a
reasonable result. No explorer is going to have enough Askaris to wipe out
the kind of populations we are talking about. Victory over the inhabitants
of one village isn’t going to dent the total population in the hex. Therefore,
what we should be doing is interpreting the “number of warriors” as the
number in an average village in the hex (as a result of kinds of crops raised,
local geography and militaristic tendancies or lack thereof). This number
can change temporarily during combat, but only because only one village is
being fought. Explorers moving into/remaining in the hex on subsequent
turns will find that the defeated village has been brought back up to
strength by immigration from other villages, or, to put it another way, they
will have to take on a different village every turn.
Looting and trading will be limited by the size of the village (since one
must waste a lot of time traveling from one to another we limit this to one
village per hex per turn). However, no amount of repeated looting will
eliminate all the natives from the hex-one just keeps looting different
villages. By the way, for those who have not played the game, I want to state
that the games does not endorse this kind of policy towards the natives.
Although it is an available activity one can engage in, we have tried to
discourage morally reprehensible conduct.
NATIVES: TRADING I like your proposed modifications to the
limits on looting and trading. We do need to add something like this to
control the “buy your way across Africa” strategy that can be over-
whelming late in the game.
NATIVES: POISONING EXPLORER Good point. Probably
should be a break for Zoologists here too, since they are liable to notice that
their mushrooms are different from everyone else’s at the dinner. . .
NATIVES: ATTITUDE LEVELS As previously stated the
adjustments are NOT reversed.
EXPLORER SPECIALTIES: I would incline to lump the Botanist
advantages you cite into the Zoologist specialty. Zoologists and Geologists
were generally not popular with our playtesters who hated to waste time
“rock-knocking” or “pickin’-posies”. As remarked earlier, the specialist is
supposed to be a dedicated professional who is going to do heroic (i.e.
stupid) things for his calling be it science, medicine or religion.
MEDICINE: On a roll of three, after telling the natives how great he is,