I say she was a character, but really all we had to go on was a sheet and sketch that appeared pages later. It is generally assumed that the two go together and the sample character Morgan Ironwolf, was the woman with sword and shield. It matched the sheet so I guess it is fine, and the discussion about movement was talking about her right above her picture.
Here is the original Basic Set sheet with the image 'shopped in.
In a similar vein of going through the motions of stating up a character, I printed out a new D&D Essentials sheet and went through the book to stat her up. The results are below.
Not too bad really. Like my conversion of Emirikol the Chaotic, I opted for D&D4 style abilities scores, so I used the array from the book. Sure I could have used her stats or even rolled. I wanted this to be more organic.
She is still a fighter, still Lawful (Good), and still has a sword, chainmail and a short bow. I ran out of money to buy the shield though. Basic D&D characters got more gold than their D&D4 counterparts.
I opted to use the "Slayer" build for her for a lot of reasons, mostly because it is new and she looks like more of the stealthy type than the club you on head with heavy steel type. I mean look at those boots. Ok, chainmail is not very sneaky.
Plus I had a character back in the day named Morgan that I must have subconsciously named after her. In later years when she reappeared in my Buffy/Ghost of Albion opus The Dragon and the Phoenix (which you will read about this week) she became a Slayer. So why not.
All in all the characters feel pretty even to me. D&D4 Morgan obviously has an better chance to hit, but the monsters are also tougher.
Time to make either character felt about the same. The biggest issue was checking to make sure I was still doing D&D4 correctly under the Essentials revision (I was).
There are few links out there for Morgan, given how little we actually know about her.
Here is a great Deviant Art page with her picture by artist Dominic-Marco, http://dominic-marco.deviantart.com/art/Morgan-Ironwolf-111886797
Another page from Santiago Iborra, http://www.quellion.com/portfolio/Color%20Work/Morgan%20Ironwolf.jpg, looks more like the Jeff Dee original.. Both have given her blonde hair, which is interesting. Given she was made in the early 80's then big blonde hair seems appropriate.
I might be using her in a game as well.
I loved those Moldvay characters. Black Dougal, for instance, was just such a cool name. But while I dearly loved Jeff Dee's art for D&D (more than anybody else until Larry Elmore came along), Morgan was clearly very cold in that chainmail.
ReplyDeleteCold and tough. IT is chainmail afterall.
ReplyDeleteVery Nice Tim, I'll have to dig out my sheets and do the update.
ReplyDeleteIts great seeing Morgan there Tim. My favorite will always be Aleena, but all of these characters (Bargle, Black Dougal etc) are classics worthy of being brought back every now and then :)
ReplyDeleteEvery time you convert a classic D&D character to 4e, Tim, I die a little inside.
ReplyDeleteI KID! I KID!
@Jason, you should be completely dead then by the end of next week. ;)
ReplyDeleteOh, how I used to swoon over Morgan as a young, hormonal middle schooler.
ReplyDeleteOh, who am I kidding? She's still great!
@Christian she is still hot.
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised WotC hasn't officially done something like this, what, with jumping on the old school bandwagon and all.
ReplyDeleteHeh! I just found this blog yesterday, but I rolled up Aleena for Essentials last week! ;)
ReplyDelete-Bobjester
I had, well have, such a crush on Morgan Ironwolf that I commissioned Santiago (quellion) to do that updated version of her based on the original. We both agreed she was a blonde………You should see his reworking of ‘Elf King’ which he did for me too.
ReplyDelete