Because my interviews with people associated with the early days of the hobby have become one of the most popular features of this blog, I thought I should clarify a few things about how I go about doing them.
Once an interviewee agrees to receive my questions, my first batch of them almost always consists of "softball questions," that is, fairly generic ones about how he or she entered the hobby, earliest and/or most famous publications, current activities, and whether he or she still plays RPGs. I never begin by asking anything too "controversial," because I prefer to wait until I receive the responses to my initial questions. Those responses provide me with a good gauge on how much -- or how little -- an interviewee wishes to share with me. In some cases, they provide ample opportunity for me to ask "hard" questions and in others it's clear that they're not interested in airing dirty laundry about the past. In the latter case, it's my practice to respect whatever boundaries they establish, even if that means I don't get to probe deeply.
I am not a professional journalist, as several people are quick to point out from time to time. My interviews are conducted to give some of the founders of our collective hobby a chance to say a few things about their own involvement in and contributions to it. I do this both out of simple curiosity and a desire to help establish a few more facts about those bygone days. I do not do it to advance an agenda or to play "gotcha." Consequently, some of my interviews are shorter and less "juicy" than others. That's a function of my innate politeness -- I don't delve into matters that it's clear my interviewees seem to have no interest in discussing, no matter how much I myself might wish to know them. On the other hand, I don't hesitate to pursue matters that my interviewees clearly want to discuss, particularly if it gives me further insight into the history of the hobby.
The upshot of all of this is that my interviews are necessarily of uneven length and content, according to my own estimation of each interviewee's level of comfort and openness, as well as my own comfort at asking them lots of tedious questions about events two or more decades in the past. Any perceived inadequacies in the interviews are thus entirely my fault, not my interviewees', who have all been most gracious to take the time to submit to my interrogations. While there are some interviews of which I am more proud than others, I am genuinely pleased with all of them, even those where I felt I could not ask deeply probing questions. I leave that task to others, but experience has taught me that it's often more productive to avoid sensitive topics, even if that yields a less "sensational" interview.
At this stage in my examination of the hobby's history, finding out even the most basic details are of use to me and, I hope, to my readers, many of whom are unaware of them. I consider this a valuable endeavor, even if it'll never win me the Pullitzer Prize.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Interview: David "Zeb" Cook (Part I)
Another of the new designers to join the ranks of TSR in the late 70s and early 80s was David Cook. He would eventually remain at the company for over fifteen years, during which time he would be involved in numerous significant RPG projects, including the Expert Rulebook, Star Frontiers, the licensed Conan RPG, the Planescape campaign setting, and, of course, the second edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. An avid player of games of all sorts, including the wargames that gave birth to the hobby, Mr Cook has since left the roleplaying field, moving on, like many others, to the computer games industry. He generously agreed to answer my many questions of him. The first part of this interview appears here, with the second part to follow tomorrow.
As always, I ask that your comments be pertinent and presented respectfully.
1. Like a lot of people in the early days of the hobby, you discovered roleplaying through wargames. What do you remember about your first encounters with Dungeons & Dragons at the University of Iowa?
I had been part a wargames club -- everything from Diplomacy to a massive go at War in Europe. It met at the union on weekends and was a good way to spend an afternoon. I found it as a freshman and it was a kind of vindication of these games that I'd played (mostly by myself). So here I was happily doing the boardgame thing when one of the members (Wolfgang, I think) had this game they were playing in a side room. After a couple of sessions I had a chance to join. It was white box D&D, and I played a dwarf, not really understanding what it was about. It was like a miniatures game but you only had one guy and had to act out what you did. Nobody could explain it well and none of us really knew what we were doing. But after that session I was pretty much hooked. It was this great combination of games and theater (I was a theater minor) that just seemed perfect.
Our campaigns were basic, but we had some creative people -- aspiring writers, theater types, pre-law, the whole gamut. The university club was an active group -- they published a fanzine (with some good ideas), created interesting worlds, and had a generally good time.
There were a lot of memorable moments -- like the time one of the group created a fighter with 17 strength and 3 dexterity (yay, random rolls!). He wore pop-bottle thick glasses and decided the character had vision as good as he did without the glasses. It made for great role playing and much accidental death.
2. What made you give up your previous career as a high school teacher and try your hand at game design? Did you find the transition between the two careers difficult or did your experience as an educator assist you in your design work?
Do you know how much high school teachers got paid in Nebraska at the time? Not much (although I still took a pay cut when I first started at TSR). I like teaching but I don't think I was cut out for it full time -- especially in a town of 300 people. I saw this ad in Dragon magazine that TSR was looking for designers and my wife, bless her, encouraged me to apply. (She's as much a gamer as me.) It was a big leap - we were expecting a child at the time. I knew I could do the job (at least I thought I could) but I was pretty surprised when they hired me.
I think the fact that I loved history and had a strong English background helped. Gary was an old school gamer -- miniatures, wargames, the lot -- and the fact that I knew and played a lot of those things myself helped. But ultimately it was the fact that I could write passably (I won't say well, looking back on it) and knew games that made the difference. I'm not sure that being a teacher made me a better designer, but it did help later on at places like conventions where I felt more comfortable in front of crowds. I suppose being a teacher also helped in improvising -- you had to be ready to adapt what you were doing in class if it was bombing. You need a lot of that as a designer.
3. Your name is associated with the second part of the much-beloved 1981 edition of D&D, the Expert Rulebook. What were your goals for this project? That is, what did TSR hope to accomplish with the publication of the Expert Rulebook?
Well, the problem up to that point had been that D&D was hard to learn if you didn't have someone to teach you. So several Basic sets came out with that goal. Then we decided we needed try again and grow beyond just the basics. So the red book focused on the basic of dungeons, while the Expert Set was about expanding the player's world to do wilderness adventures. It was a pretty natural progression. Obviously the other goal was to expand the audience so we could sell more product. Originally there was the thought that we could create a set that would transition players from the red and blue box and into AD&D. However, legal issues prevented that, so it became a separate game line. It was still supposed to be easier to learn and use than AD&D more suitable for a younger audience.
As always, I ask that your comments be pertinent and presented respectfully.
1. Like a lot of people in the early days of the hobby, you discovered roleplaying through wargames. What do you remember about your first encounters with Dungeons & Dragons at the University of Iowa?
I had been part a wargames club -- everything from Diplomacy to a massive go at War in Europe. It met at the union on weekends and was a good way to spend an afternoon. I found it as a freshman and it was a kind of vindication of these games that I'd played (mostly by myself). So here I was happily doing the boardgame thing when one of the members (Wolfgang, I think) had this game they were playing in a side room. After a couple of sessions I had a chance to join. It was white box D&D, and I played a dwarf, not really understanding what it was about. It was like a miniatures game but you only had one guy and had to act out what you did. Nobody could explain it well and none of us really knew what we were doing. But after that session I was pretty much hooked. It was this great combination of games and theater (I was a theater minor) that just seemed perfect.
Our campaigns were basic, but we had some creative people -- aspiring writers, theater types, pre-law, the whole gamut. The university club was an active group -- they published a fanzine (with some good ideas), created interesting worlds, and had a generally good time.
There were a lot of memorable moments -- like the time one of the group created a fighter with 17 strength and 3 dexterity (yay, random rolls!). He wore pop-bottle thick glasses and decided the character had vision as good as he did without the glasses. It made for great role playing and much accidental death.
2. What made you give up your previous career as a high school teacher and try your hand at game design? Did you find the transition between the two careers difficult or did your experience as an educator assist you in your design work?
Do you know how much high school teachers got paid in Nebraska at the time? Not much (although I still took a pay cut when I first started at TSR). I like teaching but I don't think I was cut out for it full time -- especially in a town of 300 people. I saw this ad in Dragon magazine that TSR was looking for designers and my wife, bless her, encouraged me to apply. (She's as much a gamer as me.) It was a big leap - we were expecting a child at the time. I knew I could do the job (at least I thought I could) but I was pretty surprised when they hired me.
I think the fact that I loved history and had a strong English background helped. Gary was an old school gamer -- miniatures, wargames, the lot -- and the fact that I knew and played a lot of those things myself helped. But ultimately it was the fact that I could write passably (I won't say well, looking back on it) and knew games that made the difference. I'm not sure that being a teacher made me a better designer, but it did help later on at places like conventions where I felt more comfortable in front of crowds. I suppose being a teacher also helped in improvising -- you had to be ready to adapt what you were doing in class if it was bombing. You need a lot of that as a designer.
3. Your name is associated with the second part of the much-beloved 1981 edition of D&D, the Expert Rulebook. What were your goals for this project? That is, what did TSR hope to accomplish with the publication of the Expert Rulebook?
Well, the problem up to that point had been that D&D was hard to learn if you didn't have someone to teach you. So several Basic sets came out with that goal. Then we decided we needed try again and grow beyond just the basics. So the red book focused on the basic of dungeons, while the Expert Set was about expanding the player's world to do wilderness adventures. It was a pretty natural progression. Obviously the other goal was to expand the audience so we could sell more product. Originally there was the thought that we could create a set that would transition players from the red and blue box and into AD&D. However, legal issues prevented that, so it became a separate game line. It was still supposed to be easier to learn and use than AD&D more suitable for a younger audience.
4. Do you feel you were successful in making the Expert Rulebook easier to learn and use than AD&D? Were there any particular features of its presentation that you felt made the game more accessible and suitable for a younger audience?
Yes, easier to learn than AD&D, though we still couldn't break the mass market barrier. Probably the biggest features that made it easier were the attention paid to organization (by the editor more than me) and the streamlining of things. That meant the Expert set didn't try to cover everything which did mean forgoing some sub-systems that added density to AD&D.
5. While at TSR, you also worked on many classic D&D modules, two of which, The Isle of Dread and Dwellers of the Forbidden City, are among my personal favorites. Both show a clear pulp fantasy influence, the former reminding me of many "lost world" tales and the latter having a vaguely Howardian "Red Nails" vibe. Are you a fan of pulp fantasy and, if so, who are your favorite authors and stories?
Well, I'm not surprised by the "Red Nails" reference since that was what I was clearly going for. It's my favorite Conan story and the city was based off of it. It was originally something I did for my own campaign and then used it as my resume when I applied to TSR.
I love pulp stories and grew up reading a lot of the classic pulp stuff. As a kid I read Conan, Solomon Kane, most al the Tarzan novels, Doc Savage, the Shadow, Vance, Lovecraft, etc. The Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories by Leiber were among my favorites -- he created this really interesting world and characters that made great stories. Laumer, deCamp, Farmer, Zelazny, Lin Carter, Bloch were a few more. Of course Tolkien, but also a lot of the golden and silver age writers shaped my imagination in junior high and high school.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Idea Spawned by a Rules Oddity
OD&D is rightfully known as being sparse when it comes to both details and its rules. When those two categories of sparseness come together, it sometimes leads to head scratching. A good case in point is this cryptic statement from Volume 1 of the three little brown books: "Note that clerics of 7th level and greater are either 'Law' or 'Chaos,' and there is a sharp distinction between them." (And before anyone points this out, yes, I know this version of the lines comes from a later printing, one that post-dates the supplements, but bear with me here). This implies to me that, in OD&D, Neutral is not a valid alignment for a cleric, at least not one who wishes to get far in his hierarchy and command great powers. AD&D specifically excludes True Neutral as an alignment option for clerics. Greyhawk introduced druids as a monster type and notes that they're "priests of a neutral-type" religion. Eldritch Wizardry opens them up as a player character option, but limits them to the neutral alignment.
Taken together, it's all very suggestive, as if there were some kind of specific understanding of alignment at work here. I know that's probably not true at all, but it doesn't change the suggestiveness of it all -- a suggestiveness that Frank Mentzer spun in a very interesting way in his edition of the D&D rules. His Companion Rules druid is a kind of "proto-prestige class" that's parasitic upon the cleric class. Druids are Neutral clerics who abandon their old faith and embrace the ways of Nature. in the process shedding some old abilities (like turning undead) and acquiring new ones (such as new spells). I think Mentzer's druid is a riff off the old OD&D rules about clerical alignment and I've always rather liked it. In Dwimmermount, druids -- and Nature -- stand outside the battles of Law and Chaos. Consequently, they're generally regarded with suspicion by most folk, particularly those siding with Law, since they have a "with us or against us" mentality.
I haven't yet introduced any druids into my campaign and may never do so. Still, I have been thinking about them and what their class will be like. It'll certainly be based heavily on the Supplement III version of the class, but there's a big part of my that really likes the notion of druids as made up entirely of formerly Lawful or Chaotic clerics who've abandoned their old faiths and adopted a new one. There's something very Moorocockian -- something very rebellious -- about this approach that appeals to me. The trick, though, is to ensure that the druids never come across as hippy-dippy, kumbaya types. I frankly hate that conception of the druids and it's certainly not one that belongs in a setting that takes its cues from swords-and-sorcery. Instead, the druids will indeed have a certain nobility to them, one that's mixed in with a certain cruelty and inhumanity. These are people, after all, who turned their backs not only on the gods but on humanity as well, throwing their lot in with insensate Nature, which cares not for the fate of neither men nor mankind. It's a harsh, unmerciful philosophy and Law has good reason to view it as every much as big a threat as Chaos.
Taken together, it's all very suggestive, as if there were some kind of specific understanding of alignment at work here. I know that's probably not true at all, but it doesn't change the suggestiveness of it all -- a suggestiveness that Frank Mentzer spun in a very interesting way in his edition of the D&D rules. His Companion Rules druid is a kind of "proto-prestige class" that's parasitic upon the cleric class. Druids are Neutral clerics who abandon their old faith and embrace the ways of Nature. in the process shedding some old abilities (like turning undead) and acquiring new ones (such as new spells). I think Mentzer's druid is a riff off the old OD&D rules about clerical alignment and I've always rather liked it. In Dwimmermount, druids -- and Nature -- stand outside the battles of Law and Chaos. Consequently, they're generally regarded with suspicion by most folk, particularly those siding with Law, since they have a "with us or against us" mentality.
I haven't yet introduced any druids into my campaign and may never do so. Still, I have been thinking about them and what their class will be like. It'll certainly be based heavily on the Supplement III version of the class, but there's a big part of my that really likes the notion of druids as made up entirely of formerly Lawful or Chaotic clerics who've abandoned their old faiths and adopted a new one. There's something very Moorocockian -- something very rebellious -- about this approach that appeals to me. The trick, though, is to ensure that the druids never come across as hippy-dippy, kumbaya types. I frankly hate that conception of the druids and it's certainly not one that belongs in a setting that takes its cues from swords-and-sorcery. Instead, the druids will indeed have a certain nobility to them, one that's mixed in with a certain cruelty and inhumanity. These are people, after all, who turned their backs not only on the gods but on humanity as well, throwing their lot in with insensate Nature, which cares not for the fate of neither men nor mankind. It's a harsh, unmerciful philosophy and Law has good reason to view it as every much as big a threat as Chaos.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
More Hendryx Information
In the first part of my two-part interview with ex-TSR designer Kevin Hendryx, Allan Grohe asked the question, "Do you touch on the ex-TSR folks' infamous newsletter, by chance? IIRC, Kevin was one of the primary instigators of its creation and distribution!" In answer, I have a reply direct from Kevin Hendryx himself. He says:
Lawrence Schick and I began this little private fanzine/newsletter in 1983, while we worked in the same office at Coleco. Just as a lark, and an outlet for our energies and a desire to maintain ties among the ex-TSR crew.And there you have it.
I sold my original two sets of this ("The CTHULHU CHRONICLE") in late 2007 to an avid TSR collector. There were 7 issues, if I recall correctly, published irregularly and only circulated among ex-TSR staff. Plenty of gossip and humor (?) and in-jokes, fully illustrated and wacky. We got contributions from other TSR alumni, including a few pages of hilarious sketches and jokes done by Paul Reiche and Erol Otus when they were completely sloshed, but mainly it was created and assembled by Lawrence and myself, photocopied, and sent out. Only a few dozen of each issue were ever "published". Industry news, gossip, deliberate lies, parodies of TSR products and employees, doodles -- it was like a MAD magazine for the in-crowd. When I left Coleco it became too much work for Lawerence on his lonesome so he folded it and started his "The Fort Mudge Moan" private fanzine instead, which ran for another few years but was primarily interested in comic books, not the game biz.
In Praise of the Rules Cyclopedia
Long-time readers of this blog will know I'm not a huge fan of the 1983 Frank Mentzer-edited version of Dungeons & Dragons, even though I retain a lot of fondness for the Companion Rules that are part of that series. The reasons for my dislike are partially esthetic and partially philosophical, but they're not really important right now, because I'm not actually going to talk about those boxed sets in this entry. Instead, I'm going to talk about their 1991 Aaron Allston-edited descendent, the Dungeons & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia.The Rules Cyclopedia was, in many ways, the final gasp of OD&D, as it was the last time TSR published a version of D&D that wasn't a sub-set or spin-off of AD&D. Weighing in at just over 300 pages, it was also a complete game, containing all you needed to create and play characters from levels 1 through 36. When I say "complete," I'm not exaggerating (much), since the Cyclopedia had rules not just for characters, combat, spells, monsters, and treasures, as you expect, but also rules for stronghold construction, domain management, mass combat, and planar adventuring -- the entirety of the now-missing D&D endgame. With this book alone, you have everything you'd ever need to play endless D&D campaigns.
Some would assert that the original three little brown books are just as complete as this 304-page tome and do so in the span of far fewer pages. There's much truth in that assertion and goodness knows no one needs as much explication as the Cyclopedia provides in order to create and maintain a D&D campaign. However, the truth is that OD&D, despite being first chronologically, is probably the most advanced of all the D&D rules sets. It's not a good fit for beginners or for gamers who aren't accustomed to having to "wing it" at nearly every turn as their campaign unfolds. For such neophytes, books like the Rules Cyclopedia are a godsend, providing just enough detail to be useful as references but not so much as to reduce the whole endeavor to an exercise in bland number-crunching. The Rules Cyclopedia in my opinion strikes a fairly happy medium between the extremes to which roleplaying games can fall prey.
More than that, though, reading through this book, I don't get the sense that it was part of a grand plan to sell more products. Instead, it feels very much like a stand-alone product. Certainly there are many references to other D&D products -- many of them AD&D 2e products, oddly enough -- but these references don't detract from the overpowering completeness of this single volume. When one compares it to the bulk of TSR's output in the early 90s, most of which were clearly intended as mere pieces in a larger product line, the Cyclopedia seems all the more anomalous. It's as if it were someone's pet project that they somehow managed to sneak on to the release schedule in between Volumes 632 and 633 of the Encyclopedia Magica and after the 115th domain book for Birthright.
That's not to say I love everything about this book. Even as relatively slim as it is, it's still too long for my liking and wastes a lot of space on things I'd rather not have seen (like a skill system or an overview of the Mystara setting). Nevertheless, I always keep this book close at hand and enjoy re-reading it every now and then. When I do so, I often have to fight off the urge to start a campaign using these rules as-is. There's just something very appealing about this book, something that's very hard for me to quantify. I suspect it's that the Rules Cyclopedia somehow manages to steer itself between the Scylla of AD&D's complexity and the Charybdis of OD&D's sketchiness -- a sweet spot for many gamers, especially in an age when modern editions of D&D dwarf even 1e in length and complication.
Retrospective: The Awful Green Things from Outer Space
If boardgame designers had their own religion, surely Tom Wham would be their god of mischief. Over the course of the last 30+ years, he's designed some of the most delightfully offbeat but playable games I've ever owned, including my personal favorite, 1980's The Awful Green Things from Outer Space.
TAGTFOS, like many Tom Wham efforts, appeared first in the pages of Dragon magazine, but, when TSR was looking to expand its product lines into the realm of family boardgames, it was one of several games chosen for this purpose. Since I never owned issue 28 of Dragon, the boxed version was my first encounter with the game and I loved it from the first. Much like Dungeon!, it very quickly became a staple of my gaming group, something we'd play when we were waiting for our friends to arrive for the RPG session or when we didn't have the time to run an adventure module or whatever.
I think what we liked about the game was that it wasn't just playable but re-playable. Much of the game play was pretty random, from the placement of starting positions to the effectiveness of various tactics, and that ensured that every game was different. A strategy that might work in one game wasn't guaranteed to work in another, because each game had its own unique starting conditions. Success in TAGTFOS was dependent on being a quick thinker who could roll with the random punches the dice threw at you.
Sometimes that was frustrating, I'll admit, and it wasn't uncommon to have victory snatched from your grasp because the canister of Zgwortz didn't work the "right" way this time around, but that was also part of the game's fun. Its loony unpredictability guaranteed that, even if you did find yourself overwhelmed by the Green Things, you had fun nonetheless. Indeed, sometimes it was more fun to lose the game spectacularly than it was to eke out a narrow victory against the odds. Perhaps there's a lesson here for us in the old school movement, as we try to convince our wayward brethren of the joys of random mayhem and death.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
OSRIC is Mine
Thanks to the kindness of Tim Brannan, who saved me from having to pay Lulu's ungodly Canadian shipping costs, I now own a shiny, new, hardcover copy of OSRIC. I'd already seen the final release version of this game in PDF form months ago, but that couldn't compare to the, well, majesty of holding all 380+ pages of it in my hands this afternoon. OSRIC is an extraordinary piece of work -- by far and away the most ambitious of all the retro-clone/simulacrum games published to date. I'm frankly in awe of what Matt Finch and Stuart Marshall accomplished and there's no question I'll get a lot of use out of this book.That said, I'm still a bit disappointed that OSRIC isn't a fully open game like Swords & Wizardry and Labryinth Lord. Had it been released in such a fashion, I suspect that OSRIC might be getting wider use by publishers than it seems to be. I admit I may simply not have noticed evidence to the contrary, but, from where I'm sitting, it seems as if S&W and LL are garnering more attention and support, both by gamers and third party publishers. That the 1e conversions of Goodman's Dungeon Crawl Classics aren't using OSRIC disappoints me. Heck, even Expeditious Retreat Press's Malevolent and Benign, which is explicitly sold as "a first edition bestiary," isn't an OSRIC product, which strikes me as very odd.
I'm sure there are reasons why OSRIC, the original retro-clone, now seems (to me anyway) to have been overshadowed by its younger siblings, but it's sad nonetheless. I was, for most of my gaming existence, a staunch 1e aficionado and I still retain much love for AD&D, even if my own tastes have moved closer to OD&D in recent years. Consequently, I want to see OSRIC prosper. Even if it's not likely to be my go-to game for old school fun these days, I think it's important that the standard bearer for the Gygaxian patrimony of the hobby be successful and widely used by gamers and publishers alike, which is why I hope my perceptions are mistaken.
Regardless, the print version of the game is simply awesome. Many hearty congratulations to everyone involved in its release and much thanks from me for making the kind of contribution to the old school renaissance I can only dream of doing.
Interview: Skip Williams
Anyone who reads this blog knows that I'm keenly interested in living connections between the early days of the hobby -- and the fan cultures out of which it grew -- and the present day. Sadly, those connections are becoming fewer and fewer as the years take their toll, which is why it's always a pleasure to speak with someone who was a young person in those days.
Skip Williams was still in school when D&D was released in 1974 and thereafter found himself playing in the legendary Greyhawk campaign, the second RPG campaign in history. He subsequently worked at TSR in a variety of capacities before moving on to Wizards of the Coast, where he was involved in the design of the third edition of Dungeons & Dungeons. Together these experiences give him a unique perspective on the history of the hobby and its most famous game.
Mr Williams agreed to answer a few questions I put to him and his answers are presented below. I'd like to ask that anyone who comments do so in a respectful fashion, whatever your disagreements might be with the responses here. While I recognize that some of what Mr Williams says might be at odds with the received wisdom of the old school community, that's no excuse for rudeness and I will not hesitate to delete comments that I feel step over the bounds of common courtesy, so please rein in your enthusiasms before I have to do it for you.
1. I usually begin by asking my interviewee how they entered the hobby of roleplaying. In your case, I suspect you became involved in the hobby because you went to school Gary Gygax's son, Ernie. Is that correct?
Mostly correct. I've told this story before, so I'll keep it short.
I first became aware of gaming one summer when I saw a picture of of some people playing a game with tanks. It turned out it was an article about Gen Con, which was held in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, my home town at the time. I soon discovered that several of my school classmates were playing various wargames (D&D had not been invented yet). When D&D hit the shelves, I was soon involved in a couple of campaigns, and my classmate, Ernie Gygax approached me about getting involved in an even newer game, Warriors of Mars. That, in turn, got me introduced to the Gygax household and to the fledgling TSR.
2. Were you a participant in the original Greyhawk campaign refereed by Gary and Rob Kuntz and, if so, which characters did you play?
Ah, you're giving me a chance to split hairs here.
Gary ran the very first Greyhawk campaign using the map from the Outdoor Survival game and his notes for the future D&D Game (the very first D&D suggests getting Outdoor Survival and using it for your campaign map). After TSR published D&D, Gary drew a campaign map of his own and that became the Greyhawk setting everyone knows. I was involved in that campaign pretty much from the start, having seen the map laid out on Gary's dining room table.
In "New Greyhawk," I had several characters. The most famous of these was Rufus of Hommlet (or Rufus of Skipperton as Gary named him in one of his novels). Rufus explored the Temple of Elemental Evil and eventually became a bigwig in Hommlet. He's mentioned in the modules Gary wrote about the Temple of Elemental Evil campaign.
I also had a halfling thief (these days D&D players would call him a rogue) called Phalangas, or "Fingers," who ran around the City of Greyhawk causing as much trouble as he could, and picking pockets on the way. I only ever played Phalangas when Rob Kuntz, Gary's co-DM decided to run a pickup game, so no one has heard of him until now.
My longest-running character in the Greyhawk campaign was a human fighter named Boaric. Boaric was no great shakes, but he rubbed elbows with the big boys in the campaign (Tenser, Erac's Cousin, and Robilar to name a few) and was involved on some famous adventures. He was involved in an aborted expedition into the Tomb of Horrors. His biggest accomplishment there was dragging various bits and pieces of his former comrades back out. He also hacked and slashed his way through Against the Giants until coming toe to toe with Snurre Ironbelly. That episode ended badly for all, and it took a wish to get us back on our feet. Boaric also made a few trips to The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror, and briefly owned the Invulnerable Coat of Arnd.
Boaric was the only character I played under both Greyhawk DMs, Gary and Rob Kuntz.
3. You're thanked by name in both the AD&D Players Handbook and Dungeon Masters Guide. Were there any specific contributions you made to the writing or development of either?
In the early days of D&D, everybody did things his own way. I was involved in several campaigns in my high school days and I essentially found a different version of the game in each. I used to have talks with Gary about how the game ought to work (often during commercial breaks for televised football games). We talked about everything from how spells are cast and aimed to how much a DM ought to manipulate events in a campaign. It was those talks, I'm sure, that Gary was thinking of when he named me a contributor.
4. One of the many "lost" D&D supplements about which gamers still talk is Shadowland, a product that would have detailed the Plane of Shadow. According to Gary, this was to have been a collaboration between himself and you. Do you remember anything about this project or why it never came to pass?
I remember quite a bit abut the project, and I came very close to getting it rolling again a few years ago. It involved an expedition to the Plane of Shadow where the party would discover, shades, shadow dragons, and several of those enigmatic quasi-deities Gary was always pulling out of his hat. My notes on the plane eventually were co-opted for the Planescape setting.
What killed the project, mostly, was lack of time. Gary became interested in getting a D&D Movie off the ground, and I was interested in my college homework and eventually in running the Gen Con Game Fair. Somehow, the two of us never got back together to finish the thing.
5. Of the principal designers of Third Edition, you're the only one who had a direct connection to the earliest days of the hobby. Do you feel your longstanding, personal connection to those days informed your work on 3e and, if so, how?
Mostly what I brought to the design effort from those days was a sharp sense of how things can go wrong. Whenever we came to a place in the rules where I knew DMs and players were going to clash, I'd tell a "campaign from hell" story, in which a character (mine or someone else's) was in peril and the DM made the most illogical and completely off the wall ruling you could imagine. I tied to be very careful that all the loose boards in the system were well nailed down. Of course, people still found ways to pry them loose again.
6. For many years, you acted as "the Sage," providing official answers to questions about the rules of D&D in the pages of Dragon, a role you continue to assume for Kobold Quarterly. I remember Gary once complaining that, in the early days, fans of D&D would call him at his home to ask him rules questions and he was baffled as to why anyone needed him to come up with answers, a feeling many early TSR staffers apparently shared. Do you see any contradiction between the desire of many fans for official answers to their questions and the belief of many early designers that players should come up with their own answers?
It's a huge contradiction. The early designers were wrong. It comes down to this: If you want to be in control of your character, you have to have some idea how anything you might try is going to come out. and you can't know that unless you have some idea of how the rules are going to handle the situation. If the GM is making capricious decisions about what happens in the game, you're always shooting in the dark and you have no real control over your character at all. Think of how hard it would be to, say, learn to ride a bicycle if the laws of physics were constantly in flux. The game just works better if the DM and players have similar expectations about how the rules handle things.
7. I think most gamers are sympathetic to the concern about capriciousness by the referee, but some would nevertheless argue that having official answers can have the opposite problem of reducing the referee to being a less active participant in the adjudication of the rules than he might have been in the early days of the game. Given that, what do you see is the proper role for the referee as it relates to the adjudication of rules?
The referee is there to keep the game moving. As Patton once said, a good answer today is better than a perfect answer next week.
A well-written rules set is the best friend a DM can have. It helps manage the player's expectations and gives the DM a leg to stand on when things don't go the players' way.
8. What RPGs do you currently play?
D&D 3.5 and 4.0
Big Eyes, Small Mouth
High Adventure Role Playing
Skip Williams was still in school when D&D was released in 1974 and thereafter found himself playing in the legendary Greyhawk campaign, the second RPG campaign in history. He subsequently worked at TSR in a variety of capacities before moving on to Wizards of the Coast, where he was involved in the design of the third edition of Dungeons & Dungeons. Together these experiences give him a unique perspective on the history of the hobby and its most famous game.
Mr Williams agreed to answer a few questions I put to him and his answers are presented below. I'd like to ask that anyone who comments do so in a respectful fashion, whatever your disagreements might be with the responses here. While I recognize that some of what Mr Williams says might be at odds with the received wisdom of the old school community, that's no excuse for rudeness and I will not hesitate to delete comments that I feel step over the bounds of common courtesy, so please rein in your enthusiasms before I have to do it for you.
1. I usually begin by asking my interviewee how they entered the hobby of roleplaying. In your case, I suspect you became involved in the hobby because you went to school Gary Gygax's son, Ernie. Is that correct?
Mostly correct. I've told this story before, so I'll keep it short.
I first became aware of gaming one summer when I saw a picture of of some people playing a game with tanks. It turned out it was an article about Gen Con, which was held in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, my home town at the time. I soon discovered that several of my school classmates were playing various wargames (D&D had not been invented yet). When D&D hit the shelves, I was soon involved in a couple of campaigns, and my classmate, Ernie Gygax approached me about getting involved in an even newer game, Warriors of Mars. That, in turn, got me introduced to the Gygax household and to the fledgling TSR.
2. Were you a participant in the original Greyhawk campaign refereed by Gary and Rob Kuntz and, if so, which characters did you play?
Ah, you're giving me a chance to split hairs here.
Gary ran the very first Greyhawk campaign using the map from the Outdoor Survival game and his notes for the future D&D Game (the very first D&D suggests getting Outdoor Survival and using it for your campaign map). After TSR published D&D, Gary drew a campaign map of his own and that became the Greyhawk setting everyone knows. I was involved in that campaign pretty much from the start, having seen the map laid out on Gary's dining room table.
In "New Greyhawk," I had several characters. The most famous of these was Rufus of Hommlet (or Rufus of Skipperton as Gary named him in one of his novels). Rufus explored the Temple of Elemental Evil and eventually became a bigwig in Hommlet. He's mentioned in the modules Gary wrote about the Temple of Elemental Evil campaign.
I also had a halfling thief (these days D&D players would call him a rogue) called Phalangas, or "Fingers," who ran around the City of Greyhawk causing as much trouble as he could, and picking pockets on the way. I only ever played Phalangas when Rob Kuntz, Gary's co-DM decided to run a pickup game, so no one has heard of him until now.
My longest-running character in the Greyhawk campaign was a human fighter named Boaric. Boaric was no great shakes, but he rubbed elbows with the big boys in the campaign (Tenser, Erac's Cousin, and Robilar to name a few) and was involved on some famous adventures. He was involved in an aborted expedition into the Tomb of Horrors. His biggest accomplishment there was dragging various bits and pieces of his former comrades back out. He also hacked and slashed his way through Against the Giants until coming toe to toe with Snurre Ironbelly. That episode ended badly for all, and it took a wish to get us back on our feet. Boaric also made a few trips to The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror, and briefly owned the Invulnerable Coat of Arnd.
Boaric was the only character I played under both Greyhawk DMs, Gary and Rob Kuntz.
3. You're thanked by name in both the AD&D Players Handbook and Dungeon Masters Guide. Were there any specific contributions you made to the writing or development of either?
In the early days of D&D, everybody did things his own way. I was involved in several campaigns in my high school days and I essentially found a different version of the game in each. I used to have talks with Gary about how the game ought to work (often during commercial breaks for televised football games). We talked about everything from how spells are cast and aimed to how much a DM ought to manipulate events in a campaign. It was those talks, I'm sure, that Gary was thinking of when he named me a contributor.
4. One of the many "lost" D&D supplements about which gamers still talk is Shadowland, a product that would have detailed the Plane of Shadow. According to Gary, this was to have been a collaboration between himself and you. Do you remember anything about this project or why it never came to pass?
I remember quite a bit abut the project, and I came very close to getting it rolling again a few years ago. It involved an expedition to the Plane of Shadow where the party would discover, shades, shadow dragons, and several of those enigmatic quasi-deities Gary was always pulling out of his hat. My notes on the plane eventually were co-opted for the Planescape setting.
What killed the project, mostly, was lack of time. Gary became interested in getting a D&D Movie off the ground, and I was interested in my college homework and eventually in running the Gen Con Game Fair. Somehow, the two of us never got back together to finish the thing.
5. Of the principal designers of Third Edition, you're the only one who had a direct connection to the earliest days of the hobby. Do you feel your longstanding, personal connection to those days informed your work on 3e and, if so, how?
Mostly what I brought to the design effort from those days was a sharp sense of how things can go wrong. Whenever we came to a place in the rules where I knew DMs and players were going to clash, I'd tell a "campaign from hell" story, in which a character (mine or someone else's) was in peril and the DM made the most illogical and completely off the wall ruling you could imagine. I tied to be very careful that all the loose boards in the system were well nailed down. Of course, people still found ways to pry them loose again.
6. For many years, you acted as "the Sage," providing official answers to questions about the rules of D&D in the pages of Dragon, a role you continue to assume for Kobold Quarterly. I remember Gary once complaining that, in the early days, fans of D&D would call him at his home to ask him rules questions and he was baffled as to why anyone needed him to come up with answers, a feeling many early TSR staffers apparently shared. Do you see any contradiction between the desire of many fans for official answers to their questions and the belief of many early designers that players should come up with their own answers?
It's a huge contradiction. The early designers were wrong. It comes down to this: If you want to be in control of your character, you have to have some idea how anything you might try is going to come out. and you can't know that unless you have some idea of how the rules are going to handle the situation. If the GM is making capricious decisions about what happens in the game, you're always shooting in the dark and you have no real control over your character at all. Think of how hard it would be to, say, learn to ride a bicycle if the laws of physics were constantly in flux. The game just works better if the DM and players have similar expectations about how the rules handle things.
7. I think most gamers are sympathetic to the concern about capriciousness by the referee, but some would nevertheless argue that having official answers can have the opposite problem of reducing the referee to being a less active participant in the adjudication of the rules than he might have been in the early days of the game. Given that, what do you see is the proper role for the referee as it relates to the adjudication of rules?
The referee is there to keep the game moving. As Patton once said, a good answer today is better than a perfect answer next week.
A well-written rules set is the best friend a DM can have. It helps manage the player's expectations and gives the DM a leg to stand on when things don't go the players' way.
8. What RPGs do you currently play?
D&D 3.5 and 4.0
Big Eyes, Small Mouth
High Adventure Role Playing
Monday, June 29, 2009
Pulp Fantasy Library: The Well of the Unicorn
Fletcher Pratt, the only author named twice in Appendix N of the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide, was also a military historian and a wargamer, writing a set of naval miniatures rules in 1943. His 1948 novel, The Well of the Unicorn, clearly shows his love of both history and military matters. Its setting is reminiscent of the early Middle Ages, with the action taking place in an analog of northern Europe, where raiders known as "Vulkings" have invaded the kingdom of Dalarna and imposed taxes so oppressive that many people, including the novel's protagonist, Airar Alvarson, find themselves reduced to serfdom. Of course, Airar isn't content to remain a mere peasant under the rule of foreign invaders and so he sets off to find some means to overcome them and restore his land to its former state.If all this sounds uninspired and hackneyed, that's because it is. Now. In 1948, though, fantasies of this sort weren't an industry. Remember that The Lord of the Rings was still six years in the future, never mind its legions of imitators. And while The Well of the Unicorn is neither as well-written nor as timeless as Tolkien's novel, it's still a cut above most of its contemporaries. The titular well is a magical spring possessing magical properties, chiefly its ability to bring peace to opponents who agree to drink of its waters. Unsurprisingly, Airar seeks out this well, in the process grappling with the question of free will and human action and the conflict between freedom and societal stability.
The Well of the Unicorn is an enjoyable novel, far more serious than one might expect if all one had read were Pratt's collaborations with L. Sprague De Camp. It's clear that De Camp was the wit and Pratt the philosophical one. There's certainly an earnestness to this book that might not appeal to everyone, but, as I said, when one compares it to the vapidity of a lot of the fantasies produced at the time, it's a welcome diversion and one worth reading if one has the opportunity to do so.
A Good Post
I'm not usually one to point out good posts on other blogs, since we all pretty much read the same ones anyway, but I'm going to make an exception in the case of Delta's latest entry on "games within games," because he articulates very well some thoughts I've been having lately. It's well worth your time to check it out.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
