Sir Yamashiro Li Halan

I often comically lament that I spent my personal character points on the wrong abilities and skills, choosing writing over much more sought after – and profitable – skills like mapmaking or art. Dyson Logos can do both of the latter, which is why I told him that, if he weren't my friend, I'd hate him. Yesterday, while playing in the fourth session of our new Fading Suns campaign, he drew his character, Sir Yamashiro Li Halan. It's a lovely piece of art and one that does a great job of visually bringing to life this drug-addicted rake of a nobleman. 

I suggested to Dyson he give the same treatment to the other characters in the campaign, but I was only half-serious, since I know it'd be a lot of work. Still, it's amazing how helpful it can be to have portraits of characters in a campaign. The make them real in a way that mere words frequently cannot. That's why I commissioned Zhu Bajiee to produce a commemorative portrait of all the important player and non-player characters of the recently completed House of Worms campaign. It'll not only be a great memento of the campaign itself – the longest I have ever refereed – but it will also help me to recall the characters, who are really what helped keep the game going for as long as it did. 

Inquiry

Another public post over at my Patreon, one that's specifically directed at those who are already members but that might be of general interest to other regular readers (at least I hope so). 

Retrospective: The Complete Priest's Handbook

When the second edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons appeared in 1989, one of its implicit goals was to make the game’s classes more flexible and setting-driven. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the treatment of clerics. First Edition AD&D more or less followed the template laid down by OD&D, where the cleric was an odd hybrid of Templar, exorcist, and battlefield medic. This was a pragmatic invention designed to plug holes in early play (someone had to turn undead and heal wounds). The cleric class was thus foundational to the game, but rarely inspiring. If my experience is anything to go by, few players aspired to be a cleric and would only acquiesce to doing so because the party needed healing.

The Complete Priest’s Handbook, published in 1990, represents TSR’s most serious attempt to rethink the cleric, building on what had already been established in the 2e Player's Handbook. Written by Aaron Allston, it stands as one of the most conceptually ambitious entries in the “Complete” series, as well as one I really liked at the time of its release. The supplement's title is significant. Second Edition, you may recall, replaced the term "cleric" with "priest" as the name of the broad class category. “Cleric” became only one example within that category – a type of priest, much as the druid was another. This terminological shift heralded a new approach to divine spellcasters. Where 1e’s cleric was monolithic, 2e’s priest was varied. There could be hundreds of priestly archetypes, each distinct to its faith and overall ethos. Allston’s book took that conceptual flexibility and attempted to make it practical.

At the heart of The Complete Priest’s Handbook lies 2e’s concept of specialty priests as a flexible framework for portraying the servants of specific gods or cosmic powers. Rather than treating every priest as a lightly re-skinned version of the same armored miracle-worker, Allston provided Dungeon Masters with clear guidelines for customizing spell access, weapons, armor, granted powers, and restrictions to reflect each deity’s nature. A priest of a war god might wield swords and command battle magic, while one devoted to a god of secrets could be forbidden to fight openly but gifted with divinations and hidden knowledge. The idea had its roots in Dragonlance Adventures (1987) and the 2e Player’s Handbook, of course, but Allston expanded and refined it in meaningful ways. He demonstrated that the faiths of a campaign world should shape the rules of divine magic, not the other way around.

Much of the supplement reads less like a player’s guide than a campaign design manual. Allston encouraged DMs to think about pantheons, from who the gods are, what their worshippers are like, and how their clergy interact with worldly institutions. He presented religions as social, political, and metaphysical forces, not merely sources of spells. From here, he moves on to designing priesthoods, walking the reader through the process of defining a faith’s beliefs, organization, duties, and other details, with each choice shaping both flavor and play. Allston even made space for philosophical or non-theistic priests, who draw power from devotion to an ideal or cosmic principle. That idea was barely hinted at previously, but, in this supplement, it's offered as an unambiguous possibility (one that I embraced wholeheartedly in my Emaindor campaign from high school).

In many ways, The Complete Priest’s Handbook was TSR’s first real attempt to treat religion as a serious worldbuilding concern rather than an afterthought. The gods and their faiths were no longer just color for the background; they became engines of conflict, patronage, and adventure. The priest was not simply a healer or support character but a representative of a larger belief structure and institution. One can argue that this was always true in AD&D and perhaps it was, but, for many of us, it took books like this to make us think seriously about what that actually meant in play.

Like all entries in the “Complete” line, The Complete Priest’s Handbook included a selection of kits, optional templates meant to add flavor and specialization. Ironically, I never found most of them especially interesting. Too many represented vague social roles, like the Nobleman Priest, the Peasant Priest, and so on, rather than more distinctive archetypes like the Crusader or the Missionary. Arguably, 2e priests didn’t need kits at all. Between their spheres of magic and granted powers, the class already had plenty of built-in flexibility. However, compared to what other classes received in their "Complete" books, this section felt oddly underbaked.

What truly stands out, though, is how The Complete Priest’s Handbook reflects a broader shift in TSR’s design philosophy. Second Edition was increasingly interested in building distinct, coherent settings for AD&D. One could reasonably argue this was motivated by a desire to sell more products, but, even so, it had an intriguing creative side effect: it pushed the rules toward flexibility and world-specific interpretation. Instead of assuming a single “cleric” archetype for every world, 2e encouraged Dungeon Masters to make each campaign’s religions – and thus its priests – unique.

Of course, the book is not without its flaws. Balancing specialty priests was left largely to the DM’s discretion and the examples varied widely in quality. Allston’s approach assumed a polytheistic setting where divine diversity was the norm, leaving monotheistic or dualistic campaigns to do some extra work. Yet, these are minor quibbles compared to the book’s larger accomplishment. The Complete Priest’s Handbook encouraged DMs to shape faith to fit their worlds and, just as importantly, to let their worlds shape faith in return. For a game as rule-bound as AD&D sometimes was, that felt genuinely liberating.

For all my reservations about the "Complete" series as a whole, I still regard The Complete Priest’s Handbook as one of its true high points, a book that took a neglected class and made it central not just to the mechanics of the game but to the presentation of the setting in which it was played.

The Articles of Dragon: "The Nine Hells Revisited"

As a kid, I was endlessly fascinated by AD&D's Gygaxian cosmology of the planes of existence, especially the so-called Lower Planes, populated as they were by the baroque categories and hierarchies of devils, daemons, and demons (not to mention demodands and hordlings). For that reason, I adored Ed Greenwood's two-part series on the Nine Hells, which appeared in issues #75 and #76 of Dragon. They were, in my opinion, one of the best explorations of the Outer Planes in First Edition, not merely for the new information they presented, but also for the way Greenwood succeeded in making the Hells locales where characters might have adventures. Then and now, that's very important to me. Much as I enjoy imaginative "lore dumps," background information is always improved when it supports play. That's why, more four decades later, I still look back with affection on "The Nine Hells," Part I and II.

Apparently, I wasn't the only reader of Dragon who enjoyed those articles, because, a year later, in issue #91 (November 1984), we got "The Nine Hells Revisited." Ay 16 pages long, this article wasn't as long as Part II of the original series, but it was slightly longer than Part I, meaning it was a substantial addition of new material about the Nine Hells. I was overjoyed to see its appearance in the issue and even happier when I'd finally read it. Greenwood had once again written the kind of article I wanted more of and, while it's not quite as groundbreaking as his previous work, it was still quite memorable.

Whereas "The Nine Hells" had been a systematic presentation of the plane of ultimate Lawful Evil, focusing on each layer, its notable features, and denizens, "The Nine Hells Revisited" was more of a grab bag. For example, the article begins with a brief discussion of how mortal can "safely" deal with devils through magic, followed by the proper pronunciation of certain devils' names (important if you want to ensure your summoning rituals work properly). Then, Greenwood gives us six pages of "outcast" devils – greater devils whose offenses against one of Hell's archdevils resulted in their being removed from the plane's hierarchy and left to wander. These devils are quite interesting, because their independent status makes them great antagonists for AD&D characters of mid to high-level without necessarily involving all the legions of Hell in their schemes.

Next up is a discussion of the treasures of Hell and the unique metals to be found there. Though not especially interesting in their own right, these topics are eminently practical for adventures that take place in Hell or involve their inhabitants. Much more fascinating to me was Greenwood's discussion of mortal devil worshipers and agents and "The Lord Who Watches," Gargoth. Gargoth is another unique devil, but, unlike the ones described earlier, he is of immense power, being an exiled archdevil, who was once second only to Asmodeus in power. Exiled to the Prime Material Plane, he now pursues his own goals. Gargoth makes for a great high-level enemy and longtime readers of Dragon will appreciate Greenwood's subtle incorporation of elements of Alex Von Thorn's "The Politics of Hell," which appeared in issue #28 of the magazine (August 1979), reprinted in The Best of Dragon, Volume II.

(As an aside, Alex Von Thorn was the co-owner of a game store here in Toronto that Ed Greenwood would occasionally visit. I got to know Alex, too, and even gamed with him a few times.)

The article wraps up with discussions of the nature of devils, which is to say, how their society operates, traveling the River Styx, and a "note to the DM." The latter is interesting, because Greenwood makes it very clear that devils are very powerful beings and the Dungeon Master should take pains not to overuse them or otherwise diminish them in the minds of players. Even the weakest named devils are dangerous foes and should offer a challenge. The DM needs to keep this in mind when employing them in adventures. This is a fair point, I think, but I wonder what occasioned its inclusion in the article.

 

"The Nine Hells Revisited" was, as I said, nowhere near as revelatory to me as its two predecessor articles. Nevertheless, I found it both enjoyable and information, not to mention practical. This wasn't just background information without any utility in play. Instead, it provided the Dungeon Master with a collection of details and foes he could use to inject a little bit of the infernal into his ongoing campaign. Being a devotee of the Outer Planes in my AD&D campaign at the time, I liked this one a lot. Even now, I think it's one of the more memorable Dragon articles of its era.

The 3 Waves of the RPG Moral Panic

I've mentioned many times on this blog that, to a great extent, I owe my introduction into the hobby of roleplaying to the furor surrounding the disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III in August 1979. Consequently, I've always had a deep interest in the history of the moral panics surrounding D&D and RPGs more generally. That's why I was intrigued when I saw that Seth Skorkowsky had released a lengthy video essay about this very topic. It's a well-presented and informative video and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in this subject. Thanks to Loren Rosson for recommending it to me.

Pulp Fantasy Library: Ex Oblivione

H.P. Lovecraft’s brief prose-poem “Ex Oblivione” tends to get overlooked when readers discuss his so-called Dream Cycle and I can understand why. At scarcely two pages long, it lacks the elaborate worldbuilding of The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath or the mythic resonance of "The White Ship." Yet, I think this slight, melancholy piece deserves more attention than it usually receives, if only because it reveals something essential about Lovecraft’s evolving view of dreams, escape, and, as its Latinate title suggests, oblivion.

Before turning to the piece itself, a few background details are worth noting. First and most intriguingly, “Ex Oblivione” is one of the few works Lovecraft ever published under a pseudonym, in this case Ward Phillips, a name that August Derleth would later use for his HPL stand-in in the touching story “The Lamp of Alhazred.” Second, the prose-poem first appeared in the March 1921 issue of The United Amateur, the journal of the United Amateur Press Association, an organization to which Lovecraft devoted much of his energy during the early years of his writing career. It did not receive “professional” publication until after his death, when Arkham House included it in Beyond the Wall of Sleep (1943).

Like several of Lovecraft’s early dream tales, “Ex Oblivione” is told by an unnamed dreamer who, weary of life, seeks a gate that will lead him beyond the bounds of waking reality. There’s a familiar texture here, with a manuscript inscribed on yellowed papyrus, a gate of bronze, and a secret known only to the dead. The language is the same high, antique diction that marks the other efforts of his Dunsanian period. On its surface, this could easily be another story of mystical adventure in the Dreamlands – except that's not what "Ex Oblivione" is at all.

Unlike his other dream narratives, this one isn’t really about wonder or discovery. Rather, it’s about release – release from life, memory, and even consciousness itself. When the dreamer finally passes through the gate, what he finds is not some transcendent realm of beauty but the ultimate nothingness that lies beyond all things. "Once it was entered, there would be no return." The peace he sought is not the peace of heaven or dream, but of extinction, the "native infinity of crystal oblivion from which the daemon Life had called me for one brief and desolate hour."

That conclusion gives “Ex Oblivione” a very different flavor from the rest of Lovecraft’s dream writings. Randolph Carter, for example, is nostalgic for the lost worlds of his youthful imagination. He travels through the Dreamlands not to die, but to rediscover wonder. The narrator of “Ex Oblivione,” by contrast, has no such illusions. He doesn’t seek new vistas; he seeks an end to vistas altogether. In that sense, this story marks a quiet but profound shift from romantic escapism toward the cosmic fatalism that would eventually come to define Lovecraft’s mature work.

It’s also worth remembering when Lovecraft wrote it. In 1921, he was only a few years removed from a long period of isolation and depression. In that sense, “Ex Oblivione” feels like a remnant of his earlier darker mood, a poetic expression of the same yearning for nonexistence that haunted his teenage and young adult years. The piece reads less like a story than a confession. It's a moment of weariness rendered in dream imagery. It’s the voice of someone who has dreamed too long and too deeply and has finally grown tired of even his own fantasies.

In stylistic terms, “Ex Oblivione” is still firmly rooted in Lovecraft’s early Dunsanian phase. The imagery and language would not have been out of place in The Book of Wonder. But whereas Dunsany’s dreamers usually awaken from their journeys sadder but wiser, Lovecraft’s narrator never wakes up at all. The story ends in stillness, not revelation. That’s the difference between Dunsany’s wistful mysticism and Lovecraft’s emerging materialism.

For that reason, I think it’s misleading to treat “Ex Oblivione” as simply another Dream Cycle story. It belongs to that group in imagery, perhaps, but not in spirit. Rather than celebrating the imagination, it questions whether imagination – or indeed existence itself – has any meaning at all. It’s a dream story that rejects dreaming, a meditation on escape that ends by denying even the possibility of return.

In that sense, “Ex Oblivione” stands as a bridge between Lovecraft’s early dream fantasies and his later cosmic horror. What the dreamer finds beyond the gate prefigures some of what Lovecraft’s later protagonists would confront in their own investigations, namely, a vast, impersonal universe where what peace that can be found lies only in surrender. "Ex Oblivione" is a minor work in scale, but not in theme. As an early glimpse of the fatal serenity that would come to haunt so much of Lovecraft's writing, I feel it's worth greater consideration than it typically receives.

Campaign Updates: Fading Suns

It's been a while since I last wrote a post about the three campaigns I'm currently refereeing and, while I will in due course have more information about both Dolmenwood and Barrett's Raiders, I thought I'd first take some time to fill you in on my newest campaign – Fading Suns. 

The campaign, which doesn't yet have a distinct name, has taken the spot of the recently-concluded House of Worms Empire of the Petal Throne campaign in my weekly rotation of games. Currently, there are six players, five of whom played in House of Worms, while the sixth player is a new addition – an old friend of mine who's wanted to game with me for years and only now has a spot opened up to make this possible. We're only three sessions in, but already the campaign is starting to take root, in large part, I think, because of the strength of the characters.

• Sir Yamashiro Li Halan is the nominal leader of the group, thanks to his noble birth and social standing. A minor scion of House Li Halan, Yamashiro is regarded as something of a family disgrace. Where most of his kin are solemn and devout, he is a notorious hedonist and carefree rake, more interested in pleasure than piety. Exiled from his homeworld of Rampart under the guise of a “grand tour” of the Empire, Yamashiro’s journey is meant to teach him humility and discipline. He, however, views it as an invitation to indulge his appetites and discover what delights the wider Known Worlds have to offer.
• Accompanying him is Father Kosta, an Urth Orthodox priest appointed as Yamashiro’s confessor, though the young noble shows little inclination to unburden his soul before the Pancreator. Patient and compassionate, Father Kosta relies on the former quality most of all when tending to his wayward charge. Unlike many of his brethren, he favors a gentle hand in spiritual matters, convinced that quiet persistence will, in time, reach even the most stubborn heart. He often recounts tales of his own reckless youth, when his misdeeds nearly led to his death. Only through the mercy of the Pancreator did he survive to repent and now he sees it as his sacred duty to offer that same chance of redemption to others.
• Holai liTarken is an Umo’rin counselor, one of the alien Obun’s esteemed order of diplomats and empaths. Generations ago, his family fell into debt to House Li Halan and, in repayment, vowed that one of their line would forever serve the noble family. Holai now fulfills that ancient pledge as Yamashiro’s counselor and psychic advisor. Though he often finds humanity and its baffling blend of passion and prejudice difficult to comprehend, he approaches his duties with quiet dignity and sincere devotion, striving always to guide his charge with patience and wisdom.
• Iskander Ecevit is an Engineer, a member of the vast Merchant League, one of the three great pillars that uphold the Empire, alongside the noble houses and the Universal Church of the Celestial Sun. Once a soldier, Iskander’s life was forever changed by a near-fatal injury that left him broken and dying. The Engineers saved him with their arcane technologies, rebuilding him until he became something more machine than man. Fascinated by the relics of the Second Republic and the enigmatic works of the ancient Annunaki, Iskander devotes himself to uncovering their secrets. His hard-won knowledge and mechanical prowess now serve Yamashiro well as they journey together across the Known Worlds.
• Orphos is perhaps the most enigmatic member of Yamashiro’s entourage. A blunt, sharp-tongued cynic with little respect for the nobility – and even less for the Church – he belongs to the Scravers, a guild notorious for its scavengers, smugglers, and criminals. Despite his rough edges, Orphos proves invaluable thanks to his extensive underworld connections, which open doors closed to more polite travelers. His brash manner and disregard for decorum often attract unwanted attention, but his resourcefulness and streetwise instincts more than earn his place among Yamashiro’s companions.

You'll no doubt have noticed that I've only described five characters above, despite there being six players in the campaign. That's because, owing to real life scheduling conflicts, one of the players hasn't yet been able to attend our sessions. With luck, that will change soon and the coterie of player characters will at last be complete.

The campaign opens on the world of Pandemonium. Once called Grange, it was an idyllic agricultural planet, its fertile plains and temperate skies maintained by Second Republic terraforming engines that continued to hum along for centuries after the Fall. Now, those ancient machines are faltering. The vast farmlands beyond the capital city, The Hub, are drying up, the soil turning to dust as the world slowly dies. Life on Pandemonium has thus become harsh and uncertain. Yet House Decados still clings to it, not for its dwindling crops or crumbling cities, but for what lies within its system: a second jumpgate, long dormant and shrouded in mystery. To unlock its secrets would mean power beyond measure and every major faction knows it.

For now, Sir Yamashiro and his company move carefully through the tangled web of Pandemonium’s politics, learning who truly holds influence in The Hub and where their own ambitions might best take root.

Addicted to Dreams

I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to suggest that most of us who play or referee roleplaying games are readers first. Before we ever picked up polyhedral dice or scribbled on a character sheet, we had books – paperbacks with cracked spines and lurid covers, library copies borrowed and re-borrowed, pages filled with strange names, lost cities, and impossible creatures. It was through those stories that many of us first discovered the wonder of other worlds. I know I did. Long before I ever rolled a saving throw, I’d already learned what it meant to lose myself in another place, to be consumed by imagination, to live elsewhere, if only for a time.

That hunger – to be elsewhere – never really fades. It lingers in the back of the mind, calling us to dream again. It’s what drives writers to put pen to paper and referees to sketch maps or invent pantheons. It’s an act of creation born, at least in part, from dissatisfaction with the ordinary. In a way, it’s a quiet rebellion against the everyday, the only kind of rebellion a stick in the mud like me is capable of. The schoolyard and the shopping mall are all well and good, but they pale beside Moria or Melniboné. The imagination whispers, “There are other worlds than these,” and, once you’ve heard that whisper, it’s impossible not to believe it.

When I first discovered roleplaying games, what drew me in (though I couldn’t have articulated it at the time) was their invitation to take that same imaginative impulse, the one that led me to daydream in church or stare at the horizon as if something wondrous might appear and share it. Writing, for all its pleasures, is solitary, even lonely. It’s a private communion between the writer and the page. But RPGs opened the door to something altogether different, a kind of collaborative dreaming. Around the table, the game became a campfire and we were the storytellers gathered in its glow, shaping a dream together, speaking it aloud so that others could live in it too.

That’s the real magic of roleplaying. I hesitate to say that, because it can sound sentimental or pretentious, but it’s true nonetheless. Roleplaying lets us touch the same creative fire that first called us to stories: the power to imagine not just what is, but what could be. In that moment, we become co-authors of our own mythologies. The settings we build, the characters we play, even the dice we roll are all tools for bending reality toward something richer, stranger, and truer to that inner sense of wonder that first made us turn a page.

Maybe that’s the answer to the question I asked myself yesterday. Why did stuck with RPGs for all these decades when most of my childhood friends did not? I don’t keep playing out of nostalgia or habit. I keep playing because, even now, I’m still addicted to dreams. Roleplaying games give that addiction shape and fellowship. They remind me that imagination isn’t a childish escape, but one of the most human acts of all. It’s our ability to make meaning, to build worlds, to see beyond what’s immediately before us and, in doing so, to bring a little of those other worlds back with us.

In the end, that’s what the best games and the best stories both do. They invite us to live for a while in another world and then return to this one with new eyes, eyes that still, even after all these years, look to the horizon and wonder what might lie beyond.

Why I Stayed

My birthday was last week and, contrary to what I expected, it proved an occasion to look back over my life and ponder a few things. I don’t mean this in a maudlin or self-critical way. For the most part, I’m fairly content with my current existence and reasonably comfortable with my creeping senescence. Rather, I found myself thinking about the fact that, forty-six years after first discovering Dungeons & Dragons, I’m still actively involved in the hobby of roleplaying, while so many of the people with whom I first discovered it are not.

I was 10 years-old at the Christmas holidays of 1979, when I first opened the D&D Basic Set edited by J. Eric Holmes. That was the beginning of my journey. Through the end of childhood and into my early teens, roleplaying games felt like a shared discovery, something my friends and I stumbled into together, almost like finding a secret passage beneath the ordinary world. We played obsessively – after school, on weekends, and during those seemingly endless summer vacations. At the time, it would have seemed absurd to imagine any of us ever not playing. RPGs were simply what we did, eclipsing nearly every other pastime.

That shared enthusiasm didn’t last. By my mid-teens, very few of the friends with whom I’d entered the hobby were still playing. Some drifted away gradually, their interests and circumstances changing. Others dropped it abruptly, as if a curtain had fallen on that chapter of their lives. In the years that followed, careers, families, and the usual responsibilities of adulthood pulled still more away. Yet I’ve always wondered whether those explanations were truly sufficient. Many hobbies survive the transition to adulthood. In my circle of childhood friends, though, roleplaying games mostly did not.

To be fair, I eventually made other friends who shared my passion for gaming, but they were almost all people I met through the hobby, not the ones I’d grown up with. That’s why I often wonder why I stuck with it when so many others did not. I don’t believe it’s because I was more dedicated or imaginative; some of my friends were far more talented referees and players. Nor do I think the hobby itself changed in some way that pushed them out. They’d already drifted away long before the edition wars, the OSR, or any of the other developments one might offer as convenient explanations for their departures.

If I’ve come to any conclusion at all, it’s that roleplaying games continued to scratch an itch nothing else quite could. They combined the pleasures of reading, worldbuilding, problem-solving, and camaraderie into a single, strangely durable form. Even during my late high school years, when I didn’t play as often as I’d have liked, I still found myself returning to rulebooks, adventures, and setting material, much as one might return to a favorite novel or album. RPGs became part of the architecture of my inner life.

I don’t begrudge my childhood friends for having “abandoned” the hobby. Their lives simply went in other directions, as lives often do. I wouldn’t be surprised if some still remember our campaigns with fondness, even if they haven’t rolled a die in decades. Others may barely remember the details, but I remember those early days with great affection. In a very real sense, they laid the groundwork for the life I lead today. Even so, it’s hard not to wonder why I stayed immersed in this hobby while they did not.

I suspect many long-time gamers have had similar experiences. We are the ones who stayed, often without entirely meaning to. Something in roleplaying games held our attention long after the initial spark that brought us in. Perhaps that’s why so many of us older players end up blogging, designing, or running campaigns well into middle age. We’re still trying to understand what this odd pastime means to us and why it continues to matter so much after all these years.

In the end, I don’t know precisely why I stuck with RPGs when most of my childhood friends let them go. But I’m grateful I did. The hobby has given me friendships, creative outlets, and a way of thinking about the world that I doubt I would have found elsewhere. Maybe, in some small way, staying with it all these years is my way of honoring the unbridled joy we all felt around the table, back when we had no idea what we were doing and felt as if a vast, unknown world had been opened to us.

Retrospective: Conquest of the Empire

Stop me if you've heard this before: I was never a wargamer, but I liked the idea of wargames, specifically simulating a military or other conflict through the use of a board, tokens, and dice. There's just something inherently appealing to me about this, which probably explains why I've spent more than four decades trying but rarely succeeding at finding a wargame that really clicked with me. I owned and played a number of Avalon Hill and SPI games in my youth, but, with the exception of Diplomacy, I was never very good at them (and even there I was hampered by my inexplicable tendency to play Austria-Hungary).

However, in 1984, Milton Bradley released a line of games under the banner of the "Gamemaster Series" that caught my attention. The series was an experiment in bringing wargames to the mass market. Each entry in the series came in a massive, shelf-dominating box filled with lavish components and a rulebook that looked intimidating compared to more traditional boardgames like Monopoly or Risk. The series began with Axis & Allies, designed by Larry Harris, and followed swiftly with another of his creations, Conquest of the Empire.

While Axis & Allies presented World War II in game form, Conquest of the Empire did the same thing for the Roman Empire's Crisis of the Third Century. The game was a grand-scale battle for supremacy across the Mediterranean world after the death of Marcus Aurelius. It was, in every sense, a spectacle, a game whose physical components alone promised an epic experience before a single die was rolled. As a young history buff with a particular affection for Greco-Roman history, this was the game I'd been waiting for.

To appreciate Conquest of the Empire, it helps to recall what the gaming landscape looked like in the mid-1980s. The boundary between “mainstream” and “hobby” games was much starker than it is today. Wargames were, as I noted above, largely the province of companies like Avalon Hill or SPI. They were sold in specialty stores to an audience comfortable with long rulebooks and hex maps. By contrast, the Gamemaster Series was an attempt to bridge that gap by combining high production values, streamlined rules, and compelling subjects to attract both traditional hobbyists and curious outsiders like myself. 

Axis & Allies was, I gather, very successful. Certainly my friends and I enjoyed playing it and we did so often. Of course, even in the 1980s, World War II was a staple of wargames. Conquest of the Empire thus deviated just enough to be considered daring. Furthermore, its subject, the period of the Military Anarchy, was less familiar and its map of the Mediterranean world, divided into provinces and trade routes, hinted at something more intricate than the average family game. Of course, that's precisely why I loved it.

Opening Conquest of the Empire for the first time is something I cannot forget. To start, the box was enormous. Inside lay nearly four hundred molded plastic miniatures, such as legionnaires with raised shields, catapults, coins, and galleys to patrol the Mare Nostrum. There were also cities to build, roads to lay down, and an oversized, vividly illustrated board depicting the known world from Britannia in the northwest to Aegyptus in the southeast. Following the death of Marcus Aurelius, the empire teeters on the brink of chaos. Each player takes the role of a would-be emperor, commanding armies, building cities, taxing provinces, and waging war until one emerges victorious. It's a straightforward and appealing premise – especially to my teenage self.

Like Axis & Allies, the game was structured around economic management and military conquest. Provinces provided income, which could be spent to raise legions, fleets, and fortifications. Armies moved along roads or across the sea, engaging in battles resolved by simple dice rolls. Catapults were useful in sieges and galleys could ferry troops to distant shores. Victory went to the player who amassed the most wealth and territory, though, in practice, the game often ended in exhaustion or mutual ruin long before an emperor was crowned.

That said, the game was not without its flaws. Its economy could snowball rapidly, favoring whoever secured a few prosperous provinces early on. Combat could be pretty random, with legions sometimes crushed or exalted on a handful of dice. The rules for roads and taxation added an appealing Roman flavor but little in the way of meaningful choice. Players spent much of the game counting coins, rebuilding destroyed forces, and waiting for their next chance to strike. One might argue that some of this is, in fact, realistic or at least true to history, but it didn't always make for a satisfying game.

Even so, Conquest of the Empire often felt epic. Setting up the board, arranging your legions, and surveying the Mediterranean was a ritual of grandeur. It was easy to imagine oneself as a latter-day Caesar, eyeing the spoils of empire. The game rewarded patience more than finesse and spectacle more than subtlety, but it delivered a sense of scale that my friends and I found incredibly alluring. It's little wonder that I still think about this game decades later.

From what I have read, it seems that Milton Bradley’s Gamemaster Series never achieved the mainstream success the company had hoped. Axis & Allies became a perennial favorite and spawned multiple editions and spin-offs, but Conquest of the Empire eventually vanished from store shelves, remembered fondly by those of us who had the chance to play it back in the day. I suspect part of the reason was that its theme was less immediately engaging to American audiences and its rules required a level of commitment somewhat closer to Avalon Hill than to Parker Brothers.

I don't mean that as a criticism at all. I absolutely adored this game and deeply regret that my original copy was lost sometime in the '90s. Conquest of the Empire might not have achieved what Milton Bradley had hoped for it, but, for me, it was a near-perfect "middle road" between simple boardgames and the esoteric complexities of "true" wargames. If there were more games like this, I might actually play them.