Open Friday: Other Reprints

Last Friday, I posted a poll about how likely buyers of WotC's upcoming AD&D reprints were to use them to play an AD&D adventure or campaign. Of the nearly 800 respondents, about one-quarter said they planned to do so while another quarter hoped to do so. That's fairly impressive if you ask me and makes me think that, while the numbers are unlikely to be vast, there is a market for reprints of TSR era gaming materials.

So, for today's Open Friday question, I'm doing another poll. This one is about what other types of TSR era material you'd like to see Wizards of the Coast reprint, in the unlikely event that they choose to do so. This poll allows for multiple answers, so feel free to choose as many options as suit you. Likewise, feel free to use the comments below to elaborate on your choices.

Old D&D Movie

Lots of people emailed me today asking me if I'd seen Ethan Gilsdorf's latest post over at Wired. Mr Gilsdorf, you may recall, wrote Fantasy Freaks & Gaming Geeks, which I reviewed back in 2010. His post at Wired includes a recently unearthed video shot back in 1981, showing him and his friends in New Hampshire playing D&D together. It's a very short movie, but well worth a look, especially if, like me, you were involved in the hobby back in those days.

Everything you'd expect to find is there -- dice, a DM's screen, goldenrod record sheets, even Mountain Dew -- so it's a real blast of nostalgia for me and I'm very happy he posted it. Makes me wish I had some photographic records of my early gaming, though, judging from the attire and haircuts in Mr Gilsdorf's video, perhaps it's just as well that I can't share such a thing with the world.

Sci-Fi and the Book

Perhaps because of the average age of my readers, it's often uncritically accepted around here that the 1970s represented a unique flowering of science fiction. Now, it's certainly true that there were a lot of SF movies and TV shows produced during the '70s, especially after the success of Star Wars. And, of course, being kids at the time, many of these movies and TV shows probably exert powerful pulls over our imaginations even now. The awful truth is, with few exceptions, much of the Hollywood SF being made in those days was both terrible and short-lived. Battlestar Galactica, perhaps the quintessential '70s SF series, lasted a single season and, fond of it though I am, most of its 24 episodes are woeful. The track records of other science fiction series aren't much better and many are much worse. The same can be said of the decade's movies.

Consequently, if you were a sci-fi fan back then, as I was, you got the majority of your fix from reading. The 1970s were a great decade for literary SF and many of my favorite authors -- Poul Anderson, Frank Herbert, Larry Niven, Frederick Pohl, to name just a few -- produced some of their best and most compelling works during this time. It's thus no surprise to me that, even more than 30 years later, it's the books and authors of this period that still scream "Science Fiction!" to me. I've encountered other since that I've also enjoyed, but few of them have had a lasting impact on my conceptions of the genre.

So, when I wrote Thousand Suns, I did so with the express intention of promoting an "old fashioned" style of SF, one that I first encountered in the 1970s but whose roots stretch back into the '50s and '60s (and even earlier). Take a look at the game's Appendix N to see what I mean:

I also begin each chapter of the book with an appropriate quote from a story I liked from the period. For example:

I bring this up in part because I'd like some assistance. The first supplement to Thousand Suns I'll be producing is a revision to the Starships book. In this case, "revision" may be too strong a word, since very little will be changed in the text of the original version. Rather, the new version will simply incorporate a few small bits of errata, along with a new layout and additional interior art so that it matches the rulebook.

To do that properly, I'm going to need some quotes from science fiction short stories and novels from prior to 1980. I've already begun searching on my own and have some good ones, but having more from which to choose is always better. Each quote should pertain to the subject matter of the chapter with which it's associated. The four chapters of Starships are: The Navy (dealing with the nature and organization of interstellar navies), Operations (dealing with the operation of starships), Combat (dealing with starship battles), and Design (dealing with starship construction). There's also an introduction.

So, if you can find or think of a good quote from pre-1980 literary SF -- no movies or TV shows, please -- that you think fits one or more of these chapters, send them my way. If I use them, I'll happily credit you and send you a copy of the book in a format you prefer (PDF, softcover, or hardcover) when the book is released (likely in March or April). Thanks in advance!

Adventurer. Conqueror, King Now Available in PDF

The Adventurer, Conqueror, King System is now available in PDF for $9.99. For those of you unfamiliar with this game, it's an old school fantasy roleplaying game designed by Alexander Macris, Tavis Allison, and Greg Tito. What makes ACKS unique is that it makes good on D&D's largely unfulfilled promise to take characters from lowly insignificance to the heights of power. There are rules for building castles, establishing and ruling domains (as well as wizard's sanctums and thieves guilds), and trading -- just about anything a high-level, power-hungry fantasy character might be interested in pursuing. Adventurer, Conqueror, King is a very cleverly designed game whose rules are quite compatible with most retro-clones, particularly Labyrinth Lord, making it extremely valuable to any player or referee looking to add any of its rules to their existing campaigns. This is good stuff and well worth a look.

Thousand Suns Art

I'll have some Thousand Suns-related posts coming over the next few days, but, for the moment, I wanted to share this piece of art Liz Danforth did for the upcoming Thousand Suns: Technology, which I'm hoping will be available sometime this summer. It's the opening illustration for the robots chapter and I was very pleased with how it turned out. Liz was a joy to work with and beautifully captured the slightly retro "imperial SF" vibe that inspired Thousand Suns. With luck, this won't be the only piece by Liz in either Thousand Suns: Technology or other future projects of mine.

©2012 Liz Danforth

Retrospective: Dragon Dice

The first polyhedral gaming dice I ever owned were a set of multi-colored, low impact ones I bought in a Kay-Bee Toys. I bought them because my printing of the Holmes Basic Set came with chits and a voucher for dice from TSR, apparently because such dice were still in short supply at the time. Though my friends and I tried using the chits -- we separated them into little bathroom Dixie cups -- we quickly found them unwieldy and, frankly, not very fun. Rolling dice is an enjoyable experience, whereas picking little pieces of laminated cardboard out of a cup is not.

So, I sought out a set of dice and found them wherever I could. As it turns out, the dice I bought were identical to the ones some people got in their Holmes sets. I later acquired a duplicate set in my copy of Gamma World. When I got those dice, I thought they were the coolest things in the world, not knowing any better. I used them for a couple of years, since I hadn't yet succumbed to dice fetishism and saw no need to buy more, even though the D20 was rapidly losing its edges and becoming spherical through continued use.

After that initial set of dice, the next set I acquired came in the Moldvay-edited Basic Set. They were blue, like the ones pictured above (those in my Expert Set were yellow), and they also exerted a strange fascination for me. For one, they came with a little black crayon to color in the numbers. This struck me as peculiar, since my original dice came pre-inked. Also of interest was that the D20 was actually numbered 1-20 as opposed to 0-9 twice, a fact that TSR proudly proclaims in its advertisement. I honestly don't know if the ad is correct in its claim, but, if so, it wasn't until 1981 that the hobby saw a "true" D20. I can't speak to the truth of it one way or the other, only that I personally never saw one numbered 1-20 until 1981.

Over time, I acquired several more sets of "Dragon Dice," as TSR called them. For some reason, I really liked them, even though they weren't of the greatest quality. Over time, they too started to show signs of wear, losing their edges through regular use. But they were smaller than my original dice and were of uniform colors, two qualities my younger self found very appealing. Indeed, Dragon Dice were my gateway to the wider world of matched dice sets. When I started playing, I never saw anyone with matched dice sets, only hodgepodge collections of them. Once I acquired my Dragon Dice, though, I found it harder and harder to use "mismatched" dice and slowly started acquiring a sizable collection of dice sets.

Eventually, I stopped using my Dragon Dice, moving on to dice produced by Gamescience or The Armory, both of which were much, much better made and available in a wider variety of colors and materials. But I still have a certain fondness for these TSR dice, as they introduced me to one of the weirder aspects of our hobby (at least to outsiders): its fascination with dice.

The Articles of Dragon: "A Field Guide to Lunar Mutants"

As I've noted before, I adored "The Ares Section" of Dragon, often finding its contents far more interesting and inspirational to me than the rest of the magazine. That's probably because, deep down, I'm more of a sci-fi gamer than a fantasy one. Nevertheless, I'm not very strict about my definition of "science fiction" and include lots of stuff, like Star Wars for example, that more purist fans would undoubtedly place in the fantasy pile. Consequently, I've always loved Gamma World and have long felt that it's often treated by more "serious" gamers as if it were a joke, an opinion that's sometimes been reinforced by the game's own publishers, which emphasized its "wackiness" over its other elements. Now, there's no denying that Gamma World has a lot of wacky elements, but that's not all the game offers and I think a large number of gamers have come to dismiss Gamma World unduly because all they see -- and all its publishers have promoted -- are giant anthropomorphic rabbits.

"The Ares Section" included a lot of Gamma World articles, many by its creator, James M. Ward. One of my favorites was a follow-up piece to a description of the Moon in the game's setting. Published in issue #87 (July 1984), "A Field Guide to Lunar Mutants" described the weird creatures that inhabited Tycho Center base in Gamma World's 25th century. As detailed by Ward in his earlier article, Tycho Center is devoid of humanoid and animal life. Its inhabitants consist entirely of mutated plants and "macrobes" -- giant single-celled organisms -- that acquired strange abilities and sentience due to scientific experiments allowed to continue unchecked in the absence of human oversight. Two mutually hostile species vie for Tycho Center and any PCs who visit will find themselves thrown into the middle of a warzone.

What I liked most about this article and its predecessor was not just its descriptions of weird mutants, but rather its suggestion -- a suggestion found throughout Gamma World -- that end of human civilization ushered in a new age, an age where potential successors to mankind have risen up and now seek to lay claim to the Earth as their own. It's a setting that's ripe for moody heroism (and bathos), provided the referee is willing to play up the "weird" aspects of the post-apocalyptic world humanity has inadvertently created in its hubris. "A Field Guide to Lunar Mutants," with its coordinating eye macrobes and tech-wielding rosoids really helped bring that home to me as a teenager, which is why I have a particular fondness for this article. One of these days, I need to start up a Gamma World (or Mutant Future!) campaign and see in what ways I'd do things differently as a middle-aged man that I didn't as a younger one.

RIP Jean Wells (1955-2012)

TSR alumnus Steve Sullivan is reporting that Jean Wells, who was the original "Sage" of Dragon's "Sage Advice" column, as well as the author of Palace of the Silver Princess, has died at the age of 56. This is very sad news, as we've lost another individual associated with the early days of the hobby far too soon.

Pulp Fantasy Library: The Metal Monster

I've talked recently about how the name Abraham Merritt is not as well known among fantasy enthusiast as it ought to be and I stand by that assertion. In the early part of the 20th century, Merritt, along with Edgar Rice Burroughs, was fantasy. His stories were widely read and influential, none moreso than his The Moon Pool, which was a particular favorite of Gary Gygax. The Moon Pool had a sequel of sorts called The Metal Monster, which first appeared in the pages of Argosy All-Story Weekly in serial form during the weeks of August 7 to September 25, 1920. H.P. Lovecraft thought very highly of the story, remarking in a letter written in 1934 that

the book contains the most remarkable presentation of the utterly alien and non-human that I have ever seen.  I don’t wonder that Merrittt calls it his “best and worst” production.  The human characters are commonplace and wooden — just pulp hokum — but the scenes and phaenomena… oh, boy!

I think that's a fair assessment, not just of The Metal Monster but of Merritt's work in general. His characters are rarely noteworthy but his ideas are often top-notch and inspiring. This is certainly the case in The Metal Monster, which concerns an expedition by Dr. Walter Goodwin of the International Association of Science to Himalayas in search of rare plants. Goodwin also makes an appearance in The Moon Pool, which is why I call The Metal Monster "a sequel of sorts" to the former book, even though The Metal Monster stands perfectly well on its own.

The story is framed, as was The Moon Pool, as a real account of an adventure that Dr. Goodwin related to Merritt. In this respect, it's very much in keeping with the conventions of Burroughs, who does the same in his Barsoom tales. Where Merritt differs is in the ominousness with which he infuses his novel. Before he sets off on his expedition, Dr. Goodwin has an extended soliloquy that espouses a Lovecraftian worldview before the fact.

In this great crucible of life we call the world—in the vaster one we call the universe—the mysteries lie close packed, uncountable as grains of sand on ocean's shores. They thread gigantic, the star-flung spaces; they creep, atomic, beneath the microscope's peering eye. They walk beside us, unseen and unheard, calling out to us, asking why we are deaf to their crying, blind to their wonder.

Sometimes the veils drop from a man's eyes, and he sees—and speaks of his vision. Then those who have not seen pass him by with the lifted brows of disbelief, or they mock him, or if his vision has been great enough they fall upon and destroy him.

For the greater the mystery, the more bitterly is its verity assailed; upon what seem the lesser a man may give testimony and at least gain for himself a hearing.

There is reason for this. Life is a ferment, and upon and about it, shifting and changing, adding to or taking away, beat over legions of forces, seen and unseen, known and unknown. And man, an atom in the ferment, clings desperately to what to him seems stable; nor greets with joy him who hazards that what he grips may be but a broken staff, and, so saying, fails to hold forth a sturdier one.

Earth is a ship, plowing her way through uncharted oceans of space wherein are strange currents, hidden shoals and reefs, and where blow the unknown winds of Cosmos.

If to the voyagers, painfully plotting their course, comes one who cries that their charts must be remade, nor can tell WHY they must be—that man is not welcome—no!

Therefore it is that men have grown chary of giving testimony upon mysteries. Yet knowing each in his own heart the truth of that vision he has himself beheld, lo, it is that in whose reality he most believes.

This speech is intended to prepare the reader for the many oddities that Merritt describes once Dr. Goodwin reaches the Himalayas. There, the protagonist quickly makes the acquaintances of several other researchers and explorers -- Dick Drake and the brother and sister team of Martin and Ruth Ventnor -- who join him in his activities. As they press onward, they see strange lights, what appears to be a giant set of footprints, and a civilization of vicious men who look to their eyes to be ancient Persians unchanged since the time of Darius and Xerxes. These Persians pose a grave threat to Goodwin and his compatriots, until they are rescued by a mysterious woman who appears from nowhere.

Within the black background of the fissure stood a shape, an apparition, a woman—beautiful, awesome, incredible!

She was tall, standing there swathed from chin to feet in clinging veils of pale amber, she seemed taller even than tall Drake. Yet it was not her height that sent through me the thrill of awe, of half incredulous terror which, relaxing my grip, let my smoking rifle drop to earth; nor was it that about her proud head a cloud of shining tresses swirled and pennoned like a misty banner of woven copper flames—no, nor that through her veils her body gleamed faint radiance.

It was her eyes—her great, wide eyes whose clear depths were like pools of living star fires. They shone from her white face—not phosphorescent, not merely lucent and light reflecting, but as though they themselves were SOURCES of the cold white flames of far stars—and as calm as those stars themselves.

And in that face, although as yet I could distinguish nothing but the eyes, I sensed something unearthly.

The woman reveals herself as Norhala and commands remarkable powers in her battle against the Persians.

"To the crevice," I shouted to Drake. He paid no heed to me, nor did Ruth—their gaze fastened upon the swathed woman.

Ventnor's hand shot out, gripped my shoulder, halted me. She had thrown up her head. The cloudy METALLIC hair billowed as though wind had blown it.
From the lifted throat came a low, a vibrant cry; harmonious, weirdly disquieting, golden and sweet—and laden with the eery, minor wailings of the blue valley's night, the dragoned chamber.

Before the cry had ceased there poured with incredible swiftness out of the crevice score upon score of the metal things. The fissures vomited them!

Globes and cubes and pyramids—not small like those of the ruins, but shapes all of four feet high, dully lustrous, and deep within that luster the myriads of tiny points of light like unwinking, staring eyes.

They swirled, eddied and formed a barricade between us and the armored men.

Down upon them poured a shower of arrows from the soldiers. I heard the shouts of their captains; they rushed. They had courage—those men—yes!

Again came the woman's cry—golden, peremptory.

Sphere and block and pyramid ran together, seemed to seethe. I had again that sense of a quicksilver melting. Up from them thrust a thick rectangular column. Eight feet in width and twenty feet high, it shaped itself. Out from its left side, from right side, sprang arms—fearful arms that grew and grew as globe and cube and angle raced up the column's side and clicked into place each upon, each after, the other. With magical quickness the arms lengthened.

Before us stood a monstrous shape; a geometric prodigy. A shining angled pillar that, though rigid, immobile, seemed to crouch, be instinct with living force striving to be unleashed.

Two great globes surmounted it—like the heads of some two-faced Janus of an alien world.

At the left and right the knobbed arms, now fully fifty feet in length, writhed, twisted, straightened; flexing themselves in grotesque imitation of a boxer. And at the end of each of the six arms the spheres were clustered thick, studded with the pyramids—again in gigantic, awful, parody of the spiked gloves of those ancient gladiators who fought for imperial Nero.

For an instant it stood here, preening, testing itself like an athlete—a chimera, amorphous yet weirdly symmetric—under the darkening sky, in the green of the hollow, the armored hosts frozen before it—
And then—it struck!

This is the metal monster of the title and its origins and purpose, along with the origins of all the other mysteries the protagonists encounter, most especially Norhala, form the bulk of the story. The Metal Monster is a great deal of fun if you can get past Merritt's somewhat archaic diction and thin characterization. As I said before, it's his ideas that are so compelling and are what made him such a popular and influential author in his day. Despite the weaknesses of his prose, I think him worth reading for his ideas alone; he's the wellspring of so many of the concepts that would eventually become commonplace, even trite, in later pulp fantasies. Anyone with even the slightest interest in the history of genre literature should seek this one out and read it.

AD&D Reprint Covers?

Over at his blog, scottsz has posted an image of what may be the covers of the upcoming AD&D reprints.

Now, there's no confirmation that these are indeed what the "new" covers to the Players Handbook, Dungeon Masters Guide, and Monster Manual will look like. Indeed, it seems quite likely that they're just mockups, since the actual covers aren't ready to be shown yet. On the other hand, I can certainly imagine covers like this being used, since they very explicitly recall the originals while also being noticeably distinct. If they were the actual covers being used, I'd be quite content.