Frank Frazetta Does Sci-Fi

Or more specifically: he does some concept art for the original Battlestar Galactica series.

There are a few more examples of his work over in this thread at the K&K Alehouse.

I'm taking it easy this holiday weekend, so regular posting and some replies to comments will resume on Tuesday, September 2. Until then, enjoy!

Debate

Resolved: That the entire history of the development of Dungeons & Dragons as a set of rules has been one of incremental change in order to minimize, if not outright eliminate, the likelihood that a "bad," which is to say inexperienced, arbitrary, or malicious, referee might adversely affect a player's enjoyment of the game.

REVIEW: Classic Monsters Revisited

Part of Paizo's Pathfinder Chronicles line of products, Classic Monsters Revisited is, to put it plainly, a peculiar little book. Written by a variety of authors (many of them associated with D&D's Third Edition), this 64-page, softcover book examines ten of "classic" monsters -- bugbears, gnolls, hobgoblins, orcs, lizard men, trolls, ogres, kobolds, minotaurs, and goblins -- and "reimagines" them for the Pathfinder fantasy setting of Golarion. Given how often the term "reimagining" is used nowadays as a synonym for the wholesale gutting of an idea or concept in the interests of marketing an existing IP, I can't say I was keen on picking up this book. But, buoyed by what I saw in the Pathfinder Chronicles Gazetteer, I decided to take a chance and I am glad I did so.

This is not to say this book is flawless; I have a number of nits to pick with it from my own idiosyncratic old school perspective. Overall, though, this book is written with imagination and with more respect for the traditions of D&D than was 4e. It's hard not to have one's heart warmed, at least a little, after reading editor James Jacobs' introduction, where he states plainly that the authors of Classic Monsters Revisited went back to the original Monster Manual for inspiration when writing their reimaginings. More to the point, his words are not just idle. Take a look and you'll see, for example, that orcs have tribal names that are clearly inspired by those in the 1e MM. There are many other little bits of color and detail like that, loving nods to the original source material.

The book itself is well made and sturdy, with glossy full-color pages. I can't say that I'm a fan of this format, not least because I'm sure it pushes the cost of the book up ($17.99 retail) unnecessarily. The art itself is good but very modern, in its obsession with detail and "action." That said, there are a number of pieces I quite liked. Anything with the reimagined goblins is terrific, but then that's because Paizo's version of these monsters as malicious little vermin with a love for twisted battle songs and a fear of dogs is simply inspired. There's also a nice piece showing an unwary adventurer, torch in hand, about to turn a corner in a labyrinth, where a minotaur lays in wait.

The bulk of the book is made up of ten chapters, each of which presents a new monstrous race as it appears in the Pathfinder setting. Each 6-page entry includes an overview, as well as discussions of ecology, habitat and society, campaign role, treasure, variants, and additional details about the place of the creatures in Golarion. Each chapter ends with single-page stat write-up in v.3.5 terms. In most cases, this write-up is identical to that found in the v.3.5 Monster Manual, but there are small alterations in some, small enough that they'd probably escape notice unless you were specifically comparing the two, as I was. I presume the changes were done both to bring them closer to the reimagined versions of the monsters and also to make the game mechanics simpler and easier to use, which seem to be the watchwords of Paizo, as they forge ahead with their own v.3.5-derived Pathfinder RPG.

The reimaginings themselves are almost universally good. I've already noted the goblins, who are far and away the best things in this book. That said, many other reimaginings struck a chord with me; the "bogeyman" bugbears, the Spartan hobgoblins, the cursed minotaurs, and the cannibalistic ogres all stand out. In reading these entries, I was often pleased at how the authors had managed to do something quite remarkable: create a new version of an old favorite that was still somehow continuous with nearly 30 years of D&D tradition. They didn't succeed in every case. I intensely dislike the draconic kobolds that 3e foisted on us and that this book continues to develop, for example. Yet, despite the missteps, there is a solid core here that I felt I could use in my own games.

Although written with v.3.5 in mind, there is in fact very little rules content to it. Aside from the stat block and the occasional item or feat relegated to sidebars, this book is almost pure "fluff." I think an old school gamer will find a lot to enjoy here. Certainly six pages is probably more information than most of us need for these monsters. There is, I can't deny, more than a whiff of new school indulgence in setting for setting's sake in this book. At the same time, I was reminded often of the way that, prior to the advent of the Monster Manual, each referee's interpretation of an orc's appearance was different. And just what the heck was a gnoll anyway? As much as I love my Gygaxian MM, there's a certain sense in which it was the beginning of the end of the imagination and creativity that OD&D demanded. After its appearance, we knew what an orc looked like and that a gnoll was a hyena man, not some magical cross between a gnome and a troll. And while I'm as fond of established D&D tradition as anyone, there's a big part of me that longs for the wild and woolly days when one campaign's orc and another's were not necessarily the same.

Classic Monsters Revisited goes a long way toward making many old favorites new and interesting. After reading this book, I want to use minotaurs again in a way I haven't in, well, probably ever. The same goes for goblins and ogres. That's a pretty remarkable achievement. Even more remarkable is the way that the book made me look at other monsters not described in this book and whom I thought I knew well. Now, I'm not so sure; I think the next time I use, say, a gargoyle I'll present it somewhat differently than the way it's traditional presented, because that's what D&D is all about.

OD&D presented itself as a toolkit for building your own fantasy world and I think that would be the best way to present and market even modern editions of the game. Believe me, I am not arguing that Classic Monsters Revisited is in any way an old school product or completely consonant with my own Quixotic hopes for the hobby. This book is too clearly part of a plan to build and promote a new IP for that, but I am willing to forgive it that sin, because it made me look at things I've "known" for nearly three decades and reconsider them. I can't remember the last D&D product that made me do that, but then that might explain why I'm no longer buying new D&D products. On the other hand, I will certainly continue to buy Pathfinder products, so long as they continue to spur my imagination the way this one did.

Final Score: 4 out of 5 polearms

An Example

Like my previous post, this is an inchoate one -- notes toward a thesis to be published later, if you will. I thought I'd share a very memorable example from my own gaming history of how a campaign with a referee-created succumbed to what I see as the inherent danger of such things: the referee came to love his own ideas so much that those of his players weren't even considered. I'll say again that I am not saying this outcome is inevitable or even unavoidable, only that it's likely and highly problematic and one of the reasons why I have come to eschew the notion of "theme" or "story" in planning a new campaign. It's only an anecdote and thus highly specific and idiosyncratic. Nevertheless, I think it illustrates well what I'm talking about.

Some years ago, I joined a campaign in which a character who'd previously been established as the last surviving heir of a far-off kingdom received an invitation by members of a rebel faction who wished him to return to his ancestral homeland and claim his rightful throne. The reason they wished him to do this was because, after the deposition of his ancestor (I think it was his grandfather but it may have been more distant), the priesthood of an evil ice goddess -- this was a northern realm -- took over the reins of power and they were nasty and tyrannical, as evil priests usually are in fantasy worlds.

The character in question knew of his ancestry but never gave much thought of returning to his homeland. He certainly had no interest in becoming a king, but he was good-aligned and the rebels told of the horrible atrocities committed by the evil priests, so he eventually agreed to return and lead this rebellion that had been fighting in his name for some time. He collected some mercenaries and brothers in arms to join him (my character was one of them) and together they set off into the frozen north to fight against the minions of the ice goddess.

So far, so good. The problem was that, as we soon discovered, even the rebellion worshiped this evil ice goddess and propitiated her with human sacrifices each winter in order to keep the worst weather away. The referee explained to us (through the rebel NPCs) that the state religion had always been devoted to the ice goddess. The objection to the priesthood was not their beliefs as such, but that they had usurped the proper place of the king. Their "tyranny" was mostly that they had upset the social order, not that they had imposed an evil religion upon the land.

Needless to say, none of us, least of the character of the heir to the throne, would have any truck with the idea of participating in a rebellion dedicated to evil (we were all good-aligned as well), even they did so as appeasement rather as piety. Now, it had previously been established in the game world that the beliefs of mortals were what gave gods their power and that new "aspects" of a god might spring into being if there were enough mortals with a heretical/heterodox interpretation of that god's teachings. We then hit upon the plan to use the rebellion not just to place the heir upon the throne, but to create an alternate, "friendlier" version of the ice goddess by manipulating the beliefs of the common folk of the northern kingdom -- the ultimate in psychological warfare. We thought it a great idea and one with a bizarre fantasy feel to it. In short, it'd be the basis for a memorable campaign.

The referee, though, would have none of it. His plan for the campaign was about the heir's having to come to grips with the nature of the society whose rulership he had inherited. Over time, there'd be many other aspects of his people that he'd learn about that would "challenge" his previously held notions and this would lead to a great campaign. There was also, if I recall, the introduction of a woman, unpleasant in some way, who belonged to some important faction or other and thus was intended to be betrothed to the heir. My friend, who played the heir, would have none of it; his character had been led to the northern realm under false pretenses and he felt it reasonable that he'd take action accordingly. More to the point, the ideas he and the rest of us players had come up with were exciting and interesting and at least worth a try. Even if we failed, who can say that plotting to use a rebellion to give birth to a new god isn't fantasy roleplaying at its finest?

The referee simply wouldn't budge on this point. He had already made it clear what the campaign was about and had done a lot of work to plot out this campaign. He wasn't interested in taking our alternate ideas and running with them -- ideas, I might add, that made perfect sense given the setting and the nature of the characters involved. I still look back on this failed campaign as an opportunity lost, because it could very well have been an amazing one. The setup for the campaign was fine and the reaction of the players to that setup reasonable. The problem was that the referee didn't see that reaction as reasonable at all, because it was strongly at variance with the "story" he wanted to tell. And so the campaign died before it ever got very far.

I tell this not to suggest that there is nothing to be gained by considering long-term plans in a campaign or that there's something inherently wrong with a campaign's focusing on a particular activity or activities. However, I do believe there's a great danger in attempting to plan story arcs for characters or settings. That danger is identifying these plans as what the campaign is about, when, in point of fact, a campaign is about what the players say it's about through their choices and actions in-game. Sandbox play is not the only way to ensure no one forgets this, but it's a very good one. The further one gets away from that style of campaign, the greater the danger that what I experienced in that long-ago campaign will come to pass.

No Guarantees

I've got to step out for a while, so I'll be unable to respond to any comments here but a thought occurred to me this morning that I wanted to throw out there for discussion.

Two common complaints about old school gaming is that it lacks "story" and that there's little interest in character development beyond what occurs as a result of gaining XP. I've already, I think, argued that both these complaints are utterly mistaken and result from a misreading of old school games (not to mention a misremembering of the history of the hobby). The big difference between the old school and the contemporary one is that the old school assumes that "story" and character development are things that evolve organically through play rather than something one presumes before play. The old school also allows for the possibility that neither story nor development will evolve and isn't willing to find ways to ensure that either takes place through the imposition of game mechanics designed to do so.

Anyway, what I was thinking about is that what makes old school gaming so appealing for me is that notion that, if I create a 1st-level Fighter, whom I call Conan and say is a young Cimmerian warrior out to find his fortune in the world, I actually have to play D&D well -- not to mention get lucky -- in order to fully realize that character. That is, it's not a given that because I create this character with dreams of one day ruling his own kingdom that he will in fact one day rule his own kingdom. I don't sit down with the referee and agree that, yes, the campaign "theme" will be about Conan's rise from obscurity to his accession to the throne of Aquilonia. Rather, I, as the player, decide that that's what I want to do with my lowly 1st-level Fighter and then I play the game with that in mind, doing everything I can to make that "story" that I've chosen come alive through play, but with the understanding that an unlucky dice roll -- or the whims of other players -- might derail that story, even ending it forever.

My point is that one of the essential features of old school play is that there are no guarantees. I sometimes think the hobby has emphasized the roleplaying aspect of RPG to such an extent that it's forgotten what the G stands for. Old school gaming never forgets that games typically involve chance and the best gamers are those who can roll with the punches randomness throws at them and succeed in spite of them. To me, there's more fun to be had in the story of a would-be Conan who actually fails at his player's original intended "story arc" and then goes on to do something else as befits the circumstances than one whose story arc has a conclusion that's foreordained by mutual agreement with the referee at the campaign's start. If you know your 1st-level Fighter is destined to become King of Aquilonia and that the whole campaign is about the steps to achieving that destiny, why bother? I don't personally see any fun in that and I think one of the big dividing lines between the old and new schools lies here.

Anyway, this is a random, inchoate thought, so be gentle. And play nicely while I'm gone. It might be a while before I can wade back into discussing this.

Patrimony of Evil

Say what you will about the Third Edition of Dungeons & Dragons itself -- and I have -- but I cannot countenance anyone complaining about the Open Game License, which is nothing sort of a godsend for the old school community. Why, you might ask? Quite simply, the OGL literally ensures that the Gygaxo-Arneson heritage of the game is available to any and all in perpetuity. Without it, games like OSRIC, Labyrinth Lord, and Swords & Wizardy, among others, would not be possible. The OGL is nothing short than an insurance policy against the day when Hasbro decides to treat D&D like so many other bits of IP it controls and locks it away in a vault somewhere, never to be seen again (like so many Avalon Hill titles). One day, "Dungeons & Dragons," as a brand name may disappear forever, but the specific ideas and concepts of its creators are now forever available to the hobby to use, develop, and disseminate.

To cite some rather specific examples, let's take a look at some demons and devils created specifically for D&D and see how many of them are now Open Game Content:

Baphomet: This name is, of course, public domain, but the specific association of it with the demon lord of minotaurs is a Gygaxian invention. Thanks to the Tome of Horrors, you can now use him in your retro-clone products if you so desire.

Fraz-Urb'Luu: Famous for having been imprisoned beneath Castle Greyhawk, the demon prince of illusion is OGC, thanks again to the Tome of Horrors.

Geryon: Derived form Greek mythology by way of Dante's Inferno, D&D's serpentine ruler of the fifth layer of Hell is OGC.

The "Faceless Lord:" No, we can't call him Juiblex, but we can call him Jubilex. Again, ToH is to be thanked.

Kostchtchie: Again, a real world mythological name, but his portrayal as the demon lord of frost giants is unique to D&D -- and he's now OGC.

Moloch: Of Biblical origin, Moloch is the ruler of the sixth layer of Hell and lieutenant to Baalzebul. Both and the name of his master are OGC.

Orcus: Orcus has a real world analog, but the image of him as a bat-winged, goat-headed prince of the undead is pure D&D; it's also OGC.

Pazuzu: An ancient Baylonian demon famous in the 20th century for his connection to The Exorcist, D&D's version of him is now OGC.

Careful examination of other OGC products will reveal many other formerly D&D-specific monsters are now Open Game Content that may be freely used by anyone under the terms of the Open Game License. I find it hard not to be very happy about this, because it means, for example, that, were I to publish an old school gaming product, I am free to use many distinct elements of AD&D rather than having to create my own substitutes.

This may seem like a small thing, but it isn't, for much -- though not all -- of the appeal of old school gaming is its unique storehouse of monsters. Without them, there's a sense in which a fantasy game could never claim to be Dungeons & Dragons anymore. I know that, for many people, one of the reasons that 4e does not feel like a true successor to OD&D is because of the way it has abandoned or extensively reworked so many monsters that have been strongly associated with the game for 25 or more years. But, of course, if one's goal is to build an IP you can exploit and others cannot, you have no choice but to abandon the past, particularly since so much of D&D's patrimony has been bequeathed to us, the gaming community, to do with as we please.

And that's why I shall be forever grateful to Ryan Dancey and the Open Game License.

Nifty

You learn something new every day and today I learned that Charles R. Saunders, creator of Imaro, has a blog of his own. He updates it only irregularly, based on his archive, but it's nifty nonetheless. Check it out.

Grognard's Challenge #3: Six of One, Half Dozen of Another

I received a lot of excellent submissions for Challenge #3, but one stood out as a clear winner: Michael Curtis's "Six of One, Half Dozen of Another."

A narrow alcove has been carved into the stone here. Standing in this niche is the life-sized statue of a woman, carved from unblemished white stone. The woman is of indeterminate age and dressed only in a loose-fitting sarong that leaves one leg and her bare feet uncovered. Her hair is coiled in dreadlocks, hanging just past her alabaster shoulders. Her eyes are obscured by a thin blindfold and her mouth and chin are set in a resolute manner. Six shapely arms extend from her sides, palms up-turned and cupped as if waiting to receive something.

The statue is carved from fine marble and stands 8' tall including the base and weighs 500 lbs. It depicts a female aspect of the Luck God, which may or may not be recognizable to a cleric encountering it. The statue is imbued with the nature of the goddess, and while it does not radiate magic, any cleric or paladin who approaches the statue will feel a warmth emanating from it that is likely of divine origin.

The statue can bestow weal or woe upon any object that is placed in one of the statue's six hands. The exact form of this luck is random, determined by the whim of the Luck God. When the statue is encountered, roll a d6. On a roll of 1-3, the right three hands bestow luck on an object placed in them. On a 4-6, it is the left which are lucky. Any weapon placed in a lucky hand temporarily becomes a +1 weapon for 24 hours. Any other object placed in a lucky hand becomes a form of a luckstone, providing a +1/+5% bonus to any saving throw, proficiency or ability check, and thieves' skills for 24 hrs. After such time, the object returns to normal.

On the other hand(s), any object placed in an unlucky hand becomes cursed for 24 hours. Weapons act as if they were -1 cursed weapons (including not being able to be discarded or allowing use of another weapon) and any other object is treated as a loadstone (movement reduced to half, attacks per round reduced by 1).

The enchantment is of a divine nature, but does not radiate magic. Weapons that bear a luck boon are considered magical for attempts to hit or damage creatures only affected by magic. Both boons and banes vanish after 24 hours, but the enchantment can be removed prematurely by either a dispel evil/good as appropriate. A remove curse will also negate the effects. A boon or bane is only applied to one item per week. After that, the statue still radiates divine warmth, but grants no further effects.

I liked this entry for a number of reasons. Firstly, it reminded me of the kind of thing I might read about in the reminiscences of players from the original Greyhawk campaign. There are lots of examples of peculiar statues that do random or semi-random things when one interacts with them, so this is in keeping with that tradition. Secondly, the attributes of the statue, as well as its game effects, have a mildly Gygaxian cadence to them: "weal or woe" just tickled my esthetic sense, but there's a slight voluptuary tone to the description of the female form of the statue that also reminded me of other parts of the Gygaxian corpus. Finally, the game effects were simple, straightforward, and equally subject to random chance and player observation. All in all, it had just enough little touches that set it above its competitors, many of which were very good indeed.

So, congratulations to Michael Curtis. He can contact me via the email address to the right and give me his street address, so I can send him his copy of Greyhawk as soon as possible.

CONTEST: Grognard's Challenge #4

With the third Grognard's Challenge now completed -- the winner will be announced shortly -- it's time to turn to Challenge #4. For this contest, the prize is the volume pictured to the left: Supplement III of Dungeons & Dragons (1974), Eldritch Wizardry

The fourth Grognard's Challenge is somewhat more specific than previous ones: create, describe, and provide game stats (if necessary) for a single new demonic monster (including demon lords), artifact/relic, or psionic item. Unlike Challenge #1, there is no word limit on this challenge, so feel free to make it as long as you feel necessary. Game stats should be for either OD&D or AD&D (or compatible retro-clones/simulacra).

Entries will be judged on the basis of creativity, brevity (there may be no word limit, but concision is rewarded), and old school feel, the last of which is an entirely subjective metric based solely on my own peculiar preferences, most of which regular readers of the blog should know by now. The whole point of this and subsequent contests is to foster an appreciation for old school traditions and philosophies, so bear that in mind. Think pulp fantasy and the early days of the hobby and you'll be on the right track. No one is barred from entering, including friends and colleagues. I will post the winning entry here and explain why I selected it over its competitors, meaning that even were my wife to submit an entry -- not that she will -- it still has to withstand my rather exacting standards. Winners receive a copy of Eldritch Wizardry (in nearly mint condition) and retain ownership of their creation, which they may then do with as they please (I recommend submitting it to Fight On! or another old school product).

The contest begins immediately and ends at midnight (EST) on September 8, 2008. Submissions may be sent to my email address indicated on the right hand side of this blog. Multiple entries are allowed and encouraged, but each one must be sent in a separate email. Although not strictly necessary, I'd appreciate it if you'd make the subject line of your submission something like "Grognard's Challenge #4" as that'll make it easier to keep the emails straight in my inbox.

Any questions about the contest can be asked either in the comments below or by sending me an email at the address to the right.

Weekend

Taking the next couple of days off to get some work done. I'll be back on Monday with my regular postings.

See you then.

Old School Adventure Path

In the comments to yesterday's post about the difference between plot-driven and locale-based modules, the possibility of an old school "adventure path" is briefly discussed. I'd been giving that very idea some thought and had been looking into the structure of earlier modules to see if there might be a model lurking among them -- and in fact there is, namely the famed G and D series of modules written by Gary Gygax.

What's really remarkable about these modules, the first ones ever published by TSR for D&D, is how many people's memories of them differ rather radically from their actual texts. The biggest misconception is that they're plot-driven, when in fact there's only the thinnest of plots in them. G1 begins thusly:

Giants have been raiding the lands of men in large bands, with giants of different sorts in these marauding groups. Death and destruction have been laid heavily upon every place these monsters have visited. This has caused great anger in high places, for life and property loss means failure of the vows of noble rulers to protect the life and goods of each and every subject - and possible lean times for the rulers as well as the ruled. Therefore, a party of the bravest and most powerful adventurers has been assembled and given the charge to punish the miscreant giants. These adventurers must deliver a sharp check, deal a lesson to theclan of hill giants nearby, orelse return and put their heads upon the block for the headsman’s axe!

And that's extent of its "plot." The body of the adventure itself consists simply of a map and description of the steading, the dungeon beneath, and its inhabitants and their treasures. The description of Nosnra, the main "villain" of the adventure, provides only game stats and nothing more. He is not given any real background or motivations and indeed his role in planning and/or executing the giant raids mentioned above is never explained. In his treasury, the characters find a map of the Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl and a magical chain that will transport up to 6 people to said locale.

Module G2 follows a very similar pattern to G1, with Jarl Grugnur not being given any background or motivations other than simply being the leader -- and most powerful example -- of the frost giants who are among those raiding civilized lands. In his private cavern can be found a magical lever that transports people outside the Hall of the Fire Giant King, Snurre Iron Belly. But, again, that's the extent of the "plot": seek out the frost giant stronghold and deliver a blow to them that might dissuade them from ever again attacking the lands of men.

Module G3 ramps up the actual plot elements somewhat, but not by much. In King Snurre's council room, there is a signed missive from the drow high priestess Eclavdra, encouraging the fire giant monarch to make an alliance with as many giants and humanoids as he can muster so that they might march united against the nearby settled lands. No explanation of why Eclavdra wishes this is provided and even the description of the drow leader provides no more details. There is a hint of a suggestion that the drow may be doing the bidding of the Elder Elemental God, a shrine to whom is found in the lower level of the Hall, but even the drow's connection to this Lovecraftian entity is implied (by proximity and their use of tentacle rods) rather than outright stated. When the drow flee the adventurers (or are killed by them), they leave behind a map of their escape route into the deep caverns beneath the world.

Modules D1 and D2 provide nothing in the way of a "plot." They are simply descriptions of locales and encounters along the way to the drow metropolis of Erelhei-Cinlu. Along the descent into the depths of the earth, the characters might make various friends and enemies to aid them in their explorations, but none of these encounters is part of a grand plot as such. Instead, what we get is a subterranean "wilderness," with many different monster lairs, along with the usual tricks and traps. Even the fabled Shrine of the Kuo-Toa is mostly a dungeon without any greater significance, although the characters may loot from it drow brooches and clothing to aid them in infiltrating the Vault of the Drow.

Module D3 is, like its immediate predecessors, mostly a travelogue, in this case of the drow city and its surrounding areas. The only plot we get is the following text, in the description of the House of Eilserv:

The Eilservs have long seen a need for an absolute monarch to rule the Vault, and as the noble house of first precedence, they have reasoned that their mistress should be Queen of All Drow. When this was proposed, the priestesses of Lolth supported the other noble families aligned against the Eilservs, fearing that such a change would abolish their position as the final authority over all disputes and actions of the Dark Elves. Thereafter, the Eilservs and their followers turned away from the demoness and proclaimed their deity to be an Elder Elemental God [see MODULE GI-2-3). Although there is no open warfare, there is much hatred, and both factions seek to destroy each other. An attempt to move worship of their deity into the upper world, establish a puppet kindom there, and grow so powerful from this success that their demands for absolute rulership no longer be thwarted, was ruined of late, and the
family is now retrenching

In this text, we finally get an explanation of the reasons for the alliance of the various giants, as well as some specific insight into the politics of Erelhei-Cinlu. Beyond that, though, there is nothing. The city is otherwise treated much like a wilderness area, with individual "lairs" of drow here and there and the Fane of Lolth is given a map as if it were a dungeon like any other. There is even an opportunity to square off against the Demon Queen of Spiders' physical form if the characters prove themselves bold (or unlucky). It's interesting too that there's a dissident male drow imprisoned in the Fane named Nilonim, who is neutral aligned -- with good tendencies -- and who leads a band of rebels trying to overthrow the nobles of Erelhei-Cinlu. D3 ends with this rather inspiring text:

THIS ENDS THE DESCENT INTO
THE DEPTHS BUT BEGINS MANY
NEW AND EXCITING PROSPECTS

Terrific stuff.

My memories of these modules were quite different than the reality. My recollections were of a number of memorable encounters with various antagonists, strong connections between the various groups of evildoers, and an overall coherence that simply isn't there. But then I was the referee for all these modules and ran them many times. I provided huge doses of "connective tissue" based on what my players did and how well they succeeded (or failed). The end result was as least as much "my" module as it was Gygax's.

One of the key things I noticed in rereading these modules is how there are no "events" that occur within them. They're largely static, with the monsters occupying some location (or series of locations, since some of them do move around). Events occur when these monsters interact with the PCs. They're almost entirely player-driven rather than being modules where things happen to the characters by fiat of the plot. Thus, there is no inherent "drama" in them other than what the players bring to them. I like that and my memories bear out the fact that "steady state" adventure locales can and do inspire great roleplaying moments.

I'll still have to ponder some more about the concept of an old school adventure path, but I'm more convinced than ever that we have a good model here in the Giants/Drow series. What we need now is for someone to produce another series in the same general vein. A project for the future perhaps ...

Character Assassination in Module Form

From the "Background" section at the start of module G1: The Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, you can read a description of the titular villain:

This chief, one Nosnra, is a grossly fat and thoroughly despicable creature, sly and vicious, loving ambush and backstabbing.

Words fail me.

Fight On!'s Film Debut

Lifestyle Gamers?

As a company, we will continue to be the leader in entertaining the lifestyle gamer. Re-aligning resources ensures we achieve this goal for our most powerful brands.

What the heck is a "lifestyle gamer?"

More to the point, have I become some kind of granola-eating, tree-hugging hippie while I wasn't looking? I ask, because -- and I'm being completely serious here -- I find that quote reeks of everything I fear about the future of our hobby. The reduction of D&D to a "powerful brand" disturbs me on many levels.

I don't so much fear what RPG R&D might do to Dungeons & Dragons if they had their own way. That's not to say they'd do what I would; clearly, they wouldn't. But I think, in the final analysis, they're not out to destroy the game or trample on the memory of Gygax. The problem is that I don't think they're the guys calling the shots anymore. They have to conform to a business plan handed down from on high and how much does Greg Leeds know about the hobby beyond what he sees in a ledger? His words above are very telling and not in a good way.

Grognard's Grimoire: Anagrams

Gary Gygax was a huge fan of oblique homages, puns, and especially anagrams. A careful examination of the Dungeon Master's body of work makes this plain. The indefatigable Allan Grohe has cataloged many of these here. Over the years, I've indulged in the use of anagrams in my games. My contribution to Issue #2 of Fight On! is positively riddled with them, for example, as is the retro-stupid masterpiece, Encounter Critical. Consequently, I regard anagrams as part of the hobby's old school heritage and would like to encourage their use whenever possible.

To that end, the referee should grant a small but lasting boon to players who indulge in non-silly anagramming (unless your game is silly, in which case full speed ahead). For example, my friend Kevin once played an Elric wannabe named Nivek. The great thing about the name Nivek is that it worked; it sounded appropriate and, while it was an anagram, it didn't reveal itself unless you already knew something was up.

The boon should be something significant but not overwhelming and, most important of all, it shouldn't be game mechanical in nature. One of the big mistakes many contemporary games make is buying into the notion that the only way to reward a player is to give his character a +2 bonus here or extra skill points there. That is the road to hell. Instead, provide a specific in-game boon that is appropriate to the character, such as the fact that children instinctively trust him or that merchants never try to cheat him. Or whatever. The point is that the referee rewards the player for his clever use of an anagram by giving the character some little extra bit of personality/background that's beneficial to him in his adventuring career in a small way. A similar approach could be applied in games where the referee wants to encourage punning or allusions or whatever.

And if you have trouble coming up with anagrams, here's a nifty little webpage to help you out.

Shilling Isn't Just an English Coin

I've mentioned Paizo's Planet Stories line of reprints a lot in this blog. I do that for a couple of reasons. One is that I like Paizo; I think their hearts are in the right place when it comes to our shared hobby and I'd like to see them succeed. Another is that they're singlehandedly doing more to educate today's gamers about the literary foundations of the hobby than probably any company out there. The stories they're reprinting are forgotten classics by authors whose influence on D&D cannot be underestimated. I'm a firm believer, as you know, in respecting the past and Planet Stories is a giant love letter to the early days of fantasy and science fiction.

I had been buying each book in the series piecemeal through local retail stores. However, I decided that, since I was buying them all anyway, I might as well get a subscription. Obviously, this isn't something everyone will want to do, not even if you're a fan of pulp literature. Still, I'd like to recommend it as an option, because I'd like to see Planet Stories prosper for many years to come. And maybe one day my dream of seeing every author and story in Appendix N to the Dungeon Masters Guide back in print will come true.

Locale and Plot

A common topic of discussion among gamers reminiscing about their past is, "Which adventure modules have you run more than once?" I would contend that how one answers that question says a great deal about when one was introduced into the hobby and/or one's early experiences in it. I would hazard to guess that the majority of self-identified grognards would be able to list several modules they'd run more than one time. I myself could regale you with multiple tales of my having run, for example, David Cook's Dwellers of the Forbidden City, at least a half-dozen times, often with the same group of people. I expect this general pattern is true for many old school gamers, while it's something most younger players can't even imagine. How could I have possibly gotten multiple uses out of a single module whose page count didn't even break 30?

The answer is quite simple and it's this: old school modules were, by and large, descriptions of adventuring locales, whereas new school modules are plotted (loosely or tightly) adventure stories. That's not to say there aren't elements of plot in many old school modules. The aforementioned Dwellers of the Forbidden City includes a backstory about caravans being raided by mysterious enemies and the PCs are hired to go and find the source of the raiders and stop them. By the same token, many more strongly plot-driven modules, such as those in the Dragonlance series, include extensive descriptions of locales. There's a difference between the two types of modules, not merely in their focus -- which is important -- but also in their content. Dwellers never explicitly deals with the question of exactly who is behind the caravan raids. Presumably it's the yuan-ti, but the matter is left rather vague (someone can correct me if I'm mistaken on this point) and, at any rate, the backstory is there as an excuse to get the PCs to venture into the jungle and find the Forbidden City and its denizens. The real "plot" of the module is what happens to the PCs once they're there, not something the author has scripted in advance. That's patently not the case with the Dragonlance modules, whose entire purpose was to advance an epic story in which the player characters can take part but the general outlines of which were mapped out not by the referee but by the modules' authors.

If you're looking for a good signpost in determining where the old school ends and the new one begins, it's the shift in emphasis from locales to plots. It's not a hard and fast division; there are examples of both on either side of the line. Nevertheless, I think the expectation that a module "tell a story" rather than provide a location for a story of your own devising is a good indicator of where one's gaming sympathies lie. Since the late 80s at least, roleplaying has largely been defined as "freeform storytelling" and, given that, it's no surprise that adventure modules have been structured accordingly. Now, I don't actually think that definition is incorrect but it's misleading, because it doesn't take into account the increasingly heavy-handed role played by the manufacturers of modules, who've largely usurped the role of the referee in creating and maintaining his campaign world. This is why, though I love the folks at Paizo dearly, I've never been a fan of the whole "adventure path" concept that they've developed into a high art. I'd love to see them produce more location-based modules myself, but I expect they know their fanbase better than I do.

To some extent, I expect that the shift away from the location-based approach is a concession to the oft-repeated saw that gamers no longer have as much free time to make things up as they once did. I think this is hooey myself. More to the point, I do not favor the abandonment of modules entirely -- far from it! Rather, what I advocate is that modules should be made more, well, modular and that means providing lots of options and alternatives that a referee can then use to make its contents his own rather than someone else's. When I was a kid, I may have had lots of time to waste that I no longer have today. I can tell you, though, that I didn't spend hours and hours planning out my adventures, most of which were seat-of-the-pants affairs. What modules gave me was a structure -- map, room descriptions, game stats, etc. -- onto which could hang the story my friends and I created as I refereed their adventures. What I think has happened over the years is that, because "adventure module" has become so strongly associated with the notion of a pre-made adventure story, gamers now simply recoil at the notion of having to "make up the story yourself." They see it as too much of a chore, when, in point of fact, creating a plot/story is the easiest part of being a RPG referee, not the hardest.

I'd love to see some modern day easily reusable modules. Perhaps I need to write them myself.

Father of Us All

On this day in 1890, Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born in Providence, Rhode Island. Perhaps the finest practitioner of the "weird tale" ever to have put word to the page, his influence on the subsequent development of horror, fantasy, and science fiction is incalculable. Even during his lifetime, Lovecraft's ideas were widely disseminated, as his colleagues in the pulps borrowed and expanded upon his imaginary mythology. After his death, thanks to his many admirers and imitators, his ideas were disseminated wider still and are now part of the common pool from which numerous genres draw inspiration. This, of course, includes roleplaying games, including not just the explicitly Lovecraftian Call of Cthulhu, but also Dungeons & Dragons and many others. Had "Grandpa Theobald" (as he sometimes whimsically styled himself in letters) never lived, the course of several genres of literature, not to mention the popular media they spawned, would be very different indeed.

As I noted in a previous post, Lovecraft has been a powerful influence on my conception of horror and fantasy. Most of my D&D campaigns include Lovecraftian elements and, while Lovecraft's worldview is about as contrary to my own as any, I still find something powerful in his writing that speaks to me on many levels. Like him, I have strong antiquarian tastes and I recoil at many aspects of the modern age. I also can't help but feel an aversion to the popularization of Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos. When you can buy stuffed versions of the Great Old One in a Santa hat, I hope I can be forgiven for feeling that H.P. wouldn't have been pleased at how his work has been treated. I understand that this is all evidence of many people's affection for Lovecraft and his stories. After all, there'd be no stuffed Cthulhus at all if people didn't love his work. Still, I'm uncomfortable with the way the Mythos has been reduced to a geekish jest in many quarters. But then I'm inclined to treat authors and ideas I like with a fair degree of reverence, so maybe I'm constitutionally ill disposed to find it all in good fun.

Of course, even Lovecraft smiled on occasion and so today shall I. I owe the old gent a great deal and it's only fitting I should remember him on the day of his birth. I encourage others to do the same. Chances are that anyone who's reading this blog owes him a lot as well.

Great Minds

An idea I've had for a long time and that I've never yet had the chance to fully implement is the creation of an "interplanetary" D&D setting, by which I mean one in which there are multiple inhabited worlds, each of which is (or has been) in contact with the others. This strikes me as true to the pulp fantasy inspirations of OD&D, with its regular invocations of Burroughs, and also with Vance's The Dying Earth, where there are frequent references to powerful wizards traveling to other moons and planets. I've also felt that the existence of congress with other worlds made it easier to justify the smörgåsbord of weird creatures that inhabit most D&D worlds. If I can say, for example, that lizard men are natives of the Green Planet and that those on the main campaign world are degenerate descendants of interplanetary travelers from the past, in my mind it's all a lot more "believable," if that makes any sense.

In my mind, I always imagined that the main campaign world had two sister planets, which I called simply the Green Planet and the Red Planet. I might give them actual names, but, as I envisioned it, regular travel between worlds was no longer common, having been curtailed by some cataclysmic event in the past (because all good fantasy worlds need a cataclysm in the past), so those names were known primarily to sages and savants and the rare wizard who still traveled there by arcane means.

The Green Planet is pulp Venus -- a lush, steaming jungle world filled with intelligent apes, all manner of reptiles (including dinosaurs), and weird amphibians. Imagine the Isle of Dread as an entire planet and you'll get the idea. The Red Planet, on the other hand, is pulp Mars -- a parched desert world whose decadent civilization teeters on the brink of collapse after untold millennia of practicing black magic and demon worship. Imagine if H.P. Lovecraft had written A Princess of Mars and you'll have the right of it.

What's fascinating is that Paizo's Pathfinder RPG setting, Golarion, seems to be trying to mine the same vein of pulp science fiction. It even uses the terms Green Planet and Red Planet much as I do. It's stuff like this that makes it hard for me not to wish the guys and gals at Paizo well, even if their taste in game mechanics are decidedly more new school than I like. If I ever get to use this in a campaign, you can be sure I'll be swiping a couple of ideas from Pathfinder.

Public Service Announcement (Again)

I've said before that I don't see being passionate about roleplaying games -- or any other hobby -- as a bad thing. Without passion, the world would be a much duller place. But passion can also lead people astray and make them say and do things in the heat of the moment that, on reflection, they'd probably never consider saying or doing. That's why I'd like to ask that, if you disagree with me or with anything I've said, if you think an idiot, a fool, or just an opinionated bastard, please direct your ire toward me and not toward my family, least of all my children.

I have a very thick skin and am not someone who cries foul whenever a voice is raised in anger against my views; it's happened my entire life and I fully expect it to continue so long as I dare to say anything the least bit controversial. I don't have any problem with someone engaging me in spirited debate or even launching a good polemic against me and what I think about gaming or anything else. If I shied away from disagreements, I'd never have put this blog out there for people to read. I'm sincere when I say that I welcome opposing viewpoints.

I may seem like an immovable stick in the mud who closes his ears to the world, but that's pretty far from the truth. I can and have been swayed to revise my opinions in the face of reasoned discourse. "Reasoned" is key here. And wishing ill upon my children because I happened to say something you disagree with, even strongly, is not a good way to convince me of your rationality. So, please, don't do it.

Thank you.

REVIEW: Points of Light

Points of Light, written by Robert Conley and Dwayne Gillingham, packs more old school goodness in its 48 pages than any product published in 2008 has any right to. Don't believe me? Take a look at the 11-page PDF preview and then come back here. Even a quick skim of that preview will make it clear what I'm talking about. Quite simply: Points of Light is the Wilderlands of High Fantasy for the 21st century -- and in some ways it's better. Hyperbole comes easily to me, doesn't it? Perhaps. Let's take a closer look at the book before continue with my effusive praise.

Points of Light describes four different settings, each one broadly consonant with the notion of a dangerous wilderness punctuated by small outposts of civilization. As everyone knows, this is the default setting assumption of 4e and the book's title is an allusion to it. I'll grant you that, when I first heard the title, I wasn't enthused. Like most things about 4e, "Points of Light," as a phrase, reminds me too much of my college philosophy classes, where 18 year-olds, confronted with Plato's dialogs for the first time, suddenly think thoughts they believe no one has ever thought before, failing to realize of course that Plato has been read and analyzed for 2500 years and that there are very likely no new thoughts about the great thinker. By the same token, "points of light" isn't new at all; it's been a setting assumption of D&D from the start. The formalization of the concept -- and the creation of jargon to describe it -- is a good indicator to me of how rootless 4e is, but that's a topic for another time. I don't blame the authors of Goodman Games for adopting the title in an effort to sell the product to players of the new edition, who could certainly learn a few things about the old school from its tightly-written pages.

Despite its title, Points of Light is not, in fact, a 4e product; indeed it's not a product for any system, since it contains almost no game stats at all. What stats it does include, such as references to classes and levels, for example, suggests that it's intended for D&D, but I have no doubt it'd be easily adaptable to any fantasy roleplaying game built on the same concepts as D&D. I was mostly quite pleased with this approach, as it increased the utility of the book a great deal and makes adaptation a snap. My only quibble -- and it's a tiny one -- is that some "high-level" NPCs are in fact given specific levels (Clr12, for instance). I'd have preferred that such things remain vague, so each referee could decide for himself what constitutes high-level. Now, such things are supremely easy to change, so I cannot complain too vociferously. I know from experience, though, that, if something is written in the book, at least some referees or players will expect it to be so and, in a toolkit product like this, the fewer expectations that are introduced, the better.

The meat of the book are the four settings it describes, each with an accompanying one-page hex map (each hex representing 5 miles). Each setting is given a capsule history of three or four paragraphs to "set the scene" and Adaptation Notes that give some ideas about how to customize it to suit the needs and interests of each referee. There is also a table of random encounters and random rumors to give the referee something from which to work in making the settings his own. The descriptions of the settings are divided into sections: Geography, describing terrain features and Locales, describing fixed "encounters," whether they be settlements, monster lairs, ruins, etc. Each hex is numbered and there is an entry in the appropriate section if the hex contains anything noteworthy. These entries are typically no more than a single paragraph, with a few (generally settlements) containing a little more detail (and possibly a thumbnail map). There's just enough detail here to spur the referee's own imagination and give a sense of a greater whole, but not so much that it's hard to change the details if so desired.

The four settings included in Points of Light are as follows:

• Wildland: An area analogous to an outlying province of the Roman Empire in the 5th century A.D. -- after the legions have gone. As its name suggests, it's a "wild" region, overrun with humanoid and barbarian tribes and only a few small outposts of civilization that cling to the old ways.
• Southland: An homage to the Outdoor Survival map of which OD&D often speaks, this setting is an untamed area "to the south" of civilized kingdoms and where the PCs are expected to go and establish themselves as local lords.
• Borderland: This is a war-torn area where several different factions seek the upper hand. It's a good locale for referees and players who like moral ambiguity and intrigue.
• Swamps of Acheron: The most unusual of the four settings, this one is located in an extraplanar realm dedicated to a Lawful Evil god, meaning that it's also the most limited of the settings. It's also the shortest of the four settings (and the one with the smallest map), which can be seen as either good or bad, depending on one's proclivities

Of the four settings, I found that both Wildland and Southland fired my imagination powerfully and I am already torn between using one or the other as the basis for a new campaign. Borderland is also excellent, but it's a bit less "primal" than the other two. The Swamps of Acheron is a puzzle. There are lots of good ideas within its description, but it's also very esoteric, being extraplanar in nature and the realm of an evil god. Its utility is much less than that of the other three, but the other three are so well-done that I scarcely minded. And of course, the Swamps of Acheron is good; it's just not as good in my opinion as the others, but tastes differ on such things.

The layout of the book is simple and usable. The illustrations are nice black and white pieces, definitely contemporary in their appearance but not of the Elmore strike-a-pose school. The writing is generally very clear and concise, with only a few infelicities here and there. The hex maps are simply gorgeous, a beautiful melding of old school sensibilities with modern technology. Indeed, that's how I could characterize Points of Light in general. It's an old school product with new school production values. The book even includes an extensive index, making it easy to find things, which is a nice if somewhat unnecessary touch in a book of this size. All in all, the presentation of Points of Light should serve as a model for how old school publishers present their own products. I'd have liked different interior art, for the most part, but it's not a huge issue and, given that the book is intended to appeal to a broad spectrum of fantasy gamers, I can't fault Goodman Games for not going with something more strongly connected to older forms of illustration.

If Points of Light has a significant flaw, it's the intimation of a larger setting when you look at all four regions it describes. Certain names, historical events, and concepts reappear throughout the book. Now, none of these things gets much -- or any -- explication in the text, so it's not a huge concern. My worry, I suppose, is that there will be a temptation to use these names and so forth as the basis for creating a larger setting that encompasses them all, as was done with the Dungeon Crawl Classics line. The desire to find coherence and unity where there is no need for either is a powerful force in the RPG hobby today. As it stands, Points of Light gives us the thinnest of details, a pencil outline on a broad canvas that we can then color to our own liking. However, I am sure there will be gamers out there who'd like to know more about the history of the Bright Empire or the teachings of the goddess Delaquain and game publishers have a tendency to cater to such obsessives. I'd hate to see that happen, but I can hardly fault this book for what might or might not happen in possible sequels to it.

Leaving aside my concerns for a future that might not be, Points of Light is nearly perfect -- so perfect in fact that I can reasonably call it the Wilderlands of High Fantasy for the next generation. Like its illustrious predecessor, this is a product that's meant to be used rather than pored over for trivial details. One cannot (yet) talk about the intricacies of any of its settings, because they simply don't exist. In that respect, I think it has more utility than the Wilderlands, but then the Wilderlands has had almost three decades of support products. Given that much time, I fear the "world" of Points of Light would be just as detailed. I hope that does not occur; I hope that the toolkit approach of this volume is kept pristine.

The animating philosophy behind this great book is "imagine the hell out of it," a do-it-yourself perspective that is positively refreshing in a hobby filled with brand building and canned settings. Points of Light is gaming at its best -- a call to each referee to use these raw materials to create their own worlds of the imagination rather than relying on the pabulum spoon fed by game companies looking to develop an IP. I have no idea if Points of Light will appeal to today's gamers; I'd love to find out that it sold like gangbusters. That'd be proof that the old ways aren't quite dead, that the kind of gaming I enjoy is still cherished. Regardless, this is a terrific book and I can't speak highly enough about it. Go out and buy a copy and see for yourself.

Final Score: 5 out of 5 polearms

A Bit Like Rock Music

"Games are a bit like rock music, in that no matter where you take them, there needs to be at least a grain of stupidity there, a thread leading back home. I think the same is true of anything done for pleasure."

Thus spake S. John Ross in his Epilogue to the True Scientific Edition of Encounter Critical, which arrived safely in my mailbox this morning. I'm very happy to have been turned on to this game by guys whose opinions I respect, like Jeff Rients. EC is a thing of beauty and I hope to have the chance to inflict it on my gaming group sometime soon. If I do, you can be sure I'll make a post about it -- oh yes indeed.

Grognard's Grimoire: Weird Monetary Treasures

One of the things you need to remember about old school D&D is that most characters received the bulk of their experience points for accumulating treasure rather than from slaying monsters. That's why treasure generation is given such detail in the old rules. It's also why many valuable items are bulky and/or unwieldy -- to make it hard for the characters to haul it out of the dungeon and thus gain experience points appropriate to its value.

That said, I was never really one of those referees who saddled his players with a funerary boat made of solid gold and took big to fit through the doors of the burial chamber where it was kept or a dragon's trove consisting entirely of copper pieces in the millions. I liked to toy with my players, of course, and test their ingenuity, but I preferred to go the route of simply making ordinary things like coins, gems, or jewelry sufficient weird that it took cleverness and perseverance to be able to be able to cash them in.

I used to have a formula for the way I determined the likelihood that monetary treasure was unusual in some way, but I can no longer recall it. So, I'm going to borrow a page from Matt Finch's Swords & Wizardry and go with the following:

For every 100gp in value, there is a 10% chance that 100gp worth of monetary treasure is unusual, AND

For every 1,000 gp in value, there is a 10% chance that 1,000gp worth of monetary treasure is unusual, AND

For every 5,000gp in value, there is a 10% chance that 5,000gp worth of monetary treasure is unusual.

Remember, of course, that "monetary" here means treasure whose value to the characters is expressed entirely in how much cash it can bring through its sale. I never used this method when dealing with weapons, armor, and other such things, because there already were tables to determine their unique properties, if any.

For every Xgp worth of monetary treasure determined to be unusual, roll on the following table to determine in what way it's unusual:

1 Unusual Shape (e.g. triangular coins or square gems)
2 Unusual Size (e.g. giant-forged coins or small bead-like gems)
3 Unusual Color (e.g. green gold pieces or blue rubies)
4 Unusual Markings (e.g. strange glyphs on coins or carvings on the surface of gems)
5 Unusual Property (e.g. glowing coins or floating gems)
6 Hazardous Property (e.g. coins coated with contact poison or gems that give off radiation)

Except for number 6 on the list, all of the other unusual qualities add about 10-25% value to the monetary treasure, but the characters have to work hard to get someone who will be willing to buy them. After all, how many fences have ever heard of blue rubies and would recognize their value when he did? The intent here is to spur side adventures and visits to sages and esoteric collectors in order to offload the weird loot.

The Art of the Old School

I'd read this quote a while ago and agreed with it then, but, in light of the terrific conversations going on my comments lately, I'm going to bring it to everyone's attention, because it succinctly says a few things I've been trying to get across about old school games. I've bolded a section I think is particularly pertinent and that speaks quite clearly on why I see devolution rather than evolution over the course of D&D's history.

The rules themselves were barely there. You had to make it all up. This put so much responsibility on the GM. He had to be entertaining, imaginative, fair, rational. In many ways the steady march away from original D&D has been a sustained effort to remove the effects of a bad GM on the game. The more game elements are objectively determined, written down in books, the less you have to rely on the GM. The less you need a really good GM to run the game. And yes, the more of a science it becomes, and less of an art. Running this game was an art form and only a few people could do it really well. There’s something magical about that. Newer versions become more systematized and therefore more people can play. Mediocre GMs can run good games. But, if I’m being honest with myself, something of the magic is lost. That feeling that most of this game lived in your mind. Because of that, I think, it was more real. As more and more of the game lived in the rules and on character sheets, it became a game instead of a world in your head.

Read the rest of the post too. I have a fair number of quibbles about it, but, overall, there's a lot I agree with and would recommend to anyone who still doesn't quite get the old school philosophy.

The Old School Culture

One of the occupational hazards of championing the older form of something for which an updated version exists is the charge of "fogeyism," which is to say, a form of contrariness with no rational basis, only an emotional attachment to the old over the new. Fogeyism is an extreme example of nostalgia or rose-colored glasses syndrome -- viewing the past in a purely subjective fashion and comparing it favorably to the present. Now, I can't deny I indulge in fogeyism from time to time. I'm temperamentally well-disposed toward contrariness, particularly when doing so makes people question the notion that "newer is better." Likewise, I'm a wretched traditionalist about most things in life, so, as a mindset, fogeyism suits me well.

So, I would hope no one would be surprised by the fact that I look on the three earliest iterations of Dungeons & Dragons -- OD&D, Holmes Basic, and AD&D -- as my primary sources when it comes to discussing the game. Of the three, I played AD&D the most and the longest, while Holmes was my introduction into the hobby. OD&D I have played only a handful of times, but I revere it as an important historical artifact and quasi-philosophical text. When I am confused about the development of a particular rule or concept, I always refer back to OD&D to see where the idea began; it's a good guide when asking questions about D&D, even if it's rarely a place I find answers.

As I have refined my own views about this hobby, I've come to the conclusion that its faddish success in the late 70s and early 80s -- the so-called Golden Age of 1978-1982 -- was in fact a glorious Autumn before the onset of Fimbulwinter. My entry into the hobby in late 1979 puts me squarely in the middle of the Golden Age, when D&D became a household word and schools and public libraries across the nation sponsored game clubs and game days. Hobby and toy shops everywhere sold D&D books, dice, and miniatures and almost everyone in my circle of friends and acquaintances played the game.

It was a heady, exciting time to enter the hobby, because it was still a single hobby at this point. The first generation of gamers, the guys who'd played wargames in the late 60s and early 70s and who remembered a time when there was just D&D without the O or A, were still around and active. They were mentors to a lot of us and they took great pleasure, mixed with occasional annoyance, at all these young kids who suddenly took an interest in the same things they did. It was during this time that I was introduced to Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, and Michael Moorcock, took up my love of history, and began my lifelong love affair with maps and languages.

Though only a young person, these were interests I shared with the older guys and together we formed a single hobby. Of course, the reason we formed a single hobby is because I had adopted my hobby from the older guys. I'd been "initiated" into the brotherhood and was deemed worthy to participate in its mysteries. There's a quote from Mike "Old Geezer" Mornard that's been making the rounds lately and it's a good and pertinent one:

Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax originally developed OD&D for adult wargamers. Those of us under 18 were there because invited, and because we could 'play like adults'.

I'm certainly younger than Mornard and I never had the chance to game with Arneson, Gygax, and Barker as he has, but what he describes there mirrors my own experiences. Back in the day, I often played at game gatherings with "old" guys and never once considered it odd. We all could quote from Conan stories, knew details about the Hundred Years War, and liked to show off hand-drawn maps of our campaign worlds. Why wouldn't we game together?

But then something happened and that something was the mass marketing of D&D to appeal to people outside of this little brotherhood into which I'd been initiated. The Basic Rules of 1981 (Moldvay) and 1983 (Mentzer) were attempts to broaden the appeal of the game and make it more accessible to people who, either by circumstance or disposition, weren't able to hook into the network of masters and padawans that I'd so gleefully joined a few years previously.

The mass marketing of D&D succeeded and succeeded brilliantly, bolstering the ranks of people who bought TSR products. However, it was also a hammer blow to the common culture of the old school. The people who entered the hobby with Moldvay and Mentzer were (largely) those who discovered fantasy in the post-D&D world. They weren't into Howard or Moorcock; they were into "fantasy," this suddenly-popular genre of literature that had sprung up in the aftermath of D&D's amazing success. Let me be clear: I'm not faulting anyone for having been born too late to have experienced the Golden Age of Gaming or whose circumstances militated against their picking up a Lin Carter anthology and devouring it. Nevertheless, the influx of new gamers whose acquaintance with the old culture was superficial at best wrought changes, changes that weren't obvious at the time, but that, as the years wore on, shattered the old consensus, replacing it not with a new consensus but a fragmented one.

When I bemoan the state of the hobby today, I do so because I miss the old culture. I miss the days when I could enter a game shop and strike up a conversation with a guy thirty years my elder and share common interests and experiences. Fantasy now is too balkanized and diffuse to serve as the basis for a common culture. I often feel quite alienated from younger gamers, because, other than a vague commitment to "roleplaying" (however defined), we simply don't have a common frame of reference anymore. A lot of times I express my alienation in what comes across as contempt for the new stuff; heck, sometimes it is contempt. But what I am trying to get across is that I lament the passing of the day when there really was a brotherhood of gamers, when I really could talk about The Hobby with the definite article and it meant something that wasn't just platitudinous can't-we-all-just-get-along Kumbaya nonsense.

Often, what might appear to be anger on my part is actually sadness. I dearly miss the old hobby shops and companies. I miss the game clubs and game days. I miss the old school culture that I enthusiastically joined almost thirty years ago. Any ire I feel is mostly directed at those who argue that the things I miss are not just long gone -- I know that already -- but unimportant and that keeping their memory sacred is a waste of time. I simply won't accept that. 2008 has already seen the deaths of Gygax and Bledsaw, two titans of the Golden Age. Over the next few years, we'll undoubtedly lose even more of the founders of the hobby. I'm not willing to forget them or abandon the things they created; that's just not the way I am about the past, particularly when that past laid the groundwork for my present. I owe a lot to this hobby and I've chosen to honor it the best way I know how: by keeping the old culture alive and trying to inspire a little more love for it in others.

I know that makes me a fool, but I've been called worse.

I Hate Technology

I'm still finding it impossible to convince Google Analytics that I have a tracking code embedded into this blog. I have tried pretty much everything and nothing works. And given that I use Blogger to compose Grognardia, my ability to monkey around with its inner working is pretty limited -- that is, assuming I even understood how to do so, which I don't.

I have less than 1000 regular readers and I don't sell anything through this blog, so it's not vital that I have the ability to track visitors and so forth. Still, I found it interesting to see where all my visitors were coming from. I discovered a number of great new blogs by checking my Analytics stats. I'd like to continue to be able to do that, but technology seems to be conspiring against me.

And people wonder why I prefer a game made in the 1970s ...

Castle Zagyg: Upper Works

I understand this product was released as a boxed set for GenCon. Has anyone seen it or, better yet, know anything about it? I ask because I'm in principle quite interested, but there's also a part of me that's rather worried that, for various reasons, it won't meet with my approval. I rather liked Yggsburgh, warts and all, so I'm hoping this product will be in a similar vein. And let's face it: I'm a sucker for a boxed set. At the same time, I have fears and trepidations.

Anyone have any deep insights to share?

The Shoulders of Giants

Growing up as a gamer in Baltimore during the 1970s meant that it was impossible for me not to know about Charles S. Roberts and the company he founded, The Avalon Hill Game Company. Called by some the "Father of (Board) Wargaming," Roberts was the designer of the classic Tactics, which he published in 1954, a game that revolutionized the way wargames were published and played forever after. Between Tactics and his second game, Gettysburg (published in 1958), most of the features we now associate with wargames (hex maps, cardboard counters, combat resolution tables, etc.) became established as standards that all subsequent wargames would either imitate or react against. Originally located in Avalon, Maryland (hence the name of the company), Avalon Hill eventually moved to Baltimore in 1962, after Roberts sold the company to one of his creditors, Monarch Printing. The company remained there at 4517 Harford Road until 1998, when the company and its properties were acquired by Hasbro.

As I've said before, I was never much of a wargamer myself, but I knew wargamers, mostly my friend's father and his buddies, as well as guys I knew through various hobby shops I'd frequent. I'd occasionally join them in playing various games -- 1776, Gettysburg, Rise and Decline of the Third Reich and, of course, Squad Leader -- and I enjoyed them well enough. I was never very good, of course, which may explain why people liked playing wargames against me, but I didn't mind. I found the games fascinating as physical artifacts, with all those counters and hex maps. I used to use my Squad Leader maps when playing D&D, because they worked great as generic wilderness areas. Little did I realize I was recapitulating history, albeit with a different game. I also played a lot of other "wargames," like Diplomacy, Freedom in the Galaxy, Kingmaker, and so forth and was generally more adept at them.

Given all of that, it was rather hard not live in awe of Avalon Hill. Sure, there were other wargame companies out there, most notably SPI, but AH always seemed to me to be the king of this particular hill (no pun intended). I felt considerable local pride in the company and its accomplishments, even if it had (as the legend goes) turned down the opportunity to have published D&D and thereby deprived me of the chance to work for my favorite game's publisher in my own hometown. Not that I'm bitter about that or anything ...

Anyway, my father, as was often the case, knew one of the printers who worked for Avalon Hill and he arranged for me to get a tour of the place. I still have very fond memories of that day, as I watched men laying out books -- by hand -- on these giant machines. I realize it only confirms my Luddite credentials, but there's something so right about old fashioned printing. I was absolutely captivated by it, so much so that I almost forgot where I was. I met a number of editors and designers too, although, for the life of my I can't recall a single name. Back then, if you weren't Gary Gygax or Marc Miller, you really weren't a "name" in my book. Still, just being there made me feel like I'd died and gone to Valhalla; this is the place where games were made. And I mean literally. This is where they were printed and packaged and shrink wrapped and all the rest. I mean, people used to hand pack these wargames. I saw huge stacks of cardboard counters and the machine that made them. It was an astounding thing.

Like many companies, Avalon Hill fell prey to a combination of economic factors that led to its being purchased by Hasbro in 1998. In a strange irony, Avalon Hill is now a brand name under the auspices of Wizards of the Coast, the company that bought TSR, publisher of Dungeons & Dragons, and itself purchased by Hasbro in 1999. Disappointingly, very few classic Avalon Hill games have been re-released since Hasbro bought the company (Diplomacy being the notable exceptions). AH is now mostly a brand name, like Parker Brothers or Milton Bradley, without much connection to its history or origins. Under WotC/Hasbro, Avalon Hill's logo goes on "strategy" boardgames like Axis & Allies or Risk 2210. A few classic AH wargames of old, like Advanced Squad Leader, have been licensed to other publishers, but most are in the vault somewhere, unlikely ever to see the light of day again.

Avalon Hill occupies a strange place in my history as a gamer. Even when the company was still around, I viewed it as a relic from an earlier age, but one that welcomed me into the borders of a wondrous kingdom, like the Argonath. There were untold riches here; this was, after all, the company that had created an entire hobby around itself and whose games had nourished the imaginations of my heroes, Gygax and Arneson. I might not have ever been a true wargamer, but I always had respect for Avalon Hill. It was an institution and a link with the past and I took great interest in that past. The stories my friend's father told us about the games he had played in his own youth with his friends and the real world history that I learned from these games are memories I'll always carry with me. They're part of what drew me into roleplaying, strangely enough -- a desire to be part of something that had been going on for decades, ever since Charles Roberts changed the world forever in 1954.

Grognard's Challenge #2: The Lightning Field

I received far fewer entries for Grognard's Challenge #2 than I did for #1, owing, I think, to the much greater difficulty of coming up with clever tricks or traps to befuddle players, which is why I extended the deadline and expanded the scope of the contest. Nevertheless, I did receive many excellent entries and I thank everyone who made a submission.

Having examined them carefully, though, there was one that stood out in my mind as a clear favorite and that was Ed Moretti's "The Lightning Field." Not only did his entry include a very nice map -- with hexes! -- but the core concept of his trick/trap is one that speaks to many different aspects of my own gaming philosophy. In essence, it's a giant gamble, because there's a healthy dose of randomness involved. There's a chance a character could easily cross the lightning field without every running afoul of its dangers -- but it's only a chance. In addition, the randomness isn't "pure," since the presence of characters wearing metal armor introduces another degree of variability that is also unpredictable.

The Lightning Field reminded me of tricks/traps I used when I was a younger man. For a long time, I had an obsession with giant chessboards and other similar kinds of puzzles involving plotting a course across deadly terrain that followed certain not easily discernible patterns. I think the Lightning Field is unique too because, while it could be transported to a dungeon environment with ease -- bonus points for flexibility -- it is "native" to the wilderness. I'm of the opinion that old school gaming tends to be overly dungeon-focused to its detriment and I appreciate seeing submissions like this, because they're a good reminder that there's a whole world out there in which to adventure in an old school fashion.

So, without further ado, here's the Lightning Field. Congratulations to Ed. I'll be sending him a copy of The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures shortly as his prize.

Description: The Valley of Storms is as shrouded in mystery as it is shrouded in the veil of perpetual storm that gives it its name, for no one has gone into the valley and returned in living memory.  The knowledge of who or what dwells within is beyond the reach of even legend; all that one can be sure of is that some sinister intelligence guards the valley against the curious and the venturesome.

The entrance to the valley is a narrow ravine, 20 yards wide, with sheer walls and floor of polished, smooth, hard, black stone slick from the constant rain.  The ground between these walls is dotted by long metal poles embedded in the black stone floor every three feet for a distance of 100 yards. The purpose of these poles is given much speculation by those who view the valley for the first time. Impalement? Astronomical observatory of some kind? A new spectator does not have long to wait, however, to learn the awful truth of what these poles mean in a land whose atmosphere is a seething boil of constant storm. Each round, a bolt of lightning erupts from the clouds, attracted randomly to one of these metal poles, with lethal results to anyone in the vicinity.

Rules: The pole that the lightning strikes can be determined by obtaining a 1d20 roll representing the X axis and a 1d100 roll representing the Y axis (see Figure 1.0 below). A lightning strike will do 6d8 points of damage to anyone in the hex determined by the roll with the amount of damage decreasing by d8 for each hex a character is standing away from the hex struck (save for half damage).

If the roll determines that lightning will strike within 6 hexes of any character wearing metal armor, there is a 60% chance (-10% per hex distant from the hex rolled) that the lightning will strike that character instead for a full 6d8 points of damage (no save). If more than one character wearing metal armor is in range, roll the percentage for each character. The lightning will strike the character who rolled under the percentage chance with the highest number displayed on the dice. For example, Character 1 in plate mail is 2 hexes away from the hex rolled and thus has a 40% chance of being struck and rolls a 15; character 2 in scale mail is 4 hexes away with a 20% chance of being struck and rolls a 19; and character 3 in chain mail is 1 hex away with a 50% chance and rolls a 70; character 2 will be struck by the lighting. The slick wet stone is slippery so that any character crossing it will be limited to their base movement rate when traversing the field.

I plan on sticking with two week spans for each contest from now on, meaning that Challenge #3 still has another week to go before I announce a winner. Good luck to everyone and many thanks to those who have submitted to the first two challenges.

Alive and Out of Print

Here's a link to what could be a promising little website. Called "Alive and Out of Print," it's dedicated to providing links and information about out of print RPGs so that players of said games can find each other, share their resources, and locate OOP products up for sale or auction. I think this is a great idea and I hope the site expands beyond its present somewhat limited scope as time goes on.

Grognard Test Answers

For those who are interested, here are the answers to yesterday's Grognard Test.

Three brief comments:

1. Several of the questions dealt with wargames, as is only fitting. Though the term "grognard" has been appropriated by the RPG hobby to refer to old school players, it's applied more properly to old school wargamers. Of course, roleplaying grew out of wargaming, so many of the oldest players of RPGs are also wargamers of ancient vintage. And, for a long time, the two hobbies existed side by side and cross-pollinated one another in various ways. I was never much of a wargamer myself -- I did play some Squad Leader and a few other Avalon Hill games -- but I knew lots of them. My friend's dad, one of the guys who introduced me to the hobby, was a wargamer and we sometimes played with him. Anyway, my point is that connection between wargaming and RPGs is a venerable one and, if you don't have any experience of that connection, chances are you're not old enough to qualify as a grognard -- not that there's anything wrong with that.

2. Question 1 was phrased misleadingly, yes, but that didn't bother me. All I needed to see was "retired Scout" and the answer was obvious.

3. I contend that the tiebreaker was a trick question, because both Morgan Ironwolf and Aleena -- female characters drawn by Jeff Dee and Larry Elmore, respectively -- appeared in mass market editions of D&D. Anyone who not only knows who they are but cares enough to argue about the relative merits of their feminine virtues is probably someone who entered the hobby late, during its faddish phase in the 80s rather than earlier. Now, it's possible that some genuine grognards care about this nerdy debate, but I doubt it.

Finally, as the test proved, even many people whose grognard credentials are widely accepted had a hard time with at least a couple of the questions; I know I did. Being old school is, to some extent, as much a function of exposure and interests as it is of time and experience. I have no interest in kicking anyone out of the clubhouse because they didn't know about grues or the displacement tonnage of a Type-S Scout/Courier. I do, however, have an interest in ensuring that collective memories, history, and traditions of our common hobby are known and honored, even by those who weren't around to live through them. Without this past, our hobby has no future.

Grognard's Challenge Update

A couple of quick announcements:

1. Grognard's Challenge #2 now has some excellent entries, thanks to my extending the contest another week. There's still a few more days left, so, if you're thinking about submitting something, you can still do so!

2. Consequently, I'm going to extend the deadline of Grognard's Challenge #3 to midnight (EST) August 24, 2008. I've gotten a couple of entries so far, but I'd love to see more.

Grognard Test

With apologies to Stuart "PapersAndPaychecks" Marshall, I reproduce here his Grognard Test from this post. For what it's worth, I only score 6 out of 9 (taking 2a and 2b as two separate questions). And I contend that the tiebreaker is in fact a trick question.

QUESTION 1:

In a RPG, a member of your party is a retired scout, age 38. He has a highly useful piece of equipment. How much does it weigh?

QUESTION 2:

Before you is a grey 5/8" cardboard chit. It has numbers in each corner as follows:

TOP LEFT - 20
TOP RIGHT - 20
BOTTOM LEFT - 1
BOTTOM RIGHT - 0

In between the two "20"s is the letter A.

2a: There are two games you could be playing. Name them both.
2b: What exactly does the cardboard chit represent?

QUESTION 3:

Your opponent has hordes of those pesky Russians with piles of 4-4-7 riflemen! You have ordinary riflemen as well, but they're superior in one important respect. What is it?

QUESTION 4:

Thed, the goddess of rape, is associated with which creature?

QUESTION 5:

Eclavdra is described as an EHP'SS. What does EHP'SS stand for?

QUESTION 6:

You trip over an unseen imaginary deceased turtle. What game are you playing?

QUESTION 7:

It is pitch dark. What might eat you?

QUESTION 8:

Gold, Sword, and Juno are associated with which date?

TIE BREAKER:

Explain in no more than 50 words why Morgan Ironwolf is hot and Aleena is a skank ho.

Big Damn Heroes

I intensely disliked the 4e Players Handbook cover, but I actually liked the cover of the 4e Dungeon Masters Guide. The cover of the 4e Monster Manual is more bad than good in my opinion, both esthetically and "philosophically."

Who the heck is that guy on the cover? Why, Orcus, Demon Prince of the Undead, of course. "But he doesn't look a thing like Orcus!" This is absolutely true, but then Orcus hasn't really looked like himself in a long time. For those with short memories, here's how ol' Goat Boy looked in the 1e Monster Manual (which is itself an almost perfect copy of his previous appearance in Eldritch Wizardry):

Now, I understand and accept that the illustration of even iconic characters will change over time, as each artist interprets the character differently. But, as the 4e MM cover interprets him, I only see the faintest resemblance to the original conception of Orcus. There are some ram's horns, wings, and a skull-tipped wand. Oh yes, and hooves. Kinda. Other than that, though, it looks rather like a different creature to me -- a buffer, more bad ass one. And that's almost certainly the point. The original Orcus illustration has scrawny, satyr-like legs, almost vestigial wings, and a pot belly. What self-respecting adventurer would be afraid of him, right?

But the new re-imagined Orcus is Schwarzenegger with a goat's(?) head. You can tell he's a force to be reckoned with just by looking at him. He's even adopted a body builder pose just to show of us demonic musculature. And he's wearing his WWE championship belt to boot. Oh, and his tail now has spikes all over it now, for some reason or other. Clearly, this is a guy worthy of being the opponent of your player characters, not like that wimp Dave Sutherland drew back in the 70s.

There are a lot of issues here, so I'll start with the differing esthetics. The original Orcus, though a wholly imaginary creation of Gygax (or was it Brian Blume?) looks like a medieval demon. He's a strange concatenation of human and animal parts, some of which look atrophied or distended. He's clearly not natural. In some sense, he might even be called metaphorical, for many of the features of medieval monsters were highly suggestive to the medieval mind of certain qualities that, culturally, they associated with certain referents in the real world. That Orcus' wings are too small to carry his bulk is irrelevant; all that is necessary is that he have wings, for wings equate with flight. The physical plausibility of their operation is utterly beside the point.

Now, I'm not trying to suggest in the slightest that the Sutherland Orcus is a careful product of someone with a deep understanding of the medieval mind, because that'd be laughable. However, the Sutherland drawing, like most of the drawings in the original Monster Manual, is broadly consonant with medieval esthetics. Or perhaps I should say that it calls them to mind. There's something weirdly primal about that goofy Orcus DCS drew. I've always found medieval demonic images to be far creepier than modern ones, precisely because they have some atavistic connection to aspects of my cultural memory. Modern demons are just imaginary creatures; they're not monsters, if you catch my meaning. Wayne Reynolds' Orcus isn't a demon. Look at how muscular and physically powerful he is. That's a creature that inspires fear for my life, whereas Sutherland's Orcus is one that inspires fear for my soul.

I'm just going to ignore the fact that this piece is another strike-a-pose piece from the latter day Elmore school, even if it is far more dynamic than most Elmore pieces. Of course, "dynamic" is a relative term, since it's not clear from context that Orcus is actually doing anything other than flexing his muscles for the judges. Take a good look at his wand, though, and compare it to the one in the Sutherland illo. The Reynolds version looks as if it's an actual skull (plus some vertebrae) mounted onto a black metallic handle. The DCS version is just a skull, possibly even just a carved one, atop a black wand. What are the odds that 4e has introduced a backstory to Orcus' wand? I'll bet you the the identity of the skull's original "owner" is made clear (or will be before long). A god whom Orcus slew perhaps? Or some powerful being Orcus defeated in his ancient climb to demonic princedom? Maybe I'm being unfair, but the new version of his wand just begs for explanation and brandification. It's not merely a symbolic representation of Orcus' affinity with the power of death; it's instead a trademarkable image that helps build IP.

There's also the potentially bigger issue that says a great deal about the design philosophy of 4e. By picking a single (yes, he has a couple of henchmen with him, I know), powerful opponent for the cover of the Monster Manual rather than illustrating several, I can't help but think that this is what's deemed the ideal 4e encounter -- the set piece against a "boss" monster (known as "solo" monsters in 4e). I know it's unfashionable to make comparisons between 4e and video games, but so be it. The reality is that there's clearly been a shift toward a "cinematic" model for combat in 4e, treating them as big special effects extravaganzas, where the player characters get to show off how cool and powerful they are. The placing of Orcus on the cover of the MM is WotC's way of saying, "Isn't this the kind of bad guy whose ass you want to kick?" There's nothing wrong with that, if that's what the average D&D player actually wants out of the game, but I hope I can be forgiven in saying that that's a huge shift away from the philosophy and esthetics of OD&D, never mind the pulp fantasy literature that inspired it.

The cover of the Monster Manual pretty well cemented my dislike for 4e. I disliked the contents already for various reasons, but the cover was the icing on the cake. The fetishization of the D&D's most powerful entities has always sat poorly with me, but 4e's cover takes it to new heights. It's a reductionist mentality that treats even the Demon Prince of the Undead as another notch on your character's belt as he claws his way toward immortality. Indeed, it's a wholesale rejection of the Gygaxian "naturalist" approach to fantasy roleplaying. I hesitate to call this the worst MM cover ever, given how poor its competitors are, but I will say that this is the first cover whose philosophical underpinnings are so reprehensible to me that it actually makes the cover of the 1e version look inspired by comparison. That takes a singular kind of badness. Bravo.

*sigh*

For reasons I cannot begin to fathom, after I rebooted my computer my email reader, Thunderbird, decided to eat all my emails, including saved ones. Everything else is fine, including my address book and settings.

What this means is that if you have sent me an email in the last week or so, there's a very good chance I don't have it anymore. In the interests of safety, I'd appreciate it if you could resend any recent mails to me, particularly if it's something relating to the Grognard's Challenge contests.

Between this and my inability to get Google Analytics to work again, I am convinced that technology hates me.

Grr.

GROGNARD's GRIMOIRE: The Cleric (Again)

One of the things that's always bugged me about D&D's "Vancian" magic system was that, while the game mechanics are the same for both magic-user and cleric spells, the explanation for why this is so is fuzzy. If spells take up mental "space" in the process of memorizing their arcane formulae, then does that mean a cleric is simply a magic-user by another name, that is, another flavor of wizard? Otherwise, it would seem to me that clerics, who simply pray to their deity to grant them their spells each day, ought either to use a different mechanical system or a different explanation of how they obtain their spells.

For Pulp Fantasy D&D, I opted to keep the standard Vancian system for clerics but to embrace the notion that they were simply magic-users by another name. Whereas wizards use their Intelligence to command the powers of the cosmos, clerics look to their Wisdom to find ways to bring themselves and their companions into accord with it. Consequently, a cleric's spell list is almost entirely protective/creative in nature rather than destructive, as a wizard's is. What about reversible spells, you may ask? A good question. In OD&D, clerics cannot cast reversed versions of their spells, but anti-clerics can. "Anti-clerics" are Chaotic clerics who can only cast reversed spells. That is, they can only cause light wounds rather than cure them. They can likewise never even raise dead, which has interesting implications for the campaign world.

I like this idea in principle, but it doesn't quite jibe with the way I want to explain why wizards and clerics use the same game mechanics for spells but get very different types of spells. So what I'm doing is this: regardless of alignment, the cleric's spell list does not include reversible spells. The path of the cleric is one of healing and defense. Even the bad guys need healers and the cosmos doesn't care whom you're healing or why, only that you are. However, reversed spells are still possible. A cleric of any alignment can still choose to reverse one of his spells, but doing so opens his soul to darkness, since he's betraying the very intent of the path he has chosen, in effect trying to trick the cosmos through his superior insights into it.

Each time a cleric casts a reversed spell he must immediately make a saving throw against magic. If he fails, he loses a point of both Wisdom and Constitution. This loss is either temporary or permanent depending on what the cleric chooses to do between now and the next time he attempts to memorize his spells. If he wishes to overcome the ability score loss, he can atone by undertaking some sort of perpetual penance that consists either of an action -- never again to eat meat, never to wear purple garments, always give money to beggars, flagellate himself daily --
or a religious devotion -- carrying the relic of St. So-and-So at all times, always greeting others in the name of his god, blessing any places he enters, etc. These penances can never be abandoned, as they are the only thing that keep the wrath of the cosmos at bay. Should a cleric be unable or unwilling to perform one, he will then lose the Wisdom and Constitution he lost before, only this time there is no restoring it. A penance must be performed for each and every time the cleric casts a reversed spell and fails his saving throw, meaning that clerics who make a habit of casting reversed spells will soon either have very low Wisdom and Constitution scores or be a bundle of taboos and eccentric pious behavior. Any cleric whose Wisdom or Constitution score drops to zero dies and rises as an undead being whose Hit Dice is closest to their level at the time of death.

Because my pulp fantasy clerics are closer to wizard's than to the traditional D&D Knight Hospitaller, I've decided to limit their choices to those of the wizard. In almost every other respect, though, they're identical to the D&D cleric -- spell progression, weapon restrictions, hit dice, the ability to turn undead (since the undead represent the ultimate example of beings "out of sync" with the cosmos) -- but I've reworked their experience table thusly, to accommodate the fact that they have fewer armor choices:

1 - 0
2 - 1400
3 - 2800
4 - 5600
5 - 11,200
6 - 25,000
7 - 50,000
8 - 100,000
9 - 200,000

+100,000 XP per level after 9th

The Crux

If anything, the old school movement is a move away from being slaves to a global marketing plan focused on boosting sales through constant revision to follow whatever juvenile trend or game mechanic is hot at the time. We're all adults and generally experienced enough to decide for ourselves what we like, what works and what doesn't. WOTC has nothing more to offer people like that. Ultimately, if you're having fun and playing the game you want to play who's to tell you any different? If anybody does...slap them and tell them Kellri sent you.

A great post from a great thread over at the Knights & Knaves Alehouse.

Old Gamma World Ad

One of my commenters noted that Gary's daughter, Elise Gygax, appeared in another TSR ad back in the 70s, this time for Gamma World. The ad apparently appeared only in the UK in an issue of White Dwarf magazine. Consequently, I'd never seen it myself, but reader Jarl Frå Oslo did and he kindly scanned the image, which I reproduce here:


The good Jarl also has a blog, Demons & Dragons, which I am happy to add to my links below. A pity it's in Polish, a language my great grandparents more or less abandoned after immigrating to the United States almost 100 years ago, so I can't read a word of it.

The Strange Case of Winnie-the-Pooh

Winnie-the-Pooh is probably one of the most widely recognized fictional characters in the world, right up there with Mickey Mouse, Superman, and Darth Vader. He is also an icon of English children's literature. The bear of very little brain made his debut in 1926 in the eponymous Winnie-the-Pooh, written by A.A. Milne and loosely based on the stuffed toys of his own son, Christopher Robin, a fictitious version of whom appears as the only human character. The stories of Pooh and his friends in that volume (and its sequel, The House at Pooh Corner) proved phenomenally successful, receiving great acclaim throughout the English speaking world.

So great was the success that, in 1930, an American by the name of Stephen Slesinger purchased the US and Canadian merchandising rights to the Winnie-the-Pooh stories and characters for $1000 (approximately $12,000 today) and a promise of two-thirds of the proceeds. Until his death in 1953, Slesinger marketed Pooh relentlessly, selling toys, games, books, puzzles, and records. He is also responsible for the "red-shirted" version of Winnie-the-Pooh that most people now associate with the character. By 1938, Pooh merchandise was making over $50 million a year and, in the process, laying the groundwork for the licensing industry that now dominates most creative endeavors.

Slesinger died in 1953, but his widow, Shirley, continued to market Pooh until 1961, when she sold the licensing to the Walt Disney Company. Five years later, Disney released the first of three short films starring Pooh and his friends, all of which were combined and released as a single feature in 1977. While these films are fairly close adaptations of the Milne stories, there are differences, chief among them being the introduction of a new character, Gopher (in full, Samuel J. Gopher), not found in the original tales. At the time of his introduction, there was an uproar about the insertion not just of a new character but one that did not "fit" into the presumed English setting of the stories, as gophers are not found in England. Likewise, gopher is a purely comedic character, whose whistling voice and slapstick behavior is quite different than the almost meditative humor of the actual Milne characters.

Since 1977, Disney has continued to develop the Winnie-the-Pooh characters and stories, turning them into a franchise of remarkable staying power. There have been four television series and almost a dozen movies. Naturally, the content of these shows and movies has been almost entirely original, written by Disney rather than deriving from Milne's own works. Many new characters have been introduced, such as the heffalump Lumpy, Kessie the bluebird, and, most recently, Darby, a six year-old girl who seems to have usurped the traditional role of Christopher Robin as Pooh's only human friend and confidante. Pooh appeared, alongside many other cartoon characters (such as Alvin and the Chipmunks and Garfield) in a 1990 anti-drug film entitled Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue. He has also appeared as one of 100 Disney characters in the Final Fantasy-related video game Kingdom Hearts.

There can be no question that Winnie-the-Pooh is simultaneously a much beloved children's character throughout the world and a highly successful merchandising franchise. Most children -- most adults -- only know the character through the Disney version of him, having never read the original stories from which he and his friends come. Had it not been for Stephen Slesinger and Disney, it's quite likely Pooh would be largely unknown today, like many other fictional characters popular in their day but that subsequently failed the test of time, but who can say for certain?

2008 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest Winner ...

... in the category of Fantasy Fiction is a true classic. I think there's deep wisdom here that applies equally to the field of roleplaying game design.

"Toads of glory, slugs of joy," sang Groin the dwarf as he trotted jovially down the path before a great dragon ate him because the author knew that this story was a train wreck after he typed the first few words.

All that and more wretched prose to be found here.

Strangely Compelling

I am not a fan of the "faux tome" look that Wizards of the Coast decided to use for the Third Edition Dungeons & Dragons books. I thought they looked somewhat cheesy, truth be told. I've said before that, while I understand they were aiming for a "classic" look that showed their respect for the history and traditions of the game, what we got looked silly and pretentious instead.

That said, I have an inexplicable soft spot for the covers of the 3e and v.3.5 Monster Manual volumes.

And I know exactly why: the eye. Where the covers of the Players Handbook and Dungeon Masters Guide look like the covers of game books, this one -- if you ignore the little "Core Rulebook III" business -- actually looks as if it were some black libram found in the library of a necromancer in the pulp fantasy tradition. Nothing says "forbidden lore" than a metal-bound book with a vertical-slitted eye staring out at you from the front cover.

Now, the question remains whether such a cover, however much I like it, is appropriate for the Monster Manual. I have no firm answer to that. On the one hand, none of the previous covers we've looked at has done the book justice in my opinion. On the other hand, why should the MM, of all the books, be the where the faux tome look works? I guess part of me is reminded of medieval bestiaries or the Physiologus, with their catalogs of fantastic creatures. That's the tradition out of which the Monster Manual has arisen and I somehow have this image in the back of my head that the MM should look like it's an ancient book of lore. One reason for this is that, alone among the three core D&D books, the MM is the one that could in fact exist in the game world in some form. It's not purely an artifact of game play like the PHB and DMG. That's not to say I have ever included a Monster Manual in any of my campaigns, but I wouldn't object if I discovered that some other referee had included one in his own campaign.

I don't know. There's some strangely compelling about both the 3e and v.3.5 MM covers. I can't say that they're ideal, but then what would an ideal MM cover look like? I still don't know. All I can say is that this is the best I've seen so far. There's just some indefinable something about these volumes that feels right and that's a big part of the definition of old school art, such as it is: it feels right.

GROGNARD's GRIMOIRE: The Price of Magic

This is the first installment of the long-promised new feature of this blog, a twice weekly (every Tuesday and Thursday) helping of some old school content for use in your own adventures or campaigns.

For the premier, I've decided to be utterly self-serving and offer up an idea I'm toying with for my Pulp Fantasy D&D project. As things stand now, I'm working under the assumption that the Cleric will be folded into a broad Magic-User "meta-class," becoming an example of one approach to the wielding of arcane powers. The traditional Magic-User, which is to say, the pointy hatted guy with a long beard, will become the Wizard, an example of another approach to magic. The Wizard's spell list will be like that of the OD&D M-U, while the Cleric (I considered calling him the "Priest," but am not sure I like that) will be that of his OD&D namesake.

Under this scheme, the Wizard's approach is all about the harnessing of power through the force of one's own will. Even when used for good, this is a dark, selfish path that slowly warps and twists the Wizard's body and (often) mind. Consequently, every time a Wizard gains a level, he must roll on the following table to see what, if any, price he must pay for his continued meddling with Things Man Was Not Meant to Know.

1D20 Roll (Any result achieved more than once is ignored, unless the given affliction is broad enough to admit multiple examples):

1. Wizard's hair turns white or falls out completely
   
2. Wizard acquires a pallid and/or waxy complexion
3. Wizard is wracked with a incurably phlegmatic cough
4. Wizard acquires a strange obsession
   
5. Wizard experiences periodic hallucinations
6. Wizard develops a limp in one leg
7. Wizard develops a facial tic
8. Wizard exhibits sores/boils on his skin
9. Wizard periodically breaks into fits of uncontrollable laughter
10. Wizard's nose begins to rot away
    
11. Wizard loses the senses of taste and smell
12. Wizard develops an allergy to a common food, animal, or object
13. Wizard's lips crack and bleed
14. Wizard weeps tears of blood
15. Wizard's eyes either bug out or sink deeper into their sockets
16. Wizard's arm or hand withers, becoming largely useless
17. Wizard's finger and toenails grow at a prodigious rate
18. Wizard's spine twists
19. Wizard's body is periodically wracked with spasms or seizures
20. Wizard develops webbing between his fingers and toes

You will note that none of these afflictions has any game mechanics associated with them. Likewise, none of them are debilitating. How they play out and what effects they have on a character are left entirely to the player and his referee. Their entire purpose is to make Wizards, even good ones, appear unnerving and unnatural. These are, after all, the men and women who attempt to impose their will on the cosmos and make it do their bidding; it's only right that, should they achieve any degree of power, they be left scarred by their experiences.

The above list is partially inspired by the effects of Taint listed in the 3e version of Unearthed Arcana, a book I consider to be a very fine one, even if my love for 3e itself is less than enthusiastic.

Same Old, Same Old

So far as I have been able to determine, the cover illustration of the revised Second Edition AD&D Monstrous Manual (note that the name continues to be used even as late as 1995) is identical to that of the 1993 version, although the trade dress has been altered to match the rest of the 2.5e line.

Everything I said in my previous entry applies to this one as well, but I have two additional, possibly tangential comments. First, I think it says a lot that TSR didn't see fit to commission a new cover for its revised MM cover. The previous white version of the book came out only two years before, so I can see the bean counter logic that argues, "Why get a new cover after so short a time?" Of course, the same logic might also ask, "Why a revision after so short a time?" I can't help but wonder if the reuse of art was an indicator of TSR's ailing financial health. In retrospect, we know that, by 1995, TSR was bleeding money and its sales were in serious decline. Was it in fact in such a bad way that it couldn't spare the cash to commission a new cover illustration? Second, the retention of the name Monstrous Manual strikes me as further evidence that TSR no longer saw D&D as a game with a history and traditions of its own, but rather as a property that they could mold and twist in any way they wished to serve their bottom line. Such was their right, of course, but I think (again, in retrospect) one of the reasons why Wizards of the Coast were once viewed as the "savior" of D&D is because its spokespeople and designers publicly showed respect and fondness for the past of the game, even as they were updating and changing it in ways that I ultimately think were problematic. Whatever else Third Edition was, it was in many ways a "nostalgic" edition, restoring many things to the game that TSR had shed in its multifarious efforts to "remake" the game in their own image.

I'll close this post with a scan of a 1977 magazine ad for the original Monster Manual, featuring Gary's daughter, Elise, as its sales model. Strange stuff indeed.

Muddled and Confused

My dislike for the art direction and marketing of AD&D Second Edition is well established, but the truth of the matter is that I played and indeed enjoyed 2e without too much complaint in the early years of its existence. By and large, the rules of 2e are not so far removed from those of 1e that they've wandered too far off the campus of the old school. The presentation, content, and marketing of 2e are another matter entirely, as its "Monster Manual" reveals:

The first thing you'll notice is that the 2e version of this "book" carries a different name, the Monstrous Compendium. I put "book" in scare quotes, because the MC was not in fact a book at all, but rather a D-Ring binder decorated with Jeff Easley art and TSR promotional text. The pages of the MC were loose-leaf sheets with three holes along on side to be place in the binder. The theory was that the DM could simply remove the sheets he needed for play and leave the rest of the binder elsewhere, without the need for flipping through a large book. In addition, as future volumes of the MC were released -- see that "Volume One" on the cover? -- you could just interpolate the new sheet with those of other other as you wish, in the process creating a custom volume that included only those monsters the DM used in his adventures or campaign.

Unfortunately, very few monsters occupied more than one side of a sheet, which made a mockery of any attempt to alphabetize a large collection of them. The same problem occurred when you attempted to weed out monsters you didn't like or didn't need to use, as there was a good chance that at least some of them had useful information on monsters you did use on their reverse. TSR attempted to correct this flaw primarily by padding out the entries for many monsters, adding levels of detail that were frankly unnecessary and weakened the game's tool kit credentials by establishing all sorts of "facts" about orcs or dragons we'd never heard of before.

The cover art of the binder itself isn't terrible, at least in general concept. I'm not happy with the execution, which is much more cartoony than the covers of the other two 2e volumes. The piece also does not depict a scene, but is it a "strike a pose" illustration, with three monsters standing together for no good reason and without any context. TSR seems to have realized that iconic D&D monsters -- in this case the beholder, umber hulk, and displacer beast -- are iconic for a reason. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I am glad they're paying homage to certain distinctive elements of the game. On the other hand, it's pretty clear that TSR sees these distinctive elements as trademarkable images they can use to promote the D&D "brand." Unsurprisingly, that makes me a little unhappy.

Equally unsurprisingly, TSR learned from its mistakes and four years later released the Monstrous Manual (again, note the name change) that collected together many creatures from the Monstrous Compendium volumes in a single hardcover, complete with full-color illustrations. Interestingly, the Monstrous Manual entries were all confined to a single page in most cases, just as if they'd be sheets in the abandoned MC.

The cover to this book is again by Jeff Easley and follows a similar style to that of the Monstrous Compendium's first volume. However, the monsters are (mostly) different. The beholder is still there, which is not surprisingly given how 2e era TSR treated the monster as the quasi-mascot of the game. We also see a red dragon, which I think is appropriate. Joining them are a lich, a minotaur, and a thri-kreen. The thri-kreen is an interesting choice and I suspect it was there in order to make a connection to the Dark Sun campaign setting, although it may just be that the race was a popular one. All in all, it's not a terribly strong piece, but it's not wretched. My main beef with it is that it simply makes no sense as anything other than a cover. It looks like a movie poster or promotional shot from a TV series rather than an illustration with any coherence of its own.

And that, right there, is my biggest problem with both these covers and with 2e generally: incoherence. The rules of 2e are still (mostly) the same Gygaxian chassis but 2e adds a new body, paint job, and tail fins that suggest the people in charge of marketing and promoting D&D either didn't understand its foundations or hoped to move away from them. I suspect it's a little bit of both. 2e is part of a major push by TSR to ride the mass media success of fantasy, which is why we got so many divergent settings for D&D; this was the first edition that was influenced by its popular culture brainchildren rather than being an engine of influence in its own right. If, as I have argued, Dragonlance is where D&D first made the acquaintance of Mephistopheles, 2e is where the game signed on the dotted line in its own blood.

Cartography Request

I seek the services of a cartographer who's willing to help me with a little project, namely the transformation of Great Lakes region of North America into part of a fantasy world. Basically, I have a longstanding desire to run a D&D campaign set in a fantastical analog to the Great Lakes (especially the area around Lake Ontario). My thought has long been, "Why try to improve on Nature?" I find the geography of the region really fascinating and conducive to the feel I want to convey for an upcoming campaign.

My problem is that I'm not very good at reproducing real world geography in map form. What I want is a volunteer of at least some small skill who can do this for me. I don't need an exact reproduction -- indeed, small changes here and there might be worthwhile -- but it needs to look roughly like the area so that I can take advantage of real world photographs of the terrain, etc.

Anyone up for this? I can offer only my thanks but they will be most heartfelt.

Grognard's Challenge #2 Update

Today I should be announcing the winner of the second Grognard's Challenge, but the simple fact is that I received so few entries that I don't feel I've got an adequate number to be able to call any one of them a clear winner. The entries I have received so far are all good ones. However, they number precisely three, whereas Grognard's Challenge #1 resulted in over 50 entries.

Part of that is likely because of the narrower scope of the second contest. Part of it is also, I suspect, because the creation of original tricks and traps in an old school style is difficult to do well. Indeed, I would probably argue -- and I may write an entry on this topic some day soon -- that tricks and traps are one of the greatest casualties of the shift from the old school to the new. Tricks and traps challenge the player as much as they challenge the character, which is why they've been reduced over the years to a series of purely game mechanical obstacles that can be overcome with the right in-game skills and a series of dice rolls.

That aside, I am now formally extending the deadline of Grognard's Challenge #2 to midnight (EST) August 17, 2008, as well as broadening the scope. The broadened challenge is to create, describe, and provide game stats (if necessary) for either a single new trick or trap or a locale for use with a wilderness or dungeon scenario. To clarify: this means you can describe a single room, cavern, or terrain feature that may or may not be inhabited but must have something unique and interesting about it. All the other normal rules for Challenge #2 still apply and I will still judge more favorably those entries that attempt to provide a challenge for players as well as their characters.

Again, this is not a reflection on the quality of three entries I received for Challenge #2, as I could easily have chosen one as the winner. However, part of the purpose of these challenges is to get people thinking about what old school gaming is about and into that spirit themselves, if only for a little while. I haven't yet achieved that with this challenge and would like to give people another week to try and do so.

CONTEST: Grognard's Challenge #3

With the first Grognard's Challenge now completed and news about the second about to be announced, it's time to turn to Challenge #3. For this contest, the prize is the volume pictured to the left: Supplement I to OD&D, Greyhawk.

The third Grognard's Challenge is as much about style as it is about content: create, describe, and provide game stats (if necessary) for a single character, monster, magic item, spell, or location that has a distinct "Gygaxian" feel. There is no word limit on this challenge, as nothing that could truly be called "Gygaxian" is spare with words. Game stats should be for either OD&D or AD&D (or compatible retro-clones/simulacra).

Entries will be judged on the basis of creativity, brevity (there may be no word limit, but concision is rewarded), and old school feel, the last of which is an entirely subjective metric based solely on my own peculiar preferences, most of which regular readers of the blog should know by now. Likewise, this particular challenge will be judged strongly on how closely entries imitate the style and spirit of the late Gary Gygax. The whole point of this and subsequent contests is to foster an appreciation for old school traditions and philosophies, so bear that in mind. Think pulp fantasy and the early days of the hobby and you'll be on the right track. No one is barred from entering, including friends and colleagues. I will post the winning entry here and explain why I selected it over its competitors, meaning that even were my wife to submit an entry -- not that she will -- it still has to withstand my rather exacting standards. Winners receive a copy of Supplement I: Greyhawk (12th printing, in nearly mint condition) and retain ownership of their creation, which they may then do with as they please (I recommend submitting it to Fight On! or another old school product).

The contest begins immediately and ends at midnight (EST) on August 17, 2008. Submissions may be sent to my email address indicated on the right hand side of this blog. Multiple entries are allowed and encouraged, but each one must be sent in a separate email. Although not strictly necessary, I'd appreciate it if you'd make the subject line of your submission something like "Grognard's Challenge #3" as that'll make it easier to keep the emails straight in my inbox.

Any questions about the contest can be asked either in the comments below or by sending me an email at the address to the right.

Mass Market Monsters

For a book that's frankly at least as much a cornerstone of actual play as the Players Handbook, you'd think the Monster Manual would have gotten better covers over the years. It hasn't and I find that strange. The 1e cover is, as I already discussed, a cartoonish muddle that doesn't really do its contents justice. The revised 1e cover that replaced it, however, has different problems.

From a technical and compositional standpoint, this cover is pretty good. Like the original 1e cover, this one shows a flying red dragon, but, unlike its predecessor, the dragon doesn't look like a piñata. The other nice thing about the piece is that it depicts an actual scene and one that gives a sense of scale. It's clear from looking at this cover illustration that the dragon is much bigger than the pegasuses. I appreciate that. I also appreciate that the piece doesn't just look like some random monsters thrown together willy-nilly, like a page from a kid's coloring book. There is a suggestion (albeit a thin one) of a story here and I think good old school art should always leave the viewer asking questions about the nature of that story. So, overall, this cover is a definite improvement over the Sutherland 1e one.

With that said, I don't in fact like this cover very much. The reason I don't is that it's too polished and slick. Now, there's nothing wrong with polish or slickness in and of themselves. I'm definitely not someone who loves roughness to the point where I would, as some old schoolers do, praise the scrawls in the OD&D LBBs as good art. My problem here is that I smell the powerful whiff of marketing in this illustration. A red dragon on the cover makes good sense, given the name of the game. But the pegasuses? We're treated to not just one but to a whole flock of these winged, white horses fending off this evil draconic beastie. Now, I have nothing against the pegasus, but, like unicorns, they are often overused and emblematic of the kind of happy-go-lucky high fantasy that D&D birthed in popular media. Some call it "Ren Faire Fantasy," but, for me, it's always been "mass market fantasy," which is to say, pulp fantasy with all the edges pounded down and rough patches smoothed out. Its existence is, to me, the death of D&D.

Yes, yes, I know, hyperbole and you're right, of course. Still, there's something in this piece that bugs me that has nothing to do with the artwork itself, which, as I say, I think is decent (even if it's not necessarily the best possible choice for the cover of the MM). The revised covers were created to give D&D a new look. They're for a world where the game is available in Toys 'R Us and chain bookstores and every kid in America is a potential buyer. In short, they're a mass media production even if their content remains very much a product of a hobbyist culture. I think it's that tension that I detect and the one that irks me so.

Take note: I am not exculpating either TSR or Gary Gygax from their responsibility in having turned D&D into a mass media product. In many ways, the whole purpose of AD&D was to do just that, as Gary stated on numerous occasions. OD&D was a game for hobbyists by hobbyists; it was deemed "a non-game" by Gygax, because of its do-it-yourself ethos. AD&D, on the other hand, was meant to be accessible to a wider range of potential customers, most especially those without the background in wargaming, history, or pulp fantasy that almost all adopters of OD&D were assumed to possess. Given this, is it any wonder that we would eventually see D&D become beholden to mass media conceptions of fantasy that had little or nothing to do with the original inspirations of the game?

And, for me, that's where the real root of the problem lies: D&D became successful and, in so doing, it slowly shed all the things that drew me and many others to it, to the point where, in 2008, "Dungeons & Dragons" means so little even to the company who produces the latest iteration of the game that they felt it necessary to shed more of the game's patrimony in a never ending quest to make it yet more palatable to the mass market. So, if you're looking for the source of my beef with recent vintages of D&D, there it is. If that makes me a grumpy old man, so be it.

Scarce Again

Busy today, so posting will be light.

In the meantime, enjoy Scot Hoover's superb Old School Encounters Reference; it's simply amazing.

And if anyone understands how Google Analytics works, let me know, since I seem not to be getting reporting data anymore. I suspect something about the poll I added to the site is interfering with the Analytics script, but I honestly don't know.

Anyway, back later and expect more posts tomorrow.

Further Dissent

The Monster Manual was the first AD&D book I ever bought. Given that I started playing D&D with the Holmes boxed set at Christmas 1979, I surmise I must have bought the Monster Manual in early 1980, probably January. I ordered it through the Sears catalog and it was delivered straight to my front door, which was a novelty to me in those days, as I rarely ever got packages in the mail. I think it cost $12, although it's possible it was slightly cheaper than that. In any case, the price was a fairly significant amount of money to me, representing many weeks' allowance. Fortunately, Christmas had just passed and I'd gotten some cash from relative who had no clue what to buy me, given how "unusual" my interests were. Thank goodness for them!

The Monster Manual really was a revelation to me. Whereas the Holmes rules have only a few dozen monsters, most of which weren't even illustrated, the MM had over 350 monsters, most of which had art either by Dave Trampier or Dave Sutherland. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that I pored over the pages of the 1e Monster Manual for longer than any RPG book before or since (and I don't just mean the one containing the illustration of the succubus). The pages of this book are pure gold and fired my imagination in ways too numerous to count. No other monster book has ever come close to matching the genius of the original Monster Manual (though there are some excellent contenders) and it remains one of my most cherished gaming possessions.

It's a pity that the cover of the thing is so terrible:

Perhaps "terrible" is too strong a word, but I find the word "cartoonish" leaps to mind when I look at this cover. Maybe it's the garish colors that make it look worse than it is; I don't know. Yet, something doesn't sit well with me about this cover, which is just an arbitrary mishmash of unconnected monsters in "unrealistic" environment.

The red dragon in the top center is, in my opinion, the worst of the loot. He looks stiff and unnatural and, while his pose is meant to convey the notion that he's swooping down, claws outstretched like some reptilian bird of prey, I find it laughable, especially given the expression on his face. To me, it appears as if he's been gripped by a seizure mid-flight and is about to fall from the sky like a rock. In any event, neither the unicorn -- which still retains a more medieval cast to it than the white-pony-with-a-horn look beloved by schoolgirls everywhere -- nor the centaur seem much threatened by this evil creature's presence.

I like the troll, I'll admit, but then I've always been a big fan of the look of D&D's trolls. I mourn their loss in the latest edition more than I mourn the loss of many other things from earlier editions. I've never been a huge fan of the owlbear as a monster, although there's no arguing that it isn't an iconic D&D beastie. Same goes for the roper. These latter two look especially poorly drawn to me and the roper's illustration on the cover doesn't match its appearance inside.

Like both the Players Handbook and the Dungeon Masters Guide, this cover is a wrap-around one. The back cover illustrates several more monsters above and below the ground. Interestingly, these monsters, though just as cartoony as the ones on the front, at least look to be doing something rather than just arbitrarily posing for the artist. That's a plus, although only a small one.

David Sutherland is an old school artist of whom I am very fond. He's done a number of illustration that I think epitomize what I find compelling in older RPG art. Many people, though, dislike him or argue that he was not in the same league as Dave Trampier. Looking at the cover of the Monster Manual, it's very hard to disagree. This piece looks amateurish and rough. It does what it needs to do, I suppose -- show off some D&D monsters -- but it doesn't do it particularly well. As I say, some of the fault may lie in the coloring of the illustration. That's not all of it, since I think the underlying composition is poor, particularly the front cover. It's a shame, because I think Sutherland has a number of truly excellent interior pieces. He wasn't entirely without skill. What he lacked, though, was consistency and his ability to put together larger pieces is very hit-or-miss. He seems to have been better at smaller, more focused illustrations and you can see that if you look inside the MM.

I still retain a great fondness for the 1e Monster Manual. It's an absolutely fantastic book on almost every level, but the cover art is not one of them.

The Other LBBs

Among OD&Ders, the abbreviations "LBBs" refers to the "little brown books" that comprised the 1974 release of the game. Those 5½" x 8½" books are the beginnings of our hobby and, though each is only 36 pages long, they packed a lot of creative punch. Supplements to the three volumes of OD&D followed the same basic format, although only Supplement I and II are brown.
So seminal were those LBBs that many early RPGs followed a similar format. Arduin is one notable example. Another is GDW's Traveller. Released in 1977, Traveller was to science fiction gaming what D&D was to fantasy -- a generic rules set whose assumptions were a goulash of specific literary allusions, pop culture, and auctorial whimsy that somehow managed to transcend its sources and become a unique thing with a life all its own. The initial boxed set consisted of three little black books of the same size as the OD&D volumes. Among Traveller fans, those books are often abbreviated as the LBBs. They had a sleak, simple graphic design that, even now, I consider to be among the best used for a RPG ever.

If D&D is the girl that I married, Traveller is the old flame who repeatedly jilted me and yet still has a hold over me I can't quite explain. I love Traveller with the passion of a thousand suns and played it almost exclusively during my high school years, when fantasy lost its appeal for me (Remember that I started high school in 1983, just as TSR was entering its Dark Ages). It fired my imagination in a way that only two games have ever really done (D&D is the first; you'll have to guess the other) and it forever imprinted on me a notion of what sci-fi should be: sober, semi-realistic, and, above all, human(e).

I was heavily involved in Traveller fandom for years and my earliest paid professional writings were for Traveller: The New Era and in the pages of the late, lamented Challenge magazine. One of my fondest memories is attending Origins in Baltimore and going out to dinner with Marc Miller and the Japanese translators of Traveller. Over crab cakes, we talked about the history and development of the game, as well as its future (this was just before the release of TNE); it was my first brush was an RPG "celebrity" and I still retain a fondness for both Mr Miller and Loren Wiseman, both of whom impressed me as gentlemen of the old guard. Or maybe I should say the High Guard. In any case, I like the guys who created and wrote for Traveller and that probably has a lot to do with why I still have positive feelings about the game after all these years.

OD&D and Traveller are cousins under the skin. They both present simple rules, full of ambiguities and infelicities, that are nevertheless the gateways to infinite adventures. They're also both founded on literature that few people nowadays read or appreciate, which may explain why they are often misunderstood. Finally, both games eventually succumbed to hubris and forgot why they held such a powerful appeal for kids like me. Once Traveller reached the point where it was no longer a game of "science fiction adventure in the far future" but a game about, well, Traveller, the magic was gone for me. It's a parallel to the brandification of D&D and it's a shame.

Still, I can't deny it: I think about Traveller from time to time and remember the fun times we had together. It's a great game.

Poll: New Feature

I've made a poll (located on the right hand side of the blog) for the name of the new feature. If you don't mind, take the time to vote and let me know which one you like the best. If you have any further suggestions beyond the four I liked best, please put them in the comments of this entry.

And thanks to everyone for their suggestions.

I Walk the Line

One of the greatest difficulties I've found in writing this blog has been that, no matter what position I take on a given topic, I wind up getting it from both sides. Take note: I am not complaining about this -- far from it! I actually see even misguided passion for the hobby as a good thing; it's evidence that, despite it all, people actually care about this stuff and I appreciate that. After all, I am similarly passionate (and probably even occasionally misguided) about it; I would not have started this blog if I weren't. So, you'll rarely hear me criticize anyone for voicing their disagreement with me, provided they do so in a respectful way and explain why it is that they disagree. To be honest, I like discussions that engender disagreement and if people have taken the time to disagree with me, that means I must have written something worth disagreeing with and I take that as a compliment of sorts.

I'm eccentric and so are my views. I'm of the opinion that the hobby needs more eccentricity and that eccentricity should be promoted and celebrated. Consequently, my stated opinions are a mishmash colored both by my generally rationalist/intellectualist bent, my (too many) years as a student of philosophy and history, my experiences playing for almost 30 years, and the ring of contrariness I've worn on my right hand since 1979. All of these things govern my tastes and interests and are powerfully at work in the posts I write here.

Still, it's always fascinating to see what people choose to criticize me for. No matter what position I take on any topic, it's pretty much guaranteed to set someone off.

• Talk too much about the history of the hobby in the 1970s and I'm denigrating the experiences of gamers who started playing later
• Suggest Brian Blume wasn't the Antichrist and I'm betraying the memory of Gary Gygax
• Praise Gary Gygax at all and I'm making an idol of him
  
• State that not every lacuna or ambiguity in OD&D is a philosophical statement about game design and I'm a new schooler in disguise
• Speak well of Paizo or their products and I'm a shill
• Criticize 4e and I'm a bitter old man who doesn't get it

And on and on. As I said, I don't actually mind all that much. That anyone thinks enough of my opinion to send me an email telling me how foolish I am is proof that I've struck a nerve somewhere and what writer doesn't want to do that? It's just funny, in an odd sort of way, to see that, for all my self-avowed old schoolishness, there are gamers out there who view me as a wolf in sheep's clothing who's not really "one of us" -- just as there are younger gamers out there who seem to think I hate everything that has been published since 1983 and believe anyone who plays them is a mental defective. It's a funny old world.

I forge on nonetheless. I'm having too much fun to be discouraged. My weird little take on things has mostly engendered a lot of good and positive thoughts in others, which is exactly what I wanted to do. I'll continue to refine my style and presentation, of course, in order to alleviate future misunderstandings. Mind you, on the Internet, nuance rarely wins you points, so I expect my somewhat "academic" style will always have its detractors. So be it.

Wesley and the Braunsteins

An interesting, if typically myopic, article on David Wesley and his "Braunstein" game. I'm glad to see Wesley's contributions to the hobby recognized. Much like Arneson -- but even more so -- Dave Wesley's ideas and innovations are poorly known, even by people with an interest in such things. I myself didn't know a great deal about the man until late last year, when I began my researches into the history and development of the hobby. I'm of the opinion that this hobby of ours has no future if it doesn't understand its past and Wesley and the Braunstein game are a past few know, let alone care about. That needs to be corrected.

(That said, I also hold the opinion that Wesley's contributions, while real and foundational, are often overstated, both by himself and his partisans. There's a certain amount of revisionism going on here, I think, in an effort to downplay the role Gary Gygax had in creating and developing the modern RPG. Such revisionism is reasonable; I don't think anyone can deny that Gary was a master of feathering his own nest, especially when doing so helped promote TSR and/or D&D. At the same time, I think it's disingenuous to claim Wesley as the "father" of roleplaying games, when, in my opinion, it might be better to call him the "grandfather" or something similar -- to denote the real but distant descent RPGs have from the Braunsteins -- but that's a contentious topic for another day.)

The Sign of the Old Kingdom

From the dusty barricade the watched the riders approach, reptilian claws pounding salt wind from the desert. The one-eyed elf ceased her squint. "No scavengers, these, nor zombies either. Their shields bear silver devices, a twenty-petaled rose ..."

Hrunax the Wolf lifted his massive bone bow for a shot, but a craggy ancient hand fell gently on his shoulder. Aethra's brow rose: the old mage had slipped from his reverie and stood, tears rolling down his cheeks. She had known the wizard a century and never seen him cry.

"The emblem -- the sign of the old kingdom. Our wait here has not been in vain!" The mage held his staff aloft and called out in a high voice, the Tongue of the Making, and stars seemed to glimmer through the noonday sky. Clarion came the responding horn, and the knights rode toward them, to rejoin the broken enclaves of the past ..."

I just received my print copy of Fight On! Issue #2 in the mail today and, quite simply, it rocks. I've had a PDF copy for some time, since I contributed to it and editor Ignatius Ümlaut graciously sent me one to peruse until I received a physical copy from Lulu.com.

I don't think I adequately explain how much more impact holding this 88-page magazine in my hands has on me than simply reading the PDF on my computer screen. I think we often treat the sense of touch as a poor cousin to sight and sound and hefting this thing out of its shipping box reminds me that we do that at our peril. If ever there was any doubt in my mind about the utter imbecility of Dragon's migration to a purely electronic format, it was finally chased away upon receiving the latest issue of Fight On! and touching it today. From the beautiful cover by Kevin Mayle to the back cover by Del Beaudry, this issue is a remarkable labor of love by (mostly) amateurs, in the truest sense of the word -- and I can touch it. Simply amazing!

Victor Raymond recently pointed out to me that, at 88 pages, Issue #2 of Fight On! is larger than most issues of Dragon from the Golden Age of the hobby. Indeed, there's been more old school gaming material published in the last six months than there has been in many a year. Something is definitely in the air. Whether this is just an Indian summer for traditional RPGs or a new spring is still unclear, but I intend to enjoy it nonetheless.

Fight on!

Two Questions

I'm in the midst of preparing another series of cover critiques, this time of the Monster Manual covers. In reading the 4e MM, two questions crossed my mind that I hope someone out there can answer for me:

1. Are there stats elsewhere in 4e for "normal" animals? The Monster Manual has stats for Gray Wolves and Riding Horses, for example, but none for dogs or cats or boars (or lions or tigers or ...). Most of the "normal" creatures in the volume seem to be not merely of the giant variety -- of which there were many entries in the 1e MM -- but of a specially trademarked variety. Thus, we don't have stats for panthers simpliciter but instead for fey panthers or spectral panthers. I can only assume there are additional animal entries in the 4e PHB or DMG and I missed them in my read-through of those books.

2. What's with all the recycled art? I'm frankly a bit surprised to see so many illustrations I recognize from the 3e era. 4e was clearly a big project for WotC and one they've invested a lot of money in producing and promoting, so why does it re-use art?

Thanks.

Looking for a Name

I'd originally intended to kick off a regular "feature" today, in which I offered up a little bit of OD&D goodness, in the form of either optional rules or content. I haven't for a simple but possibly silly reason: I don't know what to call the feature. I toyed with the notion of calling it "Bazaar of the Bizarre," after both the Fritz Leiber story of the same name and the old feature from Dragon. However, I quickly concluded that I need a different name, one with the same kind of pulp fantasy resonance, but that's unique to this blog.

So, dear readers, any suggestions? This isn't a formal contest or anything. Even so, I could use your help. If you have any good ideas, either post them in the comments below or by sending me an email at the address to the right.

Thanks in advance.

Fightonmagazine.com

Fight On! magazine now has its own website, where you can learn some basic information about the magazine and purchase copies in either print of PDF formats. The site is brand new, so it's still a little sparse -- though I think sparse is good and very old school. Still, it's nice that Fight On! finally has its own webpage. I like being able to point someone to an easily-remembered site when they ask me how they can obtain a copy for themselves. I'm sure in the weeks and months to come that the page will grow, if only a little, and even better serve to promote this remarkable magazine of the old school renaissance.

Swords & Wizardry: Pulp Fantasy Edition

People who've been following my random musings since before I started this particular journal will be aware that one of my back burner projects has been what I called "Pulp Fantasy D&D." This would be a variant on the D&D rules that, while generally not changing anything about the game as written, would be presented in a way that was more consonant with the pulp fantasy literature that inspired Gygax and Arneson. I've recently begun to think that Swords & Wizardry would make a nice basis for such a game, not least of which because, of all the retro-clones and simulacra currently available, it's the one that's closest to the three little brown books that started it all.

In thinking about it, I realized that Pulp Fantasy D&D would be built on the foundation of three primary character classes: the Fighter, the Thief, and the Magic-User. Where is the Cleric, you might rightly ask, especially given that it's one of D&D's original classes? Well, my feeling is that the Cleric just isn't a pulp fantasy archetype. The class itself owes its existence to a combination of Peter Cushing's Van Helsing and the Knights Templar. It's really a "Vampire Hunter" class and, as such, has no place in Pulp Fantasy D&D. Now, the Priest is a pulp fantasy archetype, but the Priest is in fact just a kind of Magic-User, which is why my version of the M-U comes in two varieties (or maybe three): the Wizard and the Priest, each of which taps into the same flows of magical energy but whose effects are quite different owing to means by which they channel that magical energy.

You can view these three classes (including the sub-sets of the Magic-User) as three slices of a big circle. At the places where two classes meet, you find other archetypes, such as the Warrior-Wizard (where Fighter and Magic-User meet) or the Rogue Wizard (where Thief and Magic-User meet). It's my belief that multiclassing in either the traditional Gygaxian form or the 3e version thereof is an abomination, both mechanically and thematically. The desire to play a character whose archetype exists at the boundaries between two primary classes is a valid one and should be accommodated. D&D -- Pulp Fantasy D&D even moreso -- is a game of archetypes and the rules need to support them. In my opinion, a new character class is the simplest and fairest way to handle "mixed" archetypes. This approach also nicely puts a cap on the number of possible classes, since there are only so many combinations, even if one allows for numerous Magic-User variants, which is why I like it.

The one difficulty I'm finding is this: what's the archetype that exists on the boundary between the Fighter and the Thief? I suppose a lot depends on how I define the Thief, something I'm still mulling over. I've always been a little unhappy with D&D's portrayal of the Thief, which alternates between being reductionist (the Thief as "Special Skills Man") or being the Ninja class in all but name, neither of which quite captures the Thief as a pulp fantasy archetype. Likewise, since the Fighter is intended to cover all warriors, regardless of favored weapons or armor or fighting style, I don't think it's appropriate for the "hybrid" Fighter-Thief to be the Swashbuckler or some other nonsense like that. The Fighter is a broad enough class to accommodate the quick, dexterous warrior concept and, if you think otherwise, odds are you won't be happy with the direction I wish to take Pulp Fantasy D&D anyway.

So, there's still some thinking that needs to be done on this score, but the ideas are flowing again and I'm happy for that. Particularly in this post-4e age in which we live, there's need of a game that pays appropriate homage to the literary inspirations and origins of OD&D. It's a pity that D&D itself isn't the game to do so, but so be it.

Not Bad

I make no bones about the fact that I rather strongly disliked the cover of the Fourth Edition Players Handbook, both stylistically and in terms of content. I feel it sends a very strong signal, almost certainly by design, that D&D is no longer a unique Gestalt of pulp fantasy, fairy tales, Hammer horror, and the random detritus of pop culture but instead a copy of copy of those very things. This was inevitable, I suppose, given the way that D&D's remarkable goulash has forever changed the way we view fantasy. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that, with very few exceptions, every fantasy created since the late 1970s at least has been either an embrace (and extension) of the Gygaxo-Arneson synthesis or a rejection of it. In a certain sense, we are all Gygaxians now, even if some of us hew closer to orthodoxy than others.

It's no surprise then that Wizards of the Coast, now a subsidiary of Hasbro, would need to do something in order to distinguish D&D from its bastard offspring. If every fantasy out there is D&D or a mutant variety thereof, what then is D&D? As a commercial property, D&D is almost certainly underperforming compared to its erstwhile descendants. When World of Warcraft, which employs a fundamentally Gygaxian fantasy set-up, can pull in over $100 million a month from online subscriptions , why can't D&D do the same? I'm not seriously arguing that D&D can be -- or should be -- pulling down those kinds of numbers, but I'm pretty sure someone at Hasbro asked such questions of WotC. When you consider that the brand name "Dungeons & Dragons" has remarkable recognition in the US, the "re-imagining" of D&D we got in 4e begins to make more sense. (Unfortunately, I think it's simultaneously too much of a change to be a good RPG and too little of a change to be a huge mass market success, but that's a topic for another time)

With that as prologue, let me say that I think the cover of the 4e DMG is not a bad one.

I don't love it. I don't think it's incredibly inspired or anywhere near as good as the revised 1e cover, but it's a solid effort and one that I think hits many of the right notes. For one, it's got a dragon on the cover and said dragon is in a cavern. It's not quite a dungeon as such, but it's close enough and I give it points for that. Second, the dragon looks sinister; he's not a nicey-nicey, please-ride-on-my-back-and-fight-evil dragon. He's a dragon. Now, I don't actually care much for the overall appearance of the dragon myself -- he's too dinosaur-like and spiky, when I would have preferred a more serpentine vibe -- but he's at least something I can recognize. He's broadly archetypal and that's good to see.

The dragon is peering into a crystal ball or scrying device, in which he sees the posers on the cover of the 4e PHB. I think this is just keen, as it ties in nicely with the notion of the Dungeon Master as the overseer of his campaign. I also like it because I think dragons, as immensely long-lived beings, ought to be natural schemers and planners and this illustration implies something of the sort. Some will no doubt see in the cover echoes of the cover to the Cook/Marsh Expert Rules, which employed a similar motif. I'm not sure what to think about that assertion. On the one hand, 4e is first "ahistorical" edition of D&D since OD&D itself, so I'm not sure making an artistic allusion to a rulebook published before most of the new game's target audience was born is all that plausible. On the other hand, I've seen repeated (if implausible) claims that 4e is the result of deep research into the history of the game. If true, someone at WotC might have felt this was an "Easter egg" for long-time fans. I remain unmoved myself, but then I take the heretical view that Moldvay/Cook was in fact another step on the road to perdition, so what do I know?

In the end, I'm left with the feeling that this is a decent cover, probably the best we could hope for with the new game. Looking at it, I feel far more interested in playing the game than I do looking at the PHB cover. I also find it more evocative than than the 3e or v.3.5 covers. I realize this might seem like I am damning it with faint praise and perhaps I am, but I don't dislike this cover. It's far and away the best of the three 4e core book covers and it's more appropriate to the DMG than even the 1e DMG's illustration is. That said, I can think of many other illustrations that'd work better for the DMG than this one and many styles I'd find more suited as well. I'd grade it an A in the C+ world of 4e art, but a B- compared to the revised 1e cover or other illustrations I see in my mind's eye.

Grognard's Challenge #1: Devil's Eye

Given how tightly-knit the old school community is, I think it was inevitable that the winner of Grognard's Challenge #1 would be someone I knew, either professionally or socially. However, I am nothing if not a man of my word and I said, firstly, that the contest was open to anyone, regardless of their connection to me, and, secondly, that I would judge all contestants by the same standards. I also said that I would explain my reasons for selecting the winner, both as an aid to contestants in future challenges and to talk a bit about old school gaming philosophy as I see it.

I was amazed at how many entries I received for the first challenge and I hope the second one generates as much interest. Almost all of the entries were written for OD&D (or Swords & Wizardry), which I think says a lot about the general readership of this blog. Likewise, most of the entries were for monsters rather than treasures, which I also think is significant. The quality of the entries was very high and it was tough to choose a single winner, particularly since the one that finally won me over was written by Kevin Brennan, an old and dear friend of mine (and best man at my wedding, in the interests of full disclosure). I was in fact probably harsher in judging his submission than I was on most, simply because I wanted to be sure I was fair in my final assessment. Of course, as old schoolers know well, this is the job of a good referee and it's one I took seriously.

Consequently, I have no qualms about saying the magic item he submitted, the devil's eye, was my favorite, for reasons I'll explain. First, here's the item in question:

This monocle reveals fell intent and impure motives, but it is also intended to sow discord and eventually violence among those who rely too much on it. The wearer can tell when any person he sees is lying to him. However, there is a 1% chance that the monocle will cause the wearer to believe that a person is lying when they are in fact telling the truth. This chance increases by 1% each time the monocle is used. If this chance increases over 25%, the effect will persist whether or not the monocle is in use.

There are several reasons why I liked this submission, but chief among them was that it's a useful cursed magic item. The devil's eye struck me as quintessentially pulp fantasy in its inspirations, which I love. It's the kind of item that reminds you that magic isn't something to be trifled with and that every boon it grants might come with a price. More to the point, there's an actual temptation to use this item, because the boon it offers is a good and useful one. It's a screw job that players will seriously consider using rather than just a game mechanic designed to emulate a screw job (like cursed swords). The devil's eye also includes an escalating random element to it, which I love. Randomness is key to old school feel, as is a "gambling" mentality. Being able to play the odds is an important part of player skill and it tickles me to consider how even a player who knows the curse of the item would try and use it in the belief that, because he has only used it a few times previously, the odds favor its working properly this time. Finally, this is an item whose mechanics are simple, require no special rules, and -- most importantly -- generate fun situations. The devil's eye is the kind of magic item that doesn't just sit there and do what it does on your command; sometimes it does what it wants to do and from such things are good adventures made.

Congratulations to Kevin. He's got his copy of Monsters & Treasure and I hope he enjoys it. I also hope that I get as many super entries for Challenge #2 as I got for this one. There are lots of great old school ideas out there, it seems, and I want to see more of them!

CONTEST: Grognard's Challenge #2

With the first Grognard's Challenge now completed -- the winner will be announced shortly -- it's time to turn to Challenge #2. For this contest, the prize is volume pictured to the left: Volume 3 of Dungeons & Dragons (1974), The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures.

The second Grognard's Challenge is fairly straightforward: create, describe, and provide game stats (if necessary) for a single new trick or trap for use in a dungeon or wilderness scenario. Unlike Challenge #1, there is no word limit on this challenge, so feel free to make it as long as you feel necessary. Game stats should be for either OD&D or AD&D (or compatible retro-clones/simulacra).

Entries will be judged on the basis of creativity, brevity (there may be no word limit, but concision is rewarded), and old school feel, the last of which is an entirely subjective metric based solely on my own peculiar preferences, most of which regular readers of the blog should know by now. The whole point of this and subsequent contests is to foster an appreciation for old school traditions and philosophies, so bear that in mind. Think pulp fantasy and the early days of the hobby and you'll be on the right track. No one is barred from entering, including friends and colleagues. I will post the winning entry here and explain why I selected it over its competitors, meaning that even were my wife to submit an entry -- not that she will -- it still has to withstand my rather exacting standards. Winners receive a copy of The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures (in nearly mint condition) and retain ownership of their creation, which they may then do with as they please (I recommend submitting it to Fight On! or another old school product).

The contest begins immediately and ends at midnight (EST) on August 10, 2008. Submissions may be sent to my email address indicated on the right hand side of this blog. Multiple entries are allowed and encouraged, but each one must be sent in a separate email. Although not strictly necessary, I'd appreciate it if you'd make the subject line of your submission something like "Grognard's Challenge #2" as that'll make it easier to keep the emails straight in my inbox.

Any questions about the contest can be asked either in the comments below or by sending me an email at the address to the right.

Scarce Today

Today is a busy day for me, so expect no posts until quite late, if at all.

Grognard's Challenge #1 is over and I have chosen a winner, which I'll announce either tonight or, more likely, tomorrow. Challenge #2 will be announced tomorrow. I'll also complete my DMG art series. I'd intended last week to kick off my weekly offering of some new old school gaming content, but I was more than a little distracted and simply forgot to do so. Expect that this week too, starting on Tuesday.

Back as soon as I can.

I Took the Plunge

I decided to buy a copy of S. John Ross's retro-stupid RPG, Encounter Critical, today. I even sprang for the nifty hardcover edition, because I think anyone who puts out stuff like this deserves as much of my money as I can afford to give them.

I'll grant you that Encounter Critical does veer way more into Arduin territory than you'd expect me to appreciate. There's no question that that's true. Any game that includes "Klengons" and "Planetary Apes" as playable races (not to mention doxies as a playable class) definitely crosses some lines I wouldn't otherwise cross on my own. But EC manages to simultaneously recreate some of the gonzo weirdness of the early hobby while creating some surprisingly deft game mechanics, so it's hard not to be impressed on many levels.

Is EC silly? Almost certainly, but that's no crime. Does it poke fun at old school gaming? Absolutely. Yet, as the saying goes, this game kids because it loves. Encounter Critical is a love letter to old school gaming. Every inside joke, every anagram, every brilliant stupidity reveals how much S. John Ross loves those bygone days of the hobby and the wacky fun we all had playing games that no toy conglomerate would ever publish today. If you haven't already done so, please take a look at Encounter Critical and bask in its awesomeness.

Now, if I can only trick my players into giving it a whirl ...

Humbled

Edsan of Mutant Foursome has created an RPG "motivational poster" in my honor.

I've learned never to reject a compliment, especially a sincere one, so I won't cavil at being called "enlightened." I continue to be amazed and humbled by the large number of people who take an interest in my random blatherings. I never expected this blog to take off the way it has and I certainly never expected to become a "voice" for the old school gaming community. But often some of the best things in life are unexpected and this is a good example of such a thing.

Thank you, Edsan, for the poster and thank you, my regular readers, for all the fun you've afforded me over the last four months. Here's to many more!

Brandification

I don't really have much to say directly about the covers of the Third Edition and v.3.5 Dungeon Masters Guide that I haven't already said about the equivalent Players Handbook covers.

In most respects, I find these two covers just as dreary and uninspiring as I found those of the PHB. I do appreciate what Wizards of the Coast was trying to do with them -- evoke ancient tomes of forgotten lore. However, I simply don't find that particular tack very convincing. At the very least, I think it could have been done better than it was. Chaosium's 20th anniversary edition of Call of Cthulhu, with its faux leather embossed pages and gilded cover, was in my opinion a much better attempt. For that matter, WotC's own v3.5 Special Edition volumes, complete with bookmarks, came closer to what I'd have preferred, albeit unduly expensively.

Given this, I'm instead going to use this entry to comment on an element of the v.3.5 DMG cover and use it as a springboard for a critique of the treatment of D&D in Third Edition generally. But first, the cover:
It might not be clear from the image above, but the globe in the center is in fact a representation of Oerth, the planet on which the World of Greyhawk is set. Now, one could easily take that globe as just a throwaway artistic homage, an "Easter egg" in computer games parlance, intended as a bit of fun for hardcore fans of the game. My first instinct is, of course, to treat as such and appreciate it on that level. After all, the folks at WotC who brought us 3e were unashamed D&D geeks, who often seemed humbled to have been granted stewardship of the first RPG in history. An artistic allusion to Gary Gygax's home campaign would thus be in keeping with such feelings.

Unfortunately, I don't think mere fanboyism is at work here. One of the things we must bear in mind is that 3e made Greyhawk the implied default setting of D&D. The pantheon of the Flanaess was turned into the defaults for the game as a whole. Indeed, a new version of the World of Greyhawk Gazetteer was released for 3e, entitled simply Dungeons & Dragons Gazetteer and whose interior text spoke not of the "World of Greyhawk," but "the D&D setting." This was my first hint that things were amiss in how WotC viewed D&D and treated its history.

From my perspective, the conflation of the idiosyncratic examples from his own campaign that Gary Gygax included in his published works with Dungeons & Dragons itself was the first step along a path that reduced them to intellectual properties. Now, it's true that TSR had trod this path before. I am by no means indicting WotC as singularly culpable in this regard. Nevertheless, I am not happy to see this "tradition" of TSR continued. The vision of OD&D was an expansive one, wherein each referee could create his own campaign world and freely accept or reject whatever elements of the game they wished and yet still remain within the D&D family (provided, of course, that the spirit of the game's rules and literary origins weren't wholly rejected -- there are limits even to a game as open-ended as OD&D). "D&D" was thus a very broad game, individual examples of which had many elements in common but also many that differed. Any examples Gary used from Greyhawk (or Dave from Blackmoor) were just that -- examples. The game was intended to be a generic baseline from which anyone could build their own fantasy campaign.

The publication of AD&D started to change that initial vision. For the first time, we start to see Greyhawk-related names and places enshrined in the rules. These names aren't in any way meant to be definitive, but they're there in a way they weren't in OD&D. Thus, Gary's preferences and predilections enter the canon in a way they hadn't previously. Over time, they acquire the veneer of tradition and so it is that WotC, almost certainly for the most innocent of reasons (at first), takes the next logical step and makes Oerth the default setting of the game, but without acknowledging the setting's history or origins. All "core" products tie into "the D&D setting," which diverges ever more from anything Gary would have created, and they become part of a vast store of IP that WotC sees not as examples or illustrations of how one might use the game to create one's own setting, but as defining characteristics of what D&D is.

The reduction of Mordenkainen or Vecna to elements of the D&D brand reaches its zenith in the publication of Fourth Edition, which cuts the umbilical cord to their origins entirely and treats them as conveniently trademark-able names for selling miniatures and other paraphernalia. Sadly, to many gamers, the fact that 3e or 4e included hallowed names associated with the creator's home campaign is sufficient to argue that these editions are true to the spirit and vision of OD&D. While I shared the outrage of many upon hearing how 4e had jettisoned so many longstanding elements of D&D lore, it was not because I felt that these elements somehow constituted "D&D." To view it thus would be to reduce D&D just as surely to a brand. No, what bothered me was not any specific choice or decision so much as the general belief that D&D's collective history was not merely an impediment to the game's success but also something that could be selectively exploited without context, when convenient. Such corporate ghoulishness is something I cannot tolerate, particularly when it results in products so utterly at variance with the creative corpses being consumed.

D&D may in fact be a brand, but it is not just a brand. It's a fine distinction, I realize, but it's a real one. 3e is where the most pestilential strain of this longstanding rot solidified its hold and the results are clear to see.

Traditions Abandoned

No, I'm not talking about Fourth Edition -- I'm talking about two "traditions" of older gaming that seem to have fallen by the wayside over the years. They were both staples of my youth in the late 70s/early 80s and it's been years since I've seen either one in action anymore.

The Big Group: OD&D recommends a ration of 1 referee for every 20 players, although it notes that campaigns can reasonably handle up to 50 players without much difficulty. Now, I never played in a campaign with even 20 players, but I frequently played in adventures with a dozen or more players at one time. My regular gaming group consisted of 6-8 players on most occasions, sometimes more if friends were visiting. They'd bring their characters and, if the referee approved, they'd simply drop into the campaign and play with the regulars. Many gamers nowadays look with befuddlement on the notion of a party leader or "caller," but, back in the day, he played a very necessary role. When the adventuring party consists of 12 guys sitting around a table, a caller is the only way to get anything done without total chaos erupting.

Over the years, the average size of the party -- and presumably the campaign as well -- has declined quite precipitously. I'm not quite sure why that is. The average size seems to be about three or four. My current group consists of three people, although a few years ago it had swollen to eight, counting the referee. Before anyone makes the unlikely claim that there's been a philosophical shift in gaming toward more a more "intimate" feel (let alone that it's closer to the pulp fantasy ideal), I suspect the shift in group size has more to do with non-gaming social dynamics than anything else. The graying of the fan base has meant that it's harder to coordinate the schedules of many adults than it was to get a dozen kids together. Goodness knows I can barely get three people together to game; I can only imagine the nightmare of trying to coordinate a dozen adults with jobs and families. Mind you, I've also observed that children don't seem to be as freely available to play as they were in my youth. It's the middle of the summer now and there are no kids out playing the neighborhood and won't be until the late afternoon/early evening, because they're all off at day camp/daycare while their parents work. When I was a child, this was not the case and, during the summer vacation, children could be counted on to be constantly outside and available for play from about 9 AM till almost 9 PM -- lots of opportunities to play D&D.

No wonder everyone's looking to the wonders of computing to save the hobby.

The Rotating Referee: Because groups were so large, this led to a second commonly accepted practice: multiple referees for a single campaign. In days of yore, it was simply a fact of life that, on some days, one guy would run an adventure and, on other days, someone else would. Indeed, it was rare in my experience that a player didn't at least occasionally don the referee's hat and take over such responsibilities. Now, granted, most campaigns had a "primary" referee or a pair of them, but that doesn't change the fact that most players in a given campaign would try their hand at the referee's role every now and again.

This is a change that I think owes to a combination of factors, some of them purely accidental and some of them philosophical. The accidental factors mostly pertain to the shrinking of the average group size. If you have only three regular players, there's not as much scope for referee rotation. On the philosophical side, though, I think there's definitely been a slow morphing of the concept of the "referee." He's now viewed not just as a neutral arbiter cum occasional opponent. Rather he's now a "storyteller" or "narrator." He's the guy who creates the "story" of the campaign and keeps it moving in accordance with his grand plot. Given that, it's much less easy to accommodate a second or third referee, because they'll almost certainly spoil the story, or at least derail it, and that's not viewed as a good thing. In campaigns without explicit stories, a rotating referee just adds more details and events from which a story might later be woven, but there's no danger that he will "ruin" the campaign by introducing things that get in the way of some grand plan.

For myself, I miss both larger groups and rotating referees. They used to be givens and now they're, at best, rarities and, at worst, deemed eccentricities. I'm thinking about ways to change that in my own group.