What the Future Holds

It's New Year's Eve, the usual time when amateurs can choose to indulge in dipsomania or prophecy (or both!). Being something of a teetotaler myself -- except when it comes to very expensive champagne -- I choose prophecy. My record on this score isn't great, but it's better than most and at least I won't have a hangover tomorrow for having indulged in it tonight.

Consequently, what follow aren't exactly predictions. I'm not going to assign dates and times to anything. Neither am I going to say that either of my statements will occur. Rather, what I'm "predicting," if that's the word, is that 2009 will be the year that'll determine whether the much-discussed old school renaissance fulfills its promise or proves to be just another bout of gaming nostalgia in fancy dress. By my lights, at least one of two things must happen in 2009 for the old school renaissance to have legs outside the thousand or so people who read this blog:

1. New Product: With Labyrinth Lord, OSRIC 2.0, and Swords & Wizardry out there and freely available to any and all comers, we're now at the point where, reasonably, someone ought to use one (or all) of them to create new product. By "new product," I don't mean adventures; we have lots of old school adventures already. Neither do I mean campaign settings or monster books or collections of spells and magic items; we have tons of that stuff too. No, what I mean is something genuinely new, something that hasn't been done before (or at least recently) and that shows off the unique pleasures of the old school in a way we haven't seen (again, at least recently). This new product (or, dare I hope, products?) might be part adventure or part campaign world or part monster book, etc. but it wouldn't just be those things. It can't be or no one is going to care.

If the old school renaissance has one fatal flaw, it's that it's much too easy to dismiss it as simple nostalgia. And the reason it's too easy is because, like the poor Scholastics whose subtle philosophizing and fine distinctions looked like foolishness to people who weren't steeped in the quaestiones quodlibetales culture, we're too insular and self-absorbed to be understood, let alone listened to, by a gaming culture that, for good or for ill, has changed in some very profound ways. To reverse this situation and revitalize the Old School will require someone among us to produce something that's genuinely new and that nevertheless embodies the best of our preferred style of gaming. We can't just keep doing the same stuff we've done for the last 30 years -- not because that stuff isn't "timeless," but because that stuff has already been done, over and over. The closest we've seen in recent years is, I think, Rob Conley's Points of Light, but it's only a first step and the journey ahead is a long one indeed.

2. Big Name Adoption: The second thing that needs to happen is for a big name game company -- one with good retail penetration and distribution -- to show that old school is cool. To date, most old school products have been self-publishing ventures or sidelines by smaller publishers. There's nothing wrong with that, but the reality is that such products aren't going to reach gamers who aren't plugged in to the back alleys of the gaming world and the old school community probably doesn't even qualify as a back alley. We're a niche within a niche and, while we have a lot of admirers among the bigger players in the industry, that admiration only gets us so far.

Goodman Games has put its toes in the water with products like Points of Light and The Random Esoteric Creature Generator. If they catch the popular imagination, Goodman could well become exactly the vehicle I'd like to see. Likewise, it's possible that Necromancer Games, once it sorts out exactly what it wants to do in the future, could play a similar role, although I think the odds are less, given Clark Peterson's stated preference for supporting the latest edition of D&D, regardless of its pedigree. Much as I like Goodman and Necromancer, I'd much prefer to see a company like Paizo step up and promote the old school in some way. Paizo is uniquely placed to show that old school is cool. Even better would be WotC itself, but the design of the new edition of D&D suggests to me that that's not likely, at least not in a way that would benefit the old school community noticeably. Still, much as I dislike the current direction of the game, there's no question that there are some clever designers behind it, so anything is possible and I'll be the first to say I was wrong if WotC publishes The Big Book of Traps that puts Grimtooth's to shame in its fiendishness.

I expect 2009 to be a topsy-turvy year in general, so who knows what the future holds?

Retrospective: The Caverns of Thracia

The Caverns of Thracia by Paul Jaquays is a good example of why Judges Guild is remembered so fondly by so many of us who started gaming in the 70s. Published in 1979, Thracia is both a large dungeon and a campaign setting in its own right. While perhaps not large enough to be called a true "megadungeon," the four levels of the caverns are nevertheless expansive and filled with a wide variety of humanoid factions -- a few of them mutually antagonistic -- which contributes greatly to the feeling of dynamism the module evokes. This is a "living" environment that puts paid to the notion that old school dungeons are static places with monsters statically side by side without any interactions between them.

Even more significant, from my perspective, is the diversity of environments within this module. Firstly, there is the Lost City of Thracia itself, a surface ruin that is the start of the characters' explorations. Beneath it lie four levels, several of which have sub-levels and special room complexes that are only reachable through certain areas within the larger levels. In addition, there are multiple connections -- shafts, chutes, stairs, and other more exotic means -- that contribute to the maze-like feel of the entire place. The Caverns of Thracia is very non-linear; there is no "right" way to explore its depths and no central "set piece" locations. This is a style of dungeon design that we just don't see anymore and that's a pity, because I think gamers are missing out on the unique pleasures of exploration that can only come when the dungeon environment itself is as much of a challenge as the monsters, tricks, and traps contained within it.

I have a lot of fond memories of The Caverns of Thracia. It was one of the few Judges Guild modules I ever played in my youth. My friend Mike's older brother had a copy and more than a few of our characters died horrible deaths while exploring its labyrinthine levels. But we had fun doing it, because the pseudo-ancient Greek atmosphere of the place, combined with its memorable encounters -- like the cult of Thanatos, the incarnation of Death -- spoke to our dreams of being Indiana Jones. I was eventually inspired enough to create my own Egyptian-flavored version of The Caverns of Thracia and, while that dungeon thankfully hasn't survived, it was an important moment in my education as a budding referee. I have Paul Jaquays and Judges Guild to thank for that; I wish similar lessons might be imparted to today's generation of gamers.

Upper Works Response

Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works writer and developer Jeff Talanian dropped me an email in response to my recent review. He was kind enough to give me permission to post it here for everyone to read. He writes:

Thank you for taking the time to review Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works. I appreciate the time and effort you put into sharing your opinions with your usual articulate and thoughtful manner. I must bear full responsibility for most of your content-related criticisms, for I was provided much latitude in the design and development of Gary's famous work, for good or ill. I understood the expectations were high, and I accepted the responsibility knowing that my resources were limited and that Gary's health was in a severe decline; notwithstanding, I peppered him with emails throughout the process, seeking his advice in matters small and large. Essentially, James, I did what I feel was my best work at that time, given the circumstances. I am proud of the work, and I make no excuses for all the warts CZ:UW no doubt bears. Noting your criticisms (not all of which I agree with, of course!), those of Allan Grohe, and other gaming peers whom I respect, I hope to turn my design and development weakness into strengths so as to produce better adventures in the future. Again, thank you.

I would also like to thank Jeff for all the hard work he did in trying to do justice to this project, particularly given the circumstances under which he no doubt worked. Although I am less pleased with the end result than I had hoped I would be, I remain glad to have picked up The Upper Works. There's a lot of good contained within its pages and I'll certainly be swiping bits of it for my own megadungeon, which I mean to be a high compliment. In addition, I have no doubt that, without Jeff's tireless labor, we'd never have seen as much of Castle Zagyg as we did. We are all in his debt for that. I sincerely look forward to his future products, as I have every reason to expect great things from him.

Pulp Fantasy Gallery: The Maker of Universes

First published in 1965, Philip José Farmer's The Maker of Universes is the start of an entire series of pulp fantasy books generally called "the World of Tiers." These stories are very much in the mold of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom novels and other similar stories, in which a man from 20th century Earth is transported by mystical means to another world in which he finds himself uniquely strong, intelligent, and irresistible to the exotic women of his newfound home.

It's classic wish-fulfillment fantasy, but there's no denying that Farmer has a real knack for it. The Maker of Universes describes the adventures of Robert Wolff, an aged World War II veteran and linguist, leading a dull and unsatisfying life, who discovers a doorway to the World of Tiers -- a series of artificially constructed worlds stacked on top of each other, at the topmost level of which dwells its Lord, who rules it (and may have created it). Upon arriving in the World of Tiers, Wolff regains his youth and vigor and sets off to overthrow the Lord and end his tyranny. Along the way, he has many unusual adventures and meets a cast of memorably quirky characters, some of whom return in later novels of the series.

I don't recall any specific elements from this book that turned up in Dungeons & Dragons, but the general tenor of the novel certainly matches the pulp fantasy tone that I contend is at the heart of the game. In addition, it's another example of a story involving a fantasy world connected to our own, a common theme among the books Gary Gygax cited as important influences on him and the game. The more I think about it, the more intrigued I become about what this means for interpreting D&D and the Gygaxian conception of it. I'll probably return to this theme in a future post. For now, though, I can't shake the feeling that there's more going on here than meets the eye.

REVIEW: Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works (Part III of III)

As I noted in Part II, I like Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works. I believe it's a very fine product and well worth the money I spent on it. I also think it's a fitting capstone to Gary Gygax's life and career, even if it's a somewhat melancholy one. I say "melancholy," because TUW is a textbook example of opportunities missed and promises unfulfilled. While it is still, by any measure, a worthy product and a truly Gygaxian one, it could have been better than it was. There's a host of "could have beens" associated with this product and I'd like to talk about several of them to give a better context for my final review of TUW.

1. Timeliness: As we now know, TUW will be the last product of the Castle Zagyg line published by Troll Lord Games. That it was also, by most standards, also the first product in the line to attempt to make good on what most fans expected from it only makes this fact harder to accept. I understand that at least some of the delays in getting TUW to press were not TLG's fault. A combination of factors, no doubt including Gary's failing health, contributed to its tardiness. By the same token, had the projct been better managed from the start, with a realistic timetable and a fewer about-faces in terms of content and format, there's a chance we might have seen more than TUW in the four years since the project was first announced. A good portion of my dissatisfaction with TUW stems from the fact that, after all these years, it's all we've managed to see of the megadungeon I had hoped we'd have seen by now.

2. Appearance and Organization: Being an old schooler, I'm quite accustomed to amateurish products and indeed have a certain affection for them. At the same time, there are many companies out there that have managed to produce attractive and well organized materials without having the resources of Wizards of the Coast. TUW should have been treated like the prestige product that it clearly is. Its organization should have included at the very least an index and better cross-referencing and I don't think it's asking too much in expecting an overview of the entirety of the Castle and its levels. TUW is packed with information -- which is a good thing! -- but it's not particularly user friendly, especially compared to products like Rappan Athuk Reloaded or Castle Whiterock, both of which are larger and yet easier to use. Likewise, TUW's box is flimsy; mine is already splitting after very little use and its pasted-on cover is starting to peel and crack. All these complaints are minor in themselves and I'd have quite happily overlooked them, but, in aggregate, they contribute to the impression of a product made with less care than it ought to have been.

3. Historicity: I had hoped that Castle Zagyg would have taken an approach closer to Rob Kuntz's products, such as The Living Room and The Original Bottle City. In those products, Kuntz not only presented a reconstruction of material from his days as co-DM of the Greyhawk campaign, but also commentary on the origins of this material and how it was used, including reminiscences of events from those days. In some cases, this made the material very "modular," which is to say, disconnected from its original environment, but it also made the material far more useful for referees hoping to drop it into their existing campaigns. Furthermore, it made the material of terrific interest to people whose primary attraction to it is in gleaning insights into the early days of the hobby, not to mention details of one of the oldest fantasy campaigns in existence. Granted, there was never much chance that the Castle Zagyg line was going to adopt this approach. Anyone who'd read Yggsburgh could have seen that. Gary himself stated on numerous occasions that he didn't favor treating the Castle as a "historical" product. I think this was an error in judgment on his part, if only because I don't think historicity need get in the way of gameability. Indeed, I think a greater emphasis on historicity would have made the material of wider interest and greater gameability, particularly for old schoolers such as myself. Again, it's probably unfair to judge TUW too harshly because it didn't adhere to a model that its creator rejected, but I can't deny I held out hope that he might have changed his mind in the course of writing it.

4. Completeness: In itself, TUW contains everything it promises. It does detail all of the Upper Works of Castle Zagyg. Unfortunately, the Upper Works aren't where the Castle "lives." They're, at best, a tantalizing glimpse of what lies beneath them, a sideshow that briefly holds our attention before we move on to bigger and better things. Jim Ward notes that, in the original Greyhawk campaign, the Upper Works occupied very little of the players' attention, because the subterranean levels were far more lucrative and intriguing. I find it hard not to feel the same way. Were it not for the fact that the Upper Works are all that have been described, I rather suspect that most adventuring parties would imitate their Lake Geneva predecessors and delve deeper, lured on by the promise of sights more exciting than endless humanoid barracks and store rooms. To be fair, there is much more to the Upper Works than these things, but, taken as a whole, the feeling I come away with is that TUW describes only a handful of truly memorable encounters and a whole lot of filler intended to keep players busy until such time as the Real Dungeon is published. Alas, it never will be, at least not by TLG -- and that's deeply frustrating.

As you can see, my complaints are, in large part, extraneous to the actual product itself, having more to do with what I wish had been the case rather than what is. For me, TUW, like the entire Castle Zagyg line, is timid and mundane when it should have been daring and otherworldly. TLG and Gary clearly decided to "play it safe" in presenting the Castle and I can't shake the feeling that this approach was unwise. Had TUW (and Yggsburgh before it) treated us to lots of commentary, historical context, and vintage Gygaxian lunacy, I would likely have deemed the entire line a glorious failure cut short by the vagaries of licensing. As it is, what we have is a solid -- dare I say "workmanlike?" -- product with occasional moments of brilliance. TUW has a kind of watered-down, washed-out feel to it, as if it were a copy of a copy of a copy. You can still see the artistry of the original piece of art, but it's muted compared to what it must have looked like fresh from the brush of the Master. Instead of being grateful that the original was preserved, however badly damaged it was from the toll of years, I found myself thinking it far less impressive than the stories I had read of it from those who saw it in its glory.

My hope is that Gygax Games, now that it has reclaimed the license, will take a new tack in any future publication of materials relating to Castle Greyhawk. There are many valid approaches a company could take that would, I think, do justice to this most famous of megadungeons. My own preference is for an approach similar to that adopted by Rob Kuntz in his own work, with additional input from members of the old Greyhawk campaign, where possible. This approach would almost certainly run counter to the tastes of modern gamers, but then I don't think Castle Greyhawk was ever likely to appeal to modern tastes and it was a fool's errand to ever think it could. Perhaps the best approach is to treat Castle Greyhawk/Zagyg primarily as a document of historical interest rather than as a complete, ready-to-play "mega-adventure." Such an approach would be truest to the spirit of the Lake Geneva campaign back in the day and also the most realistic as a publishing project. Anything more would, I fear, reduce Gary's legacy to a mere brand -- which isn't to say it won't happen. Even TLG was heading in that direction, as they dubbed the line "Gary Gygax's Castle Zagyg."

As far removed as we are in time from the days of the Greyhawk campaign, it's well-nigh impossible to produce a definitive version of the Castle that fulfills 30+ years of hopes and dreams. It would be best, I think, not even to try to do so and it's here that TUW's reach exceeds its grasp. By aiming for a playable Gestalt approach to the megadungeon, it winds up being less than the sum of its parts, at least as far as I'm concerned. It's lacking both in the expansiveness necessary to make me overlook its disconnection from history and in historical depth to make me overlook its smallness. For some, these are probably not flaws and the middle of the road approach adopted in Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works hits a sweet spot that neither of my preferences would have done. I certainly recognize that my own tastes are idiosyncratic and far from widespread, even among old schoolers, most of whom seem to like this product far more than I do. Even I, for all my complaints and nitpicks, can't grade it too harshly. I remain unmoved from my repeated assertion that I am glad I own this and find much good in it, but I am equally unmoved from my belief that, as the final work from the pen of the Dungeon Master, it's disappointing on numerous levels. Gygax Games has one more chance to fulfill the promise this megadungeon holds. Let's see if they do so.

Final Score: 3½ out of 5 polearms

REVIEW: Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works (Part II of III)

As I noted in Part I, Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works consists of six staple-bound booklets and three glossy maps. I'd like to comment first on the physical qualities of these items before diving into a more detailed discussion of their contents. I think it's fair to say that TUW is by far the best looking and presented product Troll Lord Games has ever made. It's very clear to me that they quite correctly saw this boxed set as a prestige product and made every effort to avoid the past mistakes of earlier TLG offerings, many of which are legendary in their production missteps. That's not to say that TUW is entirely free of the gaffes I've come to expect from TLG -- there are typos, omissions, and other editorial infelicities to be found throughout, but none that I came across struck me as anything more than the kinds of errors one might reasonably expect from a product of this size and scope. Cory M. Coserta is listed as the editor for TUW and he deserves a debt of thanks for his work on it.

The five booklets containing the descriptions of the Upper Works all use the same workmanlike two-column layout that TLG seems to use for all its products. It's not pretty but it's quite serviceable, particularly given the density of the text itself, which uses a very small typeface. The text is broken up by black and white art drawn by TLG stalwart Peter Bradley and Jason Walton. Of the two, I found that Walton's work was by far more to my liking. There's a sameness to Bradley's pieces that reminds me a bit of Elmore's later work, whereas Walton's pieces have a "rougher" and slightly cartoonish look that somehow struck me as more appropriate to the subject matter. Ironically, Bradley's color work for the covers of the booklets were much more in a vein I like. Art, of course, is highly subjective, so I certainly won't hold my own opinions against TUW.

On the other hand, I will hold cartographic errors against TUW. Aside from lots of minor but inconvenient issues, such as inconsistent map symbols, there are a number of missing or misnumbered locations. Likewise, there are places where the maps contradict the text or where the maps were drawn in a way that I found difficult to follow. In a location-based product of this size, I would have hoped that greater care would have been taken to ensure that the maps were made as exactingly as possible and that their presentation would aid the referee in their use. The sense I get, though, is that this project was just a little too big for TLG's resources and, while they put forward a solid effort, it still wasn't quite as professional as TUW demanded.

Two more brief points before proceeding: TUW includes neither an overview of the entire Castle nor an index. In themselves, neither omission is ruinous, but their lack contributed to the "drip, drip" in the back of my brain, slowly wearing down my enthusiasm for this product. An index would certainly have made using TUW much easier and an overview of the entire Castle would have given some much needed context to the material we were given in the boxed set. Combined with the unnecessary contrivance of the "Curse of Fog & Frogs," this made me wonder exactly how much of Castle Zagyg had been completed at the time TUW was published.

1. Mouths of Madness: This is the first of the six booklets included with TUW. 44 pages in length, it details the wilderness surrounding Castle Zagyg, including the eponymous Mouths of Madness, a collection caves in which dwell several different types of humanoids and other monsters. If that sounds remarkably like the set-up for Keep on the Borderlands, I'm sure that's no accident. Despite the nostalgia this elicited, I found Book 1 to be one of the weakest bits of TUW, consisting mostly of repetitive humanoid encounters. There are a number of memorable bits -- the ogre's cottage, the gateway to Barsoom -- and several references to fabled locales (such as the Black Reservoir), but these were few and far between. I suppose it didn't help that TLG had already sold me this booklet in the previously-released Eastmark Gazetteer, but I can't say I found much here that excited my imagination or inspired me.

2. Ruins of the Castle Precincts: This 48-page booklet was much more to my liking, both because it deals directly with the Castle's grounds and because the encounters within it were varied and generally interesting. There is a goodly supply of tricks, traps, and diversions amongst its monster encounters, as well as snippets of Greyhawk lore (with the serial numbers filed off, of course). It's here that you catch glimpses of the whimsy and mercilessness that are Gygaxian trademarks. There's also a fitting -- if heavy-handed -- tribute to Gary himself in the form of a goblin cobbler that seems all the more poignant in the wake of his death.

3. East Wall Towers: At 20 pages, this is the shortest of the booklets, but it hits well above its weight category in terms of allusions to Greyhawk lore. Here we encounter the brothers of the Crimson Hand, as well as a shrine to a "celestial deity" that includes a number of nice twists and turns.

4. Castle Fortress: This 44-page booklet is another excellent one, detailing the ruins of Zagyg's old surface fortress. This area of the Castle contains a goodly mix of encounters, some of them quite memorable and challenging. According to the introduction, which includes quotes from Lake Geneva campaign regular (and Gamma World designer) Jim Ward, these ruins received very little exploration in the original campaign, as the subterranean levels had "more and bigger loot," to quote The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures. Consequently, the material here is potentially quite new, in the sense that it has never before been even hinted at in earlier accounts of the Lake Geneva adventures. I found this booklet held my attention for quite some time, as I read and re-read it for details I might have missed. There's lots of inspiration to be found here.

5. Store Rooms: Another 44-page booklet, it's a mixed bag, with several interesting encounters and far too many rooms filled with humanoids barracks, armories, and storage chambers. It's probably unfair to have expected anything more from it, given its name, but I did feel a mite disappointed. I'm a fan of Gygaxian naturalism, as you know, but this section of TUW proved fairly dull because of it. The book concludes with many new magic items, monsters, and a fully-statted rival adventuring party, the latter being a very nice old school touch that I greatly appreciated.

Maps & Illustrations Booklet: 36 pages in length, 20 of them is devoted to maps of the Upper Works. I've already mentioned my feelings about them above. The remainder is a series of 33 illustrations (all by Jason Walton) that are presumably intended to be shown to players at appropriate times, after the fashion of the illustration booklets of TSR modules of old. I was very taken by many of these pieces, as they nicely highlight the whimsical and deadly nature of the Castle. Just looking through them is a terrific antidote for anyone who, like me, tends to look down on the unique pleasures of funhouse dungeons. In some ways, I found it the most inspirational portion of TUW.

Taken as a whole, TUW didn't shake that "drip, drip" feeling I noted earlier. Part of it was that my own expectations for this boxed set were unreasonably high. I had hoped that we'd actually get to see something of the fabled dungeons, not just the areas immediately above them. Clearly, that was never the plan and I can't hold TLG accountable for that. Gary Gygax likewise decided that, rather than attempt to recreate one of several versions of Castle Greyhawk from the past, he would instead create a new castle that was a distillation of all of them that was at the same time none of them -- a kind of Gestalt. This was certainly not my own preference, but, again, I can't blame TLG for this, since it should have been clear, after having read Yggsburgh, that the best I could hope for was an "impressionistic" approach to the Castle and its levels.

Even so, TUW felt "small" and I don't just mean in the sense of its expanse, although it certainly did seem far smaller in size than I'd have expected. Rather, it felt as if there was a great deal missing from it -- its "heart," if you will. What we got in this boxed set certainly had lots of Gygaxian flourishes to it. It was hard not to recognize the spirit of the Dungeon Master hovering above it. Yet, it also had many other hovering spirits and, while I can't quite put my finger on all of them, their presence at all made me feel that TUW wasn't as good as it could have -- should have -- been.

It's not as if there's not a lot to like here, because there is. I know I'll be swiping portions of it for use in my own Dwimmermount campaign. However, I was never moved to try to and run TUW straight out of the box. Indeed, I found TUW wanting compared even to the notes that loremeister Allan Grohe has assembled on his webpage. Certainly, TUW is more "complete" in the sense of containing more statted up encounters, treasures, and so forth, but there's a very real sense in which that attempt at completeness works against it. For one thing, TUW isn't complete; it's only one very small part of a much larger megadungeon that still hasn't seen publication yet. For another, it doesn't invite the kind of tinkering and personal modifications that, say, Rob Kuntz's Lake Geneva Castle & Campaign products do, which perhaps says more about my own expectations than it does about the weakness of TUW, but there it is.

In the end, I like Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works. It's a worthy product and one I'm glad to own. But I don't love it; it didn't knock my socks off and I had hoped that it would. Again, maybe that's unfair, which is why the final part of this review will be a discussion of what I had hoped I would see and what that means not just for this product, but for any future publications of Gygax-derived material.

REVIEW: Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works (Part I of III)

Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works -- or, more precisely, Gary Gygax's Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works -- is the coda that brings the symphony of Gary Gygax's game writing to a melancholy conclusion. Consisting of six staple-bound booklets (varying in length from 20 to 48 pages) and three glossy maps in a large box, The Upper Works (hereinafter abbreviated TUW) is available from Troll Lord Games for $44.95 until the end of December 2008, after which TLG's license to publish and sell it and other Gary Gygax-related products ends. This had made TUW an instant collector's item for devotees of the late Dungeon Master. And collector's item it ought to be, for TUW is a remarkable, if flawed, piece of work. These flaws do not, I think, diminish the remarkable achievement Gygax and his protégé, Jeff Talanian, have given to the gaming world, but they do contribute to the lingering sense of time wasted and promises unfulfilled that swirl around Gary's gaming legacy.

Gamers have been waiting to see the fabled levels of Castle Greyhawk since 1980 at least, when Gygax indicated that TSR would be publishing them in an upcoming module. Since then, no such module has ever appeared, although numerous products supposedly connected to Castle Greyhawk have been published. Gygax was involved in the writing of none of them and the relationship of even the best of them to the megadungeon of the original Lake Geneva campaign is tenuous at best. Consequently, news that Troll Lord Games would be publishing a series of products detailing the renamed "Castle Zagyg" was met with great excitement. That not only Gary Gygax but also Rob Kuntz, co-DM of the Greyhawk campaign, was actively involved in writing these products only heightened the anticipation many felt. At long last, it seemed as if the fabled Holy Grail of fantasy roleplaying was about to be revealed to the world.

Alas, such hopes proved to be misplaced. The first Castle Zagyg products appeared in 2005, consisting of the 250-page hardcover Yggsburgh by Gygax, detailing a large settlement near Castle Zagyg and the surrounding wilderness, and the 40-page softcover module Dark Chateau by Rob Kuntz, detailing the ruined and abandoned former abode of the Mad Archmage himself. Anyone who read these early products with clear eyes could have seen warning signs that the Castle Zagyg project would likely never see completion nor would it fulfill the fondest hopes of gamers. Yggsburgh, while a worthy product in many respects and full of trademark Gygaxian goodness, offered little to nothing in the way of new information about the fabled Castle nor about the campaign whose centerpiece it was. Dark Chateau hinted at much but was ultimately constrained by the fact that it was quite clearly a "space filler," a bone thrown to gamers while they chomped at the bit for the main course of Castle Zagyg itself.

It took two more years before additional Castle Zagyg products appeared -- the East Mark Gazetteer and the "City Expansions" series -- but none of these new products detailed the Castle and most of them contained not a word of Gygaxian prose, instead focusing on the ever more minute details of Yggsburgh. TLG in fact planned to produce 19 separate products describing each of Yggsburgh's districts. Of these, only four were ever published. Again, it was an omen of things to come and in more ways than one. Along the way Rob Kuntz removed himself from involvement with the project, with several explanations from several sources being offered for this turn of events, but, in retrospect, it seems most plausible that it was disagreements about the direction of Castle Zagyg that were the most pertinent. When TUW finally debuted at GenCon 2008, I have to admit that I was more than a little surprised. I honestly never expected to see any more Castle Zagyg material, especially since Gary had died almost six months beforehand. I saw no reason to doubt that Castle Zagyg would disappear into the same black hole as the Castle Keeper's Guide and other such announced-but-never-materialized TLG products.

I didn't attend GenCon this year and so I waited to see TUW in one of my local game stores or available for order through an online retailer that didn't treat shipping to Canada as if it were shipping to Antarctica. I never saw either occur and so bit my tongue and ordered directly from TLG at the exorbitant shipping costs they charged to get it to me. Even at that price, I was glad to pay it, because I doubt I would otherwise have ever seen TUW. Fortunately, TLG was prompt in shipping me my copy and it arrived not long after my having ordered it. Despite being in a box, my copy of TUW was not shrink-wrapped, which at first worried me that it might not be intact. My worries proved unfounded, but, when compared to companies like Necromancer Games or Goodman Games, both of which have produced expensive boxed sets over the last few years, I can't help but be a bit disappointed that similar care wasn't taken with TUW as they showed with their products. After all, TUW was clearly meant to be a flagship product for TLG and Castles & Crusades and yet it certainly didn't appear to be treated as such.

Perhaps it's a small thing and I shouldn't think to much of it. Nevertheless, the lack of shrink-wrap suggested to me a kind of slapdash approach that I feared might carry over to the contents of the boxed set itself. Given the history of the Castle Zagyg project up till the release of TUW, I think my concern was justified. In Part II tomorrow, I'll return to this question at length as I discuss the actual contents and presentation of Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works. In Part III, I conclude my review with my thoughts on the place of Castle Zagyg in the gaming legacy of Gary Gygax and what the future might (or ought to) hold for Castle Zagyg now that Gygax Games has rescinded its license to Troll Lord Games.

Thank You

Thanks to everyone who's given me advice and suggestions regarding Tunnels & Trolls. I've already been given a copy of the 7th edition rules to examine by a friend and have ordered a copy of the 5.5 rules from Flying Buffalo, as well as several solo scenarios. I'd like to try and get as full an experience of the game as possible, so I can dispel any misapprehensions I have about it. I suspect that, while it probably won't be quite up my alley, I will learn a great deal from giving the game a second look after all these years.

Everything I've seen suggests the T&T community is every bit as vibrant -- and old school -- as the OD&D community. There's a lot we have in common, not least of which being our reverence for the Old Ways in the face of brandification. Indeed, T&T holds a lot of fascination for me right now, because, by not being a huge mass market success, it was better able to hold on to its original spirit and approach than was D&D. In many ways, T&T represents a path not taken for D&D, at least in how it's been published and supported over the last 30+ years. I can't help but be a little jealous that D&D didn't enjoy a similar fate.

In any case, I'll be posting my thoughts and experiences with Tunnels & Trolls in the weeks and months ahead. D&D will probably always be "my" game, but I now have the feeling I'll appreciate T&T's unique virtues far better than I ever could have as a younger person. Thanks to everyone who set me on this path.

Xothique

Kieran Forest has started a new blog dedicated to the development of his upcoming Swords & Wizardry/OD&D setting, Xothique. As its name suggests, it's based on Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique cycle, but uses a different spelling to make it clear that it's not a canonical take on these classic weird tales, but rather one suited for use as a gaming setting. I have to admit I'm pretty excited by the prospect of this. I'm a huge fan of Smith -- he's probably my favorite of the Big Three Weird Tales writers, for reasons I've mentioned before -- and I once pursued a license to produce a series of RPGs based on Smith's works. I eventually abandoned the idea, because of the odd relationship between CASiana Literary Enterprises (Smith's literary executors) and Arkham House, but that's probably a topic for another day.

In any case, I wish Kieran great success with this project and will certainly be following it with interest.

Merry Christmas

I recently stumbled across this image on the Gygax Games forums and thought it an appropriate Christmas greeting for the blog and a reminder of the many fine people who helped build the hobby during the Golden Age. The image originally appeared in issue 11 of The Dragon (December 1977) and was apparently used as a Christmas card by TSR at the same time. The piece was illustrated by Dave Trampier (shown trying to grab his hat) and also includes caricatures of Gary Gygax (seated next to Tramp and smiling for the camera), Tom Wham, who's peering over at the precariously balanced Dave Sutherland, while Jake Jaquet reads, peacefully oblivious to Tim Kask's poor flying sleigh driving skills. Rob Kuntz is parachuting away from this madness and the poor fellow falling headfirst is Joe Orlowski, who was an editor and manager at The Dragon in its early days.

I'd like to extend my good wishes to all my readers this Christmas season. May you all enjoy a peaceful and joyous holiday.

Lux fulgebit hodie super nos: qui natus est nobis Dominus: et vocabitur Admirabilis, Deus, Principes pacis, Pater futuri saeculi: cujus regni non erit finis.

Advice Requested

Having spoken to enough people, I now convinced I need to give Tunnels & Trolls another shot. As I noted earlier, my disdain for it is based, at least in part, on unthinking prejudice and I'd like to correct that.

So, if anyone can point me toward what is generally considered the "best" edition of the game, I'd appreciate it. I'd be even more appreciative if said edition was one still available for purchase. I know that in recent years there have been at least two different editions published, but I'm not up on the differences between them, let alone knowledgeable enough to know which one would give me the "purest" experience of T&T's unique virtues. I'm sure someone among my many astute readers can point in the right direction.

Thanks!

The OD&D Planes

Serendipity seems to strike a lot in the blogging world, with lots of people riffing off the same basic themes and making many similar posts. Over at Demons & Dragons, Jarl Frå Oslo posted an image I'd just seen yesterday as I was re-reading early issues of The Strategic Review. It's from an article by Gary Gygax in issue 6 called "The Meaning of Law and Chaos in Dungeons & Dragons and their Relationships to Good and Evil." It's a very fascinating article, because it's a glimpse into Gary's mind as he's expanding the threefold alignment structure of OD&D into the fivefold structure we see in Holmes.

Even more interesting, from a historical point of view if no other, is the aforementioned image, which doubles as an alignment graph and a map of the planes as Gary then conceived of them.

Notice the names: Heaven (not "Seven Heavens"), Paradise (not "Twin Paradises"), Elysium, Limbo, the Abyss, Hades, Hell (not "Nine Hells"), and Nirvana. There is also no plane associated with Neutrality, which is telling, I think. Notice too the beings listed as exemplars of the four cardinal alignments: Saint, Godling, Demon, and Devil. (What exactly a "godling" is I do not know, but I have some guesses)

I hope I'm not alone in thinking that this simplified structure, reminiscent of the more convoluted version we get in AD&D, is just keen. Like many aspects of OD&D + Supplements, I find that the end result is a kind of proto-AD&D or "AD&D Lite," and that's exactly the vibe I want in my games. In looking at this illustration, I was reminded of the planar structure Paizo adopted for its Golarion setting, which is eerily similar. Knowing Erik Mona's love for the old school, I'd not be the least bit surprised if this article was an inspiration when he and his crew were designing Golarion, but I have no proof of that. Even if it wasn't, I'm tickled to see some commonality between a 30 year-old article and contemporary game design. That doesn't happen everyday, alas.

The Implicit Christianity of Early Gaming

One of the many interesting ways that Dungeons & Dragons differs from its literary forebears is in the matter of religion. Pulp fantasy, by and large, is unconcerned with the subject. Priests are generally portrayed as hypocrites at best and outright villains at worst. Likewise, the actions of the gods, if they occur at all, are mysterious and easily written off by the skeptical as mere chance. This clearly isn't the case in D&D, where, thanks to the inclusion of the cleric, religion has always played a role in the game.

Granted, the cleric owes the better part of its existence to Hammer horror films, but, if you read OD&D, you can see that the class quickly evolved beyond its origins as a mere vampire hunter-cum-medic. The influence of historical medieval wargaming on the game shouldn't be overlooked. Everyone remembers Chainmail because of its Fantasy Supplement, but Jeff Perren and Gary Gygax didn't write these rules in order to facilitate miniatures battles between dragons and elves but instead to recreate the warfare and technology of the European Middle Ages. Gygax, by his own account, was very keen on medieval history, at least on the military side of things (no doubt the source of his pole arm-philia). Given this, is it any wonder that the armored, mace-wielding cleric bears a strong resemblance to the religious knights of the Crusades?

If you read OD&D carefully, you soon notice that a lot of the paraphernalia associated with clerics has Christian origins. The equipment list, for example, includes wooden and silver crosses, not the "holy symbols" of AD&D and later editions (Interestingly, there are no crucifixes, which I think is significant). The cleric's level titles include a number of specifically Christian terms (vicar, curate, and bishop). The illustrations of clerics in OD&D -- and even early AD&D -- always show them dressed in obviously Christian priestly garb. And of course many of the cleric's spells draw on Christian (and Jewish) religious writings and folklore. Indeed, the cleric's focus on defense and protection spells is, I think, more evidence of the Christian origins of the class. What's even more telling is the fact, even as late as Eldritch Wizardry, there are few (if any) explicit references to gods in OD&D. There's much talk of demons, devils,and, tellingly, saints, but gods aren't much talked about until Supplement IV's release in 1976.

I once asked Gary Gygax directly about the question of why this was so and he explained that he felt it unseemly to include anything too explicitly Christian in a mere game, even if he assumed a kind of quasi-Christian or crypto-Christian underpinning for the whole thing. This is also why his demons and devils used somewhat obscure names rather than very familiar ones. All the old school love for statting up Satan/Lucifer was something Gary didn't feel was proper. It's the same reason why, even in late AD&D, we get planetars, solars, and devas but never "angels." Interestingly, the original Blackmoor campaign, as I understand it, had a Church, complete with a hierarchy, but no named gods. Again -- and someone can correct me if I'm mistaken on this -- there's an assumption of a quasi-Christianity lurking in the background.

Reading Chivalry & Sorcery as I have been, there's a bit more explicit assumption of Christianity there, but it's still stated in a somewhat circuitous fashion -- an oddity given the great detail given to things like ecclesiastical structures, beliefs, relics, and so on, not to mention the lengthy bestiaries of demons (including Lucifer himself). In the case of C&S, the impression I get is that its authors simply assumed that their readers wanted their games to include lots of quasi-Christianity, since it was more "realistic" than the henotheism of most fantasy RPGs. I know that, in my early days of gaming, my friends and I all tacitly assumed that clerics were Christian priests -- heck, I thought monks were as well -- and that, somewhere, behind all the monsters and magic, the Lord of Hosts was lurking.

We never really talked about this assumption or dealt with it in any direct way, but we neither did we question it. It was an odd kind of Christ-less Christianity, more concerned with laying the smackdown on evil than with turning the other cheek or taking up one's cross, except in the most vague of senses. The paladin was an unambiguously Christian knight for us and indeed Lawful Goodness we associated with this unspoken religion that had bishops and cathedrals and holy water and everything else a young boy saw as being "essential" to medieval Christendom.

As time went on and our sense of D&D changed, this implicit Christianity became less important, but it never fully faded away, because it just seemed to us that there was just no other way to look at the cleric and the paladin except in the context of quasi-Christianity. Nowadays, I'm probably too immersed in swords-and-sorcery to fall into this perspective again, but I am now more firmly convinced than ever that early gaming, far from being "pagan," was in fact shot through with Christian belief, practice, and lore. It was always a kind of "fairytale Christianity" broadly consonant with American generic Protestantism rather than anything more muscular, but it was there and it's never really died, even if all the post-1e editions of D&D have tried to varying degrees to remove all evidence of it. I find it fascinating to remember this, if only because, as I spin off in flights of pulp fantasy fancy, it's good to be reminded that D&D owes its origins to more than just that style of fantasy and is in fact a goulash of unspoken and contradictory inspirations.

The Disenchantment of the World

Robert Fisher recently made a nice little post that reminded me of a thought I'd been having as well. In it, Robert quotes someone -- from ENWorld of all places! -- who notes that, "how versatile and multi-functional so many of the magic items [of AD&D] were. They were powerful, and they were odd, and fascinating, and most important of all a lot of them could do all kinds of things." The commenter adds that "By comparison so many of the magic items of more recent editions are bland, plain, uninspired, and uninspiring. It’s like using a piece of technology from the eighties or something. The items are overly specialized, technical, usually limited to one specific function, top-heavy in design and capabilities."

I definitely think there's something to this. Whenever I read my little brown books, I'm constantly struck by how much more, well, magical the magic items seem to be. One of the reasons is because, more often than not, the descriptions of the item contains almost nothing in the way of explicit mechanics. They're suggestive of mechanics but they provide no unambiguous way to handle their use in play. They're mostly flavor text that doubles as game mechanics and so, as I read these entries, I find myself thinking, "What does that mean?" and "How would that work in play?" My answers to these questions almost always result in items that aren't just pieces of magical technology but something much more intriguing.

Take, for example, the old standby -- and something even I will admit is a rip-off from Tolkien -- the elven cloak. This is what OD&D has to say about it: "Wearing the Cloak makes a person next to invisible." Next to invisible? What does that mean? Contrast this to AD&D, whose description of the item, now dubbed the cloak of elvenkind, is much more specific:

A cloak of elvenkind is of a plain neutral gray which is indistinguishable from any sort of ordinary cloak of the same color. However, when it is worn, with the hood drawn up around he head, it enables the wearer to be nearly invisible, for the cloak has chameleon-like powers. In the outdoors, the wearer of a cloak of elvenkind is almost totally invisible in natural surroundings, nearly so in other settings. Note that the wearer is easily seen if violently or hastily moving, regardless of the surroundings.

The description then goes on to give specific percentage chances of how invisible the wearer is, from 100% in heavy growth in natural surroundings to 50% while underground and illuminated by the continual light spell. I'm not keen on this degree of specificity, but, even with it, there's still some wiggle room for the referee -- and players! -- because what constitutes "heavy growth" as opposed to "light growth" is a matter of opinion. You can see, though, that, even with all the expansive physical/metaphysical description of the cloak, its functioning ultimately comes down to a D100 roll.

Third Edition, as it so often does, pares down Gygaxian flavor text and reduces AD&D's baroque mechanics to banality: "This cloak of neutral gray cloth is indistinguishable from an ordinary cloak of the same color. However, when worn with the hood drawn up around the head, it gives the wearer a +5 competence bonus on Hide checks." Fourth Edition is even more laconic: "Gain an item bonus to Stealth checks equal to the cloak’s enhancement bonus." There's not even a nod to flavor text.

I fully understand why D&D's descriptions of magic items have developed the way that they have, but that doesn't mean I have to approve of it. In my opinion, the so-called "Christmas tree effect" is not a consequence of there being too many magic items in D&D (though I have no objection to making them rarer). Rather, it's the result of reducing magic items to being a collection game mechanics that always and everywhere work in the same way. If an elven cloak is always a flat +X bonus to skill check Y, then of course the item becomes problematic when combined with other bonuses gleaned from other sources, thereby lending credence to the absurd notion that magic items need to be "reined in."

I grow ever more convinced that the quest for "objectivity" and "balance" in roleplaying games is the surest way to bleed all the magic out of them, as well as to create an audience that then perceives any "imbalance" as a flaw requiring yet more corrections and re-tunings to overcome. Certainly this approach sells more books and helps give further justification to "Sage Advice" columns and the like, but at what cost? "Game balance" is a chimera and not the cool three-headed variety. To embrace this is one of the keys to appreciating and enjoying old school play. It's something I embraced with great joy and I've never looked back.

Pulp Fantasy Gallery: Lest Darkness Fall

My distaste for the harm L. Sprague De Camp wrought to the reputations of Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft notwithstanding, there's no denying that he was an important figure in the early days of fantasy and science fiction and that his writings greatly influenced Dungeons & Dragons. De Camp is almost unique among the writers Gary Gygax listed in Appendix N in that his name appears not once but twice -- once alone and a second time linked to that of his writing partner Fletcher Pratt, with whom he co-wrote the Harold Shea stories. (Pratt, of course, is the only other author whose name appears twice)

Consequently, it'd be a grave mistake to overlook the De Camp books listed in the back of the Dungeon Masters Guide. Among them is 1941's Lest Darkness Fall, originally published in 1939 as a short story in Unknown magazine. Like many of the books that influenced D&D, Lest Darkness Fall is the story of a modern person transported to another world -- in this case, 6th century Italy -- who, through a combination of modern know-how and determination, changes this other world forever.

The modern person of De Camp's tale is Martin Padway, an American archeologist, who, after using his knowledge to introduce unheard of inventions (brandy, printing press, newspapers, telegraph) and thereby make himself wealthy, becomes involved in the politics of Ostrogothic Italy. Over the course of the novel, Padway's actions change history by stabilizing the Ostrogothic kingdom, beating back the Byzantines, and even preventing the foundation of Islam. What's interesting is that Padway never once considers the consequences of his actions in the past, even though they will undoubtedly destroy the future from which he came. I confess that De Camp tells the story with such good humor and verve that I didn't much care about such things, preferring instead to enjoy the novel for what it is: an amusing tale well-told. Harry Turtledove, contemporary master of alternate history, agrees and credits Lest Darkness Fall for igniting his interest in history and, by extension, alternate history.

Alternate histories and parallel worlds are a significant part of the pulp fantasy heritage of Dungeons & Dragons. They've largely been lost in the game's modern incarnations. Indeed, I can't recall any specific connection between a D&D world and our own in anything published in over 20 years. Once upon a time, that wasn't the norm: adventurers regularly encountered dimensional castaways from 20th century Earth or raided the British Museum in search of the Mace of St. Cuthbert. I miss things more than I realized, which is why I plan to do my part to restore this aspect of D&D's heritage in my own campaigns.

Light Bulb

Over at Greyhawk Grognard, Joseph has written a terrific post on megadungeons as "campaign tent poles," by which he means that a megadungeon serves admirably as the thing that "holds the rough up" of a campaign, even if there are -- and should be -- other things under that rough. That is, a megadungeon is a terrific foundation on which to build a campaign, but, being the foundation, it pretty much demands that you build something else on top of it in order to use it to its fullest. Clearly, both the Blackmoor and Greyhawk campaigns operated in this fashion, being focused on the exploration and looting of a megadungeon, but expanding beyond it as the demands of campaign events and player desire demanded it.

I've become ever more convinced that a "tent pole" megadungeon is pretty much a sine qua non for an old school campaign. Dungeons & Dragons was written, after all, with megadungeons in mind and I don't think you can really get the most out of the game if you avoid the whole concept. In thinking about this, I realized two things. First, there's never really been a properly presented old school campaign setting, because none that I know of have ever given us the megadungeons around which they revolved. It seems to me that, if I were an old school publisher looking for a "killer app," it'd be a well-done megadungeon and surrounding wilderness, done in a way that fosters sandbox/hexcrawl play. Second, I've now realized that my growing dissatisfaction with AD&D 2e stems in part from the fact that few of its many and much loved campaign settings had much scope for a tent pole megadungeon. Or rather, megadungeons are possible in them, but they weren't generally aspects of the setting that official support encouraged. Consider:

• Al-Qadim: A megadungeon might work in this setting with some work. It'd be a bit odd, given the socio-cultural nature of the setting, but there are enough ruined cities around in the desert that I could imagine it.
  
• Birthright: A megadungeon in Cerillia would really shift the focus of the campaign away from the power politics for which it was created.
  
• Dark Sun: Actually, this setting probably could have handled a megadungeon. Indeed, there was even a boxed set, City by the Silt Sea, that featured the ruined city of Giustenal that could have been presented as a megadungeon. Alas, it was instead used as a springboard for advancing a execrable metaplot. More's the pity.
• Dragonlance: I have a hard time imagining a megadungeon on Krynn, but perhaps I'm too biased to consider the possibilities.
• Planescape: I can't even begin to imagine what a megadungeon campaign in the Planes would be like.
• Ravenloft: The megadungeon would probably work least well in this setting of all those I've listed.
• Spelljammer: Interestingly, the Spelljammer itself was effectively a megadungeon and even got its own boxed set detailing it. Unfortunately, it was as bland as white bread and it was clear that TSR wasn't all that keen on doing much more with the concept.

On second reflection, it's more apparent to me that most of the 2e settings could be retooled to support a tent pole megadungeon, but the reality is that none were presented that way back in the day. That makes it appear in my memory as if they were much less amenable to D&D's origins than they actually were. That said, I never encountered anyway who attempted to run a megadungeon game in Cerillia or Athas and fans of these settings never mention their utility as the backdrop for megadungeon exploration in their paeans to them. So, while I'll concede that I've been more unfair to them than I ought to have been, the fact remains that 2e was an era that moved away from tent pole megadungeons as a principle of setting design and that still irks me even years later.

In any case, I think the tent pole megadungeon is, despite its antiquity, something we've never really seen on the publishing side of things. That may be because it's inherently un-publishable, but I'm not convinced of that. Indeed, I'm starting to think that a tent pole megadungeon might in fact be a rare example of an old idea that could catch fire again. The difficulty, of course, is in how its presented and in resisting the urge to over-detail and brandify the megadungeon to the point of uselessness. Some ideas are swirling in my head and I'll chat about them later, probably after I've reviewd Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works. Having now read through the entirety of that module, I have some very clear ideas on what works and what doesn't and where the approach taken in that product went awry and why. They're lessons I've taken to heart while working on Dwimmermount and I'll elaborate on them soon.

The Plot Thickens

I'm not a regular visitor to the Gygax Games website, in part because the recent announcements regarding the disposition of Gary's unfinished gaming projects left me ill at ease. From the looks of it, the whole thing smacked of a money grab on the part of Mrs Gygax, perhaps egged on by third parties who felt they could take better financial advantage of her late husband's legacy. Nevertheless, I paid a visit to the site yesterday and noticed that a Holiday Greeting, signed by Mrs Gygax, appeared on its front page. Reading through it, I noticed a number of interesting things that, while far from making everything plain, do cast a slightly different light on recent events.

After reminding everyone that it's been nine months since Gary died, Mrs Gygax adds that "I want you all to know, Gary and I discussed his wishes for his works prior to his passing and I am following the road map he left for me. Many of you are unaware how close we were, I was devoted to him." This is intriguing. Firstly, I think it's good to see Mrs Gygax laying claim to this message. Whether or not she actually wrote it, the fact remains that, by speaking directly to the point that what is happening is happening because her husband wanted it to be so, she helps to dispel rumors that she has no idea what is going on and is being manipulated by others. Gail Gygax is now a known quantity rather than some abstraction in the background. Secondly, her mention of a "road map" implies that she's acting on the wishes of Gary himself and it's vital she get people to believe this.

Now, I personally have no difficulty at all in believing that Gary, in the months leading up to his death last March, got all his affairs in order and discussed with his wife what he wanted to be done with his various properties and projects. I recall Gary's frequent allusions to his eventual demise on various message boards as early as the summer of 2007, if not before. I think it highly likely that he did in fact produce some kind of a "road map" for his wife to follow. What is unclear and probably always will be is the actual content of this road map and the extent to which Mrs Gygax is following what is laid out in it. By that I mean that I can believe Gary might have laid out what he wanted to see done with the Castle Zagyg project after his death, but I'm not certain that he specified, for example, that the license be revoked from Troll Lords and given to someone else. I'm not saying it's impossible (and I'll expand my thoughts on this shortly), but I'd like to see more evidence.

Mrs Gygax further explains her role: "To that end, after Gary passed, I asked Spencer Wright and Jon Creffield to help me. They have given freely of their time, we should all thank them. I am grateful for their help. They are not advising me what to do, but helping to maintain the integrity of the IP and continue its development." I've italicized the key bit there. Again, Mrs Gygax says the buck stops with her and, by implication, that it stops with the road map that Gary laid out before his death. She then concludes with these words:

Gary would want us all to be kind to each other during this time of transition and especially kind to each other during this holiday season. After all, that’s what his life was all about – creating environments for the enjoyment of others –

I plan to continue his mission.

That conclusion rings very true. I didn't know Gary Gygax personally -- we were, at best, infrequent email correspondents -- but I like to think I understood him. In recent years, he was a much more pacific and less cantankerous personality. He remained strong-willed, even opinionated, on many topics, but he was also much more giving and indeed forgiving than popular caricatures would have us believe. He had a keen sense of his role in the hobby and he was genuinely -- and regularly -- touched by the outpouring of affections he engendered. Consequently, toward the end, he seemed to me to be very interested in fostering fun and enjoyment and ensuring that it was those things that were his legacies.

What is now very clear to me is that Mrs Gygax has decided to step out from the shadows a bit and boldly state that what is happening now is happening in accordance to a plan she is following, a plan laid down by Gary before his death. I think it was important that she do this, but stating it does come with some risks, not least being the likelihood that many might not believe her. After all, while he was alive, Gary spoke highly of Troll Lords and, so far as anyone knows, never considered pulling the Castle Zagyg license out from under them, despite all the delays and missteps that were undoubtedly their fault and not his own. As I'll explain in my upcoming review of Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works, late as it was, the product shows many signs of having been rushed and less well produced than it ought to have been and surely Gary knew this would be the case. Yet, he continued to work with the Trolls without any public hint of displeasure or unhappiness. So why would Mrs Gygax now revoke the license when Gary never did so during his lifetime?

I have no answer to that question. I suppose it's possible that Gary was simply unwilling to pull the trigger on such a move because of his personal affection for the Trolls. On the other hand, why set up his wife to look like the bad guy after his death? Whatever else he was, Gary was no coward and I find it hard to imagine he'd planned to go to the grave without voicing his dissatisfaction like that. This is the part of the whole affair that still rankles me, not because I think it impossible that someone else might do a better job with Castle Zagyg -- depending on what approach is taken, it's quite possible, in my opinion -- but because it seems somehow "un-Gygaxian." As I say, I didn't know the man personally, so I could be wrong; I hope, though, that, if he had genuine problems with the Trolls, he'd have made them plain while still alive. Indeed, it's also possible that he did and it was because of this that he instructed his wife to pursue other avenues for the project after his death.

We may never know the truth, but there's now more evidence to sift through that might get us closer to it. I'll be paying careful attention to what happens next and will have some additional thoughts relating to this when I complete my own review of The Upper Works.

Another Old School Tradition

I know it's not fashionable to discuss such things, but I'd like to take a moment to talk about some of the prejudices I have retained about certain old school games and the gamers who played them. I've mentioned before that I had a double initiation into the hobby in late 1979/early 1980 through my friend Mike's metalhead older brother and the grognards who hung around the hobby shops I frequented. Besides teaching me the rules of D&D -- or at least their interpretation of those rules -- they also taught me a few "truths" about other games and the people who played them.

Some gamers mistakenly think that "edition wars" and "badwrongfun" are somehow unique to these modern times, but I'm here to tell you that's just not the case. Pretty much from the moment I entered the hobby, I learned that, even among gamers, there were "guys like us" and "weirdos." Weirdos were the ones who played games we didn't play and that no one we knew played or, if we did know them, we knew them to be somehow mentally and/or morally deficient and thus exactly the sort of sub-human who'd play "those games."

What were "those games?" As I said, they were any game we didn't play, but three in particular stick out in my mind:

• Chivalry & Sorcery: Playing C&S probably only counted as a venial sin, because most of us back then had succumbed to the temptation to try and make D&D "more realistic" or at least "truer to medieval history," whatever that meant. C&S -- or so we were told, as none of us ever actually played the game -- was a game for real geeks, the kinds of people even my friends and I would shun. They were the pocket protector and taped-up glasses crowd, as opposed to the "normal" guys we all perceived ourselves to be. Thanks to one of my readers, Richard, I've finally got my hands on a copy of C&S and will be reading it with great enthusiasm. My first impression, based only on a cursory scan of it, is that my old prejudice, while perhaps overly judgmental, wasn't that far off. C&S does appear to be too complicated by half, but then I didn't expect anything less from the company that brought us Space Opera.
• RuneQuest: Even my friend's metalhead brother thought RQ was too trippy. What I remember most was his rants about how it had anthropomorphic ducks -- "How can you take that seriously?" he would ask -- and that "everyone can use magic." I never actually played the game myself until the star-crossed days when Avalon Hill published its third edition, but I remember reading about it in White Dwarf, which seemed obsessed with it. RQ gamers were generally considered "hippies" who had "done too many drugs" and so we didn't have anything to do with them. When I finally did play the game for myself, I found it hard to fathom what all the fuss was about back in those early days.
• Tunnels & Trolls: T&T was the game for guys who "couldn't hack D&D." It was widely considered a "joke game" and even more ludicrous than ones with duck men in it. I did get a chance to play T&T at the time and I'll admit that I hated it. Even now, I still bristle at the spell names and the tongue in cheek way a lot of it is presented. I have a greater appreciation fo some of its rules and presentation, but it's definitely not a game for me. I'm not sure it's a "joke," but it's nevertheless much more "jokey" than I like my RPGs to be.

It's very interesting looking back on those early days and remembering that there were cliques and camps and sects even back then. That seems to be the nature of fandoms of all sorts, particularly large and popular ones. In those bygone days, when roleplaying was a fad, pretty much everyone I knew gamed and the bulk of us all played D&D (or Traveller), so those who didn't do so were quickly branded as oddballs.

There's a rich irony there, given that gaming, even in its heyday, was never cool or treated with the same respect as being a good athlete or good student was (it's worth noting too that not every gamer I knew was a genius; many of them were downright dim academically). But dividing our fellow gamers up and putting them into categories we could exclude just seemed to be the natural thing to do. It's something that's unfortunately stuck with me all these years and, though I try to fight against it, the old prejudices do bubble up to the surface from time to time.

Now, I'm not advocating the notion that games, being mere entertainments, automatically defy meaningful criticism or that we ought to like them all without qualification, out of misplaced solidarity -- the "we're all gamers here" syndrome. As I stated above, I still think Tunnels & Trolls is more than a little silly and thus not worth my time and could argue at some length in defense of my opinion. That's not the same thing as saying that everyone ought to feel the same way about it or any other game. What I do advocate is reasoned discussion about the relative merits of many games, because I think such is possible. It's also the reason why I don't bow to the notion that "old school" is a phrase empty of meaning. Simply because there is disagreement about its meaning doesn't prove that it has no meaning. To my mind, it only proves that we need to discuss the phrase more in order to refine its meaning, but then that's my way with most things.

In any case, reflecting on my past prejudices is a valuable exercise and highlights some of my blind spots and misapprehensions. Not every negative opinion I have of certain games is based purely on prejudice, but some of them are and I'm working on overcoming those that are. I can't make any promise that I'll succeed in my efforts, but do know that I am working hard at it, which is really all I can do.

Dwimmermount Takes Shape

The first session of Dwimmermount is scheduled for this Sunday and the PCs are starting to take shape. So far we have a cleric of Tyche, a gravedigger turned fighting-man -- he uses a pick axe as his weapon, naturally -- a dwarf, and an elf. It's a little more demihuman-heavy than I'd originally expected, but I'm willing to roll with the punches on this one. At this stage, the likelihood that any one of these characters will live to second level, let alone higher, is slim, so I'll worry about the long-term implications of so many non-humans later, if it should become an issue.

On the subject of elves, like all OD&D referees, I need to decide how to handle them. Swords & Wizardry takes a middle road, noting that elves "may choose, on any given day (perhaps when the moon rises) whether to use the capabilities of a magic-user, or of a fighting-man. As a result, the adventurer has two alternate class to-hit bonuses and saving throws, depending upon whether he donned steel that day or summoned up the power to cast spells." While this lends a quirky, fey quality to elves -- and that's a good thing! -- I prefer a different approach: Elves are multi-class characters and before each session, the player of an elf must decide whether he is acting primarily as a fighter or as a magic-user. Which che chooses governs his "to hit" rolls and saves and all experience earned goes toward that class. Regardless, an elf may use any weapon and may cast spells provided he's not wearing non-magical armor.

More on Dwimmermount later.

REVIEW: Forn Sidthr: The Old Custom

Forn Sidthr: The Old Custom is a 13-page PDF released by James Mishler's Adventure Games Publishing and selling for $3.00. Describing the worship of the Aesir (and Vanir) gods, this product is the first in the "Faiths of the City State" series for use with AGP's Wilderlands of High Adventure setting, but it's generic enough that it'd be useful in any setting that includes the Norse pantheon. Likewise, though Forn Sidthr written with Castles & Crusades in mind, makes no specific references to C&C's game mechanics, thereby making it easy to use with any fantasy RPG, old school or otherwise.

The product begins with a one-page overview of the religious life of the City State of the Invincible Overlord. The overview gives a good sense of the riotous polytheism of the City State and, by implication, the Wilderlands as a whole by introducing five ranks to measure one's devotion to a particular faith: irregular, regular, semi-exclusive, initiate, and priest. What's nice about these ranks is that, in addition to providing context for the setting, they also include practical guidelines about what level of religious devotion qualifies one for each. It's a small thing, admittedly, but I appreciated it, since, as we'll see shortly, there are consequences to whether one is devout or lax in his observances.

Five pages are devoted to Old Custom itself, with information on the religion's history, deities, symbols, hierarchy, and so forth. There's also a section detailing the Forn Sidthr's beliefs and dogma. Again, this information is presented very practically, with eye toward how it can be used in play. This is not an abstract flight of fancy into fantastical theology but rather a brief but specific discussion of how adherents to the Old Custom behave -- or are expected to, at any rate -- and what this means. I also appreciated the way that these five pages gave a sense of the Forn Sidthr as being a unified pantheon with a proper "church." All too often, fantasy games have no notion of ritual, hierarchy, or doctrine, treating religion as individualistic and atomized, with no regard for how its various pieces fit together. Forn Sidthr nicely avoids that error, but without committing the concomitant error of getting bogged down in pointless detail.

The last six pages of the PDF are devoted to a discussion of the afterlife and the disposition of the soul of a follower of the Old Custom. In it, we're introduced to a new system that tracks the virtues and sins of members of the faith, so that the referee can keep a running tallying that determines the fate of a character's soul after death. The section catalogs the major and minor acts that earn one approbation or condemnation in the eyes of the Aesir and gives a table that enables the referee to see what happens to your character should he die at any given point. Depending on his faithfulness, he could be rewarded with a seat at Odin's table in Valhalla or cursed to wander the earth as an undead draugr -- or anything in between. The table also shows how effective raise dead and similar spells will be on a character whose soul is in each category, which I found to be an excellent bit of forethought on Mishler's part.

I can find almost nothing to dislike in Forn Sidthr: The Old Custom, except perhaps its somewhat pedestrian three-column layout, but that's a small quibble, because, boring though it may be, the layout is nevertheless easy on the eyes and free from errors. This is an excellent product and a good example I think of how much Mishler has learned since he began publishing his Wilderlands products. Earlier products tended to be a bit too "heavy" on minutiae for my liking, whereas his more recent endeavors have been eminently "practical" in their approach. They don't skimp on details by any means, but the details are carefully chosen for maximum utility. That is, they're useful in play and not just as bits of trivia that gamers can swap while talking about playing rather than actually doing so. For me, this quality is exactly what old school gaming products should possess and Mishler has shown he understands it well. I continue to be very impressed with AGP's PDFs and look forward to future releases with great anticipation.

Final Score: 5 out of 5 polearms

Retrospective: Dungeonland

When you insert this module into your campaign, do so without alerting the players. That is, they will not see a white rabbit and a rabbit hole anywhere, nor will they discover a looking glass to pass through. I have tried these methods, and they put players on guard immediately. Conceal this module within the body of your game material. At a convenient point—for you, not for the party—have them fall into a pit or have a passageway suddenly become a perpendicular shaft. Then have them descend, ever so slowly, into the “front door” of Dungeonland.

Published in 1983, Dungeonland, like so many of the modules written by Gary Gygax in the last few years of his time at TSR, is a throwback, an atavism, a reminder of the early days of the hobby. I'm not sure one can necessarily draw any conclusions about Gary's opinions on the state of the game he helped created almost a decade earlier, but I think it's interesting to note that, just as the Hickman Revolution was building up a head of steam, the Dungeon Master was producing not one but several modules that ran counter to the adventure design principles in vogue at the time.

Dungeonland -- an obvious pun on "Wonderland" -- sits on the faultlines of a couple bugaboos of gaming and, like many similar modules, one's reaction to it is a good indication of how in tune one is with the pulse of the early hobby. First and foremost, module EX1 is a classic "funhouse" module. It has no rhyme or reason; there is no grand explanation for how or why Dungeonland exists, except that Gary Gygax felt, as have many other old school referees, that Lewis Carroll's imaginary world serves as a great inspiration for a whimsical, if deadly, adventure. Second, Dungeonland is clearly meant to challenge the player, not his character. Throughout the module, there are many places where the standard rules of D&D don't apply, leaving the characters without recourse to their usual bag of tricks. The only way to overcome such circumstances is for the player to be clever, using his wits and his knowledge of Carroll's tales to assist him. It's an adventure that actually invites players to engage in the heinous sin of "meta-gaming," because, many times, it's the best chance one's character has of surviving. In short, Dungeonland is a module that mocks "immersion" and adds a much-needed layer of nuance to one's understanding of what naturalism is and is not.

I've noted before that I have never been a huge fan of funhouse dungeons, but I've always liked Dungeonland (and its sequel, The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror). Perhaps it's because, as a child, I found the stories of Alice's adventures simultaneously awesome and terrifying. Wonderland truly is a wonder -- an alien landscape following its own bizarre "rules" and shot through with a darkness that, even as a kid, I found strangely compelling, even as I was horrified by it. I don't have to imagine why Gary Gygax found the idea of throwing his players into a D&D-ified version of the same to be such a grand jest. Likewise, fan of the Harold Shea stories that he was, I imagine it seemed perfectly reasonable to him that there existed a dimension parallel to Greyhawk that was based on a twisted version of Lewis Carroll's creations. Couple that with the opportunity to engage in painful punnery and gallow's humor and suddenly the whole venture seems to have been tailor-made for Gary's unique talents.

I have a hard time imagining a module like Dungeonland being written today, at least outside the old school movement. Indeed, even within the old school community, there are probably lots of people who would look askance at it. EX1 is a concatenation of opposites: at once light-hearted and deadly, literary and low-brow, and, above all, supremely challenging. Run in the spirit in which it was written, players will be hard pressed to come out of this adventure with their characters intact. An adventure like this was already a museum piece in 1983, at the close of the Golden Age. How much more of a curiosity would it be regarded 25 years later? There is no story to Dungeonland -- except the story of a book most gamers have probably never read -- and no attempt to provide anything more than a dangeous romp that players can, if they succeed, take pride in having beaten. I can still tell you many stories of my own players' adventures in Dungeonland, right down to how some of their characters died, which is a pretty good indication of how memorable Dungeonland is. How many modules published in its wake, no matter how finely crafted, can say the same?

Dungeon Mapping Software

Can anyone recommend to me some good, easy to use dungeon mapping software? And by "good," I mean software that isn't just a pared down version of a CAD program with some dungeon tiles added into it. Most of the ones I've encountered are far, far too complex for my purposes. I just want to be able to draw some simple maps without having to read a big manual or an anti-intuitive interface.

Do such things exist?

Curious

Anyone else notice a rash of mysterious "links to this post" appearing in their blogs? I've found a lot of my posts recently have included several supposed links, sometimes multiple ones from the same site, that have absolutely nothing to do with the posts in question. What's up with this?

Dwimmermount Campaign House Rules

The following is my initial stab at documenting the house rules I plan to make to Swords & Wizardry for my Dwimmermount Campaign, which begins in earnest this coming weekend. Many of these rules derive from discussions on the OD&D forums or from Philotomy Jurament's excellent site. More will almost certainly arise through play and I'll post them here as they do.

Alignment

Alignment consists of the following options:

Chaotic: Inimical to civilization and possibly reality itself – the alignment of demons, Faerie, and the insane.

Neutral: Apathetic and/or unconcerned with the battle between cosmic forces.

Neutral (Balance): The philosophical stance that a balance between Chaos and Law is necessary for the well-being of the cosmos.

Lawful (Good): The philosophical stance that civilization exists to foster the common good.

Lawful: The philosophical stance that civilization, regardless of how it is organized, is preferable to other alternatives.

Lawful (Evil): The philosophical stance that civilization exists to allow the strong to lord it over the weak.

Combat Sequence

The combat sequences proceeds according to the guidelines found here.

Helmets

Not wearing a helmet with one's armor grants opponents a +1 bonus “to hit” to reflect the likelihood that they will aim for the vulnerable head and neck area of anyone they are facing in combat.

Hit Dice

Hit Dice are re-rolled upon gaining a new level, but maximum hit points never decrease as a result of a re-roll, although they may not increase.

Example: Brother Candor of Tyche is a 3rd-level cleric; he has 15 hit points. Upon gaining 4th level, he rolls 4D6+4 for hit points. If the result is below 15 hit points, he gains no new hit points this level.

Liquid Courage

Once per session, characters who possess strong alcoholic beverages may partake of them to gain an additional 1D6 hit points that lasts for the duration of the next combat, after which these “spiritous hit points” disappear should they not have already been used up in the combat.

Magic Shields

The armor bonus from magic shields does not stack with that of magic armor. Instead, it is either used instead of the magic armor's bonus if it is higher or ignored entirely if it is lower. For example, a fighting-man is wearing a suit of chainmail +1 and a shield +2. In this case, only the shield's +2 bonus applies. If the bonuses had been reversed, the shield would confer no additional benefit beyond the usual bonus for any shield. Of course, when retreating or caught by surprise, a shield confers no benefit to a character, in which case the normally-suppressed bonus from magic armor may apply instead.

Scrolls

Spellcasters of any class and level may create scrolls at a cost of 100 gold pieces per level of the spell to be inscribed and 1 week's worth of time.

Weapons

Dual Wielding

A fighting-man with Dexterity 13+ may wield two weapons simultaneously, but makes only a single attack roll at +1 “to hit.” A successful attack deals the normal damage for the weapon, however.

Two-Handed Weapons

A fighting-man wielding a two-handed weapon rolls two dice on a successful attack roll and uses the higher result (to which he can apply damage bonuses, etc.).

A Grognard Christmas

Christmas is less than two weeks away. Here are some gift suggestions for the grognards on your list:

1. Adventure Games Journal: If you're a fan of Judges Guild's Wilderlands setting, James Mishler has got what you need. Published irregularly, the AGJ, like all of Adventure Games Publishing's products, is chock of great ideas and palpable entusiasm for one of the hobby's oldest sandbox campaign settings.
   
2. Castle Zagyg: The final product of the late, great Gary Gygax (and his stalwart protégé, Jeff Talanian), Castle Zagyg is probably the closest we'll ever come to the long-hoped for Castle Greyhawk dungeons. Grab a copy while it's still available!
3. Encounter Critical: The wackiest game that never was, EC is a loving homage to the wild and woolly early days of the hobby and the gloriously nonsensical games they produced.
   
4. Fight On! With three issues already available and more on the way, Fight On! is a terrific 'zine that reminds me of the early days of Dragon. It's packed to the gills with great old school gaming goodness.
   
5. Gamescience Dice: You can't go wrong with Lou Zocchi's famous dice. Granted, even these dice include the un-Platonic D10, but I think we can overlook such shortcomings in the spirit of the season.
6. Goblinoid Games: Whether you prefer the straight fantasy of Labyrinth Lord or the science fantasy of Mutant Future, Goblinoid Games has got you covered with great products.
7. Goodman Games System-Neutral Products: My hat's off to Goodman Games for publishing both Points of Light or The Random Esoteric Creature Generator, two excellent products filled with old school sensibilities that are of use to all gamers, regardless of the system they use.
   
8. Monsters of Myth: Certainly the best old school monster book put out in many years, Monsters of Myth is a testimony to the fact that the old school movement is more than just wallowing in the past but is in fact creating new and exciting material. While you're at it, grab the free PDF of OSRIC.
9. Planet Stories: Without a doubt one of the most exciting publishing ventures in years is Paizo's Planet Stories line, which makes available for the first time in decades the classics of pulp fantasy and science fiction. It's the perfect antidote to the banality of modern genre writing and a reminder of the literary roots of our hobby.
   
10. Swords & Wizardry: Matt Finch's excellent creation is my personal favorite retro-clone and it's now available in a variety of formats.

Have any additional suggestions? Post in the comments below.

Pulp Fantasy Gallery: Three Hearts and Three Lions

First published in 1953, Three Hearts and Three Lions is sort of the "older brother" to The Broken Sword. The two books share a medieval northern European setting and draw heavily from the mythologies of those lands, but the 1953 book is the one that more heavily influenced Dungeons & Dragons. The paladin class, the troll, the swanmay, and the struggle between Law and Chaos (from which Michael Moorcock drew inspiration as well), among others, all first appear here, making this one of the most important books for anyone interested in the pre-history of D&D. It's also worth noting that this book predates the appearance of The Lord of the Rings in 1954, so it's another bit of evidence for the fundamentally non-Tolkienian origins of the game.

Three Hearts and Three Lions is also useful in understanding D&D for other reasons. Firstly, its story of a Danish soldier during World War II being flung into a fantasy world is one more example of a "lost world" tale, one of many that lurks beneath the surface of the game. Secondly, the novel's equation of Law with the forces of civilization and the Church and Chaos with paganism and Faerie is clearly present in OD&D and is often overlooked in discussions of what alignment is and where it came from. Finally, because Three Hearts and Thre Lions draws on the romantic "Matter of France,"
it's a very clear case of a non-pulp fantasy influence on D&D (yes, I am aware of the irony of discussing it in this series of posts) and that alone makes it a worthy subject of study. That it's also a well-written and enjoyable book only adds to its significance.

RPG Anthology Fundraiser

Jonathan, over at a blog called The Core Mechanic, has been working on the 2008 Anthology of Roleplaying Game Blogs for publication. In order to raise some funds for this project, for which a post of mine, has been nominated for inclusion, he asked permission to sell some products using a phrase from the title of my post. I freely gave such permission, because I both think the anthology is a good idea and because I don't think of anything I write here as mine. I offer up my ideas freely in order to foster a better understanding of the history of this hobby and, more importantly, to encourage people to have fun with whatever games they're playing. I'm frankly gratified that I've generated so much enthusiasm in many people. That's one of the big reasons I started this blog in the first place and it's why I continue to post here day in and day out. Thanks for reading.

Building a Better Thief (Part II)

This post is going to be somewhat stream of consciousness in nature. I'm going to look at each of the OD&D abilities and give my current thinking about each. Note that I say current thinking. I'm prepared to change my mind through reasoned argument, so here's chance to convince of how I've got it all wrong.

Open Locks: I actually don't have a big problem with this ability. It's an appropriate "specialist" ability and one that not all characters were assumed to have prior to the introduction of the thief class. Likewise, magic-users could already use knock to achieve a similar effect, so it's not alien to the milieu of early D&D.

Remove Traps: This is a bit more worrisome to me, insofar as previously all characters could theoretically remove traps. It is my understanding that the thief class owes its origin to players in the Greyhawk campaign who wanted to hire someone who was specially trained to deal with removing traps, which is is why I call the class "dungeon bomb specialists." I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, why shouldn't there be someone trained in such things? On the other hand, why should such training be integral to only one class? I'd long used the Secondary Skills in AD&D and allowed characters with certain such skills to remove traps if I deemed it appropriate. Part of me wants to go back to a system like that, because the presence of a thief makes the other players lazy when it comes to dealing with traps and I don't want that.

Pick Pocket: I never had any problem with this ability, as it's specialized enough that very few non-thief characters have ever attempted to try it in my experience. Plus, it fits in nicely with the archetype.

Move Silently: This ability gives me pause, partly because I'm not quite sure what "move silently" is supposed to represent. Is it just the ability to sneak up on someone unawares -- and thus gain a greater likelihood of surprise -- or is it something more preternatural than that? Given that the thief is an archetypal "low magic" character class, I tend to favor the form interpretation, in which case I'd be inclined to give the thief a bonus to surprising an enemy and leave it at that. This gives him a clear niche without making other classes useless when it comes to laying ambushes, etc.

Hide in Shadows: Like Move Silently, I wonder what this ability is supposed to represent. Is it the ability to camouflage oneself so as not to be seen, provided it's dark enough? Or is another variant on being able to lay in ambush for someone? Part of me thinks this ability could easily be combined with Move Silently into a single one, but I'm not sure.

Hear Noise: Any possible objections I have to this ability -- which are few -- are overridden by the fact that, mechanically, this ability uses the same system as that for other character classes and that thieves are no better than elves, dwarves, or halflings till they reach level 3.

Climb Walls: I don't have a problem with this ability as described in Greyhawk, because it gives a system that's perfectly usable for other characters as well. A 1st-level thief has a 13% chance of slipping, with that chance decreasing by 1% per level attained thereafter.

Back Stab: Again, no real problem here. I'd allow any character, regardless of class, striking silently form behind a +4 bonus to hit. The additional damage bonus should probably be unique to the thief, or at least the increasing damage bonus should be. Must ponder.

Read Languages: I don't have any problem with a thief's ability to decipher treasure maps and ciphers, but I'm not so sure about reading dead or foreign languages. That just seems odd to me.

Read Magic: I know why this ability exists and I appreciate it, but I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense. I have many fond memories of thieves using scrolls at opportune times and of scrolls backfiring in amusing ways. Still, I'm not sure there's much warrant for this ability, particularly if one is reworking the class, as I am, to be more strongly archetypal and also more in keeping with the way other class abilities work. Must ponder this too.

The Dwimmermount Campaign

So, I'm finally about ready to begin my Dwimmermount campaign, after having worked on it on and off for the last couple of months. I've got enough of the megadungeon mapped out and ready to go that I feel confident to start using it as soon as my players can find time in their busy lives to get together for it. One of the things I'm intending to do, in order to facilitate the fact that some of my players have unpredictable schedules and that I may have "drop in" players from time to time, is to make each session quasi-episodic in nature. I'm probably going to borrow an idea from Jeff Rients to help keep my players on task and to ensure that every session ends with all the PCs out of Dwimmermount, thereby making it easier to pick up the following weekend, even if, for example, one of my players isn't available on that day or I have to introduce a new PC. I think Jeff's table is probably way too deadly even for this old schooler, but the principle behind the thing is a very sound one.

I'm going to use Swords & Wizardry for this, albeit in a modified form. At the start, I will allow paladins and monks, because I've done versions of both for S&W. In due course, I'll almost certainly add other classes, but, to start, I want to keep it simple. Available races are men (of course), dwarves, elves, and goblins. Dwarves are free-willed earth elementals and dwarven adventurers tend to be a bit peculiar compared to "ordinary" dwarves. They've spent so much time among men that they've started to act like them. Lots of dwarven adventurers affect human behaviors -- like eating ordinary foodstuffs rather than rocks and minerals -- that make it hard for them to return to the secret places in the earth from which they originally come. Elves are "hillbilly Eld" and are generally distrusted by most other civilized races because of their ancestry. Goblins are similarly distrusted.

I'm deliberately going to be vague about the wider world. I have some ideas, of course, and I'll probably drop them into the game if the opportunity arises, but my goal is to be flexible and to create as needed rather than too far in advance of the campaign itself. I plan to use the old Outdoor Survival map as the initial campaign area, with Dwimmermount situated in the central northern region (it's a snow-capped mountain) and a nearby fortified town (a catch basin on the map) called Muntburg as the PCs' base of operations. Think of Muntburg as a bit like the titular Keep from Keep on the Borderlands, except that it's more explicitly an outpost for a large city-state to the south (Adamas) that lays claim to the region around Dwimmermount and taxes adventurers who venture into its caverns and return laden with loot. Beyond that, though, I'm trying to keep details to a minimum.

Once the campaign begins in earnest, expect regular updates about it to be posted here.

Building a Better Thief (Part I)

When people wish to parody the old school community, if they're not making fun of our discussions about dice, they often turn to our discussions about the unsuitability of the thief instead. I suppose that was inevitable, given how bizarre it is to many gamers even to consider kicking the thief from the clubhouse. They likely don't realize that, for a brief time, there was no such thing as a thief, because, as I've said before, every character was a thief. And given that the thief was formally introduced to the world a little over a year after OD&D was released, it's not at all unreasonable to say that the class has been around long enough to be classified as a venerable tradition.

I have a hard time disagreeing with that, since one of my guiding principles, higher even than fidelity to pulp fantasy, is that D&D is always right. By that I mean that, before considering changing, let alone removing, some element of the game that's been around for decades, look carefully at why this element was introduced in the first place and consider just as carefully what a change might do to the gameplay of D&D. Basically, "D&D is always right" is a reminder that, though the game may look haphazardly constructed, there is a logic behind it, a logic that you really have to understand and respect before you can start monkeying around with its internal organs.

As he so often does, Philotomy sums up the case against the thief as follows:

The Thief class is not part of the original three OD&D books, but was added in Supplement I. Weak in combat and casting no spells, the main feature of the class is its special skills like climbing sheer walls, finding and disarming traps, moving without making a sound, hiding in shadows, executing surprise backstabs, et cetera. Over time, I've come to prefer the game without the Thief class (i.e. using only the original three classes). The role the thief usually plays (scout/sneaky-guy) is easily filled by the other classes; everyone can attempt to be stealthy, search for traps, et cetera. Also, without the Thief and his special abilities, these activities are often performed by the player describing how he goes about it, rather than rolling against a skill, which I think is a lot of fun.

I'm largely in agreement with Philotomy's assessments, but I've nevertheless been reading Greyhawk's description of the thief very carefully, as well as the Holmes rules, looking for insights that might help me "rebuild" the thief into something that's simultaneously true to the archetype that many now (rightly) consider a staple of D&D while still taking into account the (valid) criticisms many cite against the thief.

I have noticed a couple of interesting things. First, the OD&D thief, unlike his AD&D descendant, has no ability to find traps. Or rather, he is no better at finding traps than any other character class, who use the standard "rules" for doing so (i.e. player deduction). Now, I did know that this was the case and it makes sense, given that several people, Gary Gygax chief among them, have noted that the thief owes its origin to the desire for a "dungeon bomb specialist" class, who was better at removing traps than other characters. Second, in OD&D -- again, AD&D differs in this regard -- a thief's ability to hear noise uses the same game mechanics as the standard rules describe in The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures: a D6 roll. Holmes further explains that "The thief's ability to hear noise at closed doors, secret panels, etc. is rolled on a six-sided die like anyone else, but his ability improves as he advances in experience." (emphasis mine) Indeed, until a thief reaches third level, he is no better at hearing noise than is any other character.

Taken together, these two things might point the way toward making the thief more palatable to me. Some have suggested in the past, Philotomy among them, that it might be best to view a thief's abilities as extraordinary in nature -- being able to climb sheer surfaces rather than ordinary walls, for example (which is exactly how Moldvay does it). Taken this way, the thief's abilities are more akin to a magic-user's spellcasting; they're "powers." While there's nothing wrong with that approach, it doesn't appeal to me, both because I don't think the mechanics for the class, as presented in Supplement I, support it and also because it's the first step on the path to turning the thief into the ridiculous ninja he becomes in the WotC editions.

To rehabilitate the thief in a way that's in keeping with its origins, both in Greyhawk and in pulp fantasy, I would much prefer to treat the abilities of the class more like the combat abilities of the fighting men -- ordinary abilities at which the class excels compared to other classes. The difficulty, though, is finding a way to do that without fostering the inevitable diminishment of the ability of other classes to attempt -- and succeed at -- those same tasks. I'm not yet certain that it's possible to do that, but I am exploring that avenue and will discuss it at greater length in future posts on this topic over the coming days.

Pulp Fantasy Audio Books

Check out this site, which includes, among many others, Abraham Merritt's The Moon Pool as an audio book.

Enjoy!

Retrospective: Dragons of Despair

Let's cut to the chase: I don't hate this module.

I do, however, hate the shift in adventure design -- and Dungeons & Dragons itself -- that it heralded. When it was released in 1984, Dragons of Despair was a revelation to me and, I suspect, many other gamers. We'd already seen glimpses of the coming paradigm shift in earlier work by Tracy Hickman, such as "The Desert of Desolation" series and, of course, Ravenloft, but neither of those precursors was as ambitious or as ultimately successful as was the Dragonlance series of modules.

Consisting of fourteen modules published over two years, the DL adventures chronicled -- and that is the right word -- the exploits of a group of pre-generated heroes as they attempted to battle the forces of evil that arose in the aftermath of an apocalypse that left the world of Krynn bereft not just of hope but of the power of the gods themselves. Along the way, these heroes acquire not only experience and power but also a variety of plot complications that propel them into the heights of fantasy melodrama that left many gamers begging for more. Whether they knew it or not, Dragonlance was exactly what a sizable portion of the D&D-buying public wanted and these modules were among the most successful ever made by TSR.

I fell under the sway of Dragonlance too, but the magic of these modules wasn't all-encompassing. Even at the time, I chafed at the pregenerated characters and their predefined relationships and story arcs. I also found the world of Krynn a bit too "twee," as our UK friends might say. So, I chucked the setting and the characters and transported the core of the adventures to a world of my own construction, using characters of my players' own devising. Thus, there was no Tanis Half-Elven or Tasslehoff Burrfoot in my Dragonlance -- indeed they were no kender at all (or tinker gnomes, for that matter). There were characters in my campaign that were somewhat like their Dragonlance counterparts, but that was inevitable, given that Hickman drew on the same fantasy archetypes as my players. The main difference, as I recall it, was that my players -- then, as now -- tended to create somewhat more morally ambiguous characters than those first appearing in Dragons of Despair. This worked rather well, since the cleric of the party (he had no spells, as per Dragonlance canon) was something of a con man and snake oil salesman. That he should become the first true cleric in a generation -- and the cleric of the goddess of healing, no less -- made for some great roleplaying. Indeed, watching what was, in many ways, a rather typical D&D adventuring party slowly become heroes in spite of themselves was one of the primary joys of my ill-fated experiment with Dragonlance.

And that's a terrible shame, because I think, in principle, that Dragonlance could have been one of the most amazing things ever attempted with Dungeons & Dragons. It could have been a glorious framework for the creation of a grand epic involving your characters in your campaign world rather than an exercise in heavy-handed auctorial fiat. My own Dragonlance campaign eventually died, because, as more modules were released, it became ever more clear that each character had a plot arc that the modules simply assumed would be accepted, even when that arc involved the death of said character. That made it increasingly hard for me to adapt the rest of the module material, however much I liked it (and liked it I did in several cases). After a while, it didn't feel like we were playing D&D anymore so much as acting out a fantasy novel that someone else had written.

Of course, that's exactly what Dragonlance was and it's the reason I talk such smack about it. I don't think the idea of Dragonlance is a bad one -- far from it. I do, however, think the implementation of it by TSR was exceedingly poor and fostered and encouraged many baleful trends in the hobby. Had this series included more -- any! -- tool kit material to help the referee adapt it to his own campaign and players, I'd probably still be a Dragonlance fan today. I know, in hindsight, that what I wanted could never have happened in 1984. Heck, I'm not convinced it could even happen in 2008, given both gamer tastes and the difficulty in producing what would essentially be a customizable series of campaign aids rather than an "epic in a box."

Still, a guy can dream, can't he?

The Secret of My Success

I've often heard it postulated that the reason adventure paths have become so popular is because many gamers are older and thus lack the time they once had in their younger, more carefree days to allow their campaigns to "grow" a story organically. Thus, adventure paths and similar products give them a "story in a box" that let's them cut through all the "boring bits" they no longer have time for and dive right into what they consider the best part of a campaign: the stories that percolate to the surface through play.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, I'm not opposed to the idea of "story" in a RPG campaign. I happen to believe that the presence of story is where a campaign lives or dies. What I object to -- and what has become the assumption over the last 20+ years -- is that story is something others give you through their products. It's something professionals plot out, write up, and then add pretty pictures to so they can charge you $19.99 for an adventure you can only use once. I see this as the problem nowadays, not "story" as such. At the same time, I recognize that many gamers don't have a lot of time to plan out grand campaign arcs with which their players can interact. That's why I'm offering up the secret of my own success as a referee: make it up as you go along.

Years ago, I ran a campaign that took as its starting point a succession crisis/civil war in a good-aligned country. I decided that, for the civil war to work, I needed to wipe out the entire royal family in one feel swoop, leaving only distant -- and unsuitable -- relations still alive. I did this through the use of a gigantic sphere of annihilation that leveled the palace and effectively decapitated the government of the country, leaving the high nobles, merchant lords, and opportunists scrambling for a way to make the most of the situation. This was the starting point of the campaign, the kick-off that got the ball into play and formed the backdrop for all my subsequent adventures about the players' efforts to restore unity and peace to the kingdom.

Now, that probably sounds like a lot of work to pull off, but, in practice, it wasn't, because I had no idea who assassinated the royal family or why. Neither did I know who would wind up as the new king or queen or how he or she would gain the throne. I left the answers to all these questions up to random chance and the players' actions and, most importantly, inclinations. I knew who the major moves and shakers of the kingdom were and what their personalities were like. That made it easy for me to decide how they'd act during this crisis and they did so. How the players reacted to them and how they interpreted their actions and motives gave me the raw material from which I was able to craft what, in retrospect, looks like a coherent story but what was in fact a spectacular bit of misdirection on my part.

The end result was very satisfying and enjoyable; my players still talk about that campaign till this day, but the simple reality is that I had no idea the whys or wherefores of the assassination or the outcome of the succession crisis -- and that's what made it work. I wasn't imposing anything on the campaign except the initial starting point. The rest all arose through play. And because I had no grand plan, I could freely allow NPCs to die or the players to go off on weird tangents -- like when one kidnapped a nobleman, falsely believing him to have been on the conspiracy to kill the old king -- because, literally, anything was possible until the mass of slowly accumulated details made the identities of the assassins and the best candidate to become the new king clear. This was, if I may say so myself, an awesome campaign and I am very proud of how well it turned out in the end.

The only real drawbacks to this approach are that you must be able to think on your feet and you must know enough about your campaign setting to be able to construct NPCs and "facts" as required. I alleviated some of the latter by having a huge list of prepared names, descriptions, and personalities that I would use at random. That way, when the PCs met someone, he wasn't obviously generic-merchant-lord-who's-unimportant-to-the-plot but instead Maynoor Misrim, a tall distinguished gentleman who speaks with an imperious manner and walks with a slight limp. In short order, I had a huge cast of NPCs, any one of whom might be important, depending on how the PCs acted and how the dice would go.

In play, this approach took very little planning and I kept it going for months without much effort. I realize it's not for everyone, but I heartily recommend it nonetheless. Most of my best and most memorable campaigns ove the years have used this approach and I fully intend to use it again in my future ones as well.

Superior Scribbler

Brian Murphy, over at the excellent The Silver Key, has selected this blog as his pick for the Superior Scribbler Award. I'm always pleased and a little surprised when someone specifically speaks well of what I've done here. On some level, I believe I'm too eccentric a writer to have much appeal beyond a handful of likeminded people, so it's gratifying to learn that someone has enjoyed and appreciated my musings. Brian very kindly writes:

Grognardia is the premiere blog for fans of old school Dungeons and Dragons and its literary heritage. Author James Maliszewski offers brilliant analysis of the origins of the game and convincing explanation of why the older editions worked and continue to work, blowing up the myth that fans of AD&D and OD&D are simply stricken with an unhealthy nostalgia.

I can't say how much this made my day. Thanks, Brian.

Now, I have to pick five blogs to which I'd like to give the Superior Scribbler Award. This is hard, as there are so many good ones out there these days. To narrow it down somewhat, I'm going to limit my selections to those that have not yet received the Award to my knowledge. I'm sure I'll screw up and give it to one someone else has already honored, but so be it. I'm also going to limit myself to gaming-related blogs, because no one really cares what else I read online.

Bat in the Attic: Online home of Robert Conley, who is both a talented writer and cartographer -- and thus a source of great envy to me -- this blog is a sometimes-rambling but always engaging foray into the mind and gaming habits of an old schooler of superb pedigree. Rob and I actually have very different tastes when it comes to games, but I've never failed to find his posts interesting and thought-provoking despite this.

Greyhawk Grognard: Writing about all things Greyhawk, with occasional forays into assorted other topics, writer Joseph -- alas, I don't know his full name -- is a ready source both of knowledge and insight about the setting Gary Gygax created. I consider myself pretty well read on this topic, but Joseph shows that I still have much to learn.

The RPG Corner: Dave/Sirlarkins comes at old school gaming from a different background than I, which I consider a good thing. Every time I read this blog I am reminded that there are many different approaches to our common hobby and we all benefit from taking full advantage of them. It's an important thing for me to keep in mind and I'm very grateful to Dave for his role in helping me do just that.

The Society of Torch, Pole and Rope: Michael Curtis truly embodies the spirit of OD&D and the early hobby. His posts include many I consider instant classics, like the multi-part "The Dungeon Alphabet." Michael is positively brimming with ideas and is never afraid to reconsider long-held notions in the pursuit of fun.

Uhluht'c Awakens: The blog of Dan Proctor, creator of Labyrinth Lord and Mutant Future, though very sporadic in its posting, is nevertheless one of my favorites. Dan is simultaneously idealistic and clear-headed in his approach to old school gaming and never loses sight of the fact that these are games we're all so passionate about. I consider him one of the most astute creators in the old school community today.

Winners are expected to post the rules of the Award as follows:

• Each Superior Scribbler must in turn pass The Award on to 5 most-deserving Bloggy Friends.
• Each Superior Scribbler must link to the author & the name of the blog from whom he/she has received The Award.
• Each Superior Scribbler must display The Award on his/her blog, and link to this post, which explains The Award.
• Each Blogger who wins The Superior Scribbler Award must visit this post and add his/her name to the Mr. Linky List (scroll down). That way, we’ll be able to keep up-to-date on everyone who receives This Prestigious Honor!
• Each Superior Scribbler must post these rules on his/her blog.

Greatest Adventures Redux

Over at Examiner.com, Daniel Nations offers up his choices for the Top 10 D&D modules of all time and even references my recent post on Castle Amber. I personally can't get enough of these kinds of lists, if only because they engender a lot of valuable discussion about D&D as it is played rather than as it is on an abstract level. Believe me, I love abstraction as much as the next guy, but, at the end of the day, D&D is a game and what matters most is what happens at the game table as you're gathered there with your friends.

Nifty

For all your vocabulary building needs, here's an online search tool for the works of Jack Vance.

Thanks to Max Davenport for the heads-up!

Sword Spirits

One of the many interesting wrinkles implied in OD&D is that all magic swords possess an alignment and have the possibility of intelligence and special powers above and beyond the bonuses they provide when wielded in combat. Given that no subsequent version of D&D follows this interpretation, I'm not as convinced as some that it was intended. Rather, I think it's implied that magic swords alone may possess alignment, intelligence, and special powers, but, as is often the case in the three little brown books, the text is written haphazardly, thereby leaving it open to individual choice as to how to read it.

I have no problem with this particular interpretation and I think, like limiting the use of magic swords solely to fighting men, it adds some nice flavor to OD&D campaigns that employ it. I've been kicking around the idea of adopting it in my next campaign precisely for this reason. As I've explained before, neither magic nor Nature is personified, the former simply being a feature of the universe and the latter being the "stuff" from which the universe coalesced (there is no Creator in my current cosmology).

Interactions between magic, Nature, Chaos, and the gods (at least some of which owe their own existence to a process similar to the way the universe formed) has given rise to a variety of elemental beings, not all of which are as insensate and uncaring as Nature itself. I'm currently toying with the notion that the process of metalworking, which involves (to some degree) the interaction of all four elements inadvertently gave rise to a "fifth elemental" -- spirits that are sometimes drawn into crafted objects, endowing them with magical powers and, in many cases, allow the spirit to exercise its own intelligence and will.

The hows and whys of the process I prefer to keep strange and mysterious, including why it is that these metal spirits seem to manifest most fully only when drawn into swords -- thus giving rise to their more common name: "sword spirits." But I very much like the idea that the fashioning of magic weapons isn't simply a matter of a magic-user deciding to do so by following some hoary formula that always results in a sword +1, +2 vs. lycanthropes. I want magic weapons to be, on some level, accidental in their origins, something beyond the ken of men, elves, and even dwarves (who were probably the first to notice the phenomenon). It makes magic swords special and a little bit dangerous and that's a good thing.

Pulp Fantasy Gallery: The Broken Sword

First published in 1954 -- and, portentously, re-published in 1971 as part of the Lin Carter-edited Ballantine Adult Fantasy series -- The Broken Sword is one of a handful of novels that can lay claim to being the most significant influences on Gary Gygax and, thus, Dungeons & Dragons. The Broken Sword is set during the age of the Vikings and describes the tragic lives of two people: a boy stolen by the elves and raised among them to handle the iron they themselves cannot and the changeling who takes his place. Each comes to hate the world in which they were raised, with terrible consequences. The Broken Sword is not a happy book, but it's extremely well-told and reminds one, not coincidentally, of the Norse sagas from which Anderson drew significant inspiration.

Personally, I find The Broken Sword interesting, because it provides a plausible alternate avenue for the treatment of elves and half-elves in D&D, particularly the latter. Given that half-elves first appear in Supplement I, a book that also introduces several other Anderson-inspired game rules (such as the paladin class), I don't think this is implausible. Anderson's elves share many characteristics with Tolkien's, but then both authors looked to Norse legends as their models. Anderson's elves are far more passionate and martial than are Tolkien's. They're also more alien and removed from the affairs of the mortal world of which they are not a part. I very much like their portrayal and my own interpretations of the race owe a lot to Anderson, much as I suspect Gygax's did as well.

A Guide to Old School Fun

Michael Curtis has written a terrific post on his blog entitled "With New Old Eyes" that really cuts to the heart of how to approach old school gaming in order to get the most out of it. Do yourself a favor and give it a read.

In Praise of Mentzer

I'm often rather harsh about the D&D rules written in the mid-80s by Frank Mentzer. Part of it is because they're products of a decadent era at TSR, when Sutherland and Trampier gave way to Elmore and Parkinson and when mass market appeal drove most design decisions. And the Mentzer rules are nothing if not mass market. Even moreso than Moldvay/Cook, the Mentzer rules were written for people unfamiliar not just with roleplaying games but also with the entire culture out of which D&D sprang. They're the first truly "post-D&D D&D" and it's very hard for me to look beyond that much of the time.

That's a shame, because, for all their concessions to mainstream acceptance, there's some good stuff to be found in these boxed sets, particularly Set 3 -- the Companion Rules -- from which I stole lots of ideas for my AD&D campaigns. For me, Set 3 was the fufillment of a promise on which D&D had never quite managed to make good -- to provide rules and guidelines for the endgame of a character's adventuring career. The Conpanion Rules gave us not only domain management rules, but also a mass combat system. Together, these two systems addressed issues D&D had had ever since 1974: what do characters do when the reach high levels of experience?

The domain management and mass combat systems in the Companion Rules are simple, straightforward, and abstract. They depend very heavily on referee adjudication and there's a high degree of randomness to both of them that might offend some sensibilities. Quibbles aside, they're both quite old school in their approach and I like that. I played the heck out of both of them back in the day and eventually generalized the domain management system to cover random campaign events and the fate of entire nations rather than the single-hex baronies for which they were originally written. I also used the mass combat rules to wage wars between nations in my fantasy setting. Together, they gave that setting a healthy dose of unpredictability that gave it an air of "realism" it might otherwise have lacked. For example, a civil war broke out in the major good nation of the world and that sparked innumerable adventures, not to mention far-reaching consequences that I doubt I'd have chosen had I instead plotted out its future history myself. This is excellent stuff.

Another aspect of the Companion Rules that I liked a lot, even though I never incorporated them into my AD&D game, was the way Mentzer introduced paladins, druids, and other such classes into the game. They were kind of proto-prestige classes but far more elegantly implemented and far more grounded in the history of D&D. For example, I see in the druid an echo of the notion that OD&D clerics must side either for Law or Chaos once they reach 7th level or they cannot advance any further. Likewise, the paladin offers up a viable interpretation of the line that Lawful fighting men "may opt to become paladins." I've often considered reworking many AD&D sub-classes into a similar kind of scheme and may yet do so one day.

I'll admit that I'm not at all fond of the Master Rules, let alone Immortals, both of which strike me as huge missteps compared to the Companion Rules. Those final two boxed sets are the result of a corporate completist mentality rather than as answers to questions most D&D players had at the time. It certainly doesn't help that I think those sets also highlight the limits of D&D and not in a positive way. There is only so far that the game can go before it loses its identity and the heights of power detailed in the Master and Immortals rules are several steps too far in my opinion.

I'll continue to quibble about the Mentzer rules, because there's much to quibble about, but it's quibbling "within the family," so to speak. Frank's old school credentials are not in doubt nor is his grasp of the history of the game. I am, as I hope this post reveals, very fond of his Companion Rules set and believe it's the only real treatment of D&D's original endgame ever written. I'm not blind to the virtues of later rules sets, but I do have very specific criteria for what I like and what I'll consider using. That means I can be convinced that I'm off base when it comes to my criticisms of this or that. In the case of the Companion set, I need no convincing.

The D&D Family Tree

James Mishler has created the latest iteration of a "family tree" describing the descent of pre-3e version of Dungeons & Dragons. It's a very informative bit of history in graphical form and I hope others will find it useful.

Of Goblins and Pig-Faced Orcs

One of the things that has always bugged me about Dungeons & Dragons is the proliferation of humanoid monsters. I simply don't see the point in having so many variations on the same basic idea. I understand why there are so many -- the referee wants to keep his game from getting "stale" -- but it strains credibility to suppose that there could be so many different types of humanoid creatures in a single campaign setting. I've come out of the closet as a Gygaxian Naturalist, so I prefer that the worlds I create make sense, even if that sense is predicated on magic or some other nonsense.

That's where the Eld come in. Being very ancient, intensely chaotic, and amazingly adept at magic, the Eld are my catch-all explanation for many of the monsters in my campaign setting (the other being the Thulians). In addition, I decided early on to limit myself only to the humanoids that appear in OD&D and to use their descriptions as the basis for my own, with a couple of exceptions. Reading Monsters & Treasure, it's clear that there's a "continuum" of humanoid creatures, beginning with goblin/kobolds and working upwards by Hit Dice. I decided I'd take that idea and find a way to make sense of it. What I came up with was this:

• OD&D implies that goblins and kobolds are the same creatures, the only difference being that kobolds are weaker physically. I'd already decided that goblins are one of the few genuinely aboriginal races of my setting; kobolds will be the degenerate mine-dwelling versions thereof. While I like the scaly dog-men versions of kobolds a great deal, Gary often said that that version was, like so many other D&D monsters, based on a miscommunication between himself and the illustrator, Dave Sutherland. Gary originally envisaged kobolds as evil wizened, gnome-like creatures, as in German folklore. So, I'm going with that, albeit one that complements the "little green men" version of goblins I'm using.
• Goblins are, in their natural state, not very nice from a human perspective: greedy, selfish, and with a penchant for cruelty. But they're not willing servants of Chaos. That's where hobgoblins came in. They were magically created by the Eld as taskmasters and "drill sergeants" to keep ordinary goblins pressed into Eldritch service in line. They're now "independent operators" but still enjoy lording it over goblins when they get the chance.
• Bugbears are another magical mutant of goblins, created by the Eld as shock troops. I can't make up my mind as to whether I'll go with the Monster Manual appearance of these guys or stick with Greg Bell's wacky pumpkin-headed version.

This brings me to pig-faced orcs. Again, Gary claimed that the pig-faced version was the result of another miscommunication with his artists -- this seems to have happened a lot -- but I have a great fondness for them nonetheless. Plus, I already have a bunch of Otherworld minis to use, so I figure why not do so? I've decided that orcs were also magical creations of the Eld -- boars given humanoid form and sentience to be used as easily replaceable cannon fodder. By the same logic, gnolls, rather than being a gnome-troll hybrid as OD&D suggests, are uplifted hyenas.

That about covers the basics. I'm still pondering what to do about giants and trolls, but I've already decided that ogres are human beings cursed for having indulged in cannibalism and have now become monstrously ravenous eating machines.

Scrappy-Doo and the Hickman Revolution

It's pretty much a given, among people of a certain age, to treat the appearance of Scooby-Doo's overly exuberant young nephew in 1979 as the beginning of the end for that venerable Hanna-Barbera cartoon. For many, Scrappy represents a betrayal of the original vision of the show, which, while light hearted, was rarely outright comedic. Scrappy's arrival changed that and forever earned the ire of Scooby-Doo's legions of devoted fans.

What many such fans don't realize is that Scrappy-Doo saved Scooby-Doo, a series that was on the verge of cancellation by ABC in 1979. Scrappy's creator, famed cartoon wordsmith Mark Evanier -- one the brains behind the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon a few years later -- has related the tale of the little Great Dane's birth in a series of four articles. Reading them is very enlightening on many levels, not least of which being the context it provides for how and why Scrappy-Doo came to be and the impact his arrival had on the Scooby-Doo franchise. Far from being as unpopular as he might seem in retrospect, Scrappy-Doo was in fact immensely popular and played a major role in keeping Scooby-Doo alive and on the air throughout the 1980s. It's not an exaggeration to say that, without Scrappy-Doo, Scooby-Doo would have gone the way of many other cartoons and been mostly unknown to a generation of children.

Tracy Hickman made his TSR debut in 1982 with module I3, Pharaoh, the first part of the "Desert of Desolation" trilogy and the first of many popular and influential D&D modules he'd pen, often with his wife, Laura. All of Hickman's work shares a common emphasis on providing a coherent story as a backdrop for the adventure. While many of his early modules, including Ravenloft, reveal an old school heritage with their trick and trap-filled "dungeons," what made those modules a popular success was the way they went beyond the thin backgrounds of earlier adventures -- "Some giants are attacking civilized lands. Go and find out why or you'll get the axe." -- by spinning epic tales of love lost and won, baleful curses, ancient prophecies, and, most importantly, memorable NPCs with hopes, dreams, and fears of their own.

Back in 1982, what Hickman was doing was nothing short of revolutionary, at least in the context of TSR's official support for D&D. The gaming public responded very positively and enthusiastically, particularly to Ravenloft and the Dragonlance modules, both of which seem to have been the "gateway" for a significant portion of the "third generation" of gamers who entered the hobby in the mid-80s. Despite the financial distress TSR suffered -- $1.5 million debt in 1984 -- D&D's fortunes were buoyant, due in no small part to the change Hickman's modules effected on the way gamers viewed D&D and what they expected from it. Dragonlance was the greatest -- and most profitable -- fruit of the "Hickman Revolution" and its success set a pattern for D&D that dominated the next 10+ years, right up until Wizards of the Coast acquired the company in 1997.

Given the financial mismanagement of TSR under the Blumes and D&D's loss of its faddishness in the mid-80s, I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that the Hickman Revolution played a key role in keeping TSR, D&D, and by extension the hobby vibrant and vigorous well into the 1990s, when "storytelling games" came into their own. A lot of us older gamers look at this stuff and think about it the same way many Scooby-Doo fans look at Scrappy-Doo: isn't this the worst thing that could have happened to our beloved? I know, for myself, that I often feel that D&D would have been better off in the long run if had not embraced "story" as central to its self-identity.

But would I still care about D&D -- or even roleplaying -- today if my preferred alternate history had come to pass? Did the Hickman Revolution safeguard the future of D&D by transforming it into something other than its origins? That's an impossible question to answer. I offer it up because I think it's all too easy to see each and every deviation from pristine Gygaxianism as another cobblestone on the road to hell. So they are in a certain context, but it's also true that these deviations are what enable D&D to continue to have relevance to gamers decades after the original game -- and the culture that spawned it -- have passed from the scene.

This is the only sense in which I accept the term "evolution" as being a valid one to describe the development of RPGs and I obviously don't think all such evolution is positive, except in the sense that it can sometimes better enable a game to survive changes in popular tastes. In such cases, though, what you wind up with is not a "better" game so much as a different one entirely. I'm inclined to think that the lasting effect of the Hickman Revolution has been to permanently splinter D&D into several distinct "species," some of which bear more genetic resemblance to one another than do others.

Let me reiterate that I don't think Tracy Hickman is the Devil nor do I think he set out to change the face of Dungeons & Dragons forever. That his work met with such popular acclaim -- and still does, in many quarters, even after 25 years -- is pretty good evidence that he gave gamers something they very much wanted. "Story" wasn't imposed on D&D so much as happily embraced by many younger gamers who felt the Gygaxian template for the game was too narrow and not at all like the books, comics, and movies that inspired them. I don't think there's any question that the Gygaxian template itself would have changed over time -- it already was changing in 1982 -- but would it have changed enough to keep D&D at once vital and in keeping with its origins? Or was the Hickman Revolution the only path to continued success? There's no clear answer to this beyond the obvious one that the Hickman Revolution, like Scrappy-Doo, succeeded and succeeded brilliantly. We still live in the world it helped to usher into existence.

Castle Zagyg Review

Allan Grohe offers up a magisterial 15-page review of Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works here. I was planning on offering my own review, but, having now read Allan's work, I'm not sure there's any point. He's done a great job and hit a number of points I'd intended to make as well. Go read it for yourself.

Retrospective: Ravenloft

I give Dragonlance a lot of grief -- deservedly so, I think -- for the role it played in forever changing both Dungeons & Dragons and the way it's been sold, but Dragonlance was merely expanding on ideas first put forward in earlier modules penned by Tracy Hickman, particularly 1983's Ravenloft. Unlike the Dragonlance modules, which, even at the time, I liked more in theory than in practice, I used to love Ravenloft. It's easy to understand why. Module I6 is a very "moody" piece of work, unlike most previous AD&D modules, which achieved their moods much more haphazardly or at least less self-consciously. Ravenloft's evocation of Gothic horror was also unlike most other modules at the time and, given my relative unfamiliarity with that genre of fiction -- I'd not yet read Dracula in 1983 -- I found it all very compelling.

There are other factors too in why my youthful self loved Ravenloft. Strahd von Zarovich, while sporting one of the most ridiculous faux Eastern European names in gaming, seems tailor-made for referees looking for a pet NPC. He's immensely powerful, well nigh indestructible, and fun to roleplay -- an angst-ridden anti-hero before White Wolf made such things a staple of the hobby. That he's the central figure in a story that provides a backdrop to the PCs' actions only made him more attractive. Moreso than most modules published before or at that time, Ravenloft is about its villain. The actions of the PCs are, in many ways, beside the point, because their sole purpose is to help to facilitate a melodrama of lust, betrayal, despair, and love beyond the grave in which NPCs are the primary actors.

And then there were the maps. Dave Sutherland's three-dimensional maps of Castle Ravenloft were amazingly innovative for the time, providing a superb sense of how all the pieces of this vast dungeon -- for dungeon is it was -- fit together. I know I drooled over these maps for many hours as a younger man and, even now, looking at them, I find it hard not to be won over by them. The problem, of course, is that, in play, they're quite unwieldy and sometimes even a little confusing. I'd go so far as to say that they're emblematic of Ravenloft itself: attractive, innovative, and a clear break from the past.

Now, I think it's all too easy to emphasize how much Ravenloft differed from its predecessors. At the same time, as I just noted, this is still, at base, a dungeon crawl and an occasionally non-sensical one at that, given that, for all its Gothic horror trappings, we find sometimes find monsters not at all in keeping with that style of writing. Likewise, there's plenty of low humor, especially puns, to be found in the module. The names on many of the tombs in the castle crypt -- "The Lady Isolde Yunk (Isolde the Incredible). Purveyor of Antiques and Imports," for example -- are outrageously bad and make Gary Gygax's own efforts seem subtle by comparison. These puns wrench one back from the Gothic atmosphere other parts of the module are trying desperately to evoke. The module uses a method of placing important NPCs and magic items based on fortune telling with a deck of playing cards. It's actually a very clever idea and, from my memory of playing the module long ago, it's effective and lends something to the atmosphere. Plus, my icy old school heart melts when random generation is involved in such a significant way.

Effective though it was, the card reading system made me wonder at the time if it was introduced partly to give the module replayability. That is, because certain important NPCs and items were placed in Castle Ravenloft randomly, the system could, in theory, ensure that each playing of Ravenloft would be different. Brilliant! The problem is that no one is going to Ravenloft more than once, because, as it is written, you can't. Dungeon crawl it may be in many ways, but there's no overlooking the fact that Ravenloft tells a story and a heavy-handed one at that. Not only does it have a prescribed conclusion, complete with Harlequin romance level dewy-eyed sentimentality, but, ultimately, what the PCs do just doesn't matter, since everything in the module is designed to support a predetermined conclusion.

Ravenloft is, like the "Desert of Desolation" series (also by Hickman -- I see a pattern here), a transitional module. There's still a great deal of old school design in its pages. There are lots of tricks and traps, for example, and Castle Ravenloft itself is a monstrous labyrinth of rooms, corridors, and crypts, making for a very non-linear portion of the game. It's also a very unforgiving module, with death around every corner, particularly if the players are foolhardy enough to try and take on Strahd without adequate preparation. Of course, unlike the later Dragonlance modules, Ravenloft can afford to be a death trap, because -- and I hate to keep harping on this -- the PCs' actions don't really matter. Strahd and his story are the main attraction here and it makes little difference whether a player loses a dozen characters along the way so long as he eventually has some character who's able to be present to witness the melodramatic conclusion the Hickmans have in store for them. That's a pretty big crime in my book and, while new and innovative at the time, it laid the foundation for much mischief later.

I still have a fondness for Ravenloft despite it all, but that fondness is born mostly out of nostalgia and that's fine. I don't think Tracy Hickman is the Devil any more than I think L. Sprague De Camp was. Nevertheless, I don't think it's possible to deny that, in both cases, these men planted seeds that would eventually bear bitter fruit. We're still wrestling with the consequences of design decisions Tracy Hickman made in 1983. The adventure path style of play, for example, is a direct descendant of modules like "The Desert of Desolation" series, Ravenloft, and Dragonlance, which represent an about-face from the more open-ended, sandbox play of the old school. The fetishizing of "super NPCs," whose actions overshadowed those of the PCs, got a nice boost too with the creation of Strahd von Zarovich. Neither of these things necessarily had to become the abominations they would one day be, but the immense popularity of Ravenloft made it hard for them to avoid this destiny. I think, with some work, Ravenloft could be remade into a perfectly acceptable and throughly old school module. That's more than can be said of the Dragonlance modules, so, in the final analysis, I'd have to say that module I6 isn't wholly without virtues, even if they are buried beneath even greater vices.

REVIEW: Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting

I'm going to do something I rarely do and issue a mild retraction of a comment I made in my earlier review of the Pathfinder Chronicles Gazetteer. In that review, which was largely positive, I pointed out two areas where I felt the product violated old school sensibilities: its art and its wealth of detail. I still feel that the art (mostly) runs counter to the Old Ways, but I'm big enough to admit that I was wrong on the question of detail. Yes, it's true that no one needs as much detail as either the Gazetteer or the Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting provide, but, presumably, if one is buying a campaign setting rather than making it up for oneself, detail is, to some extent anyway, what one is after.

Granted, there are levels of detail and, for me, the comparative sparseness of the Gazetteer was a blessing rather than a curse. Yet, having thoroughly read the Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting and enjoyed it, I can safely say that it still manages to leave plenty of room for individual referees to insert their own ideas or to take the information this 256-page book provides into directions of their own devising. Whereas the Gazetteer provides only three or four paragraphs of description for each of the major nations and city-states of Golarion, the Campaign Setting offers up two (sometimes three or four) pages for them all, including many not covered in the Gazetteer. It's certainly a lot to take in all at once and I am deeply sympathetic to anyone who feels this is too much, particularly in the area of history. At the same time, I didn't see a lot of self-indulgent fluff in the additional material. Instead, we're given a solid overview of each locale, including their populations, societies, power groups, and major settlements. I think, with this information, it'd be quite easy for the referee to open to the appropriate section of the book, skim it quickly, and get plenty of details, including specific bits of local color, to make the area memorable in the course of play. That's useful, but, again, I am sympathetic to those who find it overkill.

Moreso than the Gazetteer, the Campaign Setting is a D20 book, as there's a fair bit more game mechanics in it, such as spells, equipment, feats, and prestige classes. That means that there's more "wasted" pages for old schoolers than there was in the Gazetter, which is practically mechanics free. Of course, old school gamers are accustomed to overlooking game mechanics if there are good ideas to be found and there are plenty of them here. I very much like a lot of what the authors have done with the traditional D&D races -- including half-orcs -- to give them a spit and polish that makes them at once different and more like themselves than ever. Indeed, one of the great glories of this product is the way that its writers clearly thought long and hard about the archetypes and origins of many D&D staples and then used those things to craft new takes on them that were nevertheless consonant with what had gone before. Despite its failings in other areas, I certainly cannot fault the Paizo design team for not knowing and respecting the history and traditions of Dungeons & Dragons -- but then I'd expect nothing less from the people who brought us Planet Stories.

Golarion, the world of the Pathfinder Chronicles, has a distinctly Hyborian Age feel to it, with its obvious riffs on, allusions to, and outright thefts of real world historical places and cultures. That gives it a familiar air that I find appealing, for reasons I've discussed before. What I also appreciate is the willingness of Paizo to broaden its definition of fantasy to include such things as firearms, robots, printing presses, and many other bits of "advanced" technology that some deem anachronistic and thus inappropriate to the genre. Like it pulp forebears, Golarion is a world in which, literally, anything might be found, provided it offers a good hook for an exciting adventure. Thus, we can find gunslingers in the magic-dead Grand Duchy of Alkenstar and robots patrolling the borders of Numeria. It's a refreshing change of pace from the more "realistic" approaches to fantasy world design we've seen in the last three decades. This is a campaign setting built to support D&D (or, technically, the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game), right down to its gonzo keep-'em-guessing logic of adventure design.

The book exudes a pulp-y feel that's hard to miss, but, as I noted previously, that feel is somewhat muted by its art, which is almost uniformly of a piece with the 3e/4e house style of WotC (no surprise given that many of the same artists were used). This leads to a slight "split personality" esthetically, which is foreshadowed in the fact that it includes two "celebrity" introductions: one by Robert J. Kuntz, co-DM of the Greyhawk campaign, and one by R.A. Salvatore, creator of the drow ranger Drizzt Do'Urden. I can barely think of two people whose involvement with and contributions to D&D have been so different -- much like the disconnect I feel between the text of the Campaign Setting and its illustrations. Given that Paizo is hoping to grab a sizable portion of the 3e remnant community that didn't move on to 4e, I can't really blame them for the style of art they chose, as it'd be familiar to 3e players already. Likewise, there's no doubt that Jeff Carlisle and the guys at UDON, for example, are talented. I simply feel that the art they produce exudes a different feel than the one that the Campaign Setting implies.

Golarion is clearly a labor of love by people who adore D&D and have a fondness for pulp fantasy. I've tried not to let these facts cloud my objectivity, though, which is why, despite my generally positive view of the book, I have a couple of pointed caveats. First, there's the price. The book retails for $49.99, which is frankly a lot of money, even for a full-color, glossy book like this. I understand that Paizo is a small(ish) company and thus probably has tighter margins than, say, WotC, but this is an expensive book for what it is. More specifically, it's a lot for a book as shoddily bound as the one I own, which is starting to tear away from its spine after only a few months of my owning it solely as a reference book. I've never used the book in play and I handle all my books with care. It's possible I've just been unlucky and gotten an aberrant copy. Even so, the price is high and I can't in good conscience recommend the book to anyone who's either not a completist or not going to use it in play. It's well written and contains terrific ideas, but I'm not sure that's enough to justify dropping so much money on it.

My second concern is a broader one and it pertains not so much to this book itself as to what appears to be the Paizo business plan for developing and selling Pathfinder products. This plan involves not only monthly installments of several adventure paths but also lots of supplementary material in the form of articles and companion books, each of which further fleshes out some aspect of the setting in great detail -- far greater than anything seen in the Campaign Setting. Now, Golarion is a huge world, so it's quite possible to stay away from the areas Paizo is developing -- or ignore even the stuff they are -- so as to stay clear of the growing mass of canon. However, after a certain point, I have no doubt that this will become harder and harder, if only because many players have a tendency to think that, if it's in a printed product, it's true and the referee must abide by it. That's far from a universal statement, I realize, and I recognize that it's unfair to damn this book for something external to it. Nevertheless, I think there's a very real possibility that Golarion will quite quickly become over-developed after the fashion of many other earlier settings. Anyone buying this book needs to give this due consideration before deciding to take the plunge.

This is a good product and one in which there are lots of good ideas. I think it's a good example of setting that takes pulp sensibilities and uses them to create something intelligible to gamers more used to other fantasy influences. In that respect, it's a great success. Looked at within the context of the plan Paizo seems to be adopting, though, I worry that the openness and freedom offered even in this already-packed volume will evaporate and what we'll be left with is yet another pre-packaged "big story" setting filled to the gills with NPC heroes, villains, and with tons of niggling details. That's by no means a certain future for Golarion, but it's also a very possible one. Here's hoping I'm proved wrong.

Final Score: 4 out of 5 polearms.

Above Ground "Dungeons"

Even as work proceeds on Dwimmermount, I found myself intrigued by another concept: a vast, ancient, and ruined city stretching miles in every direction, now populated by scavengers, tribes of humanoids, and leftover horrors from whatever cataclysm laid waste to the city in the first place. If it all sounds a bit like Gamma World, that's part of the appeal. It's never been surprising to me that Metamorphosis Alpha (set aboard a generation ship fallen into chaos) and Gamma World (set on a post-apocalyptic Earth) were among the earliest RPGs. After all, the very idea of exploring -- and looting -- the ruins of the past is only a slight modification of D&D's basic premise.

The main difficulty of using a vast ruined city as the basis for a "dungeon" is that it's not constrained geographically. That is, players can very easily move around the edges of the ruin to avoid any tricks or traps the referee might have placed in one area. Now, on one level, that's solid old school thinking there and ought to be rewarded. On the other hand, it's perhaps a bit too easy. Consequently, planning a dungeon of this sort takes some forethought. The simplest approach might simply be to use a ring-like structure, with the outer portions of the ruin corresponding to the topmost levels of a traditional dungeon, while the inner portions correspond to the deeper levels.

Even this approach raises issues, particularly once magic starts increasing player mobility. My general rule, when encountering seeming difficulties, is to embrace them as opportunities. Yes, players will eventually gain access to spells like fly and dimension door that might enable them to "skip" certain encounter areas. Rather than fret about that, why not give them something else to do with such spells? In my campaign setting, the Eld and the Thulians are the two primary sources of ancient ruins. Both were masters of magic, so it stands to reason that their once-great cities were built and maintained using magic, magic that lingers still after all these centuries.

So, I'm thinking my ruined city will have several floating islands associated with it -- former wizard towers and research facilities and other such arcane treasure troves. These will be magnets for mid to high-level adventurers who have access to magic and magical items that enable them to move around more quickly and easily. No, this won't prevent PCs from "upsetting the balance" of the surface ruins, but that's fine. Dungeons are made, after all, to be kicked over and looted by adventurers. The trick is to ensure that, no matter what, the process of kicking over and looting is challenging and that requires a referee who can think on his toes and respond appropriately. That's why I'll probably be a bit looser about the inhabitants of the inner ring of the ruins, so I can change them up as needed. I won't leave the area blank entirely -- that's just a recipe for disaster -- but their strength and numbers can be varied, as can their tactics and level of magical support.

I've often wondered why there aren't more examples in D&D of vast surface ruins as outdoor "dungeons." Other than Ed Greenwood's Myth Drannor, I can't think of any off the top of my head. I feel like I'm missing some obvious ones, though. Can anyone think of some I might have forgotten?

Memories of Game Stores Past II

It's easy to forget how faddish roleplaying games were even into the early 80s. Back in those heady days, you could buy RPGs -- and not just D&D -- from a wide variety of stores. One of the places I used to go to was called Games & Gadgets. Ostensibly, it sold video games -- also a faddish item at the time -- so you could buy game cartridges for the Atari 2600, Intellivision, and Colecovision, as well as other electronic games. But they also sold RPGs in great quantities, including miniatures and paints.

I distinctly recall that Games & Gadgets was the only place where I'd ever seen Grenadier Models blister packs. Prior to that, I'd only ever seen the boxed sets of Grenadier minis, so it was quite a revelation to me to stumble across these small packages of 3-6 miniatures in a clear plastic bubble that actually let me see them directly. I bought quite a few of them, including the kobold sets, because you can never have enough kobolds. I also bought a set called "Rakshasas" that contained two weird-looking creatures, one of which was a lizard guy and the other of which looked like a humanoid elephant. It was then that I concluded that rakshasas could look like any sort of animal, not just tigers, and I've long had a hard time adapting to the New Order introduced in 3e on this particular point.

In retrospect, I know now that it was momentary faddishness that allowed tabletop RPGs and video games to co-exist peaceably in the same store without explicitly catering to a "geek culture." That's only natural, I suppose, because there was no self-awareness of such a thing in the early 80s. There were geeky things, to be sure -- being a D&D player may have been faddish then but it still wasn't "cool" -- but buying them wasn't an explicit lifestyle choice. There were no paraphernalia or tchotchkes associated with gaming for sale in Games & Gadgets, just games and accessories used in actually playing them.

RPGs are no longer faddish; it's increasingly hard to find games other than D&D outside of very specialized stores these days. Interestingly, though, the mainstreaming of geekery continued apace and is now bigger than ever. As I've noted previously, this bugs me quite a bit, not merely because I think a lot of this stuff is tacky (though I do), but because the rise of geek culture has coincided with the decline of those aspects of the old culture I so enjoyed. In both gaming and literature, there's a definite trend away from the older styles and influences and that saddens me. There may not be a direct correlation between the two phenomena, but it's interesting to note nonetheless.

Games & Gadgets was eventually renamed The Electronics Boutique and stopped selling RPGs entirely. The rest is history.

Pulp Fantasy Gallery: Giant of World's End

First published in 1969, Giant of World's End kicks off a series of books describing the adventures of Ganelon Silvermane, an artificially created hero awakened prematurely to save the far future world of Gondwane -- Earth after all the continents have again positioned themselves into a super-mass -- from a variety of threats. These books clearly belong to the "Dying Earth" sub-genre and the influence of Vance is quite clear, which perhaps explains their appeal to Gary Gygax. Though published first, Giant of World's End takes place last in the series and there are some incongruities between its depiction of Ganelon and Gondwane and those of the later books. Still, it's an interesting read and another example of a type of fantasy that was once commonplace and now a curiosity.

I feel compelled, as an aside, to speak briefly about Lin Carter, who frequently catches a lot of flak because of his involvement in posthumous "collaborations" with pulp authors, most notably Robert E. Howard. For these, I do think he deserves criticism and fairly harsh criticism at that. Like August Derleth before him, these efforts of Carter are almost universally amateurish and of limited literary merit. Along with L. Sprague De Camp, Carter did much violence to the Conan saga and many readers of a certain age have a distorted view of the Cimmerian's adventures -- and REH's writing -- because of his work. At the same time, Carter was the driving force behind much of the pulp revival of the late 60s and early 70s, when he promoted numerous formerly-forgotten writers to the general public once more. He was the first editor of Ballantine Books' "Adult Fantsy" series and it was this series that brought authors like Lord Dunsany, Clark Ashton Smith, William Morris, James Branch Cabell, and many others to view again. In a sense, he was a spiritual godfather of Dungeons & Dragons, because Carter's editorial work enabled many to read fantasy tales they otherwise wouldn't have, many of which were very influential on Gary Gygax. Consequently, for all his faults, I still retain a fondness for Lin Carter that I don't for De Camp.