Steve Lortz reviews a game I've never heard of, Legacy, written by David A. Feldt. If Lortz's review is to be believed, Legacy is "a signal work in the expansion of role-play," but it's difficult to tell precisely what the game is about. It appears to be a game about the Neolithic era, but the review says little more. A quick search online reveals that Legacy is quite infamous for its convoluted and unclear rules, something even Lortz alludes to in his otherwise positive review.
The second part of Mike Gunderloy's "Specialty Mages" is a meaty one indeed, covering six pages and providing details on mages of light, darkness, fire, and ice. While none of this is material I'd personally use in any of my own games, it's nevertheless fascinating to see early D&D variants, particularly those that appeared in publications outside of TSR's orbit. Elaine Normandy and John T. Sapienza Jr have written "Character Name Tables," which are just that: random tables for generating the names of humans, elves, dwarves, and hobbits, as seen in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. The next installment of "My Life in Role-Playing" includes articles by both Steve Jackson and David A. Feldt, writer of the aforementioned Legacy. Jackson's piece is very fascinating and includes some interesting anecdotes about his The Fantasy Trip campaign, as well as his thoughts on roleplaying, that I'll share in an upcoming post. Feldt's article article is fascinating too but only because it's so bizarre. In it, he presents a probably tongue in cheek future history in which it's revealed that reality is itself a roleplaying game of sorts overseen by the Game Overall Director. I'm still confused.
"Starships & Spacemen Expansion Kit" by Leonard Kanterman is a collection of new rules and options for his 1977 Star Trek-inspired RPG. "Lord of the Dice" is a humorous set of one-page roleplaying game rules by Greg Costikyan. I share the developer's notes here, since they give you a good sense of the thing's overall flavor.
"Arduin, Bloody Arduin" is Dave Hargrave's overview of his famous game and campaign setting. Accompanies by a hand-drawn map, it's a good article for anyone interested in the setting and Hargrave's own philosophy of gaming. Like the previous installment of this series in issue #1, I enjoyed this one a lot and look forward to seeing more designers talk about their home campaigns.
Steve Perrin writes about "The Cacodemon Cult" for RuneQuest and Steve Lortz appears again with "Dramatic Structure of RPGs." I must confess to finding the article, which begins by comparing RPGs to movies, quite tedious. It's precisely the kind of unnecessarily abstract philosophizing about gaming that sets my teeth on edge. Much more enjoyable is the very first column by the pseudonym Gigi D'Arn, the roleplaying hobby's famed gossip columnist. I could – and probably should – write an entire post about this first installment, because it's filled with lots of amusement, not to mention genuine gossip, such as
So far as I know, the identity of Gigi has never been revealed, though I believe the most common theory is that she was not a single person but rather a house name used by editor Tadashi Ehara and anyone else who submitted bits to the published piece. From the vantage point of 2021, though, it's fun to read columns like this, if only to get a sense of what the hobby was like at the end of the 1970s – small but growing and still very clubbish. This is right before I started gaming and, though I never participated in its directly, being just a little too young, echoes of it could still be heard. I'd be lying if I didn't say I miss those days.
Legacy sounds interesting. But let's ask the man who owns one: https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/legacy-the-worst-game-every-written-or-the-least-the-unintentionally-funniest.359401/
ReplyDeleteThanks for that!
DeleteHey, I'm pretty sure that's my copy... I picked up Legacy I think at a Boskone, maybe from the author. I never figured out what to do with it.
DeleteHmmm...think that might be the first appearance of the RQ Cacodemon cult in print, but it's been revisited several times since.
ReplyDeleteCostikyan has always been something of an iconoclast when it comes to gaming, and has won awards for his efforts to give indie game designers a means to publish without signing their work over to big companies. Not really a surprise to see him slinging shade at TSR even this far back. Man's done some brilliant work over the years but he's also got a streak of mean-spiritedness, especially when he's behind the Designer X mask.
I'll point out that when this was published Greg was 20, while "crotchety old man" Gygax was all of 41. Wonder how he feels about 40 being "old" now that he's in his sixties himself?
I agree with your assessment of Costikyan. Granted, I'm a thin-skinned milquetoast but I have little patience for casual meanness like that and I think it's unbecoming of a man of such obvious talent as Costikyan.
DeleteWell, on the whole Costikyan has benefited the hobby and the industry far more than than most, and he's pretty professional the vast majority of the time. Makes the odd display of aberrant nastiness all the more jarring.
DeleteTo play Devil's advocate in this particular case, he was very young in 1989, couldn't even buy a drink legally. Most of us have done iffy things at that age, back when we were angry young folks.
Very true – and a genuinely charitable take on the comment.
DeleteMaybe this was so blindingly obvious that you didn’t even mention it, but “Gigi D’Arn” appears to be named in honor of Gygax (“G.G.”) and Arneson (“D. Arn.”)
ReplyDeleteI think you're probably correct – or at least, I came to the same conclusion. That, sadly, doesn't resolve the issue of D'Arn's actual identity (assuming it's a single person).
DeleteHmm, I never made that connection...
DeleteThere was a lot of thought back in the day that it was Tadashi, but could also have been Greg Stafford. Or like you say, multiple people.