Wednesday, June 23, 2021

Retrospective: Rahasia

My feelings about the work of Tracy and Laura Hickman are more complicated than is generally assumed. While I have very little regard for the Dragonlance series and feel that it set Dungeons & Dragons down a path that isn't to my liking, I'm actually quite fond of the roughly contemporaneous Ravenloft, even though it exhibits many of the same elements I dislike in the former. This makes me wonder if many of my criticisms stem from matters of degree rather than substance. I'm not yet committed to that position by any means, but it's nevertheless been on my mind lately.

To test my thesis, I re-read the 1984 D&D module, Rahasia, a lesser known work of the Hickmans. Before diving into it, a brief bit of history. The earliest version of Rahasia, which I have never seen, was self-published by the Hickmans in 1979, along with Pharaoh (another Hickman effort for which I have largely positive feelings). In 1983, Rahasia was released by the RPGA, along with its follow-up, Black Opal Eye. Then, both modules were combined under a single cover as module B7, which is the only version of these adventures I've ever seen. I understand there are a few differences in content between the various editions but they are mostly minor. If I am mistaken in this understanding, please don't hesitate to offer corrections in the comments below.

Make no mistake: Rahasia is just as heavy-handed as most Hickman modules, in that there's a very definite "story" in which it intends to involve the player characters. That story begins with the PCs traveling through a "beautiful elven forest," when they come upon the body of an elf, perhaps slain by bandits. A letter is found on the body and a lengthy one at that. The contents of the letter are reproduced at the back of the module, presumably either to be read aloud to the players or photocopied so they can read it for themselves. Written by an elven maiden named Rahasia, the letter details how a handsome stranger known simply as "the Rahib" had come to the village to seek her hand in marriage. Though everyone else in the village was won over by the Rahib, Rahasia's father was not. 

Not long thereafter, the elven students of a nearby temple disappeared, as did Rahasia's father, who traveled to the temple to determine what happened to them. Like them, he seems to have disappeared. Disappearing along with him was his wealth, which would have been used in part for Rahasia's dowry. Rahasia's betrothed, Hasan, then sets off for the temple too and, like everyone else, does not return. That's when the Rahib reveals – surprise! – that he is behind these shenanigans. He has placed the students under his spell and will not release them until Rahasia turns herself over to him. She will not do so and seeks help from outsiders who'd be willing to brave the temple, defeat the Rahib, and free those whom he has enchanted.

If you can keep all of that straight, good for you! I left out many details (such as the kidnapping of two other elven maids) in the interests of brevity and because, frankly, they only complicate what is already an unnecessarily complex scenario for 1st to 3rd level characters – or so I say. For a great many gamers, I suspect that this type of set-up is greatly appealing, because it gives their characters an obvious hook that immediately embroils them in a fantasy adventure tale filled with heaping helpings of bombast and melodrama. The boxed text scattered throughout the module is exactly what you'd expect, starting with one of the very first.

In the village, the delicate elven dwellings mirror the grace of their people. Yet the faces of the villagers reveal great sadness. You soon are lead to an elven maid, whose veiled face and beauty outshines all others present as the sun outshines the stars – she is Rahasia.

One either cringes at such prose or one embraces it. I fall firmly in the first camp, finding it some of the worst boxed text to appear in any D&D module, but I recognize that not everyone feels that way. Indeed, I suspect that I'm in the minority when it comes to disliking this kind of heavy-handed mawkishness. Leaving that aside, what's more frustrating to me is that, like Ravenloft and Pharaoh before it, the dungeons of Rahasia are actually quite good. Both the Temple of Gray Mountain and Elyas's Tower have interesting layouts with multiple unique encounters and traps. I was particularly struck by how often the best solution to dealing with an encounter is not violence but instead cleverness. This is a commonplace in the Hickmans' work, demonstrating, I think, that they're actually more talented dungeon designers than they're sometimes given credit for, especially in old school circles.

Consequently, Rahasia only adds to my growing uncertainty about how to assess the contributions of Tracy and Laura Hickman on the development of both Dungeons & Dragons in particular and the hobby of roleplaying more generally. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that they stand solidly alongside Gary Gygax himself when it comes to the influence their style has had on subsequent generations of roleplayers. There is little question in my mind that their emphasis on presenting coherent stories, with clear beginnings, middles, and ends, through the vehicle of modules became widely imitated to the point that it's now the unquestioned standard for such things. Regardless of one's feelings on the matter, that's the very definition of a success. 

14 comments:

  1. Not familiar with this module but I would say your final assessment of the Hickmans is spot on. Personally I find all styles engaging at times, and my own is some sort of weird hybrid of Gygax and The Hickmans, if I had to describe it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The word 'Rahasia' means 'secret' in Malay. I wonder if that was intentional.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It means the same in Indonesian. Hickman spent 18 months in Indonesia as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. So it's absolutely no coincidence. Rāhib is a monk (loanword from Arabic), so the names of the characters in the story are clearly indicative of their function.

      Delete
  3. You're most definitely not alone in your interpretation of their boxed texts. Ugh.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Agreed. We may be a minority for that opinion, but if so it's a large one.

      Delete
  4. I always loved the striking and "Trippy" cover art on this one but never got around to actually reading it. I'm a little disappointed that it's just a save-the-princess deal and not some psychedelic epic about a witch that keeps getting reincarnated as a jaguar or something.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You are welcome to write that module, I'm sure many will love it!

      Delete
  5. The Hickman's exhibit quite a bit of cleverness with their dungeon design. There's "juice" in some of their ideas and concepts.

    That's about the nicest thing I can say.

    However, one thing to keep in mind was how YOUNG the Hickmans were at the time they were writing these early adventures: Tracy was 25 and Laura was 24 the year Rahasia was first published (1980). In my opinion, very few writers have the "seasoning" to write decent prose at such a tender age.

    According to Ye Old Internet, the average age for a novelist's first publication is 36. The Hickmans had a tremendous advantage in joining a "publishing house" (TSR) that had pretty minimal standards when it came to writing novels but that had a tremendous "built-in fan base" (D&D gamers). Without TSR...well, I find it doubtful Hickman becomes the "Bestselling Author" he is today.

    [Margaret Weiss, co-author of the first DL novel was 36 when it was published; so far as I can tell it was her first novel, though she wrote some children's books prior]

    I'd guess that Rahasia and Rahasia each enjoyed play-testing prior to publication; Ravenloft certainly did (it was run as an annual "Halloween" game five times prior to publication, which explains the need for its randomization elements). But bad prose (symptomatic of a young author) was probably an attempt to recreate the style of DMing used when running the adventures.

    ReplyDelete
  6. We ran through this a couple years ago with my Labyrinth Lord group. Wanted something that was a bit different as an intro adventure, but still included lots of the classic elements. Worked pretty well. I had last run it shortly after it came out. And having also recently re-played B1 & B2, this is superior as a story by far.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. To be fair, B2's story is "here is a bastion of order, over there is a bastion of chaos, make of it, what you will". I'm sure many great stories where created using B2, but it doesn't contain one from the get go.

      Delete
  7. The eternal debate between 'I need history in my modules' and 'Fine, I'll do it myself!'. I'm in the second position, but nearly every adventure module from the late... ¿20 years? tend to the first one.

    Joseph Manola (from Against the Wicked City) suggested that a lot of 'modern' - I say, from late TSR to our times- modules are made for reading, not so much for playing. And I thing he's right.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Curse of strahd and Rahasia are very similair in some ways. Since they were written by the same people, I wonder if its a reference or homage, or artifact? I don't know what was in the original ravenloft adventure. First there's its hook: on your way to do something else, (and after getting abducted by mists,) you find a very similair letter on a corpse, containing almost the same contents, but its instead a backhanded plea for help because of its utter hopelessness. it warns adventures to leave this cursed town to its fate, but also mentions treasure, and beatitul women in peril and sadness.

    and as in strahd, the Wizard of wines exists here, and bottle labels for all the different wines like 'red dragon .. crush, champagne du le stomp' or whatever, are in the module. the labels are player handouts cause they contain the key to... spoiler alert? ... the teleport maze

    There might be others. Probably similairities to tatiana and rahasia, the rahib and strahd

    ReplyDelete
  9. "Rahasia", "Pharaoh", and "Ravenloft" were the Daystar West adventures - Daystar West was the name for the Hickman's publishing efforts prior to joining TSR. "B7 Rahaisa" is actually a fixup of 2 earlier modules - the RPGA version of "Rahasia" and the RPGA adventure "Black Opal Eye." Originally Black Opal Eye was called "Orthanc" and was an adventure set in Middle Earth that covered the 1st level of the eponymous tower. In the RPGA version the Middle Earth elements were removed and it was retooled with a different backtory. In B7 the backstory was expanded such that the Tower was crushed by a floating mountain and then the Temple from Rahasia built on top of the mountain. Originally they were separate adventures. Also Pharaoh and "Rahasia" had WAAAY less backstory. The original hook in "Pharoah" was simply that the characters hear a chant while they travel by the pyramid in the desert. It did not have much of the wilderness wandering of the I6 version. I think the heavy handed intro of "Rahasia" comes from it being an RPGA tournament module.

    What is interesting about both "Pharaoh" and "Rahasia" is that you can easily drop the hook-story - essentially taking them back to their Daystar West intros. Personally I drop the whole backstory for "Rahasia." The Rahib is a Orcus worshipper and the "siswa" are the Rahib's cultists and they are plumbing the depths to resurrect the witches. They have captued two suitable and are seeking a third. And this does not have to be a hook.

    As for the boxed text I find the intro stuff terrible, but I find the actual dungeon room description boxed text to be quite on the utilitarian side of the whole boxed text error. All in all both "Pharaoh" and "Rahasia" are some of my favorite dungeons when you pull them out of their respective hooks and backstories. The desert that has the pyramid from "Pharaoh" is actually in a pocket dimension accessible from a dungeon in my campaign world.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I've run B7 only once, but was able to secure copies of RPGA1 and RPGA2 years ago, when they weren't that expensive. I want to run them at a con, back to back, some day.

    ReplyDelete