The Path to Adventure

I've commented in several previous posts that the period between 1982 and 1984 is a fascinating one for both TSR and its most famous product, Dungeons & Dragons. This period, I believe, represents the peak of game's faddish popularity, when the company was so flush with cash – and keen to ensure its continued flow – that it slapped the D&D logo on almost everything, from woodburning and needlepoint sets to toys and beach towels, to name just a few. Of course, this same period also saw the publication of the Frank Mentzer edited D&D Basic Set, the best-selling version of that venerable product that TSR ever released, whose sales no doubt contributed greatly to the company's bottom line.

Right smack in the middle of this same period is the premier of the CBS animated television series for which Gary Gygax is credited as a co-producer. The series, which ran for three seasons between 1983 and 1985 and a total of 27 episodes, was part of an effort to increase the pop cultural footprint of D&D beyond the realm of RPGs. So far as I know, the cartoon was the only fruit of that effort, despite Gygax's frequent reports that a Dungeons & Dragons movie of some sort was in the works. Readers more knowledgeable than I can correct me if I am mistaken in this judgment.

Because I was too old for its intended target audience, I never paid close attention to the D&D cartoon during its initial run. Consequently, I took even less note of the various cartoon-branded products released in conjunction with it. I could probably write several posts about this topic and perhaps I eventually will, but, for the moment, what most interests me are the six "Pick a Path to Adventure" books published in 1985 by TSR. As you might expect, these books are all very similar to the Endless Quest series (themselves modeled on the earlier and more well known "Choose Your Own Adventure" books), but drawing on characters and elements of the cartoon. 

As I said, I was completely unaware of the existence of these books until comparatively recently. I certainly never saw them at the time of their original publication. Even if I had, there's zero chance I'd have read them, given my superior attitude toward the series and its perceived kiddification of my beloved D&D. Now, I find myself somewhat curious about them, if only because some of them apparently introduce new characters (like Eric the Cavalier's younger brother) and concepts unseen in the series. In addition, each of the six books uses a different member of the ensemble cast as its viewpoint character, which is actually not a bad idea. (Take note as well that first book in the series was written by Margaret Weis of Dragonlance fame).

Looking into these books online revealed that, contemporaneous with the Endless Quest books (and a few years before the cartoon-branded books), TSR produced another series of "Pick a Path to Adventure" books under the Fantasy Forest brand. From what I can tell, they appear to have been geared towards a younger audience than the Endless Quest books. Likewise, these books don't carry the D&D logo anywhere, though some of them, like The Ring, the Sword, and the Unicorn, proclaim "From TSR, Inc., the producers of the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS cartoon show." 

Once again, these are books of which I was completely unaware at the time and that I've not seen, let alone read, in the years since. If anyone among my readers has read them, I'd like to know a bit more about them, specifically whether they contain anything that connects them to Dungeons & Dragons. I would assume that they do, because what other purpose would TSR have had in publishing them beyond creating a potential new audience for its games? However, judging solely on the basis of the books' covers, they all look fairly generic. Their connection to D&D, if any, would seem to be limited.

TSR produced another series of "Pick a Path to Adventure" books – or should I say "Pick a Path to Romance and Adventure?" – the (in)famous HeartQuest series of fantasy romance novels. Unlike the other two series, I did know about these. I have a vague recollection of first seeing mention of them in the pages of Dragon, but, despite all my best efforts, I can find no evidence of this. In any case, I saw these in either Waldenbooks or B. Dalton sometimes in 1983 or '84 and had a strongly negative reaction to their existence. Their covers, reminiscent of the Harlequin romance books from the same time, certainly did nothing to endear them to me.

Like the Fantasy Forest series, HeartQuest does not seem to have been explicitly connected to Dungeons & Dragons, at least as far as branding goes. From what I've gathered, they're not actually bad books for what they are, though nothing special. I would imagine that they were another prong in TSR's attempts to expand the audience of their products (and thus their sales). Given that, unlike the Endless Quest books, which had several dozen titles, HeartQuest only had six, suggesting that, whatever its quality, they failed to achieve the goals TSR had set for them.  

I've sometimes jokingly called 1982–1984 the period when TSR was throwing a lot of spaghetti against the wall in the vain hope that some of it might stick. The company certainly tried many different approaches to expanding its customer base to what appears to have been limited success. On the other hand, these book series may well have played a role in helping to build up the company's publishing division. That division would eventually prove very successful – so successful, in fact, that, by the 1990s, it would become the cart pulling the horse of TSR's fortunes. That's a story for a different day (and probably a different writer, since I don't know enough about its fine details). Still, it's always fascinating to look into the forgotten corners of the hobby's history like the "Pick a Path to Adventure" books.

Retrospective: Spelljammer: AD&D Adventures in Space

Spelljammer: AD&D Adventures in Space is a guilty pleasure of mine. Written and conceived by Jeff Grubb, this overstuffed boxed set was first released in 1989, just as I was transferring between two colleges. For a lot of reasons, this was a very tumultuous time in my life and, as a result, my memories of it are very vivid, even thirty-five years later – memories that include purchasing Spelljammer from a Waldenbooks in a suburban mall and then poring over its contents for some time afterwards.

As its subtitle suggests, Spelljammer took AD&D 2e into "space," though not in the traditional scientific (or even science fictional) sense of the word. Rather, Grubb took inspiration from ancient and medieval conceptions of the cosmos, in which the stars and planets are embedded within celestial spheres made of ether. Rather than multiple nested spheres containing all the celestial bodies of a single solar system, as the ancients conceived, Grubb imagined each sphere as encompassing an entire solar system or, more to the point, an entire campaign setting, with all the spheres floating within a "sea" of flammable material called phlogiston.

Through the use of flying vessels equipped with magical "helms," it was possible for the inhabitants of worlds within one sphere to journey to worlds within another. This was the high concept of Spelljammer: the ability to travel between TSR's various campaign settings by means of magical "space" ships. It's a very clever conceit, one reminiscent not just of ancient cosmology but also of Jack Vance's Rhialto the Marvelous. In addition to facilitating transit between existing settings, Spelljammer also opened up the development of a "bridge" setting between them, namely, the larger cosmos of races, organizations, and even worlds that make regular use of space travel. 

In some respects, Spelljammer is the forerunner of both Ravenloft: Realm of Terror (1990) and Planescape (1994), two other TSR boxed campaign settings whose conceptual frameworks allowed characters from Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms, Krynn, and elsewhere to adventure side by side while also exploring entirely new locales created to flesh out the bridge setting. In the case of Spelljammer, that bridge setting includes a mix of the good, the bad, and the downright weird. There's the pompous Elven Navy attempting to keep the peace, xenophobic beholders at war with themselves and everyone else, mysterious mind flayers with their nautilus ships, the spider-like neogi, and mercantile arcane, just to name a few. As presented in Spelljammer, the cosmos was positively filled with all manner of space-faring peoples – and an equally large number of space-based locales and mysteries.

Chief among these mysteries is the titular Spelljammer, an ancient – and gigantic – manta ray-shaped space vessel with an equally gigantic citadel on its back. The origins and true nature of the Spelljammer are unknown, making it the subject of many legends. It's also the destination of many a spacefaring adventurer, as the citadel on its back is reputed to hold untold magic and wealth for those bold enough to venture within. The Spelljammer is thus equal parts the Flying Dutchman of space and an old school megadungeon, which is itself a pretty good high concept.  

Of course, Spelljammer was replete with high concepts – and that's part of the problem. In an effort to be expansive and easy to use to use with any existing AD&D campaign setting, Spelljammer is something of a curate's egg. I suspect that this was due less to Jeff Grubb's own preferences and more to directives from TSR regarding the boxed set's place within their larger publishing scheme. This prevents the bridge setting from having a strong flavor of its own, which is too bad, because it contains a lot of elements that I wish had been better (or differently) developed. Instead, the whole thing has a kind of underdone quality that fails to do full justice something I still consider to be a great idea to this day.

Spelljammer straddles the line between the end of the Silver Age and the beginning of the Bronze Age of Dungeons & Dragons, which, I think, explains a lot. Like the products of the Silver Age, Spelljammer is an exemplar of the era's "fantastic realism," itself a metastasis of Gygaxian Naturalism. At the same time, Spelljammer heralds the start of AD&D's "boxed set era," when TSR cranked out new boxed campaign settings (and expansions thereof) almost on a monthly basis – a seemingly never-ending parade of good ideas not given sufficient time to germinate. There's reason why so many gamers of a certain age have such affection for this period of AD&D's development. For all of the flaws in their output, almost all of these boxed sets contained good, imaginative ideas that inspired a lot of us, Spelljammer included.  

Polyhedron: Issue #26

Issue #26 of Polyhedron (November 1985) is another one that I recall very vividly, almost entirely because of its Roger Raupp cover, depicting a reptilian alien superimposed over what looks to be photograph from one of the Viking landers sent to Mars in the mid-70s. The cover was inspired by Roger E. Moore's article, "Gamma Mars," on which I've briefly commented before. I have lots to say about it but will hold off on doing so until later in this post. 

"Notes from HQ" is, as usual, mostly filled with RPGA ephemera of minimal lasting value. There is, however, a brief section worthy of mention. The "City Project" announced in the previous issue is moving forward, though Penny Petticord asks RPGA members to "hold your actual submissions until specific procedures are announced next issue." Furthermore, she explains HQ "will be finalizing details with Gary Gygax" regarding the placement of the city within the World of Greyhawk setting. Of course, Gygax would depart TSR less than a year later and the City Project would, in turn, head in a different direction.

Next up is "Squeaky Wheels," a guest editorial by Frank Mentzer, in which he tackles criticisms of roleplaying games in the mass media. Mentzer isn't talking solely about the religiously-inflected Satanic Panic – though he does have rebuttals to offer on that score – but also to more general worries about RPGs, such as the suggestion that playing these games inclines one to suicide. I must admit that, despite having lived through these times, I encountered almost no resistance to my involvement in roleplaying. If anything, my parents and the parents of my friends were incredibly supportive of our hobby. Perhaps we were just lucky, I don't know. In any case, I'll never cease to be baffled when I come across articles like this one. They're yet more evidence that the past really is a foreign country.

"Con-Fusion" by Fas Eddie Carmien is a brief collection of thank yous to the volunteers at GenCon 18 – nothing special. "Where Chaos Reigns" by Sonny Scott is more amusing, being a fictionalized account of his time working telephone assistance on behalf of the RPGA at GenCon. Though hardly an article for the ages, it's fun and, as someone who's worked at a phone bank a few times over the course of my life, the inanity of the calls Scott recounts seems very true to life. Michael D. Selinker's "A View of GenCon 18 Game Fair from RPGA Network HQ" is a day-by-day recounting of the con from the perspective of someone involved in its operation. I've never been involved in running a con, so I found this article more interesting than I expected. It's helped by the fact that Selinker can spin a good yarn and has a decent sense of humor.

The third and final part of Frank Mentzer's AD&D tournament adventure, Needle, appears in this issue. Part I focused on the location of the titular obelisk, while Part II was about the process of retrieving it for transport it across the sea. Part III concerns what happens after it's been installed in the palace square of the king who wanted it in the first place. In case you're wondering: a magical door to the Moon opens in its base and the characters must journey through it to see its wonders. As premises for an adventure go, it's not a bad one and Mentzer does a solid job of presenting intriguing and challenging encounters. 

"Dispel Confusion" is short this month, tackling only AD&D and Gamma World questions, none of which are especially memorable. For me, what's most fascinating is how increasingly truncated this column has become. In early issues of Polyhedron, "Dispel Confusion" covered two or three pages and covered all of TSR's RPGs. As time went on, its page length shortened and its focus contracted, with only AD&D and Gamma World being consistently covered. The former is understandably, as it was always TSR's most popular and best selling game. Gamma World's continued presence strikes me as stranger, as I never got the impression it was very successful, despite its having no fewer than four editions during TSR's time. 

Speaking of Gamma World, we come at last to Roger E. Moore's "Gamma Mars," which, as its title suggests, presents information on the state of the planet Mars in the post-apocalyptic 25th century of the game. In this timeline, Mars was first visited by human beings in 2002, with a stable colony growing there over the course of the 21st century. By 2076, the colony became independent of Earth. The colonists would eventually discover evidence of alien habitation on the planet – the reptilian Luntarians – but these beings are not natives to Mars but visitors from another planet outside our solar system. A small number of Luntarians placed themselves into suspended animation in the past and were subsequently revived just in time for the Social Wars to engulf Earth and cut Mars off from the mother planet.

I was a big fan of the articles from Dragon that described the state of the Moon in Gamma World, so I was understandably excited to learn more about the wider solar system of the game's setting. As described by Moore, Mars has only been partially terraformed. Its atmosphere, for example, remains too thin for humans to breathe unaided. In addition, pure strain humans predominate, since Mars largely sat out the conflict that devastated Earth. The result is a very different take on Gamma World, one where rival cities jockey with one another for power and rumors of alien ruins and technology form the basis for adventure. At the time, I found it compelling stuff; even now, I think there's something remarkable about it.

Jon Pickens provides "Unofficial Illusionist Spells" that are actually fairly interesting, at least when compared to the cleric and magic-user spells from previous issues. I think that's because, in AD&D, there are comparatively few illusionist magic items and thus the spells here don't exist primarily to act as means of explaining how such items exist. Michael Przytarski's "Fletcher's Corner" also deals with magic, in this case magic items, which he first divides into the categories of "mundane, powerful, deadly, and ridiculous" with the goal of suggesting how common each type should be in a good campaign. He also addresses the question of "magic shops," something I get the impression was becoming increasingly common in mid-80s AD&D (based on how often it was criticized in official TSR publications). The issue ends with Errol Farstad's positive review of Twilight: 2000.

Twenty-six issues in, Polyhedron continues to lack a solid, consistent foundation on which to build. As I have repeatedly said in this series, you never know what to expect from an issue, with some having numerous useful and excellent articles and others ... less so. While I completely understand why this was the case, it's disappointing and played a big part in why I'd eventually let my subscription lapse, even as I continued to read Dragon for many more years to come. 

Secrets of sha-Arthan: Tomb Robber

A tomb robber by Zhu Bajie

 

Tomb Robber 

Prime Abilities: DEX and INT

Hit Points: 1d6 per level 

Starting Possessions: Leather breastplate, dagger, one-handed weapon, tool bag, 3d6 × 5ul

An almost universal custom among the myriad peoples and cultures of sha-Arthan is the burial of grave goods to aid the deceased in his journey to the afterlife. A tomb robber is someone who makes his living by stealing these goods, despite the strong taboos against it. The skills he acquires in these illicit endeavors make the tomb robber a valuable addition to expeditions into the Vaults. 

Alertness

Thanks to his keen awareness of imminent danger, a tomb robber reduces the chance of his party being surprised to 1-in-6.

Skills

A tomb robber begins with four +1 bonuses that may be applied to any of them following skills: Architecture, Climb, Lore, Luck, Search, Stealth, Survival, and Tinker. Each bonus must be applied to a different skill. Every level thereafter, he gains two additional +1 bonuses that can be applied to any of the aforementioned skills. 

• Dead Languages: Because of his familiarity with inscriptions in ancient ruins, the tomb robber does not suffer the usual –3 penalty for attempting to read dead languages.
• Improvisation: If specific equipment is normally required to use a skill he possesses, a tomb robber does not require it. If he does possess the equipment, he gets a +1 bonus to his roll. 

Trap Avoidance

To succeed in his chosen professional, a tomb robber develops a knack for avoiding traps. This knack grants him a +2 bonus to saving throws to avoid the effects of traps. 

Speaking of Miniatures ...

Behold! Qualos – guardian of the Duck Temple. This is an official RuneQuest miniature produced by Infinity-Engine. Whether you use miniatures in your games or not, it's hard to deny that this one is pretty amazing. 

What's Behind That Door?

It is, of course, well established that roleplaying games as we know them today grew out of the hobby of miniatures wargaming. I suspect that's why 25mm miniature figures continued to be made and sold for use with RPGs, even though, in my personal experience, very few people had much use for them at the table. That was certainly the case for me. Despite this, lots of games continued to recommend the use of miniature figures as an aid to play, including some rather unexpected ones, like Call of Cthulhu. 

Call of Cthulhu quickly became one of my favorite roleplaying games and I acquired all of the support products for it that I could both find and afford – like the miniatures sold by Grenadier Models. After losing the AD&D license in 1982, Grenadier tried to maintain its presence in the RPG world by picking up licenses to produce figures for other popular roleplaying games, like Traveller and Call of Cthulhu. They also tried their hand at publishing adventures for both games, with very mixed results.

I owned the two boxed sets of Call of Cthulhu miniatures, the first of which was dedicated to adventurers (though the box says "adventures," which I assume was an error). Here's the cover, showing Indiana Jones, Al Capone, and Professor Plum preparing to burst into the room behind a closed door.

The second boxed set depicts a night gaunt, a deep one, and a ghoul, who lie in wait behind the very same door the adventurers are about to open. Taken together, they form a fun little diptych that, to my shame, I don't think I even recognized until several years after I'd bought them.

Because I rarely painted or used these miniatures, I'm not completely sure why I bought them. I suppose it's because I thought I was supposed to do so. The rulebooks recommended their use, companies sold them, and nearly everyone I knew had at least a handful of minis they'd carry around in their dice bag, even though, like me, they almost never did anything with them. Owning miniatures was simply part of the culture of the hobby at the time. Like dice, they were part of the "uniform." You had to have them, if you wanted to be part of the "team." I don't think that's as common a feeling anymore, though I still see plenty of miniatures for sale in game stores. 

What are your experiences with miniatures? Do you own many and, more importantly, do you use them? I'd be very curious to know.

I'm a Terrible Player

Almost from the moment I discovered roleplaying games, I've primarily been a referee. To some degree, I was thrust into this role by necessity, since few of my friends were all that interested in sitting behind the screen themselves. Fortunately for them, I liked being the referee. I enjoyed making maps and creating adventure locales and thinking up new ways to challenge my players. Despite my perpetual stage fright – I still struggle with this before nearly every session I run – I also enjoy describing situations to my players, roleplaying NPCs, and thinking on my feet in response to their harebrained schemes. In short, refereeing is fun, which probably explains why I've got three different campaigns on the go at the present moment.

Of course, I've been a player, too. Right now, for instance, I'm playing in a dear friend's Traveller campaign set in the Crucis Margin sector and am really enjoying it. Nevertheless, there's no denying that, by most standards, I'm a terrible player. I don't say this lightly; this isn't studied self-effacement. I really do think I'm a pretty mediocre player, especially when I compare myself to the dozens of people whom I've refereed over the years – certainly when compared to the players of my House of Worms Empire of the Petal Throne campaign.

What do I mean when I say "terrible player?" Firstly, I mean that I rarely immerse myself in the world of any game I play. Instead, I retain varying degrees of detachment, sometimes to the point of treating my character as something akin to a token in a boardgame, which is to say, an abstract playing piece with little distinctiveness or personality. That might not seem like much of a sin, particularly if, like Gygax, you don't equate roleplaying with amateur thespianism. That's not quite what I mean here. Rather, I mean that I don't make much effort to play my character as something distinct from the rules he brings to bear on a session – abilities, skills, spells, gear, etc. He's not a fictional avatar but mostly a game construct.

Secondly, and perhaps more damningly, I get bored easily and don't pay attention to what's going on during a session when my character's not directly involved. To some extent, this is a consequence of my detachment. Since I view my characters mostly as vehicles for game mechanics, it's uncommon for them to engage in other activities that don't directly relate to them. Combat, for example, always catches my attention, as it directly involves all the characters present. On the other hand, lengthy discussions of in-game problems or details often leave me cold and I have to work hard to keep myself focused on the game. This second sin is an odd one. When I'm refereeing, I absolutely adore listening to the players spend long stretches of time discussing and debating new pieces of information their characters have just obtained or planning the strategy for their next endeavor. Indeed, those are among my favorite things about roleplaying. Perhaps I find them so appealing precisely because these are the kinds of in-game activities of which I don't seem to be capable.

I do think there's probably a connection between my long years participating in the hobby primarily as a referee and my terrible skills as a player. As a referee, I am constantly engaged in each and every session. As I mentioned above, I love roleplaying NPCs, describing details, responding to player queries, and so on. Even when I'm not directly involved in what's happening, I nevertheless have to pay attention in order to keep up with the action and determine what happens next. Likewise, after a session ends, I'm frequently thinking about the next session and what might happen during it. I can't tell how many times over the decades I've fallen asleep thinking about some aspect of a campaign I'm currently refereeing, pondering its possibilities.

Could it really be that, because a referee is such a large role, that having to take on the role of a "mere" player feels small and uninteresting? That seems the most obvious explanation, but I'm not sure if it's the right one. The difficulty in assessing this is compounded by the fact that, for all of this, I still enjoy playing. The aforementioned Traveller campaign is remarkable in its scope and imagination. I like the people with whom I'm playing and I look forward to each new session. Yet, for all of that, I still feel as if I'm not a very good player: I'm too distant and uninvolved most of the time and I worry it impacts others negatively.

Does anyone else feel this way? 

Retrospective: Raiders of the Lost Ark (Atari)

Though I've generally kept these Retrospective posts to looking back at roleplaying and boardgames that I thought worthy of discussion, I have occasionally turned the spotlight onto computer and video games as well. In the '80s, I never owned a "home computer," as we used to call them in those ancient days, but I did own the Atari Video Computer System (VCS), later dubbed the Atari 2600. I also had an enviable collection of game cartridges for it, two of which I think merit a post: Adventure, about which I've previously written, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. 

Released in 1982, Raiders of the Lost Ark was (obviously) a tie-in product for the action-adventure film of the same name released the year before. Historically, tie-in products like this tend to be mediocre at best, with most being little more than vehicles for making a quick buck by association with a popular book, TV show, or movie. By all rights, that's what one might reasonably expect of this game cartridge too – except that it's actually one of the more complex, imaginative, and enjoyably frustrating games Atari ever made for its first game console. 

It's that enjoyable frustration that's the main reason I still have such affection for the game. Strange though it might be for some to imagine, I actually enjoyed video and computer games whose difficulty – or at least perplexity – made me want to tear my hair out. Indeed, their difficulty was a big part of their appeal, because it suggested that, if I managed to beat them, I'd actually achieved something. It's similar to why, as kids, my friends and I enjoyed testing our wits against a Killer DM. Sure, it was tough and often downright unfair, but to win against such odds felt like an accomplishment and we cherished those moments way more than easy wins.

Raiders of the Lost Ark was not an easy win. Completing it successfully took a lot of thought and patience, not to mention above average hand-eye coordination, owing to its unusual control set-up and the finicky nature of said controls. In very broad strokes, the game recreated Indy's adventures in search of the Map Room that will lead him to the resting place of the fabled Lost Ark of the Covenant. The resting place of the Ark is randomly determined with each game reset, meaning that, should you fail, you can't necessarily carry over anything you've learned in your previous attempts to a new one. In addition, Indy requires the aid of certain items he can find hidden in various locations and these, too, are not always in the same location. 

This randomness is only one part of what made the game so frustrating to play. Another is that it required both joysticks to play. One was used in the expected way, allowing the player to control Indy's movement and actions on-screen. The other was used to control inventory. Unlike Adventure, which only allowed the player to possess a single item at a time, Raiders of the Lost Ark let you possess several, as if Indy had a backpack filled with gear. By moving a cursor among the items you possessed, the player could the one he wished Indy to use at any given time. This was very cool and quite innovative at the time, but it could also be demanding in play, especially if you had to quickly switch between items.

However, the main reason the game was so frustrating was the sparseness of its manual, which didn't tell the player much about how the goals of the game could be achieved. Instead, you were largely left to your own devices to figure out how all of the game's elements worked toward a successful conclusion. The manual includes descriptions of most of the locations and items found in the game, but not all of them. Likewise, it does include "helpful hints," but, again, these don't answer every question a player might have. "After all, what's an adventure game without surprises?" the manual asks. Consequently, even if you read the manual cover to cover, there are still very important aspects of play that you can only discover through play.

This is what made the game so enjoyably frustrating to me. To this day, more than forty years later, I can still recall the joy I felt when I first stumbled across an item not listed in the manual the possession of which was essential to finding the location of the Ark. Similarly, I remember when, in the midst of foolishly falling off a cliff to my doom – I wasn't quick enough in making use of the parachute in my inventory – I noticed something for the first time that I would later use to solve another mystery in the game. Neither of these discoveries were in the manual; I could only learn of them through trial and (much) error. 

By the standards of today, Raiders of the Lost Ark is unbelievably primitive. Heck, by the standards of games released just a year or two later, it's primitive. Yet, for all that, it remains one of my favorite video games of all time, because it challenged me just enough that I couldn't rack up an easy win but without so dispiriting me that I gave up completely. Not coincidentally, this is my ideal when it comes to dungeon design, too, so perhaps I was the perfect target audience for this game. This is a foundational game design for me and I suspect I've been chasing the high of enjoyable frustration I gave me ever since. 

Indy notices something as he falls to his pixelated doom

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Kirktá?

First, thank you to everyone who took the time to make comments or send me emails regarding yesterday's post about upcoming events in my House of Worms campaign. I've gotten a number of excellent suggestions and I now have a better handle on how I'll likely proceed, though I'd be happy to continue receiving more suggestions. After the Kólumejàlim, as the Choosing of the Emperors is known in Tsolyáni, has taken place, I'll write a post or two about it, because I am sure that, no matter how it turns out, it will be of interest to my readers. That likely won't occur until sometime this summer, as the campaign is currently focused on other matters at the moment and I'm not ready to shift gears quite yet.

Aside from my already stated reasons for wanting to adjudicate the Kólumejàlim in this way, there's also another: one of the player characters is secretly an heir to the Petal Throne. Years ago, when a new player joined the campaign, he asked if he could base his character on one from the original Tékumel campaign in Minneapolis. Named Kirktá, he was a priest NPC whom the characters in the Twin Cities campaign later discovered was one of the emperor's secret heirs, whose true identity was hidden, unknown to almost anyone, including himself. I had no objection to the new player basing his character on Kirktá, largely because I never expected it to amount to anything.

And it didn't. For many years, there was never a hint that Kirktá – my Kirktá  – was anything other than he appeared to be, namely, a young and naive priest of Durritlámish, the Black Angel of the Putrescent Hand. He served as protégé and amanuensis to Keléno, one of the four remaining original player characters of the campaign, without complaint. Indeed, Kirktá had something of a reputation as being incapable of making decisions for himself, deferring instead to the wisdom and experience of his master (and any other PC who cared to offer an opinion on what Kirktá ought to do). It's a fun dynamic and soon became one of the hallmarks of the campaign.

Then, a little more than a year ago, the characters reunited with an old antagonist of theirs, an Undying Wizard known as Getúkmetèk. Like a lot of Undying Wizards, Getúkmetèk existed outside of normal time. Consequently, when the characters encountered him, there was no telling exactly where the wizard was on his own personal timeline. On this occasion, Getúkmetèk was quite young, early in his own career and not yet an Undying Wizard. In fact, it became increasingly clear that it was due to their interactions with him early in his life (but late in that of the characters, relatively speaking – non-linear time is weird) that he would eventually become antagonistic toward them. 

When this younger Getúkmetèk met the characters, he greeted them pleasantly, since, from his perspective, he hadn't yet met any of them – or, at least, most of them. Somehow, he already knew Kirktá and addressed him differently than the others, using a formal Tsolyáni second person pronoun reserved only for the emperor, "you of supernal omnipotence," that is probably unknown to most characters, given its exceedingly uncommon usage. One of the characters, Nebússa, comes from a very high clan involved heavily in imperial service. He recognized the pronoun and quickly put two and two together, realizing for the first time in the campaign that Kirktá was likely a hidden heir to the Petal Throne. 

Initially, Nebússa kept this secret to himself, not even telling Kirktá. However, events eventually required that he reveal it, to the surprise and incredulity of his clan mates. There was a lot of debate about what the characters should do with this information, as well as the realization that, if Nebússa figured it out based on very limited information, there were probably others within Tsolyánu who also knew it and might seek to take advantage of it. That's partly why the characters elected to undertake a lengthy, months-long journey outside the Imperium: to keep Kirktá safe. However, once the Kólumejàlim is declared, events may overtake them. What happens next is anyone's guess, hence my desire to establish a means to handle the Choosing of the Emperors, just in case Kirktá decides to participate ...

Polyhedron: Issue #25

Issue #25 of Polyhedron (September 1985) features eye-catching artwork by the Marvel Bullpen, depicting the Hulk and long-time foe, the Abomination, bursting through the cover. Both characters appear in the issue's Marvel Super Heroes article – a first for the newszine. At the time, I was quite pleased by this expansion of Polyhedron's coverage, because I was a big fan of MSH and was always on the look-out for new material (particularly write-ups of Marvel characters that hadn't yet appeared elsewhere).

Normally, "Notes from HQ" is filled with RPGA-related ephemera and thus doesn't command my attention for long. This time, though, part of it is of greater interest, specifically the call for Dungeon Masters to submit "a store, tavern, house, city block, NPC, street encounter, guild" for inclusion in a fantasy setting to be used by the RPGA as a "home base" and possible locale for adventures. Robert Asprin's Thieves' World is referenced as an inspiration and it's stated that Gary Gygax has agreed to allow this city to be placed in his World of Greyhawk setting. If any of this sounds familiar, that's because I suspect the project was eventually retooled for use with the Forgotten Realms, becoming Ravens Bluff, the Living City, an RPGA staple for years to come.

Jon Pickens offers up a second part of his "Unofficial Magic-User Spells" series, again looking to existing magic items as source of new spells (like the ring of spell turning and ring of x-ray vision). It's fine, if a bit unimaginative, though I cannot forgive the consistent misspelling of "absorption" as "absorbtion" throughout, especially when the magic item that inspired it, the rod of absorption, spells it correctly. The "RPGA Network Player and Judge Standings" is hardly worth mentioning, since it's little more than three pages' worth of names. Looking through them, I spotted the usual assortment of TSR employees and freelancers, along with a few others whose names I recognized from Dragon and elsewhere. I wonder if any readers of this blog had earned enough tournament XP to make it onto the list?

Part II of Frank Mentzer's AD&D adventure, Needle, also appears in this issue. Having found the titular needle – a magical obelisk – in Part I, the characters are now tasked with removing it for transport back to their homeland while dealing with hostile bullywugs and pirates. The adventure is quite fascinating, in that it's mostly a matter of resource management and logistics. The characters command a team of workers and mercenaries over the course of the several weeks needed to achieve their goal. How well they manage their resources, as well as how they respond to various threats, determine whether or not their mission is successful. I have no idea how it would be to play, the idea behind this scenario sounds compelling.

Michael Przytarski's "Fletcher's Corner" returns, talking about high-level adventures this time. That's a topic of great interest to me, since there aren't a lot of good examples of them in my opinion and I'd love to read some good advice on how to create my own. Sadly, there's not much meat to this article. It's mostly brief nuggets ("Try not to be bring the gods into it") intended to keep things somewhat grounded and avoiding boredom ("Three red dragons are fun, but they can become tiresome"). Perhaps the article's brevity (one page) prevents Przytarski from getting into the weeds of this topic, I don't know. Regardless, I didn't find what I was looking for here, which is a shame. My quest continues.

"Rampage" by Roger E. Moore is a straightforward Marvel Super Heroes scenario, in which four different super-strong characters – the Hulk, Hercules, the Abomination, and Titania – in the streets of New York. It's not deep, but it's fun. I also appreciate the way that Moore presents different Karma award charts for each character as a way to highlight their differences. That's something I always liked about Marvel Super Heroes and that's harder to implement in a game where the characters are all original creations of the players rather than established personalities. 

With apologies to Rembert N. Parker, I'm going to pass over his "How to Succeed at Judging an RPGA Network Event," because it's of minimal interest to me. "Dispel Confusion" consists of two full pages of AD&D questions, with no other RPGs represented. By and large, the questions this issue concern ambiguities in the rules and, as such, aren't that interesting to discuss here. The most notable question concerned psionics and its use, with the answer noting that psionics will be revised "in the future." Rounding out the issue is a positive review of Paranoia, an old fave of mine, though it's been years since I've attempted to play it. Maybe I should change that.

As always, Polyhedron is so much more of a mixed bag than is Dragon and it's frustrating. Most issues contain good material, but very few are consistently good. That probably explains why I eventually stopped reading it, while I continued with Dragon well into the 1990s. I suspect this is because Polyhedron always had a much more "amateur" quality, which limited both its audience and its submissions. It's a real pity.

Looking for Ideas

This concerns a topic about which I've written before, but which is likely to become more important in my ongoing House of Worms Empire of the Petal Throne campaign, namely, the death of the emperor of Tsolyánu and the choosing of his successor. There is no primogeniture in Tsolyánu. Instead, all the children of the emperor, who are given "the Gold" (a specially engraved circular plaque) upon their births, are eligible to compete for the right to ascend the Petal Throne as his successor. To provide some additional context, here's what the Tékumel Source Book has to say about this competition:

As soon as an old monarch has died and the great sarcophagus sealed away in the black vaults below Avanthár all of those who possess the Gold (plus any remaining undeclared heirs or heiresses who must be hurriedly produced by their patrons) are summoned to Béy Sü for the Choosing of the Emperors. There they undergo a traditional roster of tests which cover every facet of character thought by the Tsolyáni to be needful for a ruler: bravery, endurance, cunning, physical prowess, judgment, knowledge of history and the arts, competence in "magic," and a dozen other fields. A candidate has the right to name champions to represent him or her in any three of these categories but must compete in person in all the others. Each event is carefully judged, and the strongest contenders are taken at last within the sacred precincts of the Temple of Hná'lla where the Holy Adepts of all the temples and the High Princeps of the Omnipotent Azure Legion make the final selection according to ancient and secret ritual methods. The winner is then declared and conveyed to Avanthár. The losers are given over to the Temple of Karakán for sacrifice.

I've decided that I'd like to play out the Choosing of the Emperors in in my campaign, with each of my eight players taking the role of one of the candidates for the throne. The problem I am having – and the reason why I'm turning to my readers for ideas – is that there is very little information about the competition in any published Tékumel materials. The section I've quoted above is close to all we know about the competition and its trials and, as you can see, it's quite vague.

In the original Space Gamer article linked to at the start of this post, there is a lengthy description of how one referee (Robert L. Large, Jr.) handled the Choosing in his campaign. He made use of only three tests – a series of arena battles, a series of magical duels, and a puzzle chamber. The account is very interesting, because Large made use of other games, like FGU's Gladiator, TSR's War of Wizards, as adjuncts to Empire of the Petal Throne itself. I'm very open to this sort of approach, but the bigger issue for me is: what sorts of contests are employed? 

The Tékumel Source Book references "a traditional roster of tests" that includes more than a dozen areas of competence, not merely the three that Large used for his EPT campaign back in 1976. I suppose it could be argued that he was simplifying the Choosing of the Emperors for the sake of play. Certainly, I don't want the process of choosing a new emperor in my campaign to take up months of weekly play, especially if the roster of candidates is large. But what to do? What's the best – and most fun – way to pit the various heirs against one another so that the end result is unpredictable, even by me?

One of my players long ago suggested that the Choosing of the Emperors was probably akin to a competitive dungeoncrawl. This is an intriguing notion, if only because one of the features of Tékumel as a setting is that most cities have an "underworld" beneath it, representing the ruins of earlier settlements upon which they've been built. Avanthár, the ancient citadel of the emperors, is very ancient place, with all manner of passages and tunnels and ancient technology hidden beneath it, so I can easily imagine trials being conducted in such an environment. When discussing this with my players at our last session, we half-joked that a trap and puzzle filled maze like The Tomb of Horrors would be ideal for this purpose, if most of us weren't already intimately familiar with it.

So, that's where things stand at the moment. I very much want to play out the Choosing of the Emperors, but I have only a few ideas of how best to simulate them. I'd like the experience to be memorable and fun, as well as unique, but I must confess to having few ideas how best to achieve this without going to the trouble of creating an entirely new game for this purpose. Ideally, I'd be able to use Empire of the Petal Throne as the foundation, statting up all the heirs as characters and then subjecting them all to various trials. However, I'm not sure that's necessarily the best approach, which is why I'd love to hear the thoughts of others. If you have any ideas, thoughts, or suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

Thanks in advance!

50 years in the Dungeon

A very interesting interview with David "Zeb" Cook about his time at TSR Hobbies, in which he talks about the D&D Expert Set, Oriental Adventures, and Second Edition, among other topics. 

Landfall!

Never having been a huge reader of comics, I keep forgetting that, during the late '80s and early 1990s, DC Comics published a number of titles based (mostly) on Dungeons & Dragons settings. One of them was set in Krynn, the world of Dragonlance. From what I understand, the Dragonlance comics were prequels that took place before the events of the first novel, Dragons of Autumn Twilight, and consequently introduced a number of original characters to serve as its protagonists alongside more familiar names.

Since I haven't had the chance to read these comics, I don't have much more to say about them specifically. However, I am fascinated to discover that, starting with issue #22 (August 1990), the series had a fair number of issues whose stories took place on the continent of Taladas, the setting of the Time of the Dragon boxed set for which I retain a fondness. I suppose this makes sense. If the comic writers had to keep away from the more familiar War of the Lance storyline, looking to a new and mostly undeveloped part of the larger Dragonlance world is a good choice. 

Did anyone read these or any of the other TSR comics published by DC? Were any of them any good?

Scary Enough

I'm a big fan of the horror genre, whether books, movies, or roleplaying games. As a kid growing up in the 1970s, horror and the occult were in the air, so it was difficult not be exposed to it. Consequently, when I saw the first advertisements for Call of Cthulhu in 1981, I knew I had to get a copy. CoC quickly became one of my favorite games, joining Dungeons & Dragons and Traveller to form the Holy Trinity of RPGs from my youth. In the years since, I haven't played Call of Cthulhu as much as I've used to, but I still regard it very highly and hope one day to have the chance to play it again.

One of the interesting things about horror RPGs is that almost no one who plays them is ever really frightened. Someone might play his character as if he were frightened, but I don't think I've ever seen anything in a game genuinely scare a player, at least not deliberately. That never really bothered me, because, let's face it, it's not that easy to induce fear while sitting around a table in a well-lit room with a bunch of your friends. Plus, would it even be fun to play a game where you're routinely frightened in the way you might be watching a movie or reading a book? 

Even so, there's always been part of me that, as a referee, has wondered about the question of why we play horror RPGs and what we hope to get out of them. That's why I was so taken with a section in the Warden's Operations Manual for the new edition of the sci-fi horror game Mothership that addresses this very issue:

Actually scaring your players, like they might get scared watching a horror film or playing a video game is an incredibly rare thing. It is not a measure of a successful game night. Most of the time, your players simply want to have fun in a horror setting. This means they want to play characters who feel afraid, while they the players sit back eating chips and rolling dice. Sometimes you have players who love to be scared and really get into it. If that's the case, enjoy it! But don't feel bad if it doesn't happen every week. Instead focus on keeping the tension escalating.

I think this is quite close to the truth of it, at least as I've experienced the play of horror RPGs over the years. The horror present in your typical Call of Cthulhu scenario, for example, is largely intellectual rather than emotional. Very few players will ever feel frightened or disgusted by events in the game, even if they understand that their characters, being ordinary people, would probably feel those things within the context of the game world. This makes for a better roleplaying experience in at least two respects. First, it doesn't set the bar so high for the referee that he'll never achieve "success." Second, it helps maintain a little distance between the players and the often horrific things with which their characters must deal.

That said, even highly intellectualized fear, horror, and revulsion are all useful tools for the referee in presenting an engaging setting and/or scenario. After all, fantasy can be frightening and confronting frightening things in a fictional context can be very appealing to a lot of people, especially those among us who are normally not very brave. In that respect, it's not much different than the more general experience of fictional danger found in many common RPG activities, like combat or exploration. It's fun for our characters to do or to endure things that we'd never be able to or indeed want to, isn't it? 

Fake Nerd Holidays

Apparently, because today is May 1 – May Day in many European countries – someone has decided that it's also the made-up "holiday" of Traveller Day, for obvious reasons. 

I must tell you: I don't like this. I absolutely loathe Star Wars Day and its nonsensical date (May 4). I feel similarly about Alien Day (April 26), which, like Traveller Day, I had never even heard of until this year. Much like forced humor, forced holidays grate on my nerves, perhaps because they're usually created by companies looking for new ways to squeeze money out of one of their customers rather than the holidays being organic bottom-up expressions of respect and affection. 

I don't know who came up with Traveller Day or the intentions behind it. Maybe it really does represent something genuinely spontaneous and fan-driven. If so, then why not choose a more suitable date for commemoration, like the date of its original publication? Wouldn't that make more sense? May 1 feels like a marketing stunt rather than something real, but what do I know?

Bah, humbug.

Which Is It?

The first RPG I ever owned was the 1977 Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set, whose cover looked like this:

If you look in the bottom righthand corner, you'll see that it calls itself "the original adult fantasy role-playing game." Take note of the italicized word and its spelling, particularly its use of a hyphen between "role" and "playing." 

Now, here's the cover of the 1981 Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set:

If you look at its bottom righthand corner, you'll see that the hyphen has disappeared – "role playing" is presented as two separate words. The 1984 D&D Basic Set restores the hyphen, which brings it in line with the general usage of the AD&D hardcover volumes. However, TSR was quite inconsistent on this point over the years. If you look at the covers of its RPGs throughout the '70s and '80s, you'll see both "role-playing" and "role playing." For example, Gamma World calls itself a "role-playing game," while Star Frontiers is a "role playing game." So, which is it?

Looking over my collection of games, at least those from before 1990, both usages seem quite commonplace, though I detect a slight preference for the hyphenated form. No publisher is completely consistent on this point, though there are some (like GDW) that do a better job at it than others. Sometime in the mid-1980s, a third variant – roleplaying, as a compound word – starts to appear. The earliest game I own that makes use of it is Pendragon (1985), but it's possible I've missed an even earlier instance of this. Nowadays, I see "roleplaying" quite a lot, though the hyphenated version persists.

Do you have a preference? Looking at my own writing, I see that I tend to favor the compound word over the two earlier versions. I'm not quite sure why that is. I wonder if "roleplaying" arose for typographical or graphic design reasons or something equally mundane. Given the general lack of consistency even within a single publisher's products, I doubt that there was a conscious effort to move from one form to another. More than likely, the shift is for other, less obvious reasons. Still, I find myself wondering about the shift and my own preference for one form over the others. I'd be very curious to hear the thoughts of readers on the matter.

Now Under Construction

Because I did a Retrospective post on Kara-Tur: The Eastern Realms last week, I was reminded of how excited I was by the announcement that the long-awaited Asian expansion to AD&D, Oriental Adventures. OA was a long percolating project about which Gary Gygax had talked for years beforehand, in part because he felt the monk class didn't belong in "standard" AD&D, given its inspiration in the legends of the Far East. Despite this, there didn't seem to be any evidence that such a project was likely to happen anytime soon and I largely put it out of mind.

Then, without warning, in issue #102 of Dragon (October 1985), this advertisement appeared:

Now, we'd finally get official game rules for samurai and ninja and martial arts and everything else we fans of Kurosawa and Kung Fu Theatre had long thought should be brought into AD&D. To say that Oriental Adventures was greatly anticipated, at least among my friends and myself, is something of an understatement and this ad, featuring a washed out, black and white version of Jeff Easley's cover painting, is a big part of the reason why. Though my feelings about OA are now a bit more mixed, I still have many fond memories of it – and the long October I spent waiting for November 1985 to roll around so that I could finally lay my hands on it.

Retrospective: The Book of Wondrous Inventions

I have a complicated relationship with humor in roleplaying games. I unreservedly celebrate games like Paranoia and Toon that are explicitly humorous in tone and content, having had a lot of fun with them in the past. Likewise, I know very well that even the most "serious" RPG campaigns are likely to include moments of unexpected levity and goofiness and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. After all, even Shakespeare included moments of comic relief in his most harrowing tragedies.

At the same time, I wince at most puns and have a particular dislike of forced attempts humor in roleplaying games. Over the years, I've seen enough well-meaning but ultimately disastrous attempts to "lighten the mood" that my natural inclination is to be suspicious of humor in RPGs. That's not to say I hate it unreservedly, only that I recognize how easy it is for this sort of thing to go badly wrong.

With all that in mind, I hope I can be forgiven for having very mixed feelings about The Book of Wondrous Inventions. Compiled by Bruce Heard from nearly fifty contributions by a wide variety of authors (more on that in a bit) and published in 1987, The Book of Wondrous Inventions is clearly intended to be a companion volume to The Book of Marvelous Magic, right down to its title. But whereas the content of The Book of Marvelous Magic was largely serious in tone – or at least no less serious than the standard lists of (A)D&D magic items – this new book was intentionally written with humor in mind. In his introduction, Bruce Heard writes the following:

These inventions should be viewed with humor. They provide fun and an uncommon change of pace whenever they appear in the game.

There's nothing inherently wrong with this approach, especially if one is sparing in their use within a given campaign. Almost since its inception, D&D has included its fair share of magic items that could well be viewed as silly. The apparatus of Kwalish, anyone? The difference here, I think, is that previous goofy magic items were spice, those included here are the main course – or, at least, they give the impression of being so, because there are so many of them under a single cover. That's not really their fault, but I can't deny that it bugged me a bit in the past and still bugs me a bit even today.

The magic items detailed in this book are all unique and highly idiosyncratic, the products of singular individuals intent on creating something truly unusual. There's Aldryk's Fire Quencher (a magical water sprinkler), Brandon's Bard-in-a-Box (a portable music system), Kruze's Magnificent Missile (self-explanatory), Volospin's Dragonfly of Doom (a magical attack helicopter for hunting dragons), and so on. As you can see, nearly all of the items described reproduce the effects of a post-medieval – and likely modern-day or futuristic – technological device within the idiom of vanilla fantasy. There's not much cleverness on display here. Instead, the entries are all "What would a magical vacuum cleaner be like?" or "Wouldn't a magical pinball machine be funny?" 

The combination of the fundamentally technological framing of these items and their banality results in a very sub-par book, even given Heard's stated intention that they "provide fun" and a "change of pace." It's particularly baffling, because many of the entries are written by talented and imaginative people, like Ed Greenwood, Jeff Grubb, and even Sandy Petersen. I can only assume that they were all specifically instructed to come up with stuff that would feel appropriate in Wile E. Coyote's Acme Catalog – or perhaps from the minds of Dragonlance's tinker gnomes. The end result is not, in my opinion, either useful as a source of ideas for an ongoing D&D campaign or even of mirth. It's dull, predictable, and, above all, forced, which is a great shame, because I admire many of the book's contributors.

Sadly, the book is done no favors by its accompanying illustrations. Much as I adore the work of Jim Holloway, one of the few artists who really understood the humor inherent in typical RPG situations, his artwork here is simply so goofy that it makes it impossible to imagine using any of its inventions with a straight face. Maybe that's the point. Maybe you're not supposed to be able to do so. Maybe I'm just a killjoy lacking in a funny bone. Ultimately, that's not for me to judge. I can only say that, when I bought this back in 1987, I instantly regretted and have never used it, except as a cautionary tale of what happens when you try to inject "humor" into a campaign rather than allowing it to arise organically through play. 

Oh, the pain ... the pain!

Polyhedron: Issue #24

Issue #24 of Polyhedron (July 1985), with its cover illustration by Roger Raupp, is another one I remember very clearly from my youth – and the cover is a big part of the reason why. When I first saw this odd collection of characters, I honestly had no idea what I was looking at. Were they supposed to be orcs or half-orcs or something else entirely? As I turned out, my guess wasn't far from the truth, but that initial perplexity compelled me to read the issue with great interest. Nearly forty years later, I still remember it.

"Notes from HQ" can be quickly dispensed with, since most of it concerns RPGA matters of little lasting interest. The main thing worth discussing is a note indicating that, in response to pleas from the editor in previous issues, there have been a number of submissions from RPGA members. Indeed, Penny Petticord states that "we have not rejected a single article." She quickly adds, though, that submissions are still very few in number and that "only a fraction of the so-called active membership has contributed." At the time there were supposedly "over 8000" RPGA members worldwide, so I can sympathize with Petticord's lament about the small number of submissions. 

"Letters" is quite interesting this issue. First, there's a letter in which a reader complains about the heavy D&D focus of Polyhedron, as well as the lack of support for Marvel Super Heroes. In response to the first part, the editors explain that Polyhedron can only publish those articles that are submitted to it, so, if anyone wants to see more non-D&D content, they'll need to make it happen themselves. As I think I said before, I wish I'd paid more attention to this sort of stuff when I was a subscriber, because I probably would have had better luck getting published in Polyhedron than I ever did in Dragon. In answer to the second part, the editors point out that, because MSH is a licensed game, Marvel itself must review and approve everything it publishes for the game. This makes it harder for any writer, especially those outside the TSR staff, to produce new articles to support it. Also among the letters published are a couple discussing the bad publicity Dungeons & Dragons is getting in their area, a consequence of the ongoing Satanic Panic. If I hadn't lived through those times, I'd hardly believed such things happened!

"Secrets of Success" by Steve Null offers tips on playing in RPGA tournaments. Never having participated in RPGA events, I must say I only briefly skimmed this article and saw nothing worthy of comment here. "Unofficial New Magic-User Spells" by Jon Pickens continues what he began in issue #22. The selection of new spells continues to focus replicating the effects of AD&D magic items, which is fine, but I'd have liked a little more variety myself. More notable, I feel, is that, like its predecessor, it includes the word "unofficial" in its title – a reminder that nothing that appears in Polyhedron carries the official TSR seal of approval. 

Part I of Frank Mentzer's AD&D adventure, "Needle," appears in this issue. Designed for characters of levels 8–10, this is another tournament adventure offered for the delectation of readers of Polyhedron, like most of the adventures published in its pages previously. The adventure concerns an expedition to locate and examine a powerful magic item – the titular Needle – that is found in a ruined city located in a far-off land. The characters are all members of an adventuring guild called SMART, which stands for Syndicate of Master Adventurers for the Recovery of Treasure. All the pregenerated characters have what I assume (hope?) are merely nicknames, like Slim, Smiley, Blondy, and Blaze. To be honest, I found this nomenclature detracted from my enjoyment of scenario, which is otherwise decent, filled with lots of challenges and puzzles. Maybe it's just me, but I prefer a slightly more serious tone when it comes to things like names.

Errol Farstad's "How Reviews are Done" is an overview of how RPGs and RPG products will be reviewed in Polyhedron, since such reviews are a new future in the newszine. All games are given a Difficulty rating from 1 to 4, with 1 being the easiest to learn for a newcomer and 4 being the hardest. Then, the product is rated on a scale of 1 to 10 in three other categories: Packaging, Rules and Explanations, and Miscellaneous. Taken together, these four ratings contribute to its Overall score, rated from 0 to 4 Stars. With the explanations out of the way, Farstad reviews Star Trek the Role Playing Game, to which he gives an overall rating of 3 Stars out of a possible 4. He had some minor (and frankly nitpicky) complaints about the game, which did not detract from his otherwise very positive opinion of it. Being a big fan of the old FASA game, I could not disagree with his assessment.

"The Grond Family & Friends" by Roger E. Moore is the first installment in a new series called "The New Rogues Gallery." Like the book after which its named, this series is intended to present write-ups and illustrations of characters from people's home campaigns – basically "Let me tell you about my character(s)" in written form. The eponymous John Grond is a half-ogre and it's his friends and family whom Roger Raupp depicted on the cover of this issue. Half-ogres were briefly described as a possible player character race by Gary Gygax in issue #29 of Dragon (September 1979). Moore apparently liked the idea enough to adopt and adapt for his own use. The article presents six characters, ranging from Grond himself (a 16th-level fighter) to his wife (a 4th-level half-ogre cleric) and followers, like Boron the Moron, a full ogre of limited intelligence.

"Fletcher's Corner" by Michael Przytarski – and people say my name is hard to spell – is the start of a new column devoted to "solving the everyday problems faced by anyone who judges role playing games." In short, it's another referee's advice column. Consequently, I expect it'll be filled with lots of good insights and advice that will be genuinely useful to someone who's sitting behind the screen for the first time but rather dull to the veterans among us. That's OK: there are always newcomers in need of advice and that's good for the hobby. For his inaugural column, Przytarski takes up the topic of introducing new characters (and, by extension, new players) to a campaign. It's a good topic and his advice is solid, though nothing I haven't heard before (or come to understand through years of play). It'll be interesting to see what he tackles next and whether I find it useful.

Concluding the issue is "Dispel Confusion," with answers to questions about D&D, AD&D, and Marvel Super Heroes. Sadly, none of the questions piqued my interest, because they were all very banal. Most pertained to discrepancies between two sections of the rules or details that had been inadvertently left out of the text – in short, the kinds of rules questions about which you can't say very much else. Personally, I've always enjoyed questions that afford the responder to pontificate a little about a philosophy of play or game design, but that's just me. Maybe next issue!

REVIEW: How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox

There were two great obsessions at the dawn of the Old School Renaissance: megadungeons and sandboxes. Each was a distinctive element of many of the foundational roleplaying game campaigns of the 1970s, like Blackmoor, Greyhawk, and Tékumel. Their rediscovery and promotion are among the lasting impacts of the OSR – so much so that both massive dungeons and open-ended hexcrawls are now permanent fixtures of the even wider RPG scene. 

Of the two, I'd say that megadungeons are probably the better understood and more commonly used, thanks in no small part to the many examples of them now available in print. Furthermore, a megadungeon is, in many ways, just a scaled-up version of a dungeon and almost everyone who's ever played a fantasy RPG, whether tabletop or electronic, knows what a dungeon is like and how it's constructed. However, sandboxes are, in my experience, both less common and less well understood. There are no doubt many reasons for this, but a big one, I think, is they require more preparation beforehand by the referee and preparation of a less formulaic sort than what's employed when designing a dungeon, regardless of its size.

Fortunately for those of us who enjoy fantasy sandboxes – my ongoing House of Worms campaign, for example, is something of a sandbox – there are resources out there to aid in their creation. The very best of them has long been Rob Conley's twenty-four part series on "How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox," whose first post appeared in the far-off time of September 2009. It's a terrific collection of blog posts, filled with good ideas and wisdom drawn from years of refereeing sandbox campaigns. I long ago bookmarked many of the posts and refer to them often in my own work, such as designing the Eshkom District for Secrets of sha-Arthan. If you've never read these posts before, I highly recommend you do so.

An equally good – maybe better – option would be to purchase How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox, 180-page compilation of Conley's blog posts, rewritten and expanded with examples, maps, and artwork, available in PDF, softcover, or hardcover formats. In the book's introduction, Conley provides both a nice overview of what a sandbox campaign is and his own reasons for enjoying them:

One of my favorite things to do with Tabletop RPGs is to create interesting places with interesting situations and then let the players trash the setting in pursuit of adventure.

That certainly encapsulates much of the fun my players and I have had with my House of Worms campaign. He goes on:

My focus is not to create any type of narrative. Rather, I focus on helping my players experience living their characters' lives while adventuring. It's called a sandbox campaign because like in life, the players are free to do anything their characters can do within the campaign setting.

This wide-open world with unlimited choices can be very challenging as a Game Master/Referee. The key to dealing with this challenge is organization. A systematic approach is needed to break down the enormous task of dealing with an entire world. Organized into bite-size chunks that one can do in the time they have for a hobby.

Once again, I think Conley has done a fine job here of distilling the essence and unique pleasures of a sandbox campaign, while also recognizing that creating and maintaining such a campaign is not always easy, hence the need for a guide such as this one. 

With that out of the way, he first describes and then elaborates upon thirty-three distinct steps in the process of designing a fantasy sandbox, from creating the map to placing settlements and lairs to choosing a "home base" for a new campaign. It's all presented clearly and methodically, so that it's easy for even a neophyte to follow. Best of all, Conley includes lots of examples throughout, drawn from his own experience of making fantasy sandboxes. Indeed, I'd go so far as to say that these examples are among my favorite parts of How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox. They not only serve as illustrations of design principles, but they also give some insight into Conley's own gaming past, which I found delightful and inspiring.

Throughout the text, the Isle of Pyade serves as the main example of how to implement the thirty-three steps to creating a fantasy sandbox setting. I found this very useful, because it's eminently practical and concrete rather than merely theoretical. If you follow the steps through, one by one, you'll see Pyade grow out of a blank hex map into a fully-fleshed out and complete location. Whether you're a novice or an old hand at this sort of thing, you'll learn a lot from the example of Pyade.

By the conclusion of How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox, the Isle of Pyade is now ready to use. However, many of its details – maps, NPCs, encounter tables, etc. – are scattered across its 180 pages, making it less suitable for use as a reference. Should you wish to make use of Pyade yourself, a better option might be the separate The Isle of Pyade book (available in electronic, softcover, and hardcover format), which takes all the relevant details and consolidates them in one place for greater coherence and ease of use. There's also some additional content in the form of artwork and color reproductions of the original maps Conley made in the late 1980s. If you're fan of RPG "archeology" as I am, this only adds to the value of The Isle of Pyade.

How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox is a very good book, one I am very happy to own and one I am certain I'll refer to and make use of in the years to come. In addition to all the thoughtful insights and clear instructions Conley provides, he "shows his work," which is to say, he lays bare how he works and why, right down to including very useful appendices of resources, hexmapping guidelines, travel and encounter rules, and information about the process behind creating Blackmarsh, his earlier published sandbox setting. Aside from some minor quibbles about editing, I have only praise to offer about this book. If you have even the slightest interest in creating and refereeing a sandbox campaign, consider picking up a copy. You won't regret it.