Friday, November 28, 2025
Dolmenwood Launch Party
Tonight at 8pm EST, I'll be joining Gavin Norman on the Exalted Funeral Youtube channel for the Dolmenwood launch party, along with other guests. If you're interested in Dolmenwood and have some time to spare, come and join us.
The Threefold Faith of the Living Balance
Over at Grognardia Games Direct, I've indulged my enthusiasm for worldbuilding by presenting an overview of the beliefs and religious practices of the Empire of Inba Iro. This is pure setting creation without any direct game mechanical application for Secrets of sha-Arthan, but I enjoy this kind of thing and thought some of my readers might too.
Thursday, November 27, 2025
Mapping the Blogosphere
Although I was already following this project, yesterday a number of friends, readers, and patrons pointed out its latest development, which is really quite fascinating. The blogger Elmcat put in a lot of effort to map out the tabletop RPG blog scene in the form of a graph that shows "nodes" and "edges" – the web of connections (in the form of links) between blogs and their posts. The resulting map, shown above, is very impressive and genuinely interesting for the way it shows the distinct ecosystems that exist within the larger blogosphere, as well as the relative influence a blog has through its posts and links in and out.
The image above is a combined map, depicting the RPG blogosphere from 2003, when the first gaming blog appeared, to the present day. Consequently, it's not representative of our present moment, which looks like this:
As you can see, the 2025 map is a lot less cluttered, owing to the fact that there a lot fewer active blogs and blogs, in general, are not nearly as widely read as they were prior to the rise of social media. Even so, there are still quite a large number of blogs out there and, though their influence is waning, they continue to generate discussions (and arguments) within that portion of the RPG hobby that reads them.
Elmcat's map is an amazing piece of work. If you go to it, you can sort it by year, from 2003 to 2025, and zoom in to view it more closely. This enables you to see the name of each node, which is to say, each blog and its connections to other blogs. I find that feature the most remarkable thing about the map, since it visually represents the distinct "scenes" within the hobby and how closely (or not) they are to one another.
Likewise, the relative influence of each node is apparent by its size and color, with influential blogs being bigger and darker in color. In case you're wondering, the big orangish-red node in both of the above maps is Grognardia. Here's a zoomed in version of the first map, the one that covers all years between 2003 and 2025
Aside from the gratification of knowing that, despite it all, this blog retains a place of prominence within its corner of the RPG blogosphere, it's great to see the names of so many of the great OSR blogs of yore, many of which are now defunct.
Zooming in on Grognardia's solar system in the 2025 version of the map is interesting, too, but for a completely different reason – so many of today's most prominent blogs are unfamiliar to me. Mind you, I don't read as widely online as I used to, tending mainly to my own little garden, but, even so, seeing what the big and influential blogs are nowadays was genuinely eye-opening. It's a reminder that I probably need to devote more time to reading and interacting with the wider hobby again, something I haven't really attempted since the First Age of Grognardia. I suspect it might do me some good.
In any case, I highly recommend you take a peek at Elmcat's blog post, which is a stunning piece of work. This is the kind of stuff we used to see more of in the past and I want to support and promote it when we see it again.
Wednesday, November 26, 2025
Retrospective: Lost Tomb of Martek
For that reason, I purchased Pharaoh as soon as I could a copy back in 1982 and still consider module I3 a pretty good adventure even today. Its immediate sequel, Oasis of the White Palm, is nowhere near as good, even if it does contain a number of memorable – and imaginative – elements. Lost Tomb of Martek, the final module in the series, carries forward many of the virtues and vices of its predecessors, while also magnifying them to such a degree that module I5 almost feels like it belongs to a different series entirely. It is grandiose, whimsical, and often overwrought, an adventure that stretches AD&D into forms it had not explored at the time.
Lost Tomb of Martek appeared near the end of D&D’s Golden Age, a period when TSR was openly experimenting with what its adventures could be. The company had not yet settled into the strongly narrative, almost novel-like structure that would crystallize in Dragonlance, but the trajectory was already visible. In this sense, Lost Tomb of Martek occupies a fascinating middle ground. It gestures toward the story-driven design that was soon to dominate TSR’s output, yet it avoids the worst excesses of that approach. Like the other installments in the “Desert of Desolation” trilogy, this one is still very much a transitional work.
Lost Tomb of Martek brings together the threads laid down in Pharaoh and Oasis of the White Palm, both of which seeded the legend of Martek, the wizard who foresaw the release of a powerful efreeti and prepared the means for its defeat. With the three Star Gems already in hand, the characters must cross the Skysea, an expanse of fused glass requiring a cloudskate, to reach Martek’s tomb and his Sphere of Power. Once they arrive, however, the adventure’s focus shifts unevenly. The first portion features the quarrelsome descendants of trapped paladins and thieves, a tonal misstep at odds with the overall self-seriousness of the module. Worse still, the scenario introduces three NPC thieves who can steal the Star Gems and force the party into a prolonged (and tedious) chase.
The adventure’s structural weaknesses become most evident once the adventure segues into a scavenger hunt across three disparate magical locales. Each site is imaginative, but only the Mobius Tower translates that imagination into compelling play. The other two are rich in concept yet mechanically thin, offering little beyond random encounters or single-solution puzzles. The result is an adventure overflowing with inventive imagery but frustratingly light on satisfying gameplay, especially when measured against the modules that preceded it. Even the polished presentation, including Martek’s climactic resurrection and the excellent maps and art, cannot fully mask an ambition that consistently outstrips its execution.
That same ambition is also responsible for many of the module’s deeper flaws. The adventure is so tightly scripted that player action routinely suffers. Characters are expected to follow a predetermined sequence of events, activating artifacts and triggering scenes exactly on cue. Inevitably, the players become spectators to a story already decided rather than adventurers shaping their own course. Even the most imaginative settings lose some of their wonder when the only viable path forward is the one Hickman has laid out in advance.
Yet, for all these shortcomings, Lost Tomb of Martek remains strangely compelling. It stands as an artifact of a transitional moment in RPG design, just before a more rigid orthodoxy narrowed expectations about what a published module should be. Its flaws are the flaws of exuberance, not cynicism. Hickman’s heavy-handed guidance stems from a genuine desire to present something like a fantasy epic in RPG form. However flawed the execution, his sincerity is unmistakable.
Perhaps age has softened me, but I cannot bring myself to dislike the module. I would not choose to run it today, yet it contains ideas worth salvaging. Its locations, artifacts, and encounters could all reward a referee willing to reshape them into a more open-ended framework. Even the plot, for all its railroading, could be retooled into a looser, more player-driven experience with modest effort. One could, of course, invent entirely new material instead but, in the interest of being constructive, I think Lost Tomb of Martek offers just enough to make it worth the effort.
Tuesday, November 25, 2025
The Die Is Cast
So, starting next week, we'll be playing one of the oldest RPGs and the first science fiction one ever published. It's also a game I've never refereed before, though I did play in a MA campaign some years ago, so this will be a learning experience for me too. That said, I've thought a lot about the game over the years and have a number of ideas to draw upon. Whether they'll survive contact with the players only time will tell, but I'm keen to see how this unfolds.
Like OD&D and Empire of the Petal Throne, Metamorphosis Alpha is mechanically somewhat sparse, with lots of lacunae and inconsistencies, as we discovered yesterday while trying to generate characters. That's fine. Part of my enjoyment of playing older games is figuring out how to make its unclear and often incomplete rules work in a way that make sense for our campaign. I rather expect that, after a few sessions, our version of MA will develop its own set of house rules and rules interpretations, as all good campaigns do. That's as it should be in my opinion.
Right now, my only worry, if that's the word, about this choice of game is whether Metamorphosis Alpha is capable of sustaining a long campaign. One of the players asked me how long I intended to run MA and I answered, "As long as I can – like all my campaigns." Barrett's Raiders lasted just shy of four years. The Riphaeus Sector Traveller campaign before it lasted slightly less long. And, of course, House of Worms lasted more than a decade. In each case, I didn't expect the campaign would last as long as it did, but I hoped they'd continue indefinitely. That's my preference when it comes to roleplaying, because I feel that, in general, these games are best enjoyed as long form entertainment.
I mentioned this to my players yesterday and they were unconcerned. If Metamorphosis Alpha doesn't last more than a few months, that's OK. It'll be a nice palate cleanser after Barrett's Raiders and we can always take up a different game later. They have no expectations that we'll still be playing this a year from now, let alone five or ten years from now. They're just happy to be roleplaying with friends each week, which I think is a wise perspective. Still, after the phenomenal longevity of House of Worms, I must confess there's a part of me that wonders whether any campaign I do afterwards will ever measure up. That, as my players reminded me, isn't the way to view this, but I do nonetheless.
In any case, I'm now about to embark on yet another new campaign and I can't help but wonder if it will take root and flourish or not. Regardless, I'll write about it periodically here, starting next week with a discussion of its first session. Until then!
REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "The Making of a Milieu"
Of all the articles Collins wrote, the one that most affected me was "The Making of a Milieu," which appeared in issue #93 (January 1985). Its subtitle was "How to start a world and keep it turning." The article is basically a lengthy discussion of how to build not just a campaign setting but a campaign itself, which is to say, how to kick things off in such a way as to ensure that play continues for months or years afterward. Nowadays, a lot of what Collins wrote might be considered old hat, but, back in 1985, it was nothing short of revelatory, at least to me.
Up until that point, I'd largely run my campaigns either in my beloved World of Greyhawk setting or else in some nebulous, vaguely defined setting. In neither case did I give much thought to "the Big Picture." And by "the Big Picture," I don't mean a plan or a script for the players to follow in their adventures. Rather, I mean only some notion of how all the various pieces of the setting interrelate and how they might be used to serve my purposes as a referee. Prior to reading this article, my campaigns were just random collections of "stuff that happened" somewhere and that was usually good enough.
By 1985, though, I started to think it wasn't good enough. I'd become so thoroughly immersed in fantasy literature, especially of the Interminable Series of Ponderous Tomes variety and I wanted my campaigns and settings to mirror that. Perhaps unsurprisingly, 1985 also marked the beginning of the period during which I actually played less and less. I went to a different high school than all my neighborhood friends and I became distracted by other things. But I was still as interested in D&D as ever and devoting my time to world building seemed an adequate substitute for actually playing the game.
Collins gave me lots of food for thought about how to build a setting, stuff that kept me thinking and creating for years to come. For example, he suggested creating several maps of the campaign area, each one depicting the area at a different point in history. In this way, names and settlements can be altered to reflect the rise and fall of empires, the migrations of people, and other such events. So I spent a lot of time at the library making photocopies of a blank map of my new, original campaign setting – the first I'd ever come up with – and then adding details to it, so that I eventually amassed a lot of information in pictorial form about how the setting evolved over the centuries. It was a fairly simple thing but quite effective and it gave me a lot of pleasure as a teenager.
These days, I'd never go to even the meager lengths Collins suggested in planning out a campaign or its setting. I'm much more of a seat-of-the-pants kind of guy; indeed, I embrace it as the best way to play the game. At the same time, I retain a great deal of fondness for this article, in large part because it broke me of certain other bad habits, namely my dependence on published material for ideas. As Collins so aptly put it at the conclusion of his article:
When I began playing the AD&D game six years ago, there were very few playing aids on the market of the type that are now so abundant. There was no WORLD OF GREYHAWK Fantasy Setting, no Hârn, and very few canned modules in print. Very nearly all of our adventuring had to come out of our own heads. And I still think that's fantasy gaming at its best. I now meet players, especially young ones, who think that, in order to play the AD&D game or some other such activity, they must invest megabucks in someone else's ideas. It shocks many of them when I suggest that it's more fun to make it up yourself.I was one of those young players about whom Collins speaks, at least to some degree, which is why I owe the man a debt of thanks. I may no longer build a campaign the way he suggests in this article. However, that I build my own at all is in large part a result of what he says in it.
Alas for them! No canned module, no playing aid, no set of rules, no list of NPCs can quite become your very own. As enjoyable and thought-provoking as all the published material may be, it is a poor substitute for creating your own campaign milieu, designing your own castles, and exercising your own brain. Creativity is what the game is about. It would be a shame if the success of fantasy gaming contributed to the stifling of creativity in its own enthusiastic adherents.
Monday, November 24, 2025
The Ensorcellment of January
Like The Shadow over August, this series will consist of daily discussions of the life, legacy, and influence of the Bard of Auburn over subsequent fantasy, science fiction, and horror, with special attention paid to what roleplaying games owe to him and his works. Naturally, there'll be Pulp Fantasy Library posts featuring Smith stories I've not yet covered on Grognardia, but I also plan posts on many other topics, with at least some of them consisting of original CAS-inspired game content.
Also like The Shadow over August, my plans for The Ensorcellment of January are not intended to be exhaustive, much less scholarly. They will follow my own interests and whims, shaped now and then by reader feedback. My aim is simple: to help the least well known of the Big Three of Weird Tales claim a larger share of the attention he justly deserves. I hope you’ll join me in January as we journey beneath Zothique’s dying sun, wander the haunted ruins of Averoigne, and trek across sorcerer-haunted realm of Hyperborea – all in celebration of Clark Ashton Smith and the strange, decadent brilliance of his imagination.
Pulp Fantasy Library: The Quest of Iranon
Though written in 1921, H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Quest of Iranon” did not see publication until nearly fifteen years later, when it appeared in the July/August 1935 issue of The Galleon, an amateur journal edited by Lloyd Arthur Eschbach. The Galleon was a general literary magazine rather than one devoted to fantasy or horror, but Eschbach admired Lovecraft’s work and solicited contributions from him. Two pieces ultimately appeared in its pages: “The Quest of Iranon” and Sonnet XXX from Fungi from Yuggoth. “Iranon” would later reach a wider audience through its posthumous reprinting in the March 1939 issue of Weird Tales.
The tale is often grouped with Lovecraft’s Dreamlands stories, though whether it actually belongs in that cycle is, as always, open to interpretation. The text contains nods to the Land of Lomar from “Polaris” and to Sarnath from “The Doom That Came to Sarnath,” both of which seem to evoke Earth’s distant prehistory. Yet the tone, themes, and geography of Iranon’s wanderings feel more like the ethereal borderlands that characterize the Dream Cycle – unless, of course, they don’t. The story offers just enough overlap, contradiction, and outright mystery that one can never be entirely certain whether Iranon exists in the world of dreams, the world before history, or some shifting place in between. In any case, as I said, it's long been included in collection of Dreamlands tales and I don't intend to argue against that inclusion om this post.
The story concerns a golden-haired youth, the titular Iranon, who wanders into the city of Teloth, claiming to be a prince of the wondrous city of Aira and delights in singing songs of its beauty. The dour people of Teloth have no patience for such things and, when Iranon is ordered to abandon his art and apprentice to a cobbler, he departs instead. A poor boy named Romnod, stirred by Iranon’s tales, joins him, hoping that the famed city of Oonai might in fact be Aira under a new name. The pair travel for years, Romnod aging into adulthood while Iranon remains unchanging, only to discover that Oonai is not Aira after all. Though the people of Oonai at first adore Iranon’s songs, their enthusiasm fades as the years pass and even Romnod declines into drunkenness and eventually dies.
Alone again, Iranon resumes his search and eventually meets an old shepherd who remembers a ragged boy from his youth, a boy who fancied himself a prince of an imaginary city called Aira. With this revelation, Iranon’s eternal youth evaporates. Aged and broken by the truth, he wanders into the quicksands and sinks beneath them, his dream of Aira dying with him.
Like many of Lovecraft’s early stories shaped by his admiration for Lord Dunsany, “The Quest of Iranon” is steeped in wistful sentiment and a yearning for idealized realms that may never have existed. Its tone is far removed from the cosmic horror of his later period. Instead, it dwells on melancholy, nostalgia, and the precariousness of a life built upon inner visions. From the outset, the story establishes a tension between dream and reality. Iranon’s exquisite inner world is richer and more beautiful than the austere cities he wanders through, yet it is also fragile, sustained only by his unwavering belief in its truth. As his companion Romnod ages while Iranon remains unchanged, the narrative dramatizes the slow erosion of idealism through time, setting the stage for the final revelation that Iranon’s princely past is not a forgotten truth but a self-created dream.
The geography of the tale reinforces this psychological dimension. Cities that honor beauty and song flourish; those indifferent or hostile to imagination appear bleak or decayed. In this way, the story aligns closely with Dunsany’s dream-fantasies, where landscapes mirror the inner states of their wanderers. Yet its final turn, where the imaginative life collapses under the weight of empirical reality, is unmistakably Lovecraftian. What begins as a Dunsanian reverie ends as a meditation on the limits of dream and the painful boundary between creative imagination and self-deception.
It's no surprise, then, that "The Quest of Iranon" includes sentiments Lovecraft expressed in his letters, where he frequently contrasted the world of dreams with the world of reality. While any reductive biographical interpretation should be avoided, Iranon’s proud retreat into an imagined past parallels Lovecraft’s own youthful romanticism and his reliance on dream life as a refuge from his mundane existence, which was at that time beginning the slow downward trajectory it would retain for the remainder of his life. The story is likewise notable for its use of time. The decades-long chronology of Iranon's journeys is atypical for the Dreamlands tales and suggests an early experiment in using duration as an emotional device, one representing the slow wearing-down of fantasy by the passage of years.
Structurally simple and lacking the metaphysical vastness of The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, “The Quest of Iranon” nevertheless remains one of Lovecraft’s clearest statements on the cost of clinging to esthetic illusion. Its conclusion, depicting an imagined identity collapsing in the face of reality, functions as a grim inversion of the usual Dreamlands arc. Instead of a mortal ascending into dream, dream descends (or degenerates) into mortal truth.
“The Quest of Iranon” is thus another important transitional work. It captures the final phase of Lovecraft’s imitation of Dunsany, anticipates his later fascination with identity dissolution, and offers insight into how he grappled with themes of artistic aspiration and personal mythmaking. The story’s quiet tragedy is not merely Iranon’s but reflects Lovecraft’s own evolving understanding of the limits and possibilities of the imaginative life and how he (and his reader) might come to terms with it.
Saturday, November 22, 2025
Gratitude
Dad’s reaction on receiving it was characteristic. “What am I going to do with this?” he asked and he meant it. The box went straight into the upstairs linen closet, where it sat – unopened and undisturbed – until Christmas of that same year, when I asked if I could have it to learn how to play D&D. The rest, as the saying goes, is history.
In a very real sense, I owe my entry into the hobby just as much to my parents, especially my mother, as to Egbert’s disappearance. Had my father not been captivated by those stories, had my mother not ordered that Basic Set on a whim, it’s entirely possible I never would have found my way to roleplaying games or, if I had, it might have happened later and under very different – and perhaps less welcoming – circumstances. That’s one of the reasons I remain deeply grateful to them both. My young life and, truthfully, my present one could have been very different indeed.
But that’s only part of it. They didn’t just toss the game in my path and walk away. They encouraged me – sometimes directly, sometimes in small, nearly invisible ways – to keep going. They drove me to remote hobby shops tucked into strip malls or down side streets when I was hunting some obscure game or module. They clipped announcements from the local paper about “games day” events at the library. They let my friends and I take over the basement for hours on end. I doubt they ever really understood what D&D was or why it captivated me, but that never mattered. What mattered to them was that I was enjoying myself and that these games had opened doors to other interests – history, languages, mythology, religion – that broadened my world and, to some degree, shaped who I was becoming in obviously positive ways.
They also never once questioned the value of D&D or roleplaying games. They didn’t treat my hours spent reading rulebooks or drawing maps as a waste of time, nor did they worry that the hobby was odd, dangerous, or somehow leading me astray – quite the contrary! I often hear stories from people my age whose parents did fear Dungeons & Dragons and whose anxieties left lasting scars. I have no such stories of my own to tell. All that panic completely passed me by, which, I suppose, is no surprise given my own origin story as a roleplayer. If my parents weren’t put off by the James Dallas Egbert case, none of the other sensationalist nonsense that later swirled around the game stood a chance. That quiet vote of confidence, unstated but unmistakable, mattered more than I realized at the time.
Looking back, I can see that what they offered me wasn’t just permission but the freedom to explore something that excited me without judgment or fear. Childhood passions often flare and fade quickly, but they took this one seriously enough to let it grow. I don’t want to paint an overly rosy picture; ours wasn’t a sitcom household where every quirk was lovingly indulged. They had their flaws, as all parents do, and I certainly had mine. But when it came to this strange new hobby of mine, they showed patience, generosity, and an uncomplicated willingness to let me be who I was becoming through contact with it.
For that, I'll remain grateful to my parents. Their small, steady acts of support nudged my life in a direction neither they nor I could have predicted. If I’m honest, most of what followed – the friendships, the writing, the years spent exploring imaginary worlds – all trace back to that unopened box in the upstairs linen closet and to the two people who, without fully understanding it, gave me permission to open it.
Thanks, Mom and Dad.
Friday, November 21, 2025
Mail Call
As you may recall, I'm currently refereeing a Dolmenwood campaign, which began a little over a year ago. Though I haven't posted about it in a few weeks, the adventures of Sir Clement, Fallon, Waldra, Alvie, and Marid continue on a more or less weekly basis. Currently, our merry band is investigating the ruined Abbey of St Clewyd under the instructions of Nedwynne Hargle, head of the Seminary of One Hundred Martyrs and Fallon's patron within the Pluritine Church. It's a fun campaign that I continue to enjoy, in large part because of just how delightful and imaginative the setting of Dolmenwood is.
Up until now, I've been using advance PDF copies of the Dolmenwood books and adventures in anticipation of the release of their print copies. Yesterday, I was very happy to receive a package containing those print copies, which, quite frankly, exceeded my expectations. They're absolutely beautiful books, as you can see here:
Here are the four main books shown from the perspective of their spines, to give you a sense of their comparative thickness:
The Campaign Book, which is more or less the referee's guide, is by far the thickest of the four. In addition to all the usual stuff you'd expect to find in a referee's book, it also describes all the major factions of Dolmenwood, along with every single hex of the setting map. This has proven incredibly useful to me, as the characters wander across the Wood. The hex descriptions are all limited to a single page, featuring noteworthy features, NPCs, and locales, along with other ideas that might spark adventures. It's all very well done and, as I said, useful in play.
Speaking of the Wood, I also got a large cloth map of the whole setting, which looks especially impressive when laid out on a table:
The map looks like it'll very useful at the table, too, enabling players to plan their travels and referees to keep track of their movements. Both are important, since Dolmenwood is, in large part, a game of hex crawling through the civilized and wild nooks and crannies of the Wood. The Maps Book has many more useful maps for use by the referee, like maps of mortal and fairy domains, ley lines, elevation, treasure hoards, and more. Like everything else, it's great and useful stuff.
Dolmenwood officially releases next Friday, November 28. I'll definitely have some more to say about it in a week's time, but I was sufficiently pleased by having received my copies yesterday that I couldn't wait to show them off today.
And So It Begins
As I posted yesterday, my Barrett's Raiders Twilight: 2000 campaign, which started in December 2021, has ended. Though sad (and even a little disappointing), its conclusion opens up a slot in my weekly schedule for a new campaign and that's always exciting. Just what that new campaign will be is still very uncertain and depends, to a great extent, on the interests of the remaining players. We'll discuss the matter at some length at our next meeting, but, in order to get the ball rolling, I sent them a selection of four(ish) RPG I'd enjoy refereeing for them, which I thought I'd share with you as well.
I'm pretty sure I've mentioned, likely many times, that I've long been a huge fan of Gamma World. In my youth, it was one of my favorite games, just losing out of a spot in my Holy Trinity of RPGs to Call of Cthulhu. It's one of those games I find very easy to run, both from an ideas perspective and from a mechanical one. I have little trouble coming up with fun scenarios for Gamma World and its rules are straightforward and easy to use – two great boons when it comes to refereeing a roleplaying game.
Notice that I've included Metamorphosis Alpha as a possibility too. That's because, while I have played MA, I have never actually run it myself and doing so has long been a dream of mine. In some ways, I actually prefer the campaign frame of Metamorphosis Alpha to that of Gamma World, perhaps because it appeals to my fascination with "secret sci-fi" settings. So, given my druthers, I would press for MA over Gamma World, but I'd be equally happy with either.
This is a no-brainer. I've working sporadically on this project since June of 2021, during which time it's undergone a number of different changes and evolutions. Those of you who've subscribed to Grognardia Games Direct know about its current state, since that's where I post regularly about it. However, I've not yet had the chance to do anything more with it than run short scenarios. What it really needs is a proper campaign to take its development to the next level and this might be the perfect time to do that.
I considered starting a SosA campaign after the conclusion of House of Worms last month, but opted not to due to its very broad similarities to Tékumel. It's a baroque, exotic fantasy setting with a secret sci-fi substratum – I'm sensing a theme here – albeit one based on very different historical/cultural influences than those of Tékumel. However, my Monday night group includes a different set of players, so the comparisons to Tékumel wouldn't be a problem.
In a similar fashion, Thousand Suns is another good option. Like Secrets of sha-Arthan, I'm currently in the midst of revising and reorganizing it in preparation for the released of a second edition. Also like SosA, I'm chronicling my work on this project over at Grognardia Games Direct. This is a game that's very near and dear to my heart and one I haven't run for some years now, so it'd be great to have the opportunity to do so again.
Furthermore, one of the goals of the second edition is to make the rules of Thousand Suns clearer and easier to use. They're already pretty good in this regard, I think, but I hope to make them even better. I also want to do a better job of highlighting those aspects of the game that distinguish it from its competitors and inspirations. Refereeing a campaign would give me lots of opportunities to do just that.
Urheim was my second attempt (after Dwimmermount) to produce a megadungeon suitable as the foundation for an entire old school D&D campaign. I got fairly far into constructing it before moving on to other projects, but it's still something I think about from time to time.
Consequently, I thought now might be a good time to return to it as a replacement for Barrett's Raiders. A megadungeon campaign is very straightforward and easy to maintain. It's also got the potential to spin off in a variety of different fun directions, so it's a good fit for my personal refereeing style. If I did return to Urheim, I'd almost certainly use Old School Essentials, probably of the advanced variety, for the rules, though part of me wants to dive back into OD&D + Supplements.
And that's where things stand at the moment. Which of these options will be chosen is (mostly) up to my players. I'm very curious as to what they'll chose.
Thursday, November 20, 2025
Taps
By now, many of you will have noticed that I haven’t posted any updates about the Barrett’s Raiders Twilight: 2000 campaign I’ve been refereeing since December 2021 – almost four years ago. The reason is simple: the campaign has, alas, come to an end. By “end,” I don’t mean “conclusion.” This is nothing like the tidy finale of the House of Worms Empire of the Petal Throne campaign last month. In this case, the end wasn’t planned, though, if I’m honest, it wasn’t entirely unexpected either.
Before getting into a proper postmortem of Barrett’s Raiders, let me explain what brought things to a close. There’s nothing dramatic here, nor did anyone grow dissatisfied with the game. Two players had real life commitments that would keep them away for an extended period, long enough that I decided to put the campaign on “pause” and let another player run a short game of his own – Fringeworthy – while we waited for their return. We’d taken short breaks like this before, so I didn’t anticipate any problems.
This time, though, the pause became an opportunity for another player to decide it was time to bow out. I don’t blame him at all. He’d been with the group almost continuously since the days of my Riphaeus Sector Traveller campaign, which began around 2017. That’s a long commitment. As I told my House of Worms players before we began The Dark Between the Stars Fading Suns campaign (as I've taken to calling it), no one is ever obligated to keep playing, especially after giving years of their time. Interests shift; life happens.
Soon after, I learned that one of the two players already on hiatus would, in fact, be unavailable even longer – effectively out of commission well into 2026. I took that as the universe’s gentle nudge that it was time to put Barrett’s Raiders to bed. We were now down two players and, truth be told, I had already been contemplating wrapping things up within the next few months anyway.
My own reasons were different. I was still very happy with the direction of the campaign. The characters’ return to the shattered USA intrigued me more than their time in Poland. I was eager to see them navigate the murky waters of the low-intensity, slow-motion civil war between USMEA, the civilian government, and New America. I’d been waiting to run this part of the campaign since I was a teenager and had no shortage of plans for where it might go.
What held me back, frankly, were the rules. While I’ve used the Year Zero Engine to good effect in other games – Forbidden Lands in particular – the Twilight: 2000 iteration had to wrestle with elements like modern automatic weapons and vehicles that simply don’t arise in Forbidden Lands. Their inclusion felt clunky to me or at least out of step with my own preferences and I regularly found myself fumbling with them more than I liked. As a result, I often avoided combat, which isn’t ideal in a military RPG.
So, while I’m disappointed that Barrett’s Raiders won’t reach the proper conclusion I had hoped for, I’m not too disappointed. The campaign lasted just shy of four years – no small feat – and we had a great deal of fun along the way. I doubt Barrett’s Raiders will be remembered in the same breath as House of Worms, but that’s a very high bar, one I may never clear again. Such is life.
Instead of dwelling on what might have been, I’m already thinking about the future: what game might this group tackle next, and where might it take us? More on that when I finally have an answer to those questions.
Wednesday, November 19, 2025
Retrospective: Kafer Sourcebook
For reasons I'll explain in an upcoming series of posts, I've been thinking a lot about GDW's other science fiction roleplaying game, 2300AD (né Traveller: 2300). As I've no doubt explained on several occasions, I was, for a time, a huge fan of the game and – especially – its setting. Truth be told, I still am a fan, even though I've not played the game in almost forty years. One of the things I've always admired about the game was its commitment to a plausible and "realistic" approach to the building blocks of its setting, whether scientific, technological, or political. Unfortunately, that same commitment has also probably contributed to my inability to ever sustain a 2300AD campaign.
Emblematic of the problems I've always had with the game is, ironically, one of its best supplements, the Kafer Sourcebook. Published in 1988 and written primarily by William H. Keith, Jr, it's a deep dive into the society, culture, history, and, above all, biology of the alien Kafers, humanity's only serious interstellar rival. It is a 96-page softcover, though it feels longer, due to the sheer amount of terrific science fictional speculation packed into its chapters. Even within a product line celebrated for its world-building rigor, this book stands out for its imagination and ambition.
Remember that, when 2300AD debuted in 1986, it was pitched as the “hard science” alternative to the looser, Golden Age-inspired SF of Traveller. 2300AD's other supplements focused on Earthly politics, interstellar cartography, and the starships, among other more "grounded" topics. For all its detail, however, the line lacked a unifying extraterrestrial element, something distinctive that would shape humanity’s place in the larger galaxy. The Kafer Sourcebook was the first supplement to supply that missing anchor. It thus introduced not merely an opponent but an entire framework for understanding alien intelligence within the setting.
At a glance, the superficially insectoid Kafers fill the recognizable role of an expansionist, technologically capable adversary, the kind of civilization that might form the backbone of a future interstellar war. But the Sourcebook's treatment of the species elevates them above cliché. Their defining trait is an evolutionary system in which intelligence surges only under stress, which feels both biologically plausible and conceptually daring. In their calm state, Kafers possess little more than animal cunning. Faced with fear, danger, or uncertainty, their mental capacities accelerate rapidly, granting them the clarity and ingenuity needed to confront threats. The result is a species whose history, culture, and institutions have arisen to support continual conflict, since it's only under such stress that the Kafers' intelligence continues to increase.
This evolutionary need for conflict becomes the core organizing principle for the book. Keith uses it to explain Kafer rituals of testing and challenge, their competitive clan structure, their tendency toward authoritarian politics, and the peculiar way they approach science and technology. The chapters on physiology and psychology are particularly strong, dense with speculative xenobiology that is nevertheless readable, even compelling. The cultural chapters, meanwhile, succeed in painting the Kafers not as a hive of faceless antagonists but as a coherent civilization with internal debates, eccentricities, and historical traumas. One comes away with the sense of a genuinely alien species whose motives can be understood but never comfortably predicted.
For all its strengths, however, the Kafer Sourcebook also highlights the central challenge of the species it so creatively presents. The Kafers are genuinely difficult to use in a typical 2300AD campaign. Their hostility isn’t ideological, political, or territorial in any human sense; it is biological. Once threatened, they are almost compelled to escalate conflict, their intelligence and aggression rising in tandem. This leaves little room for negotiation, espionage, manipulation, or the many shades of diplomacy that fuel most science fiction RPG adventures. A referee who wishes to portray the Kafers accurately must accept that they are not suited to casual interaction. They are best deployed as a looming existential threat or as the fulcrum of a military campaign, rather than as participants in the varied social and exploratory scenarios that populate the rest of the setting.
That is what makes the Kafer Sourcebook and, by extension, 2300AD’s use of the Kafers so frustrating. The supplement is filled with wonderfully imaginative speculation that makes these aliens excellent antagonists, yet it offers little sense of how they might function in any capacity other than that of an implacable foe. Keith’s efforts to avoid making the Kafers one-dimensional “bad guys” by rooting their behavior in evolutionary psychology paradoxically reinforces that very one-dimensionality. A species that becomes intelligent only when threatened cannot be negotiated with, reasoned with, or engaged meaningfully outside the context of conflict. In a game line otherwise rich in politics, exploration, and cultural interplay, the Kafers remain locked into a very narrow role. The result is an alien species that is brilliantly conceived on the page but difficult to integrate into the broader possibilities the 2300AD setting seems to contain.
Mind you, this is my eternal complaint about 2300AD. It’s an extraordinarily imaginative and beautifully presented setting, one that feels right in all the ways hard science fiction should, yet it somehow ends up feeling strangely dull. Unlike Traveller, I could never quite get a handle on what GDW expected players to do with the game. Its “realism,” whether technological, cultural, or political, always seemed to work against the very things that make adventure possible. Instead of opening doors, its grounded assumptions often closed them, leaving referees to do the heavy lifting of carving out reasons for danger, mystery, or wonder.
I think hat’s the tragedy of 2300AD: a setting bursting with potential, yet one that never quite shows you how to tap into it. It’s a toolbox full of fascinating parts, but without a clear sense of what you’re meant to build.
Tuesday, November 18, 2025
REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "Clerics Live by Other Rules"
Every edition of D&D has put its own stamp on the cleric, in the process rendering the class more incoherent than it was to start. Gary Gygax contributed further to this mess in his article "Clerics Live by Other Rules," which appeared in issue #92 (December 1984) of Dragon. To be fair, Gary's article is actually pretty good, but it laid the seeds for much mischief later. His intention was to suggest that individual referees, for the purposes of fleshing out their campaign settings, could change the rules under which clerics (and, by extension, druids) operate, either restricting their opportunities or expanding them (or, preferably, both).
In the article, Gygax gives an example of a sect worshiping the woodland deity Ehlonna, from his Greyhawk campaign setting. Owing to tragic events in the past, this sect operates differently than others of its kind, having a unique selection of spells, armor, and weapons, in addition to having certain ritual taboos placed upon them. Thus, for example, they're not allowed to use fire-based spells of any kind, but clerics, after proving themselves – gaining levels – can wield broadswords and druids can wear elfin chain.
Normally, I loathe this kind of stuff, in large part because I think it contributes further to the dilution of what the cleric class is – and it's already pretty diluted as it is. What makes Gygax's approach work, though, is that a) it's solidly grounded in the setting and b) he's limiting these changes to a particular sect, not establishing it as a baseline. That's how I think things like this ought to be done. Unfortunately, players (and later designers) didn't care for these nuances, instead using them as a template for "fixing" the cleric class. This led, in my opinion, to a variety of changes over the years that have rendered the cleric one of the least coherent classes, both mechanically and as an archetype. But I'm pretty sure I'm in the minority in feeling this way.
Interestingly, Gygax himself warns against taking what he wrote in this article as an official, universal change. In his concluding paragraph, he says some very sensible things:
Now when you hear someone, DM or player, mentioning something about "unknown" cleric spells or similar difficulties, don't panic. It could well be a cleverly planned campaign where difference and the unexpected are desirable -- and who can fault that?! Perhaps you might wish to try it in your own campaign, too. A cautionary word is necessary, however, for there is a problem with such variations. Unless the full and complete details of the differences are known to other DMs, they might well not wish to have clerics or druids of such nature participating in their games. This is their right, and skepticism on their part is justified. Players of these clerics and druids must be forewarned that such characters might be "one-campaign-only" adventurers who are not welcome elsewhereIt's good advice, but it's also, I think, advice rooted in an older style of play that was already on its way to dying out by the time this article was published. Campaign hopping of the sort Gary envisions was already rare in the early '80s when I was most deeply immersed in the hobby and I have a hard time imagining that it was any more widespread on the cusp of 1985. Ironically, the advent of the Net and online play make well lead to a resurgence of the Old Ways in this regard, in which case Gary's advice might well prove useful again.
Monday, November 17, 2025
REH vs CAS
So far, the “contest” is remarkably close. At the moment, the Bard of Auburn holds a very narrow lead over Two-Gun Bob, but not by enough to declare the matter settled. Honestly, I’m not surprised. Both Howard and Smith are more than worthy of a full month’s attention on this blog and each brings something distinct and compelling to the table. I’d be delighted to spend January exploring either one of them and, judging from the comments and emails I’ve received so far, many of you feel the same way.
In the meantime, I encourage everyone who hasn’t yet commented or sent me an email to do so. Whichever way this goes, January is shaping up to be another enjoyable excursion into the history of early fantasy literature.
Pulp Fantasy Library: Nyarlathotep
Lovecraft himself explained that “Nyarlathotep” arose from a dream. In a letter to Rheinhart Kleiner, he claimed he wrote the opening paragraph “before I fully waked,” suggesting the piece emerged almost directly from the dream-state. If we take him at his word, then the text was composed under a kind of incantatory compulsion, shaped only lightly by later revision, if at all. This immediacy distinguishes it from much of his mature fiction, which he often reworked extensively, and helps explain the breathless, uncanny atmosphere that permeates the piece.
As in many of his early works, Lovecraft was writing under the sway of powerful intellectual influences. After 1919, he immersed himself in the writings of Lord Dunsany and the Dunsanian imprint is unmistakable – the rhythmic prose, the dream-logic, the anxiety over cultural decay. At the same time, the story reflects his long-standing interests in astronomy, Egyptian antiquity, and fin-de-siècle pessimism. “Nyarlathotep” thus emerges from a convergence of impulses, from the mystical to the scientific, from the decadent to the apocalyptic, producing a work that is difficult to categorize but impossible to forget.
The piece itself presents Nyarlathotep as a wandering figure from Egypt who arrives with strange devices and demonstrations that unsettle the modern world. Crowds gather; the narrator, already alienated and uneasy, joins them. Soon the lights fail, machinery breaks down, and people drift into the streets in trances, marching into the darkness as a cosmic doom descends. This is less a story than a sensory and psychological descent. The narrative slips quietly from urban disquiet into full eschatological collapse, mirroring the disintegration of both society and the narrator’s consciousness.
Two elements in particular deserve emphasis. First, this version of Nyarlathotep is far more grounded than his later incarnation as the messenger of the Outer Gods. Here he appears almost human, a darkly charismatic prophet with a pharaonic air, demonstrating marvels that blur the line between science and sorcery. The implication is that modernity’s own tools – technology, rationality, scientific wonder – can serve as gateways to madness. Second, the masses drifting silently through the darkened city prefigure the collective irrationalities found in Lovecraft’s later fiction. More importantly, the collapse is not local but cosmic. Dreams, astronomy, machinery – all fail simultaneously. The universe itself seems to sicken.
Although “Nyarlathotep” predates Lovecraft’s fully developed Dreamlands tales, it marks a crucial step in their evolution. The action takes place in the modern world rather than in dream geography, yet nearly every aspect of it connects to his emerging dream-lore. The narrative is not a record of waking experience but a nightmare revelation, a dream so potent it bursts into daylight and overwhelms the ordinary world. This reversal is central: whereas the later Dream Cycle sends dreamers into symbolic, mythic realms, in “Nyarlathotep” it is the dream that invades the waking world, overriding reason, technology, and even cosmic order.
Stylistically, the story stands at a crossroads. Lovecraft was still under Dunsany’s spell and the imagery unmistakably reflects it. Yet, the creeping cosmic menace anticipates the hybrid mode he would perfect in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, where Dunsanian fantasy interlocks with cosmic horror. Nyarlathotep himself is the clearest bridge between the modes. In Dream-Quest, he returns as a mercurial, godlike being who toys with dreamers and bends fates. The 1920 piece presents his prototype as a wandering prophet of cosmic truth whose presence signals doom. What makes the character unique in Lovecraft’s tales is precisely this dual existence. He moves freely between the Dreamlands and waking reality, linking the two in a way no other entity quite manages. “Nyarlathotep” is the moment that connection first takes shape.
The piece continues to resonate because it feels like a transmission from the edge of consciousness. It's brief, opaque, and deeply unsettling. As a document of Lovecraft’s artistic evolution, it is both important and often underappreciated. It captures the last intensity of his Dunsanian phase even as it gestures toward the cosmic immensities of the later Mythos. That tension between dream and nightmare, fantasy and cosmic dread, gives “Nyarlathotep” its lasting power. It remains one of Lovecraft’s most haunting works, not despite its ambiguity, but because of it.
Friday, November 14, 2025
January Approacheth
With that in mind, I’ve been thinking about doing something similar in January. Two of the other great figures associated with Weird Tales, Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith, were both born in that month. Each is, in his own way, a towering influence on fantasy, horror, and roleplaying games. Consequently, I would very much like to give one of them the same kind of month-long attention I gave to Lovecraft in August.
Notice I said one. For practical reasons, I can only manage one such project right at a time, however much I'd like to do both. That leaves me with a choice and, rather than make it myself, I thought it would be more fitting (and fun) to put it to you, the readers.
I’ve come up with titles that mirror the spirit of The Shadow over August and capture something of each author’s tone:
- For Robert E. Howard: The Savage Sword of January
- For Clark Ashton Smith: The Ensorcellment of January
Both possibilities appeal to me for different reasons and I would enjoy devoting a month to either writer. So, I’m asking for your help in deciding which one I should pursue. If you have a preference – Howard or Smith – please let me know in the comments. I’ll tally the responses and announce the outcome before the end of the year, as I can begin preparing for whichever choice wins out. It's a difficult choice, to be sure, and I don't think there's a wrong option. Plus, I can always devote January 2027 to whichever of the two isn't chosen for 2026.
As always, thank you for reading and for your continued enthusiasm. August’s experiment succeeded in large part because of your engagement and I’m looking forward to seeing where January takes us.
Sir Yamashiro Li Halan
I often comically lament that I spent my personal character points on the wrong abilities and skills, choosing writing over much more sought after – and profitable – skills like mapmaking or art. Dyson Logos can do both of the latter, which is why I told him that, if he weren't my friend, I'd hate him. Yesterday, while playing in the fourth session of our new Fading Suns campaign, he drew his character, Sir Yamashiro Li Halan. It's a lovely piece of art and one that does a great job of visually bringing to life this drug-addicted rake of a nobleman.
I suggested to Dyson he give the same treatment to the other characters in the campaign, but I was only half-serious, since I know it'd be a lot of work. Still, it's amazing how helpful it can be to have portraits of characters in a campaign. The make them real in a way that mere words frequently cannot. That's why I commissioned Zhu Bajiee to produce a commemorative portrait of all the important player and non-player characters of the recently completed House of Worms campaign. It'll not only be a great memento of the campaign itself – the longest I have ever refereed – but it will also help me to recall the characters, who are really what helped keep the game going for as long as it did.
Thursday, November 13, 2025
Inquiry
Another public post over at my Patreon, one that's specifically directed at those who are already members but that might be of general interest to other regular readers (at least I hope so).
Retrospective: The Complete Priest's Handbook
When the second edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons appeared in 1989, one of its implicit goals was to make the game’s classes more flexible and setting-driven. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the treatment of clerics. First Edition AD&D more or less followed the template laid down by OD&D, where the cleric was an odd hybrid of Templar, exorcist, and battlefield medic. This was a pragmatic invention designed to plug holes in early play (someone had to turn undead and heal wounds). The cleric class was thus foundational to the game, but rarely inspiring. If my experience is anything to go by, few players aspired to be a cleric and would only acquiesce to doing so because the party needed healing.
The Complete Priest’s Handbook, published in 1990, represents TSR’s most serious attempt to rethink the cleric, building on what had already been established in the 2e Player's Handbook. Written by Aaron Allston, it stands as one of the most conceptually ambitious entries in the “Complete” series, as well as one I really liked at the time of its release. The supplement's title is significant. Second Edition, you may recall, replaced the term "cleric" with "priest" as the name of the broad class category. “Cleric” became only one example within that category – a type of priest, much as the druid was another. This terminological shift heralded a new approach to divine spellcasters. Where 1e’s cleric was monolithic, 2e’s priest was varied. There could be hundreds of priestly archetypes, each distinct to its faith and overall ethos. Allston’s book took that conceptual flexibility and attempted to make it practical.
At the heart of The Complete Priest’s Handbook lies 2e’s concept of specialty priests as a flexible framework for portraying the servants of specific gods or cosmic powers. Rather than treating every priest as a lightly re-skinned version of the same armored miracle-worker, Allston provided Dungeon Masters with clear guidelines for customizing spell access, weapons, armor, granted powers, and restrictions to reflect each deity’s nature. A priest of a war god might wield swords and command battle magic, while one devoted to a god of secrets could be forbidden to fight openly but gifted with divinations and hidden knowledge. The idea had its roots in Dragonlance Adventures (1987) and the 2e Player’s Handbook, of course, but Allston expanded and refined it in meaningful ways. He demonstrated that the faiths of a campaign world should shape the rules of divine magic, not the other way around.
Much of the supplement reads less like a player’s guide than a campaign design manual. Allston encouraged DMs to think about pantheons, from who the gods are, what their worshippers are like, and how their clergy interact with worldly institutions. He presented religions as social, political, and metaphysical forces, not merely sources of spells. From here, he moves on to designing priesthoods, walking the reader through the process of defining a faith’s beliefs, organization, duties, and other details, with each choice shaping both flavor and play. Allston even made space for philosophical or non-theistic priests, who draw power from devotion to an ideal or cosmic principle. That idea was barely hinted at previously, but, in this supplement, it's offered as an unambiguous possibility (one that I embraced wholeheartedly in my Emaindor campaign from high school).
In many ways, The Complete Priest’s Handbook was TSR’s first real attempt to treat religion as a serious worldbuilding concern rather than an afterthought. The gods and their faiths were no longer just color for the background; they became engines of conflict, patronage, and adventure. The priest was not simply a healer or support character but a representative of a larger belief structure and institution. One can argue that this was always true in AD&D and perhaps it was, but, for many of us, it took books like this to make us think seriously about what that actually meant in play.
Like all entries in the “Complete” line, The Complete Priest’s Handbook included a selection of kits, optional templates meant to add flavor and specialization. Ironically, I never found most of them especially interesting. Too many represented vague social roles, like the Nobleman Priest, the Peasant Priest, and so on, rather than more distinctive archetypes like the Crusader or the Missionary. Arguably, 2e priests didn’t need kits at all. Between their spheres of magic and granted powers, the class already had plenty of built-in flexibility. However, compared to what other classes received in their "Complete" books, this section felt oddly underbaked.
What truly stands out, though, is how The Complete Priest’s Handbook reflects a broader shift in TSR’s design philosophy. Second Edition was increasingly interested in building distinct, coherent settings for AD&D. One could reasonably argue this was motivated by a desire to sell more products, but, even so, it had an intriguing creative side effect: it pushed the rules toward flexibility and world-specific interpretation. Instead of assuming a single “cleric” archetype for every world, 2e encouraged Dungeon Masters to make each campaign’s religions – and thus its priests – unique.
Of course, the book is not without its flaws. Balancing specialty priests was left largely to the DM’s discretion and the examples varied widely in quality. Allston’s approach assumed a polytheistic setting where divine diversity was the norm, leaving monotheistic or dualistic campaigns to do some extra work. Yet, these are minor quibbles compared to the book’s larger accomplishment. The Complete Priest’s Handbook encouraged DMs to shape faith to fit their worlds and, just as importantly, to let their worlds shape faith in return. For a game as rule-bound as AD&D sometimes was, that felt genuinely liberating.
For all my reservations about the "Complete" series as a whole, I still regard The Complete Priest’s Handbook as one of its true high points, a book that took a neglected class and made it central not just to the mechanics of the game but to the presentation of the setting in which it was played.
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