Why I Stayed

My birthday was last week and, contrary to what I expected, it proved an occasion to look back over my life and ponder a few things. I don’t mean this in a maudlin or self-critical way. For the most part, I’m fairly content with my current existence and reasonably comfortable with my creeping senescence. Rather, I found myself thinking about the fact that, forty-six years after first discovering Dungeons & Dragons, I’m still actively involved in the hobby of roleplaying, while so many of the people with whom I first discovered it are not.

I was 10 years-old at the Christmas holidays of 1979, when I first opened the D&D Basic Set edited by J. Eric Holmes. That was the beginning of my journey. Through the end of childhood and into my early teens, roleplaying games felt like a shared discovery, something my friends and I stumbled into together, almost like finding a secret passage beneath the ordinary world. We played obsessively – after school, on weekends, and during those seemingly endless summer vacations. At the time, it would have seemed absurd to imagine any of us ever not playing. RPGs were simply what we did, eclipsing nearly every other pastime.

That shared enthusiasm didn’t last. By my mid-teens, very few of the friends with whom I’d entered the hobby were still playing. Some drifted away gradually, their interests and circumstances changing. Others dropped it abruptly, as if a curtain had fallen on that chapter of their lives. In the years that followed, careers, families, and the usual responsibilities of adulthood pulled still more away. Yet I’ve always wondered whether those explanations were truly sufficient. Many hobbies survive the transition to adulthood. In my circle of childhood friends, though, roleplaying games mostly did not.

To be fair, I eventually made other friends who shared my passion for gaming, but they were almost all people I met through the hobby, not the ones I’d grown up with. That’s why I often wonder why I stuck with it when so many others did not. I don’t believe it’s because I was more dedicated or imaginative; some of my friends were far more talented referees and players. Nor do I think the hobby itself changed in some way that pushed them out. They’d already drifted away long before the edition wars, the OSR, or any of the other developments one might offer as convenient explanations for their departures.

If I’ve come to any conclusion at all, it’s that roleplaying games continued to scratch an itch nothing else quite could. They combined the pleasures of reading, worldbuilding, problem-solving, and camaraderie into a single, strangely durable form. Even during my late high school years, when I didn’t play as often as I’d have liked, I still found myself returning to rulebooks, adventures, and setting material, much as one might return to a favorite novel or album. RPGs became part of the architecture of my inner life.

I don’t begrudge my childhood friends for having “abandoned” the hobby. Their lives simply went in other directions, as lives often do. I wouldn’t be surprised if some still remember our campaigns with fondness, even if they haven’t rolled a die in decades. Others may barely remember the details, but I remember those early days with great affection. In a very real sense, they laid the groundwork for the life I lead today. Even so, it’s hard not to wonder why I stayed immersed in this hobby while they did not.

I suspect many long-time gamers have had similar experiences. We are the ones who stayed, often without entirely meaning to. Something in roleplaying games held our attention long after the initial spark that brought us in. Perhaps that’s why so many of us older players end up blogging, designing, or running campaigns well into middle age. We’re still trying to understand what this odd pastime means to us and why it continues to matter so much after all these years.

In the end, I don’t know precisely why I stuck with RPGs when most of my childhood friends let them go. But I’m grateful I did. The hobby has given me friendships, creative outlets, and a way of thinking about the world that I doubt I would have found elsewhere. Maybe, in some small way, staying with it all these years is my way of honoring the unbridled joy we all felt around the table, back when we had no idea what we were doing and felt as if a vast, unknown world had been opened to us.

Retrospective: Conquest of the Empire

Stop me if you've heard this before: I was never a wargamer, but I liked the idea of wargames, specifically simulating a military or other conflict through the use of a board, tokens, and dice. There's just something inherently appealing to me about this, which probably explains why I've spent more than four decades trying but rarely succeeding at finding a wargame that really clicked with me. I owned and played a number of Avalon Hill and SPI games in my youth, but, with the exception of Diplomacy, I was never very good at them (and even there I was hampered by my inexplicable tendency to play Austria-Hungary).

However, in 1984, Milton Bradley released a line of games under the banner of the "Gamemaster Series" that caught my attention. The series was an experiment in bringing wargames to the mass market. Each entry in the series came in a massive, shelf-dominating box filled with lavish components and a rulebook that looked intimidating compared to more traditional boardgames like Monopoly or Risk. The series began with Axis & Allies, designed by Larry Harris, and followed swiftly with another of his creations, Conquest of the Empire.

While Axis & Allies presented World War II in game form, Conquest of the Empire did the same thing for the Roman Empire's Crisis of the Third Century. The game was a grand-scale battle for supremacy across the Mediterranean world after the death of Marcus Aurelius. It was, in every sense, a spectacle, a game whose physical components alone promised an epic experience before a single die was rolled. As a young history buff with a particular affection for Greco-Roman history, this was the game I'd been waiting for.

To appreciate Conquest of the Empire, it helps to recall what the gaming landscape looked like in the mid-1980s. The boundary between “mainstream” and “hobby” games was much starker than it is today. Wargames were, as I noted above, largely the province of companies like Avalon Hill or SPI. They were sold in specialty stores to an audience comfortable with long rulebooks and hex maps. By contrast, the Gamemaster Series was an attempt to bridge that gap by combining high production values, streamlined rules, and compelling subjects to attract both traditional hobbyists and curious outsiders like myself. 

Axis & Allies was, I gather, very successful. Certainly my friends and I enjoyed playing it and we did so often. Of course, even in the 1980s, World War II was a staple of wargames. Conquest of the Empire thus deviated just enough to be considered daring. Furthermore, its subject, the period of the Military Anarchy, was less familiar and its map of the Mediterranean world, divided into provinces and trade routes, hinted at something more intricate than the average family game. Of course, that's precisely why I loved it.

Opening Conquest of the Empire for the first time is something I cannot forget. To start, the box was enormous. Inside lay nearly four hundred molded plastic miniatures, such as legionnaires with raised shields, catapults, coins, and galleys to patrol the Mare Nostrum. There were also cities to build, roads to lay down, and an oversized, vividly illustrated board depicting the known world from Britannia in the northwest to Aegyptus in the southeast. Following the death of Marcus Aurelius, the empire teeters on the brink of chaos. Each player takes the role of a would-be emperor, commanding armies, building cities, taxing provinces, and waging war until one emerges victorious. It's a straightforward and appealing premise – especially to my teenage self.

Like Axis & Allies, the game was structured around economic management and military conquest. Provinces provided income, which could be spent to raise legions, fleets, and fortifications. Armies moved along roads or across the sea, engaging in battles resolved by simple dice rolls. Catapults were useful in sieges and galleys could ferry troops to distant shores. Victory went to the player who amassed the most wealth and territory, though, in practice, the game often ended in exhaustion or mutual ruin long before an emperor was crowned.

That said, the game was not without its flaws. Its economy could snowball rapidly, favoring whoever secured a few prosperous provinces early on. Combat could be pretty random, with legions sometimes crushed or exalted on a handful of dice. The rules for roads and taxation added an appealing Roman flavor but little in the way of meaningful choice. Players spent much of the game counting coins, rebuilding destroyed forces, and waiting for their next chance to strike. One might argue that some of this is, in fact, realistic or at least true to history, but it didn't always make for a satisfying game.

Even so, Conquest of the Empire often felt epic. Setting up the board, arranging your legions, and surveying the Mediterranean was a ritual of grandeur. It was easy to imagine oneself as a latter-day Caesar, eyeing the spoils of empire. The game rewarded patience more than finesse and spectacle more than subtlety, but it delivered a sense of scale that my friends and I found incredibly alluring. It's little wonder that I still think about this game decades later.

From what I have read, it seems that Milton Bradley’s Gamemaster Series never achieved the mainstream success the company had hoped. Axis & Allies became a perennial favorite and spawned multiple editions and spin-offs, but Conquest of the Empire eventually vanished from store shelves, remembered fondly by those of us who had the chance to play it back in the day. I suspect part of the reason was that its theme was less immediately engaging to American audiences and its rules required a level of commitment somewhat closer to Avalon Hill than to Parker Brothers.

I don't mean that as a criticism at all. I absolutely adored this game and deeply regret that my original copy was lost sometime in the '90s. Conquest of the Empire might not have achieved what Milton Bradley had hoped for it, but, for me, it was a near-perfect "middle road" between simple boardgames and the esoteric complexities of "true" wargames. If there were more games like this, I might actually play them.

Dream-Quest: Mirroring the Psyche

Here's another Dream-Quest post, though it's unfortunately restricted to patrons. Even so, I bring it to your attention, in the event that it might be of interest to regular readers of the blog.

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "Realistic Vital Statistics"

I am nothing if not tedious and repetitive, so, when turning to issue #91 of Dragon (November 1984), it was pretty much a given that I'd talking about the article "Realistic Vital Statistics" by Stephen Inniss. The article is a near-perfect exemplar of the Silver Age of D&D, with its concern for providing referees with the tools needed to inject "realism" into their adventures and campaigns. In this case, the author's concern is for the fact that, according to their descriptions in the Monster Manual and Players Handbook, dwarves are implausibly heavy, standing only 4 feet tall and yet weighing 150 pounds (on average). According to Mr Inniss, if one extrapolated this weight for a 6-foot tall human male, he'd weigh over 500 pounds! This, he says, violates a fundamental rule of physics – the square-cube law, which states that "the weight (or volume) of an object is proportional to the product of its linear dimensions (height, length, and width)." Using a realistic model, a 4-foot dwarf should weigh only about a third the weight listed in the AD&D books.

The article thus provides a series of tables for generating more plausible vital statistics to replace those in the Dungeon Masters Guide. For what it is, the system is pretty easy to use: the tables are clear and the variables aren't difficult to keep track of. But, ultimately, I find myself wondering why anyone would care about such a system. Mr Inniss notes that giants in D&D show no signs of appropriate adaptation to their height and (presumed) weight, meaning they're not very plausible as typically presented. Having said that, he then dismisses the concern by saying

Fortunately, their world is a magical one. They are probably supported by some permanent variant of the levitate spell, with bone-strengthening magic thrown in for good measure. Interestingly, the larger giants (storm and cloud giants), like the equally huge titans, have true levitation powers perhaps a natural extension of the talents of their lesser brethren.

It's, in my opinion, a perfectly valid solution to this "problem" of the height and weight of giants, but, if one can accept this when dealing with giants, why is the weight of dwarves an issue? Once you admit that the world is magical and therefore exempt from inconvenient physical laws that would get in the way of fantasy, where does on draw the line? Mr Inniss anticipated this line of thought and attempted to counter it.

Since this is after all a fantasy game, it might be argued that it doesn't matter how much dwarves are defined as weighing. However, it is just such realistic-looking details as a character's height and weight that make for a more willing suspension of disbelief during a game session. Otherwise, why bother with such statistics in the first place? Plausibility, or "realism" as it is sometimes called, is definitely a factor in the enjoyment of even a fantasy game; the more so where the game makes a relatively close approach to reality.

I'm far from convinced by Mr Inniss's rejoinder, but, leaving that aside, when was the last time that a character's precise weight mattered in a game? I can't recall its ever mattering in any games that I've run. Height is a little more useful, though, even there, I can probably count on one hand the number of times I ever allowed or disallowed a character action based on height. For me, knowing that a dwarf weighs 152 or merely 52 pounds is about as vital as knowing whether he has brown hair or red.

But that's just me.

Pulp Fantasy Library: Celephaïs

With October now over, Pulp Fantasy Library returns to H.P. Lovecraft and those of his tales commonly gathered under the heading of the “Dream Cycle.” Among these, few are as revealing of Lovecraft’s early imagination as “Celephaïs.”

First published in the November 1922 issue of Sonia H. Greene’s amateur journal, The Rainbow, “Celephaïs” was actually written two years earlier, during Lovecraft’s most pronounced Dunsanian phase. It is arguably the most significant of his early fantasies. A short, elegiac prose-poem that bridges the ornate reveries of Lovecraft's youth and the cosmic horror for which he would later become celebrated, it also appeared posthumously in the July 1939 issue of Weird Tales, whose cover I have reproduced here.

The story concerns a lonely Englishman living in modern London, who dreams of the city of Celephaïs, a timeless, radiant place of marble and opal beside a cerulean sea. There, he – who goes by the name Kuranes in dreams but a different one while awake – once dwelt amid golden domes and cloud-kissed towers. In waking life, however, Kuranes is destitute and forgotten, wandering the gray, joyless streets of a modern world that has lost all its color and wonder.

Lovecraft recounts how, through the use of drugs, Kuranes retreats into his dreams, striving to visit Celephaïs once again. At first, his visions are fleeting, but, as he turns to ever more potent narcotics, the distinction between waking and dreaming begins to blur. He becomes so devoted to this endeavor that he eventually loses his home and remaining wealth, becoming destitute. At the story's conclusion, his body is found lifeless, washed ashore near his ancestral home. Yet, in the Dreamlands, Kuranes reigns over Celephaïs as its chief god, eternal and unchanged.

Like “The White Ship” and “The Doom That Came to Sarnath,” “Celephaïs” clearly reflects Lord Dunsany’s influence on Lovecraft, both in diction and subject matter. Likewise, the yearning for a world of beauty and wonder lost to the banalities of modern life is pure Dunsany. However, Lovecraft’s version is more personal, suffused with melancholy and nostalgia rather than detached mythic grandeur. Kuranes’ longing for an idealized realm of beauty mirrors Lovecraft’s own retreat into the dreamworlds of antiquarianism, fantasy, and imagination. The city of Celephaïs embodies the Dreamlands’ central promise that, through dreams, one might escape time, decay, and the indignities of the modern age.

At its core, “Celephaïs” is a story of escape, not merely from the material world, but also from time and even mortality itself. Even so, Lovecraft seems somewhat ambivalent about this. He presents this escape as simultaneously poignant and ironic. In the end, Kuranes attains eternal kingship, but only through death; the perfect city of Celephaïs exists solely in dream and to dwell there forever is to abandon mortal life altogether.

Lovecraft would return to this theme in later works such as “The Silver Key” and The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. Randolph Carter, the protagonist of both, is a kindred spirit to Kuranes. He is another dreamer seeking entrance to the Dreamlands and yearning for the marvels and glories of an old remembered dream. Indeed, “Celephaïs” marks the first explicit appearance of the Dreamlands as a coherent world, populated by recurring beings, cities, and seas.

Kuranes himself would later reappear in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, Kuranes as the immortal ruler of Celephaïs. From his dream-city, he warns Randolph Carter that the gods of dream are capricious and that too great a longing for lost beauty may lead to peril. His presence in that later tale underscores the double-edged nature of dreaming itself: it can preserve the past, but only by cutting the dreamer off from reality.

Stylistically, “Celephaïs” is rich with the luxuriant diction of Lovecraft’s Dunsanian phase, which can be seen in its remarkable opening paragraph: 

In a dream Kuranes saw the city in the valley, and the seacoast beyond, and the snowy peak overlooking the sea, and the gaily painted galleys that sail out of the harbour toward distant regions where the sea meets the sky. In a dream it was also that he came by his name Kuranes, for when awake he was called by another name. Perhaps it was natural for him to dream a new name; for he was the last of his family, and alone among the indifferent millions of London, so there were not many to speak to him and remind him who he had been. His money and lands were gone, and he did not care for the ways of people about him, but preferred to dream and write of his dreams. What he wrote was laughed at by those to whom he shewed it, so that after a time he kept his writings to himself, and finally ceased to write. The more he withdrew from the world about him, the more wonderful became his dreams; and it would have been quite futile to try to describe them on paper. Kuranes was not modern, and did not think like others who wrote. Whilst they strove to strip from life its embroidered robes of myth and to shew in naked ugliness the foul thing that is reality, Kuranes sought for beauty alone. When truth and experienced failed to reveal it, he sought in fancy and illusion, and found it on his very doorstep, amid the nebulous memories of childhood tales and dreams.

In addition to strongly suggesting an autobiographical element to his portrayal of Kuranes, this paragraph also presents the emotional core of Lovecraft’s art at the time. He is acutely aware that beauty is transient, that time destroys all, and that the imagination’s only victory over decay is the fragile, perilous one offered by dreams. It is thus no coincidence that the story opens, “In a dream Kuranes saw the city in the valley.” For HPL, all ideal worlds are dreams and the act of dreaming – or of creating art – is the only means by which mortals may briefly touch the eternal. "Celephaïs" thus stands as a key statement of Lovecraft’s early esthetics. In it, he reveals a yearning for the past and for permanence, expressed through the medium of bittersweet fantasy.

“Celephaïs” may lack the cosmic scope of Lovecraft’s later mythos tales, but it remains one of his most affecting works. It reveals a writer caught between the romantic longing for a vanished world and the growing realization that all beauty is fleeting. In that tension lies the germ of Lovecraft’s mature vision, where the infinite is both wondrous and terrifying and where the dream of escape becomes, paradoxically, a confrontation with the limits of human existence.

Interview: Marzio Muscedere (Part II)

Part I of this interview can be found here. 

5. Can you talk a little about the process of turning Zothique into a RPG? I'm interested not just in the game mechanical side of things but also in your experiences working with CASiana Literary Enterprises. Did you find it easy to translate Zothique into a roleplaying game?

For me, the RPG writing process usually starts the same way: with a deep dive into the source material. For Zothique, that meant going back into Clark Ashton Smith’s stories and reading them with a critical eye. Luckily, I’ve always been a note-taker when reading, highlighting passages, turns of phrase, perspective shifts, metaphors – anything that catches my attention.

So when I returned to my old CAS collections, they were already filled with highlights and margin notes (sacrilege, I know) and those became the foundation for the game. From there, I began organizing everything into categories – locations, creatures, gods, artifacts, NPCs, spells, etc. – and slowly drew the setting out piece by piece, ensuring that every element carried the same atmosphere of doom, decadence, and fatal beauty that runs through Smith’s work.

Stats come last. For me, stats always come last. I don’t fret over them. No one remembers your adventure because a creature had AC 15 instead of AC 12. Now, I’m not saying stats aren’t important – bad stats can certainly break your game – but I’m not sure they can make your game. People remember your adventures because of how they made them feel when reading and playing.

I’ve always tried to make my games feel lived in – dripping with atmosphere and history – and I don’t mean paragraphs of exposition. I mean placing items, objects, strange writings, or locations that hint at something more, something ancient, something mysterious. In my opinion, good RPGs don’t feel like they were created just to run characters through like a carnival ride or funhouse. Good RPGs feel alive and mysterious, with the weight of ages upon every item and location – steeped in secrecy and the lingering sense that others have come before.

As for working with CASiana Literary Enterprises, it has honestly been a privilege. Chris has been supportive since day one – a great guy to work with and genuinely passionate about Clark Ashton Smith’s legacy. They’ve been open, helpful, and just as excited as I am to bring Smith’s world to a new generation of readers and players. I really think people are going to like what they see.

6. Why did you decide to use Dungeon Crawl Classics and Shadowdark as the rules for your game? I know you're very familiar with DCC but why Shadowdark rather than, say, Swords & Wizardry or Old School Essentials?

I made the decision early that I would not create a new RPG system for Zothique, but rather bring existing systems into Zothique. The setting is the constant; the rules are the lens. My goal was for the world to remain entirely faithful to CAS – its geography, its gods and necromancers, its tone of grandeur and decay – while allowing players to experience it through systems they already know. That’s why each version, whether written for 5E, Dungeon Crawl Classics, or Shadowdark, is fundamentally the same world. The dice may differ, but Zothique itself does not.

Choosing those specific systems came down to both philosophy and practicality. Dungeon Crawl Classics was a natural fit – its pulp roots, Appendix N inspiration (I know, CAS doesn’t appear there… but that’s an argument for another day, lol), and focus on strange sorcery and peril align perfectly with Smith’s fiction. Plus, it is what I do. 5E made sense because it’s the most widely played system and one I know intimately from years of conversion work for Goodman Games and play. Shadowdark, on the other hand, was chosen out of the many requests for me to do so. The more I spoke of my upcoming project at cons or online, the more I was asked to bring the setting to Shadowdark. So I looked into the system – and I loved it. The aesthetic, the tension, the fast, streamlined play - I think it fits Zothique perfectly.

It’s important to note that I’m not bringing Zothique to these game systems – I’m bringing these game systems to Zothique. Regardless of which ruleset you prefer, the world itself remains the same – true to Clark Ashton Smith’s original vision. The laws of Zothique do not change, only the dice that measure them do. In short – the rules serve the setting – not the other way around.

And why stop at three systems? Because, frankly, if I didn’t, I think I’d go mad.

7. Can you talk a little more about the rules and other game mechanics of the various versions of the Zothique RPG? What's unique about them? Are there any elements you're especially proud of or think would catch the interest of old school gaming fans? 

Zothique isn’t a new RPG system – it’s a setting designed to haunt the games you already know. Built to run seamlessly with Dungeon Crawl Classics, 5E, or Shadowdark, it lets players step into Zothique without learning a new rulebook. Familiar mechanics are reskinned in the decadent tone of Clark Ashton Smith’s last continent, supported by new character classes – the Astrologer, Doomed Prince, Tomb Robber, Court Slayer, Sorcerer-Priest, and Necromancer – along with new spells, creatures, and relics. The game introduces a new mechanic – a Doom & Decadence track, a creeping mechanic of temptation and ruin that grants power only at terrible cost. In Zothique, every act of sorcery, every indulgence, and every favor from the gods exacts a price – for nothing beneath the dying sun comes without decay.

8. You're also working on an omnibus of all of the Zothique stories. What can you tell us about that? As a huge fan of Smith, who already owns his collected fiction in several versions, what does this omnibus offer that we haven't seen before? 

The Zothique Omnibus gathers the entire cycle – fifteen stories, one poem, one six-act play, and several rare fragments – in a single lavishly illustrated volume. Artist Lucas Korte brings the dying world to life with over fifteen full-page illustrations of necromantic grandeur and ruin. It’s both a perfect introduction for new readers and a definitive companion for long-time admirers of Clark Ashton Smith’s darkest creation.

9. Is there anything else you'd like to share about this project – something that you really want gamers and fans of Zothique to know about?

What I’d most like people to know is that Zothique isn’t just another fantasy world – it’s the final dream of Earth, brought to life through the words of Clark Ashton Smith. Every page of this project was written to capture that strange beauty and fatal grandeur beneath the dying sun, exactly as Smith envisioned it – decadent, dreamlike, and filled with both wonder and doom. Every rule, map, spell, and description was crafted to feel like something drawn straight from one of his stories – strange, poetic, and tragic in equal measure.

We’re only halfway through the Kickstarter and there’s still so much more to share – more art, more lore, and more glimpses into the last continent. I want to thank everyone who’s taken the time to explore the project, and especially those who’ve backed it and helped bring Zothique closer to life.

And finally, a heartfelt thank-you to you, James, for the interview and for shining a little more light into the dusk of Zothique.

Interview: Marzio Muscedere (Part I)

Even though I spent this past August writing primarily about H.P. Lovecraft and his enduring legacy, when it comes to the Big Three of Weird Tales – Robert E. Howard, HPL, and Clark Ashton Smith – it's actually Smith whom I'd select as my personal favorite. That's why, in another life, I pursued the license to produce a game based on Smith's three most interesting and well-developed settings, Hyperborea, Averoigne, and Zothique. 

Sadly, my plans came to naught, but another inhabitant of the Great White North – Marzio Muscedere – has succeeded where I did not. His company, Marz Press, is publishing an officially licensed Zothique RPG, along with a deluxe illustrated omnibus of all the stories of the Last Continent. I reached out to Marzio to learn more about him, his appreciation of CAS, and the Zothique game he is producing and he kindly agreed to answer my questions, the answers to which will appear today and tomorrow.

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you first become involved in the hobby of roleplaying?

My name’s Marzio Muscedere, and I live in a land of nightmare and sorcery deep in the steaming jungles of southern Canada – well, maybe not all that, but I do live in the southernmost tip of the country.

I first got into role-playing back in 1984, when one of my best friends – and forever DM (he still is, by the way) – scored that sweet D&D red box with the Elmore cover. We were in the fourth grade and instantly hooked. We played every chance we got – hours and hours on end. Marathon sessions, campaigns that ran for years in real time. We sailed and reaved across Oerth, where we were the scourge of the Flanaess. We delved dungeons, put every creature to the sword, and hauled away every coin that glittered. I’m sure we mangled half the rules, and I couldn’t pronounce most of the words in the books, but none of that mattered.

As we grew, we tried all kinds of other RPGs between D&D campaigns – West End Star Wars, Top Secret, Rifts, Chill, Torg – you name it. Then, in my teen years, I stopped playing. Twenty-three years went by without a single die roll. Still, I never completely left the hobby. I’d haunt used bookstores, collecting old modules just to read them. Then around 2014 I stumbled onto Dungeon Crawl Classics and that reignited everything – both my love of gaming and my drive to write. Since then, I’ve had over twenty published works and started Marz Press, where I’m now running my fourth Kickstarter.

2. When did you first encounter Clark Ashton Smith? What was the first story of his that you read?

That’s a great question – and honestly, I wish I remembered exactly when it happened. My story’s probably a familiar one: I started with Conan, but back then it was all the Tor paperbacks. From there I found Lovecraft, then eventually the real Conan through the Del Rey Robert E. Howard collections. And somewhere along that path, I found the last and greatest of the Weird Tales trinity – Clark Ashton Smith – or rather, I like to think he found me.

Like the poisonous gleam of a forbidden jewel, his decadent, doom-laden prose pulled me in and never let go. And his vocabulary – I often joke around that the Canadian school system failed me – for here was a self-educated man living in a wooden cabin with no running water who knew more words than anyone I’d ever met!

As for the first story I read, it was “The Abominations of Yondo,” which I ended up using as inspiration for the adventure that won me the contest that led to a contract with Goodman Games. It’s still one of my all-time favorite CAS stories.

3. When did you first come across Zothique, and what was it about the setting that made it so appealing to you?

I really can’t pinpoint when I first came across Zothique – other than to say I discovered it later than many other sword-and-sorcery worlds. And I’m glad that I did. Experiencing Zothique as a more mature reader allowed me to appreciate it in ways I never could have when I was younger. The poetic and purple prose, the at-times perplexing vocabulary, the purposeful absence of a central protagonist, the decadent and dreamlike atmosphere, the world’s inevitable decline into oblivion – all the things that might have turned me off as a younger reader are exactly what captivated me as an adult.

Aside from all that, what makes Zothique so appealing to me is the simple fact that it’s a world at the end of time. It breaks from so many other fantasy settings by embracing fatalism over heroism. In Zothique, there are no true heroes – only doomed figures and decadent sorcerers reeling toward ruin. And unlike many other dying-earth settings, there is no trace of our modern world here – sorcery and superstition have completely supplanted science. Zothique lies in the far future, when the sun itself is dying and civilization has risen and fallen countless times. It is a place of alchemy, necromancy, and forgotten gods – equal parts sin and sorcery – where even the most powerful march toward their own inevitable doom.

I’ve also always loved how there’s an entire side of Zothique that remains just off camera – a vibrant, lived-in world intermingled with an age where corpses walk and dead gods whisper from the mouths of idols. Beyond the necromancers and ancient tombs, you can still feel the pulse of life – the bazaars and bustling marketplaces, the jewelers and innkeepers, the caravans hauling spices and silks across dying seas. There are peddlers of fine wines, traders of strange gems, and merchants and mercenaries far traveled from outer lands.

All of it persists amid the decay – a civilization both decadent and alive, teetering between the everyday and the eternal. It’s that tension, between the living world and the shadow of its own ending, that makes Zothique feel so different from other settings.

For role-players, Zothique is wonderful because it isn’t a world that grows or evolves – it is a world that erodes. This gives it endless room for imagination. Every mountain could hide a forgotten city; every desert could hold a necropolis; every sea, an uncharted isle. It’s a sandbox at the edge of time, filled with tragedy, wonder, and peril.

4. At what point did you decide to produce a roleplaying game set on Zothique?

I wanted Conan. I’ll admit it – I really wanted Goodman Games to get the Conan license so I could write a Conan RPG and adventures. But the more I thought about Conan, the more I found myself turning to Clark Ashton Smith for inspiration in the adventures I was already writing.

And then it just kind of clicked. Here was a world so different, so hauntingly beautiful – why not turn it into an RPG setting? Like most things that have real merit, it came down to creating something you truly love. Zothique is the world I want to play in, so I’m creating it.

My hope is that you’ll want to play in it too – and so far, I’m glad that there are people who do.

The Emperor and I

I'd hoped to have something Halloween-y to post, but the only scare you get today is my face, when Marc Miller, creator of Traveller, kindly consented to having his photo take with me at Gamehole Con earlier this month. 

Somehow. October got away from me and I didn't get nearly as much done as I'd have liked. I suppose I simply underestimated just how disruptive attending multiple conventions in the same month would be. Live and learn. Here's to a more productive November!

Commentary on Ravenloft

I'm continuing to work on a collection of the best posts from Grognardia's early years. If that project interests you, Substack is where I'm chronicling my progress. One of the things I plan to include in that collection is include commentaries on my posts, in which I look back from the vantage point of the present and consider the extent to which my opinions have changed (or stayed the same). Today, I posted an example of that commentary, offering my current thoughts on Ravenloft and its role in changing adventure design in Dungeons & Dragons. 

Commentary on Ravenloft by James Maliszewski

Looking Back on a Very Old Grognardia Post

Read on Substack

REPOST: Retrospective: Ravenloft

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

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

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

Now, I think it's all too easy to emphasize how much Ravenloft differed from its predecessors. At the same time, as I just noted, this is still, at base, a dungeon crawl and an occasionally non-sensical one at that. For all its Gothic horror trappings, we sometimes find monsters not at all in keeping with that style of writing. Likewise, there's plenty of low humor, especially puns, to be found in the module. The names on many of the tombs in the castle crypt – "The Lady Isolde Yunk (Isolde the Incredible). Purveyor of Antiques and Imports," for example – are outrageously bad and make Gary Gygax's own efforts seem subtle by comparison. These puns wrench one back from the Gothic atmosphere other parts of the module are trying desperately to evoke. 

The module also uses a method of placing important NPCs and magic items based on "fortune telling" with a deck of playing cards. It's actually a very clever idea and, from my memory of playing the module long ago, it's effective and lends something to the atmosphere. Plus, my icy old school heart melts when random generation is involved in such a significant way. Effective though it was, the card reading system made me wonder at the time if it was introduced partly to give the module re-playability. That is, because certain important NPCs and items were placed in Castle Ravenloft randomly, the system could, in theory, ensure that each playing of Ravenloft would be different. Brilliant! The problem is that no one is going to Ravenloft more than once, because, as it is written, you can't. Dungeon crawl it may be in many ways, but there's no overlooking the fact that Ravenloft tells a story and a heavy-handed one at that. Not only does it have a prescribed conclusion, complete with Harlequin romance level dewy-eyed sentimentality, but, ultimately, what the PCs do just doesn't matter, since everything in the module is designed to support a predetermined conclusion.

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

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

Building the Dream

Once again, I'm sharing a public post from my Patreon about the development of Dream-Quest, for the benefit of those who are interested in this ongoing project.

The Articles of Dragon: "Aesirhamar"

Over the years I've written this blog, I don't think I've devoted much space to the adventures that have appeared in the pages of Dragon. I'm not quite sure why that is. In retrospect, it seems to me that this would be an obvious source of commentary, particularly as I often made use of these scenarios in whole or in part. Perhaps one day I'll go back and correct this omission in a more systematic way. Today, though, I want to focus on a single specific Dragon magazine adventure that I think is genuinely worthy of attention – for a couple of reasons.

Roger E. Moore's "Aesirhamar" appeared in issue #90 (October 1984) and is a companion piece to "Plane Facts on Gladsheim" from the same issue. I'd actually go farther and say that "Aesirhamar" is just as important as the article it accompanies, because it shows how the information in the article is supposed to be used in play. I think that's important in this case. As I stated in my earlier post, "Plane Facts on Gladsheim" is rather dull, focusing primarily on the way that the normal rules of AD&D must be modified to account for the home of the Norse gods. The result is, in my opinion, quite tedious rather than exciting, which is why I never regarded "Plane Facts on Gladsheim" as highly as I did Moore's "The Astral Plane."

With the addition of "Aesirhamar," though, Moore's approach in the accompanying article makes more sense. Now that the Dungeon Master has a scenario set on Gladsheim, he has the opportunity to make use of all those rules changes and exceptions that Moore has laid out. Rather than being abstract ideas, they're very important, tied to an adventure in which high-level characters journey to Jotunheim and must contend not only with its hostile inhabitants but also with the way magic and other abilities are warped by the very nature of this Outer Plane. 

Like a lot of older AD&D adventures, "Aesirhamar" doesn't really have a plot. Instead, it presents a situation and several locales connected to that situation through which the characters journey. In brief, the characters are summoned by some of the Aesir of the Norse pantheon to locate and stop an evil dwarf who is in league with the giant Hargnar Left-Hand. The dwarf is in possession of a mighty magical weapon, the titular Aesirhamar, which was forged in order to kill the gods in revenge of Thor's killing of Hargnar's brothers. It's a pretty straightforward situation, one that's easy to understand and appropriately Norse in its focus.

For the most part, the adventure consists of a series of keyed encounters in Jotunheim while the characters travel there in search of the hammer. Given the nature of the place, these encounters are quite challenging – there are lots of giants here, as well as associated creatures, like trolls – and each one of them will likely test the mettle of the characters. Moore doesn't include any maps of these encounters. Instead, the DM is left to his own devices, tailoring them to his own tastes. This approach was pretty typical of the era in which "Aesirhamar" was published and I don't mean that as a criticism. There was an understanding in those days that the referee could easily whip up his own maps if they were needed.

Of course, the real meat of the adventure is not these encounters per se, challenging though they are, but the overall context in which they occur. The characters are acting as agents of the Norse gods, charged with defeating (or at least neutralizing) a threat to their rule. That's a pretty compelling adventure hook and one I remember being quite effective in my own campaign. One of the player characters, Morgan Just, was an admirer (though not worshiper) of Thor and considered it a great honor to have been chosen to aid him against the giants, whom he already hated. His fellow player characters, though, were a lot more venal, and saw the recovery of Aesirhamar as an opportunity to gain, if not the upper hand, at least some mighty rewards for the gods. Needless to say, this difference of opinion led to some interesting conflicts that helped spur on subsequent adventures.

Ultimately, that's why I have an affection for "Aesirhamar" – it provided me with what I needed to kick off some fun, Norse-inspired AD&D mayhem. It also provided an opportunity for me to make use of "Plane Facts on Gladsheim," which was a plus. In combination, that was enough. Whether that makes "Aesirhamar" good in some objective sense, I can't say. For my friends and I, that was enough.

CleriCon Musings

This past weekend was CleriCon, a small game convention held in Glen Williams, Ontario, which is a little over 50 km outside Toronto. This is the third CleriCon organized by The Dungeon Minister, but the first one I've attended. The con takes place over three days – Friday night, all day Saturday, and part of Sunday. I was only there Saturday, but, after having gone, I wish I'd been there for its entirety. I have no idea how many people actually attended; I'd guess about 60 or 70 people. Even so, it had a terrific vibe, with everyone obviously enjoying themselves.

For the morning session, I ran a Dolmenwood adventure, The Ruined Abbey of St Clewyd, for four players. From what I can tell, everyone had a good time. My only real regret is that the scenario, while excellent, is probably a little too involved to be completed in a typical convention time slot. I should have prepared a shorter scenario and will remember that for the future. Still, the session was fun and the players really got into their characters. I was especially impressed by the player of Brother Aubrey, a friar, who was responsible for some of the most memorable moments in the session.

In the afternoon, I played Forbidden Psalm, a skirmish-level miniatures game based on Mörk Borg. As I've written here on numerous occasions, I've never been much of a miniatures player, though not for lack of interest. Mostly, my lack of skill in painting has kept me from looking too deeply into this part of the hobby. Regardless, I really I enjoyed playing this game, once I got the hang of its rules, which were simple and straightforward – just the way I like them. Though my faction, The Horrific Morbidities, did not emerge victorious, I have no regrets. The referee and the other players were great and I will happily play this again in the future.

One of the best things about CleriCon – and Gamehole Con too, about which I still have to write more – was meeting my fellow gamers and hanging out with them. For the Dolmenwood game, it turns out that I already knew or had interacted with three of the four players previously, though I didn't realize it. Two were people who knew me through this blog and one was someone I'd met in real life several years ago but did not remember until he jogged my memory. With my birthday in a couple of days, I guess I really am getting old!

I regularly remind myself that "the Internet is not real" in the sense that, when I go to conventions, no one there cares about the latest outrages and controversies. Even if they read blogs or social media, they're at the con to roll dice and have fun, not to rehash whatever silliness we get up to here. That's wonderfully refreshing and I think I need regular infusions of that kind of energy to buoy my spirits. That's probably why, whenever I come back from one of these gatherings, I feel a renewed sense of purpose.

I should add that I attended the con with an old and dear friend of mine, who's a stalwart of my online games. We didn't play any games together at CleriCon but we both left the event with the same sense that we should make a greater effort to arrange face-to-face gaming with our mutual friends. We might not be able to get together weekly the way we do with our online games, but we could perhaps aim for monthly or something similar. The busy-ness of many people's lives makes it so that we're unlikely to ever be able to meet in-person as regularly as we did in our youth, but there are nevertheless unique pleasures to sitting around a table together and rolling real rather than virtual dice. We need to get back to that.

In any case, I would say that CleriCon was, for me, a huge success. My only regret, as I said at the beginning of this post, is that I didn't spend more time there this weekend, as I am certain I'd have enjoyed myself as thoroughly as I did on Saturday. That's what next year is for, I suppose!

Blurry Photographic Proof of My Playing Forbidden Psalm

Pulp Fantasy Library: The Cairn on the Headland

Though Weird Tales was without question the premier magazine of the pulp era, it was hardly alone in exploring the strange and macabre. Among its would-be rivals was Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror, edited by Harry Bates, a capable writer himself, best remembered for his 1940 story “Farewell to the Master,” which later inspired the classic film The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). Strange Tales set out to challenge Weird Tales directly and earned a solid reputation for the high quality of its fiction and the caliber of its contributors, including such luminaries as Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard. Sadly, the magazine’s ambitions outpaced its fortunes. Its publisher went bankrupt after only seven issues, released between 1931 and 1933.

One of the most intriguing stories to appear in Strange Tales was Robert E. Howard’s “The Cairn on the Headland,” published in the magazine’s final issue in January 1933. The tale stands out not only for its content, which is an imaginative fusion of Norse mythology and Christian legend, but also for what it reveals about Howard’s own enduring fascination with that theme. As he often did, Howard wrote and rewrote versions of this story in his search for a suitable market. Unlike his friend H.P. Lovecraft, who generally shelved a piece once Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright rejected it, Howard was relentless in finding new outlets for his fiction. Yet the persistence with which he revisited this particular idea suggests he found something deeply compelling within it and I’m inclined to agree.

The story begin as “Spears of Clontarf,” a historical adventure centered on the Battle of Clontarf  (1014 AD) and featuring Turlogh Dubh O’Brien, one of Howard’s recurring Irish heroes. When he failed to sell it, REH recast the material as “The Grey God Passes,” introducing more overt fantasy and mythic elements to the same historical events. This, too, went unpublished in his lifetime. Finally, Howard returned once more to the subject, transforming it into a modern story of supernatural horror. In this final version of the idea, the Battle of Clontarf becomes a haunting memory intruding into the present, and Howard at last succeeded in finding a publisher. It's this version of the story I want to discuss today, as the final entry in this month's horror-themed Pulp Fantasy Library posts.

The protagonist of "The Cairn on the Headland" is James O’Brien, an Irish-American scholar devoted to medieval Irish history. Fluent in Gaelic and steeped in the great chronicles of his ancestral homeland, O’Brien embodies Howard’s ideal of the learned yet passionate antiquarian. His career, however, is blighted by Ortali, a strange blackmailer who holds false evidence linking O’Brien to a murder. Ortali believes O'Brien will one day unearth some great treasure through his researches and hopes to benefit from them, hence his extortion. Trapped, O'Brien has little choice but to work side by side with Ortali, even as his hatred for him grows.

During a visit to Dublin, the two men explore the titular cairn on a headland overlooking the city. The locals shun it, believing it cursed since the time of Clontarf, when the Irish under King Brian Boru threw off centuries of Viking domination. O’Brien is uncertain whether the cairn commemorates the victors or their foes, but he is certain it should not be disturbed. Ortali scoffs at his superstition, vowing to return at midnight and dig beneath the stones for treasure, mockingly wearing a sprig of holly, which the villagers say must never come near the place.

Later, O’Brien encounters a mysterious woman dressed in archaic clothing who introduces herself as Meve MacDonnal. She gives him the lost Cross of Saint Brandon [sic], insisting he will soon need it. Only later does O’Brien realize that Meve MacDonnal has been dead for centuries, her grave not far away. That night, in troubled sleep, he dreams – or is it remembers? – his former life as Red Cumal, an Irish warrior who fought at Clontarf. In this vision, Cumal helps defeat a one-eyed Viking chieftain who reveals himself as Odin in human form. Wounded by a spear marked with a cross, the god lies helpless, trapped in mortality. Cumal knows that holly must never touch Odin’s body and he and his comrades seal him beneath a cairn.

O’Brien awakens from his dream to find Ortali gone. He rushes to the headland and arrives just as the blackmailer uncovers the body buried within, unchanged after a thousand years. A sprig of holly falls from Ortali’s lapel and the corpse stirs. Odin reawakens, shedding human guise to become a towering, demonic spirit wreathed in auroral light. His first act is to destroy Ortali with a blast of lightning. O’Brien, remembering the cross he'd been given, raises it high. The relic shines with unearthly brilliance, banishing the pagan god in an act resembling an exorcism. At dawn, O’Brien stands alone among the shattered stones, free of both Ortali and Odin.

The story's fusion of Norse myth and Christian legend is unusual, though not entirely without precedent in Howard's writing, especially when one considers his many Solomon Kane yarns. The Battle of Clontarf becomes not just a struggle for Ireland’s freedom but also a cosmic contest between Light and Darkness, Christ and Odin. Howard’s Odin is no noble All-Father but instead a demon, an ancient power of frost and cruelty whose defeat marks the turning of an age. 

Such stark moral contrasts are typical of Howard, but in “The Cairn on the Headland,” they take on an unmistakably theological tone. The story reflects the medieval Christian reinterpretation of pagan gods as fallen angels. Howard’s Odin undergoes precisely this transformation, stripped of his majesty and recast as a malevolent spirit lingering on the edges of history. Yet, for all its moral gravity, the tale remains quintessentially Howardian. O’Brien, though a scholar by nature, is no passive intellectual. Confronted with a supernatural threat, he meets it head-on, triumphing not only over Odin himself but also over the lingering shadow of his own moral weakness and subjugation to Ortali’s blackmail.

“The Cairn on the Headland” may have begun as an unsold historical adventure, but in its final form it stands among Howard’s more distinctive weird tales. It's a compelling fusion of myth, theology, and pulp vitality. It also serves as a kind of bridge between his historical fiction and his horror stories, where the heroic and the haunted intermingle. On the storm-swept coast of Ireland, faith and myth collide and the old gods are finally banished, not by priests or saints, but by a man of courage who embodies Howard’s enduring belief in strength, will, and the indomitable human spirit.

Green Devil Face

As an avowed enjoyer of the face of the Great Green Devil, I had to pick up this magnet a vendor was offering for sale at Gamehole Con. It now graces my refrigerator, alongside a couple of other RPG-related magnets. I wish I could recall the name of the vendor, because he was selling a lot of really great little souvenirs and tchotchkes like this one.

In any case, I'm still playing catch-up after my travels and, since I'm heading off to CleriCon this weekend – yes, another convention, but a local one this time – I've still got a lot of non-bloggy work on my plate. With luck, regular service will resume next week. Thanks for your patience.

The Dark Between the Stars

As I alluded to yesterday, this week marks the start of a new campaign for the (formerly) House of Worms group – today, in fact! After a decade and half a year of exploring Tékumel together, we're finally ready for something new and the game chosen by my players was Fading Suns, originally published by Holistic Design in 1996. That might seem like an odd choice, given my own inclinations, but it's not really. Indeed, I think it makes a great deal of sense, though it's probably worth delving into this a little bit.

Firstly, I should reiterate that Fading Suns was suggested by my players, not myself. I actually put forward Secrets of sha-Arthan, which I first started working on four years ago and whose recent development I've been chronicling each Friday at Grognardia Games Direct. I thought starting up a SosA campaign would be a great way to put its rules through their paces and expand on its evolving setting. However, several of the players rightly pointed out that Secrets of sha-Arthan is, by my own admission, a riff on many aspects of Tékumel. Since we'd already spent more than a decade in that kind of setting, there's a danger that we'd just be doing more of the same.

I couldn't disagree with that logic, which is why I also offered to run Dream-Quest, the Lovecraftian fantasy game I'm creating. Like Secrets of sha-Arthan, it really needs to be playtested and an ongoing campaign would be a great way to do that. This, too, was rejected on the grounds that my players didn't want to do another fantasy game, preferring instead something science fictional – or at least adjacent to that genre. You might wonder why we didn't opt for my own Thousand Suns, which I'd have gladly refereed, but the simple truth is that, by the time the conversation turned to SF, a couple of the players independently indicated that they'd always wanted to try Fading Suns, a suggestion that was soon embraced by everyone else (except one player, who decided to take the opportunity to bow out).

I had no problems with this. Fading Suns is a game for which I have a lot of affection. In the early 2000s, during the heaviest period of my freelance writing days, I contributed to three different supplements for the game, so I'm quite familiar with its setting. I also worked on the current edition of the game, writing the parts of the initial releases pertaining to the Universal Church of the Celestial Sun, along with the supplement devoted specifically to the Urth Orthodox sect. Since I haven't actually played the game since the late '90s/early 2000s, I had no problem returning to it for our new campaign. In fact, I was pleased the players were interested in it.

The campaign frame is that one of the characters is a young nobleman of House Li Halan who's something of an embarrassment to his family. Inexperienced and more than a little disrespectful of the traditions of his exalted lineage, he's been politely exiled under the guise of being sent on a Grand Tour of the Empire to "gain some seasoning" when, in reality, it's to ensure he's someone else's problem. Of course, even as troublesome as he is, the Li Halan don't want to see one of their own come to a bad end, which is why he's been sent out on his Grand Tour with a small entourage – the other player characters – including an Urth Orthodox priest-confessor who is genuinely concerned for the nobleman's soul.

Though there is a new edition of Fading Suns available, I'm honestly not all that keen on its rules. Consequently, we've opted to use the 1999 second edition of the game. It's not quite to my liking either, being an uncomfortable marriage between a White Wolf-style dice pool system and Pendragon's roll-under-but-still-roll-high mechanic. It's clunky and inelegant but still works after a fashion. Plus, I have an entire library of books written to support this edition, so it makes sense to use it. I'm sure that, in play, we'll eventually house rule anything that doesn't work to our satisfaction. That's the way every campaign I've ever played in works and I see no reason why this one should be any different.

Naturally, I have no idea where this campaign will go or indeed if it will go. It's been my experience that the early stages of any campaign are particularly fraught and it's quite easy for it to die before it has a chance to establish itself properly. While I don't think that will happen in this case, there is never any guarantees. It's quite possible I'll be writing again in a few months about yet another campaign that I'm starting, because Fading Suns didn't take root. For now, I have high hopes that my fears will be unfounded. I'll keep you posted as things unfold, giving you periodic updates on our progress, as I've done with my own current campaigns.

Reviews Reviewed

Reviews Reviewed by James Maliszewski

More Thoughts on Reviews

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Embodied

I'm still catching up on everything I left behind while attending Gamehole Con XII last week, which is why I've fallen a bit behind on my usual posting schedule here, as well as on Patreon and Substack. I apologize for that, but such is life. I figure I'll settle back into my usual rhythm by the coming weekend, if not sooner. I, unfortunately, have a lot to do this week that doesn't involve my online life – like preparing for the first session of the new campaign I'm starting with the former House of Worms players. I'll talk more about that particular topic soon, but, for now, I wanted to continue with some thoughts occasioned by my time in Madison, Wisconsin.

I was very blessed to have shared a hotel room with one of the players of my Barrett's Raiders campaign. Though we’ve known each other for years, our friendship had only existed in the digital realm until last year’s Gamehole Con, when we finally met in person. Even after all these years of online gaming, there’s something quietly profound about that first handshake and the realization that someone you’ve shared countless imaginary worlds with actually exists in the same one as you. Perhaps it’s my age showing, but I still place great value on the tangible and largely unmediated experiences.

Online friendships are real. I have many that I treasure deeply, but there’s a particular joy in crossing that invisible line between the virtual and the physical. Sharing a meal, talking late into the night, comparing notes on games and life are all things that remind me why conventions like Gamehole Con matter. They’re not just about dice and character sheets; they’re about connection, which grounds this strange hobby of ours in real human company.

In the course of our many conversations at the con, my friend said something that struck me as both insightful and absolutely true. He remarked that one of the great things about our hobby is that, unlike most others, it’s entirely possible (and even likely) that, if you attend a convention, you’ll meet the very people who helped create something you love. And he’s right. Throughout the convention, I regularly chatted with Marc Miller, the creator of Traveller, swapping thoughts and stories as if we were old friends. If you’re a fan of a particular actor or director, the odds of ever spending time with them, let alone engaging in a long, thoughtful conversation, are practically nil. In this hobby, though, that kind of connection isn’t rare or guarded by velvet ropes. All it really takes is showing up with curiosity and a love of the game.

What makes this even more remarkable is that so many of the hobby’s “celebrities” (for lack of a better word) are, themselves, fans. I can’t tell you how many times, while sitting down to talk with someone well-known in the hobby, he told me how much he enjoyed Grognardia and how glad he was that I’d returned to blogging. A few times, I was even introduced to others as “the guy who writes Grognardia” and the look of recognition that followed was both humbling and gratifying. I was particularly tickled to discover that Ed Greenwood had bought all thirteen issues of my Tékumel ’zine, The Excellent Travelling Volume, because he’s a fan of the setting. I’ve met Ed several times before, but even so, that revelation surprised me.

My point here isn’t to brag (much) but to emphasize something I think is special about our hobby. There’s no vast gulf separating creators from players. In most cases, they’re the same people, sitting across the same tables, rolling the same dice, and dreaming the same dreams. That shared enthusiasm, that sense that we’re all participants in something communal and ongoing, is what gives tabletop gaming its continued vitality, even after half a century.

It’s easy to forget, especially when so much of our engagement now takes place online, that this is a living, breathing culture made up of people who still gather, talk, and play together. Conventions like Gamehole Con are a reminder of that. They're little oases where the virtual becomes tangible and the hobby renews itself through conversation and camaraderie. Each year I attend, I come home not only inspired to create more but also profoundly grateful to be part of something that remains, at its heart, so wonderfully human.

Starports!

Starports! by James Maliszewski

Thoughts Occasioned by My Recent Travels

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Thoughts on Gamehole Con 2025 (Prologue)

As I did last year, I'd like to begin my reflections on Gamehole Con by doing a quick overview of the people I met and the games that I played. Compared to 2024, this year's con felt a fair bit busier for me personally, as I was constantly running into people and then discovering, much to my surprise, that hours had passed while talking and now I had to hurry to a game or some other meeting. This is a good problem to have, but I sometimes worried that I spent far less time with some people than I'd have liked (or that they deserved). 

• Justin Alexander of The Alexandrian and its associated Youtube channel.
• Daniel of the YoDanno podcast.
• Charles E. Gannon: Science fiction author and old Traveller old. I hadn't seen him since Origins 1991(!) in Baltimore, so it was a very pleasant surprise to spend time with him again.
• Joseph Goodman: Head honcho at Goodman Games.
• Kenneth Hite: A true Renaissance man who's contributed to more games than I can remember.
• Jason Hobbs: Host of the Hobbs & Friends and Random Screed podcasts. He's one of the people I wish I'd been able to hang out with more.
• Sean Kelley: Co-host of the Gaming and BS podcast.
• Mike Mearls: Formerly of WotC and Chaosium, now with Asmodee.
• Marc Miller: Creator of Traveller and one of my favorite people, gracious and knowledgeable as ever.
• Travis Miller: Blogger at The Grumpy Wizard.
• Ben Milton: Host of the Questing Beast channel and The Glatisant newsletter.
• Jon Peterson: Author of Playing at the World and probably the premier historian of hobby.
• Victor Raymond: A dear friend, as well as my co-host on the Hall of Blue Illumination podcast (sadly now on extended hiatus).
• Tyler Stratton of Limithron, publisher of Pirate Borg. 
• Dave Thaumavore: Host of a Youtube channel.
• Ronin Wong: Actor and referee extraordinaire. He was the Keeper of a very fun modern day Call of Cthulhu adventure I played.
• Dustin Wright: Chaosium's intrepid customer service guy.
• And so many others whose names I have forgotten to my shame.

You’ll no doubt notice a fair number of bloggers and YouTubers in the list above, which isn’t surprising, since I’m part of that world myself. Still, it’s always a genuine joy to meet people I’ve known for years online in the flesh. There’s something profoundly, well, human about it, and I can’t help but feel we all need to do this more often. Spending time with someone unmediated by technology reminds us of the warmth and immediacy that no screen can replicate, especially as our lives grow ever more entangled with the digital. That’s exactly why attending Gamehole Con has become so meaningful to me: it’s a chance to reconnect, not just with friends and colleagues, but with the shared humanity at the heart of this hobby. 

I'll go into greater depth about the people, the games, and other activities of the con in upcoming posts.

There and Back Again

I am now safely back in my northern lair after spending the last five days at Gamehole Con in lovely Madison, Wisconsin. I have a lot to say about it and other topics, but that will have to wait until after I have dug myself out from under all the emails, comments, and other correspondence that has piled up in my absence. In the meantime, enjoy another amusing Tolkien-related comic:

https://reparrishcomics.com/post/186528205633/facebook-twitter-instagram-redbubble-buy

Off to Gamehole Con

I leave today for Madison, Wisconsin to attend Gamehole Con 12, which formally starts tomorrow. However, being the anxious person I am, I like to arrive a day early to ensure that any delays won't adversely affect my attendance. Like last year, I'm signed up to play in several games, including a session of Traveller with Marc Miller himself, but my main reason for going to the con is the chance to meet up with friends whom I might otherwise only "see" online. That's by far my favorite part of the convention and why I look forward to returning each year.

While I still remain an avowed Luddite, I will be bringing a camera with me this year, so I hope to have more photos to share of the con than I did last year. I will still be largely out of contact while I'm in Madison, so there will be no significant posts from me here or on my Patreon or Substack until after I return. Likewise, comment approval will be suspended. With luck, I'll avoid coming down with the dreaded Con Crud as a result of my travels, but I wasn't so lucky last year. 

Regardless, I'm off!