An Old School (Essentials) Christmas Gift

Over at Advanced Grognardia, I've offered up a small Christmas gift in the form of a new version of an old monster from the early days of the blog. Enjoy!

Merry Christmas!

Pulp Fantasy Library: Hypnos

First published in the May 1923 issue of The National Amateur, H.P. Lovecraft’s short story “Hypnos” is one of his more obscure works, seldom chosen for inclusion in anthologies and rarely discussed in detail. At just a few pages in length, it lacks the narrative sweep of his later, more famous tales. Nevertheless, it occupies an important place in Lovecraft’s development as a writer. “Hypnos” is not a story of cosmic horror but rather one about aspiration, beauty, and the perils of reaching beyond human limits.

“Hypnos” is a first-person narrative recounted by an unnamed sculptor. He confesses his terror of sleep and explains that he is writing down his experiences before they drive him irretrievably mad, regardless of how others might judge his account. Years earlier, he encountered a mysterious man in a railway station, a figure whose “immense, sunken, and widely luminous eyes” instantly marked him as a being of singular importance. In that moment, the narrator knew he had found his destined companion – indeed his first and only true friend. He also believed he glimpsed in those eyes the long-sought secrets of hidden cosmic truths.

An intense partnership quickly forms. By day, the narrator sculpts his companion again and again, striving to capture his uncanny features; by night, the two embark on shared dream-journeys that carry them far beyond ordinary human perception. Through the combined use of sleep, drugs, and rigorous experimentation, they pass through alien realms and successive barriers of sensation and awareness. Over time, the companion grows increasingly exalted and ambitious, speaking of using their power of dream-transcendence to rule the universe itself. The narrator recoils from this vision, denouncing it as reckless and blasphemous hubris. Then, during one perilous expedition, they traverse a vast, ineffable void until the narrator reaches a final threshold he cannot cross, while his companion passes beyond it alone.

When the narrator awakens in the physical world, he waits in dread for his friend’s return. The companion eventually wakes as well, but is profoundly shaken and will say only that they must avoid sleep at all costs. With the help of drugs, the two struggle to remain awake, for whenever they succumb to sleep they seem to age rapidly and are tormented by horrific nightmares the narrator refuses to describe. Inevitably, the effort fails. One night, the companion falls into a deep, unresponsive sleep and cannot be awakened. The narrator shrieks, faints, and later regains consciousness to find police and neighbors gathered around him, insisting that no such man ever existed. All that remains is a single sculpted bust in his room, bearing a chilling Greek inscription: ΥΠΝΟΣ (Hypnos).

Whether “Hypnos” is another tale of Lovecraft's Dreamlands cycle depends, as always, on how one views these works within the larger context of HPL's oeuvre. Regardless, there is a sense in which it clearly differs from other dream-adjacent stories. Unlike, say, the stories of Randolph Carter, which treat dreams as a strange but navigable places, “Hypnos” instead presents dreams as perilous thresholds. They are not realms for adventure but gateways to truths that the human mind can barely endure. The story thus lacks the whimsical or romantic qualities found in Lovecraft’s more overtly fantastical dream tales, replacing them with a tone of somber fatalism.

“Hypnos” obviously reflects Lovecraft’s deep admiration for classical art and his belief in absolute esthetic standards. The sculptor’s obsession with ideal forms mirrors Lovecraft’s own reverence for the art of antiquity, but the story complicates this admiration by linking artistic perfection to isolation and inhumanity. To approach the ideal too closely is to abandon the world of ordinary people. The sculptor’s triumph is ultimately inseparable from the loss of his friend (and his sanity).

In terms of Lovecraft’s broader body of work, “Hypnos” is another story that falls within the period of his transition as a writer. Like "The Other Gods," it anticipates the cosmic horror of his later fiction, in which reality is layered and humanity occupies a lowly, precarious rung. Here, horror lies not in malevolent entities but in the discovery that higher states of existence are real and fundamentally incompatible with human life. At the same time, "Hypnos" story retains a personal, almost confessional quality that would largely vanish from the more explicitly cosmic horror tales for which Lovecraft is now best known.

What I think makes “Hypnos” particularly striking is its asymmetry. The narrator and his friend embark on their quest together, but only one of them remains at its conclusion – assuming he was ever there in the first place. This uneven distribution of insight and endurance is a recurring motif in Lovecraft’s fiction, where knowledge isolates and enlightenment (if such is the word) comes at the cost of connection. The narrator’s fate is not madness in the theatrical sense but resignation. He gains a life spent fearing sleep, haunted by what he has glimpsed and by what he has lost because of it.

Though minor in scale, “Hypnos” is a revealing story. It distills Lovecraft’s ambivalence toward transcendence, capturing both his yearning for something beyond the material world and his conviction that such yearning is ultimately destructive. In doing so, it offers a quiet but potent expression of the philosophical pessimism that underlies even his most extravagant cosmic horrors. It's probably for that reason that I have considerable fondness for the story and consider it a minor masterpiece of HPL's fiction.

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Commentary by James Maliszewski

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What If the Satanic Panic Had Never Happened?

I was recently reminded by a reader of the assertion that, rather than harming the sales or long-term fortunes of Dungeons & Dragons, the furor surrounding the game during the so-called “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s ultimately proved beneficial. According to this view, the controversies gave the game a level of publicity it might otherwise never have achieved, helping to propel it toward broader cultural visibility. This was certainly the position taken by TSR Hobbies and many of its employees in the years that followed and there is some evidence that lends this interpretation a degree of plausibility.

At the same time, others have suggested that this narrative is too neat and reassuring, as well as too dependent on outcomes that were visible only in retrospect. The difficulty, of course, is that the question itself resists a definitive resolution. There is no way to measure what would have happened had the moral panic not occurred. Indeed, any attempt to do so quickly runs into the limits of counterfactual history, where causes and effects cannot be isolated or tested.

The problem, as my reader put it, closely resembles survivorship bias. I think we've all seen the illustration of the battle-damaged aircraft from the Second World War. If not, I've included it at the top of this post. During the war, military analysts initially studied the bullet holes on planes that returned from combat, assuming the holes marked the most vulnerable areas. What they eventually came to realize is that the opposite was true: the planes that did not return had likely been hit in the places where the surviving aircraft were unmarked. The most important evidence was not what could be seen, but what was missing.

A similar bias may shape how we remember the Satanic Panic’s impact on the history of Dungeons & Dragons. The people who became lifelong gamers in the 1980s and 1990s were, by definition, those who passed through that period of censorship, stigma, and negative publicity. They are the aircraft that returned. Their presence is visible and their stories are often told, sometimes with pride, as proof that the panic failed or even that it backfired.

What is far harder to see are the players who never made it that far. The children whose parents forbade the game. The schools and libraries that quietly removed it from their shelves. The local groups that never formed because the social cost of participation seemed too high. These absent players leave no testimonies, no fond memories, and, of course, no sales figures. They are the aircraft that never returned and their absence subtly shapes the conclusions we draw about the era.

This does not mean that the claim that the Satanic Panic helped Dungeons & Dragons is false. It may be true or partly true or true in some contexts and not in others. Nor does it mean that the opposite claim, that the panic caused lasting harm, can be demonstrated with any greater certainty. The counterfactual remains unprovable. What it does suggest is that confidence in either position should be tempered by an awareness of what cannot be measured.

For readers who lived through that period, I'm curious about your own experiences. At the time you first encountered the game, was easy it to access or was contested or even forbidden? Did you know people who were interested in D&D but discouraged from playing or who drifted away under social pressure? I ask all this not merely out of curiosity, but because, as I'm sure I've mentioned before, I barely knew that the Satanic Panic was a thing with which anyone had to contend. I was aware of its existence, of course, but I never intersected with it in the slightest, nor did any of my friends. Without exception, our parents and extended families were supportive of our newfound obsession and, in fact, encouraged it, especially in my case. My own perspective is thus not very helpful in assessing this question.

In any case, I don't expect to come to any unassailable conclusions by raising this question. The Satanic Panic, after all, was an amorphous thing, neither a simple obstacle to the hobby's growth nor an obvious catalyst to it. It was a cultural pressure that some people resisted, some endured, and others, like myself, never encountered. That said, I think there is strength to the suggestion that any account of it that focuses only on those who remained risks mistaking survival for inevitability and resilience for proof that nothing was lost. That's why I'm curious to hear from others and their experiences of it.

The Dwellers in the Mirage

I'm presently finishing work on a long essay about ten works of "forgotten fantasy" – stories I consider to have been influential or otherwise important to the subsequent development of fantasy but that have largely been forgotten or otherwise overlooked by later generations. Included among those ten works is Abraham Merritt's 1932 novel, The Dwellers in the Mirage. Though barely known today, the novel was quite popular in its day and may have played a role in inspiring Robert E. Howard to create his character of Conan the Cimmerian.

The fine men over at DMR Books recently released a new edition of the novel that restores Merritt's preferred ending. It's a great edition, well worth picking up, if, like me, you're a fan of Merritt. I highly recommend it.

Initial Thoughts on Combat in Metamorphosis Alpha

Three sessions into my new Metamorphosis Alpha campaign – which I've dubbed "Habitat" – my players and I have now had the chance to use the game's combat system several times, most recently when their characters encountered some hostile wolfoids inside the Environmental Control Center of Habitat Level 2 of the starship Warden. My initial instincts about the game have thus far been proven correct. Though published two years after OD&D, MA is still a very early game design, filled with a lot of rough edges, infelicities, and general wonkiness. This is especially the case with the combat.

On the surface, combat in Metamorphosis Alpha isn't that much different from combat in OD&D. Players roll 1d20, with the aim of rolling equal to or higher than a target number. This roll is modified by certain factors, like a high Strength score or mutations. Weapons in MA each have a weapon class, ranging from 1 for bows and blowguns to 8 for protein disruptor pistols. In general, the higher the weapon class, the lower the target number needed versus an opponent's armor class (also rated from 1 to 8). 

There are some wrinkles in this, though, since weapon class is something of a stand-in for the weapon versus AC tables of Chainmail, Greyhawk, and AD&D. Some weapons are better against lower armor classes than they are against higher ones, for example, along with other peculiarities, like the metal disruptor pistol having no effect against armor classes above 3. Longtime players of Gamma World will, of course, recognize this system, since that descendant of Metamorphosis Alpha uses a similar system.

Damage varies by weapon type, as in Supplement I to OD&D. Each weapon's damage also varies by target type, with "humanoid beings," "mutated creatures," and "true humans" each being a separate category. It's unclear from the text whether mutated animals that have humanoid shapes count as a  the first or second category. When confronted with this on the fly, I elected to treat mutant animals as the middle category, but now I am second guessing myself, since it often means that mutant animals take less damage from common weapons like swords than do their mutant human counterparts. 

For reasons unknown to me, the game includes a second system for resolving bow combat – just bow combat – that seems to be derived from Chainmail. Instead of the difficulty to hit being based on armor class, it's based on distance. Furthermore, 2d6 are rolled against a target number rather than 1d20. When we first noticed that there were two systems for bow combat, I offered using the alternative one as an option, but none of the players were in favor of that, so we use the standard d20 system for all combat.

The possibility of surprise is handled much as in OD&D, with a d6 roll. Initiative, however, is determined by Dexterity score, with higher scores acting before lower ones. Ties are resolved with a die roll. There's a suggestion, never fully articulated, that, if a character or creature has a Dexterity score of twice that of his opponent, he can attack twice against that target. This hasn't come up in play as of yet, so I'm not certain whether I'll adopt the rule or not.

Character hit points are determined by a roll of 1d6 per point of Constitution. Since there are no experience rules in Metamorphosis Alpha, it is thus unlikely a character will ever gain any more hit points than what is rolled at the start of play. "Normal" weapons, which is to say, the sorts starting characters typically possess – swords, spears, bows, etc. – do damage comparable to their OD&D counterparts, meaning that most starting MA characters are more robust than those in OD&D, capable of sustaining more hits before expiring. 

The matter of damage is complicated by both mutations and high-tech weapons. Many mutations, like heightened precision and heightened strength, increase the number of dice a normal weapon does. Characters with these mutations can dish out quite a lot of damage, using even a sword or mace. High-tech weapons are even more dangerous. A laser pistol, for example, deals 5, 10, or 15d6 damage, depending on the type of armor worn by the target. Then there are other mutations, both physical and mental, that deal poison or radiation damage or target the mind of an enemy rather than his body. These, too, can deal devastating damage. One of the characters in the campaign has poison claws with strength 11 poison that's capable of killing any creature with a Constitution score of 11 or less on a single strike.

As I noted at the start of this post, we've only just started playing Metamorphosis Alpha. We're still finding our footing and I am sure there will be many missteps along the way. The combat system is, so far, the most confusing part of the game to get right, mostly because it's just enough like OD&D that we sometimes forget the ways that it differs. Likewise, I suspect that we may all be too complacent about damage. Other than a single, limited use slug thrower, the characters do not yet have access to any high-tech weaponry, nor have they faced opponents who do. When that changes, I expect we'll all be in for a surprise!

I'll no doubt have more to say about all of this, once we've had the chance to play the game more. 

H.P. Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror and Other Stories

Despite his profound influence over the subsequent development of fantasy, science fiction, and, of course, horror, adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft's works into film or television don't have a great track record. Most of them deviate considerably from their source material, often because it's clear that the creators don't really understand – or want to understand – HPL and his esthetic and philosophical worldview. Consequently, the number of Lovecraft adaptations I consider genuinely worthy are few and far between. Even so, I'm always on the lookout for new ones, in the hope that I might come across a rare gem.

The other day, while doing some research for Dream-Quest, I stumbled upon references to a 46-minute claymation film released in 2007 by the Japanese multimedia company, Toei. Written and directed by Ryo Shinagawa, it adapts three of Lovecraft's stories – "The Picture in the House," "The Dunwich Horror," and "The Festival" – and does so reasonably faithfully within the limited context of its chosen medium. I particularly like the adaptation of "The Festival," but then I am inordinately fond of that tale already. In any case, I thought this film might be of interest to fellow Lovecraft fans and so bring it to your attention.

Retrospective: Bermuda Triangle

Recently, I came across a couple of “news” stories about the Bermuda Triangle, a topic I hadn’t thought about in years. Growing up in the 1970s, however, the Bermuda Triangle seemed to be everywhere. I vividly remember Charles Berlitz’s 1974 book on the subject – yes, that Charles Berlitz – as well as the steady stream of television documentaries solemnly recounting the mysterious disappearances of ships and airplanes. The 1970s really were a wild time, a period when the Unexplained was treated less as fringe nonsense than as a challenge to modern rationality. UFOs, ESP, ancient astronauts, haunted houses, and Atlantis all enjoyed a curious semi-respectability. The world, it seemed, was stranger than we had been led to believe and I, of course, ate it up.

Thinking about this cultural moment reminded me of a boardgame from the same period that I adored as a child, Bermuda Triangle. Published by Milton Bradley in 1975, it is not a particularly well-known game today, but I suspect that those of us who remember it at all do so largely because of a single plastic component central to its play, the Mystery Cloud. Ships caught beneath it might be removed from the board entirely, creating a physical absence that felt far more consequential to my friends and me than simply flipping a cardboard counter or sliding a token backward. Watching one’s ship laden with cargo and hard-won progress vanish into the Cloud’s plastic depths was a small but unforgettable drama.

Mechanically, Bermuda Triangle is a straightforward enough game. Two to four players each control a fleet of four merchant ships, attempting to move them from port to port to collect goods and return them safely to their home port. The first player to amass $350,000 in goods wins. Achieving this requires a mix of luck, timing, and a modest amount of tactical awareness. Ship movement is governed by dice rolls, with vessels advancing along established sea lanes. Crowding matters, because landing on an occupied space displaces the other ship, pushing it backward, and ports themselves can hold only four ships at a time. This creates opportunities for deliberate obstruction, allowing players to slow one another’s progress through careful positioning.

Beyond the roll of the dice, though, looms the game’s defining feature, the aforementioned Mystery Cloud. At the end of each turn, after each player has moved, a spinner determines the Cloud’s direction of movement across the board. Over time, it will inevitably drift into the sea lanes, crossing paths with the merchant vessels. Each ship token contains a small magnet, as does the Cloud itself. Depending on the Cloud’s orientation and direction of travel, it may “suck up” a ship it passes over, removing it from play entirely.

It is a simple mechanic, but a remarkably effective one. There is no certainty that a ship will be lost even when the Cloud passes directly overhead – the magnets were quite finicky, as I recall – and that unpredictability only heightened the tension. Would the ship survive or would it "vanish?" That moment of suspense, repeated again and again, gave the game a sense of menace wholly out of proportion to its rules complexity. I am convinced that this single feature carried the game for us, encouraging repeated play of what might otherwise have been dismissed as a fairly ordinary, even dull, roll-and-move affair.

Seen in retrospect, Bermuda Triangle feels like a perfect expression of its era. Its mechanics are serviceable, its strategy modest, but its theme and, crucially, its physical embodiment of that theme tapped directly into a cultural fascination with mystery and unseen forces. The game didn’t explain the Bermuda Triangle, but simply assumed its reality and invited us to suffer its consequences. In doing so, it captured something about those days as I remember them, namely, that the world was unstable, unpredictable, and perhaps unknowable. 

The game left a lasting impression on me in a way that Monopoly or Sorry! never did, since, on many levels, it's no better of a game design than either of those staples of childhood. The combination of the Mystery Cloud and its ostensible subject matter, though, was enough to elevate Bermuda Triangle in my imagination. Until I started thinking about this again, I hadn't realized how much I liked this game – or how much of a role it may have played in feeding the earliest embers of my lifelong fascination with the Unexplained. Not bad for an old boardgame!

A Commemoration of the House of Worms

My longstanding Empire of the Petal Throne campaign, House of Worms, ended in early October of this year, after ten and a half years of more or less weekly play. It is, to date, the longest sustained RPG campaign I've ever refereed or indeed been involved in. Its conclusion was therefore an event of real significance, one I felt deserved to be marked in some lasting way.

I chose to commemorate the campaign by commissioning a group portrait depicting all the player characters and major non-player characters who played an important role over its long history. For this, I turned once again to the artist Zhu Bajiee, who has produced so much excellent work for me over the years. The complete portrait is quite large, and I’ve decided to share it in full only with my patrons. That said, I also wanted to give other readers a sense of it, so I’m presenting selected portions of the image here.

More information about many of these characters, along with earlier depictions of them, can be found in this post from late last year. All of the illustrations here show the characters at the time of the conclusion of the campaign.

This is Huné hiNokór, a scholar priest of Hrü'ü, the Supreme Principle of Change within Tsolyánu's pantheon of gods. He is not a member of the House of Worms clan but joined them on their adventures after encountering them in the underworld beneath the city of Sa'á Alliqiyár. 

From left to right: Keléno hiNokór, Mírsha hiGirén, Jangáiva hiTlélsu, and Ssúri hiNokór. Keléno is a scholar priest of Sárku, the Tsolyáni god of death, while Mírsha, his third wife, is a lay priestess (sorceress) of Ksárul, god of secrets. Jangáiva is a temple guard, shown here with her demonic hammer, Ikh Tèn ("Little Sister"). Ssúri is a ritual priestess and dancer for Sárku's temple. 

Toneshkéthu Vokrón is a fourth stage student at the College at the End of Time, where Sinustragán Dzáshu is her master. She's also the youngest daughter of the Engsvanyáli priestking Girándu XV, who died more than 10,000 years prior to the start of the campaign. 

From left to right: Znayáshu hiNokór, Tu'ásha hiNarkóda, and Chiyé hiZhunrán. Znayáshu is a lay priest of Durritlámish, as well as an astrologer and a seller of protective charms and trinkets. Tu'ásha is his wife – as well as undead. She hides her hideous countenance behind a jade mask. Chiyé is a priest of Sárku who has a particular interest in the magic of the Ancients, like the "eye" that he holding.

From left to right: Nebússa hiTéshku, Srüna hiVázhu, Kirktá hiNokór, and Nye'étha hiSsáivra. Nebússa is a scion of the mighty Golden Bough clan and an agent of the Omnipotent Azure Legion. He is clan-cousin to Keléno's first wife, Hmásu. Srüna is Nebússa's wife, a member of the Iron Helm clan and a potent lay priestess of Ksárul. Kirktá is a scholar priest of Durritlámish, the protégé of Keléno, and a secret heir to the Petal Throne (his claim since renounced). His wife, Nye'étha, is a lay priestess of Ksárul, and another clan-cousin to Nebússa.

Left to right: Qurén hiQolyélmu, Grujúng hiZnáyu, and Aíthfo hiZnáyu. Qurén is a member of the Jade Diadem clan and a scholar of the Mihálli originally in the employ of Prince Rereshqála. Grujúng is a former legionnaire and the uncle of Aíthfo, who was once governor of the Tsolyáni colony of Linyaró.

Though I remain somewhat sad that House of Worms is now done, I am nevertheless glad that we brought it to a satisfying conclusion, something that, I am told, happens relatively rarely for RPG campaigns. That's why I'm especially pleased to have this portrait of the characters and NPCs who played important roles in it over the decade and a bit that we gathered each Thursday afternoon. Zhu Bajiee did a terrific job with all these depictions. They really capture the essence of the characters and serve as a tribute to them and the players who portrayed them.

The Articles of Dragon: "The Influence of J.R.R. Tolkien on the D&D and AD&D Games"

I strongly considered not writing a post about this particular article from issue #95 of Dragon (March 1985), since I know it’s likely to stir up strong feelings and perhaps understandably so. At the same time, the guiding principle behind my revival of the Articles of Dragon series has been to focus on pieces that had a particular impact on me when I first read them, and this one – “The Influence of J.R.R. Tolkien on the D&D and AD&D Games” – most certainly did. Of course, if you’ve been a longtime reader of this blog, that should come as no surprise.

The question of Tolkien’s influence on the creation and later development of Dungeons & Dragons is a topic to which Gary Gygax regularly returned. From nearly the moment the game appeared, Gygax denied that Tolkien’s tales of Middle-earth, especially The Lord of the Rings, held any special place of honor among the many fantasy works that inspired him. He never denied having read and enjoyed The Hobbit, nor that he had borrowed certain monsters and creatures, such as orcs and halflings, from Tolkien. What he seems to have rejected was the idea that this borrowing meant D&D was primarily inspired by Tolkien, rather than being a mishmash of many different influences.

I say "seems," because I really don't know why this particular question so vexed Gygax. That he kept writing articles like this more than a decade after the first appearance of the game suggests that it somehow mattered to him. I suppose the easy explanation is ego – he simply couldn't countenance the idea that someone might think D&D's success was owed, in whole or in part, to the popularity of Tolkien's work rather than his own imagination and ingenuity. But is that what was going on? Honestly, I don't know and I'm not sure anyone else does either.

"The Influence of J.R.R. Tolkien on the D&D and AD&D Games" is a strange article. For one, Gygax begins it by admitting – in the very first paragraph – that "the popularity of Professor Tolkien's fantasy works did encourage me to develop my own." This is undeniable, since the Fantasy Supplement to Chainmail directly references J.R.R. Tolkien and includes not just hobbits but orcs, balrogs, and ents among its bestiary (all of which appeared in OD&D, at least in its earliest printings). Gygax continues that "there are bits and pieces of his works reflected hazily in mine," before stating that "I believe his influence, as a whole, is minimal" [italics mine].

Gygax then recalls the many, many fantasy books and authors he read, beginning in childhood. He points particularly to Robert E. Howard's only Conan novel, Conan the Conqueror (more accurately The Hour of the Dragon) as being his first exposure to sword-and-sorcery literature. He then goes on to cite L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt, Fritz Leiber, Poul Anderson, Abraham Merritt, and H.P. Lovecraft as also being important to developing his sense of fantasy. None of those names should come as surprise, since he highlights all of them in Appendix N of the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide. (Of more interest to me is why Jack Vance is not mentioned at all, despite Gygax's regular praise of him and his works and his role in inspiring the D&D magic system.)

With that out of the way, Gygax says he "thoroughly enjoyed The Hobbit" but found The Lord of the Rings a "tedious ... allegory of the struggle of the little common working folk of England against the threat of Hitler's Nazi evil." Tolkien would, of course, object strenuously to that characterization of The Lord of the Rings, but we must take Gygax at his word. He claims to have found the novel's action to be slow, its magic unimpressive, and its resolution disappointing. Moreover, Tolkien drops his favorite character, Tom Bombadil, soon after introducing him, which contributed to the slowness with which he finished it (three weeks).

Gygax then goes on, rather unconvincingly in my view, to say that many of the common elements of Middle-earth and Dungeons & Dragons have common sources, like Norse mythology for dwarves, and that therefore no one should assume the game he created owed much to Tolkien. In fairness, he also admits once again that there were some things he borrowed with the intention of "capitalizing on the then-current 'craze' for Tolkien's literature." He did this in a "superficial manner," believing that, once he'd attracted these Tolkien fiends to D&D, they'd soon realize that there was only "a minute trace of the Professor's work" therein.

As I said, I really don't know what to make of all of this. On the one hand, I generally agree with Gygax that D&D's similarities to Tolkien's creations are skin-deep at best and probably included solely for the purposes of enticing Middle-earth aficionados to the game. On the other hand, the fact that Gygax kept beating this particular drum makes me wonder if he actually believed the lines he was saying. Furthermore, Gygax was never shy about admitting the debt he owed REH or Vance or Leiber, so why did the charge he was borrowed Tolkien rankle him so? It's frankly baffling to me.

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Pulp Fantasy Library: Azathoth

Written sometime in June 1922 and never published during H. P. Lovecraft’s lifetime, “Azathoth” is little more than a fragment. Comprising just three paragraphs and fewer than 500 words, it might seem insubstantial at first glance. Yet, it remains a revealing artifact from a pivotal transitional moment in Lovecraft’s development, poised between the dreamlike, Dunsanian mode of his early work and the colder, more unsettling cosmic horror for which he is now best known. Precisely because of its brevity and ambiguity, “Azathoth” resists easy classification. It is often grouped with the Dunsanian tales when it is mentioned at all, but doing so obscures its real significance. "Azathoth" is not merely a relic of an earlier phase, but as a sketch of what Lovecraft was in the process of becoming.

By Lovecraft’s own account, “Azathoth” was at least partly inspired by his reading of William Beckford’s Vathek the previous year. An eighteenth-century Orientalist fantasy, Vathek centers on an immoral caliph whose accumulated sins drive him into a descent through the underworld, where he endures a succession of grotesque and fitting torments. Lovecraft, who had been fascinated by Middle Eastern lore since childhood – Abdul Alhazred itself began as a youthful pseudonym – was deeply struck by Beckford’s novel. So much so, in fact, that he resolved to write a weird novel in a similar spirit.

That ambition, however, quickly foundered. Lovecraft never advanced beyond a tentative beginning, and the fragment now known as “Azathoth” is all that survives of the project. For years it remained virtually unknown, surfacing only in 1938, when it was finally published in Robert Barlow's amateur journal Leaves. Since then, it's frequently been included in many anthologies of HPL's works, including the very first one I ever read. 

Despite its brevity, “Azathoth” repays attention, particularly for readers interested in the evolution of Lovecraft’s Dreamlands stories – or, more accurately, the evolution of his own thinking about dreams, creativity, and nostalgia. Its opening paragraph sets the tone unmistakably:

When age fell upon the world, and wonder went out of the minds of men; when grey cities reared to smoky skies tall towers grim and ugly, in whose shadow none might dream of the sun or of spring’s flowering meads; when learning stripped earth of her mantle of beauty, and poets sang no more save of twisted phantoms seen with bleared and inward-looking eyes; when these things had come to pass, and childish hopes had gone away forever, there was a man who travelled out of life on a quest into the spaces whither the world’s dreams had fled.

Rereading it, I was very much reminded of "The Silver Key," with its portrait of Randolph Carter’s attempt to reclaim the sense of wonder that adulthood has stolen from him. The loss of enchantment and the longing to recover it through imagination or dreams is a potent theme for literary meditation and one that resonates powerfully, perhaps increasingly so, with readers who feel themselves estranged from the world they inhabit.

The issue becomes more complex, however, when one considers The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, written only a few years later, in 1926 (though not published until 1943). That work could plausibly be read as Lovecraft’s belated fulfillment of his earlier ambition to write a weird novel in the spirit of Vathek. In Dream-Quest, Randolph Carter quite literally “travels out of life on a quest into the spaces whither the world’s dreams had fled,” echoing the aim of the unnamed protagonist of “Azathoth.” Yet, the conclusions of the two works diverge in an important way. Carter’s journey in Dream-Quest does not end in a permanent withdrawal into dream, but rather in an acceptance of the flawed, limited, but irreplaceable value of the real world into which he was born and in which he has no choice but to live.

Seen in this light, “Azathoth” marks a moment before that reconciliation was possible for Lovecraft. It captures a stage at which escape into dream still seemed not only tempting but necessary, before he had fully worked through the implications of such a retreat. As a fragment, it does not offer resolution, but as a document of transition it is invaluable. “Azathoth” shows Lovecraft standing at a crossroads, still mourning a lost world of wonder, yet already groping toward the darker, more complex vision that would define his mature work.

Feigning Ignorance

Though we're only two sessions into the Metamorphosis Alpha campaign, everyone seems to be enjoying themselves, including me. Prior to this, I don't believe any of the players involved had ever had the chance to play MA before or, if they had, did so for very long. All of them were, of course, familiar with the game in broad terms, including its central premise. While I'm sure there have been many players over the decades who weren't aware that their characters were actually aboard a generation ship gone mad after a chance encounter with a radiation cloud, that's definitely not the case in my campaign. Everyone playing the game already knows the score.

I bring this up, because one of several things about the campaign that I've enjoying as the referee is watching the players pretend, via their characters, that they have no inkling of the Big Picture. The characters began the campaign as inhabitants of the village of Habitat, located on the shores of Lake Refuge within Wolf Forest. So far as the characters know, their ancestors journeyed here from the Barren Hills of Warden after having been cast out of the First Garden by the Builder. This is the world as the characters know it and the players have been operating within that frame.

In reality, though, the characters live on Habitat Level 2 of the starship Warden, one of two levels constructed to look like natural, terrestrial environments – in this case a forest – with an appropriate "climate" maintained by artificial means. Though there are a couple of features to this environment that reveal its true origins, like the Sky Columns (elevators) that can be seen reaching upwards, none of this is known to the characters, who have a fairly simple, even primitive worldview.

Consequently, when we had our first session a couple of weeks ago, I presented the current situation in Habitat in accordance with that worldview. The weather had suddenly gotten inexplicably colder, harming the crops, killing off game animals, and threatening to do the same to the old and infirm among the villagers. The elders did not know the cause and so sent the characters off into the wilds to seek a solution or, barring that, the location of the places where their ancestors first dwelled when they came to Warden. If nothing else, they could retreat there and escape the encroaching cold.

The elders have them all supplies, including a "wrath stick," an ancient Gift, to be wielded by the party's leader (a pure human, since mutants bear the curse of the Builder). To him, they taught the prayers necessary to use it – the Prayer of Loading, the Mantra of Targeting, and the Prayer of Humble Jam-Clearing. Then, they set off to ascertain what was happening and, if possible, to correct it, so that the people of Habitat might once again resume their toil in hopes of securing the Builder's favor, so that they might one enter the promised New Garden.

Again, to be clear, the players understood a lot of things I described to their characters under veiled words. For example, they recognized the "wrath stick" as a firearm, but their characters viewed it as a holy artifact and treated it with appropriate reverence. When the party's leader prepared to fire it for the first time, he recited the necessary prayers beforehand and several of the characters added, "Praise the Builder!" at the end of it, which I appreciated. The prayers do nothing, but the characters believe they do, which is why they recite them whenever the wrath stick is employed.

For whatever reason, I absolutely love this. I think it's the proper spirit in which to enter playing a game like Metamorphosis Alpha, whose Big Secret was revealed almost half a century ago. There is simply no way to preserve it at this late a date and I'm hard pressed to imagine ways to "subvert" it that don't do extreme violence to the game's central premise. That's why I think the approach my players have taken – leaning into their characters' ignorance of the true situation – is probably the best way to enjoy MA in 2025. As I've said before, I have no idea how sustainable this is over the long term, but I plan to have fun with it for however long it lasts.

Three

While I'd prefer you to comment over at Grognardia Games Direct, your comments are very welcome here as well.

Three by James Maliszewski

Let Me Know Your Preference

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Retrospective: Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega

Since I recently started refereeing Metamorphosis Alpha, I've been thinking a lot about the game and its history. This inevitably led me back to the only version of MA I actually owned before the 21st century – 1994's Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega, released as part of TSR's Amazing Engine series of games. Like the original version of Metamorphosis Alpha. this version of the game is fairly obscure, with comparatively few people even remembering its existence, let alone having played it. Indeed, I think it's possible that it's even more obscure than its predecessor, perhaps by being one of the last Amazing Engine products published during the tumultuous final years of TSR.

For those who don't recall, Amazing Engine was TSR's attempt to produce a set of generic rules that could be easily ported to a variety of different genres and settings. Designed by David Cook, the Amazing Engine rules were very "light," based on four ability scores, skills, and percentile resolution. Each setting book for the game built on this foundation, adding specific rules as needed. In Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega, for example, specific rules additions primarily concerned mutations and high-tech equipment. 

Never having actually played any Amazing Engine game – a distinction I doubt is unique – I can’t speak to how well it worked in practice. Nor do I know whether the line’s cancellation less than two years after its launch reflects problems with the system itself or simply TSR’s dire financial state at the time, when no new product line likely stood much chance. The sad thing is that Amazing Engine did produce several genuinely interesting settings. I was particularly fond of For Faerie, Queen & Country, a Victorian fantasy setting, and Kromosome, a “biopunk” setting. Several of the other eight published settings were, by most accounts, also quite well done, though few people seemed to notice. Amazing Engine was very much a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it product line from the last days of TSR.

Designer Slade Henson, in his preface to Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega, explains that the game began its life as a supplement to the 4th edition of Gamma World. That does not surprise me, since Jim Ward had been promising an MA supplement/expansion to Gamma World since at least 1981. The game's third edition very much seemed to be building toward it as well, making it one of the few things that captured my attention about that particular version of the game. However, it was never to be, nor, as Henson recounts, was it to happen for 4th edition. Once GW 4e was cancelled, the planned Metamorphosis Alpha boxed set – complete "a couple billion cards, a few trillion maps, and a googolplex of creative tidbits for the Game Master" – was to be converted into a stand-alone 144-page book. "I think I sobbed that day," Henson says, and I can't really blame him.

That said, the resulting book, truncated though it is from its original form, is not bad. I won't go so far as to call it good, because it has numerous flaws. However, it was, as I said, the first time I'd seen Metamorphosis Alpha in print in any form and so I liked it well enough. Furthermore, in many ways, it's an improvement on its legendary predecessor, most notably its organization and its relative completeness. It's perfectly possible to run an MA campaign with Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega and not be constantly beset with questions like, "What exactly does this mutation do?" or "Where did I see the rules for surprise?" Speaking as a referee in the midst of trying to make sense of the 1976 MA rulebook and occasionally failing, these improvements are no small things.

Likewise, Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega gives a much clearer and more well defined sense of not only what happened on the starship Warden in the past but also in the present. The book provides referees with a history of the ship, from its launch to its encounter with the radiation cloud to its fall. There's also a post-sized map of all nine decks of the Warden, along with its various city and agricultural domes. These, in turn, are each described, giving the referee some sense of their inhabitants and current state. The end result is a much more cohesive presentations of the Warden and plenty of possible starting points for new campaigns and adventures.

None of these features are bad in themselves and, arguably, they're boons. One of the flaws of the original Metamorphosis Alpha is its sketchiness. As I mentioned in a previous post, MA 1976 is more of an outline toward an RPG than a fully playable game. In that respect, it's a bit like OD&D. On the other hand, one could reasonably argue that that very sketchiness is a virtue, giving individual referees a very free hand to make the Warden – and the game itself – his own, since he's left with no choice but to fill in the game's innumerable blank spaces and lacunae himself. 

By contrast, Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega does a lot more of the heavy lifting for you – not all of it by any means, but enough that there's a much stronger and more well defined foundation on which to build. That can be a great thing, provided you like the foundation. Otherwise, it can actually be harder to use, since the referee now has to work against the overall content and tone on offer rather than simply making it all up from scratch. I think it's here that Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega is more of a mixed bag. Many of the descriptions of the Warden's current state are, in my opinion, strange and silly – like a tribe of Amazons who worship deactivated robots and mutant cows engaged in a range war against cowboy hat-wearing ranchers, to cite just two examples. 

Your mileage may vary, of course, which is why I can't say Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega is unqualifiedly bad. It's not and, by many definitions, it does a really good job, given the constraints under which it was produced and published. I also have some affection for it, since it was the first version of MA I owned and it has probably subtly informed my sense of what the game and setting is without my even realizing it. But a replacement to the original 1976 game it is not, which, for all its many flaws, strikes me as much more filled with possibility than its would-be successor. 

The Current State of Dream-Quest (Part I)

An update on Dream-Quest, one of the many projects I've been working on since the summer.

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "Demi-humans Get a Lift"

For a lot of old school AD&D players, the appearance of Unearthed Arcana in 1985 marked the end of an era. Filled with a wide variety of new options for players, it fundamentally upped the power level of characters in a way that forever changed the game. What's interesting is that is that, at the time, some people were critical of UA because they felt it "didn't contain anything new." In a sense, that was true. The book consisted primarily of material reprinted from several years' worth of Gary Gygax's "From the Sorcerer's Scroll" column in Dragon. Very little of the book's contents should have surprised anyone who was regularly reading Dragon, as I was.

And yet, somehow, by compiling all that material under one cover, it became more than the sum of its parts. I knew lots of gamers, myself included, who'd allowed this class or that spell from Gygax's columns into their AD&D campaigns without so much as a second thought. In aggregate, though, they all took on a different character. Things that never bothered me before suddenly did, when placed side by side with other options I hadn't allowed (or didn't like). The result was that Unearthed Arcana was the book that "broke" AD&D for me. It was a bridge too far and it contributed to my growing disillusionment with the game in the mid-80s.

One of the last of Gygax's columns previewing material that would eventually appear in UA was "Demi-Humans Get a Lift," which appeared in issue #95 (March 1985). In his characteristic way, he explains the purpose of his article thusly:

 After long contemplation of the plight of dead-ended demi-human characters, and considerable badgering from players with same, it seemed a good plan to work up some new maximum levels for those demihumans with super-normal statistics -- and in a couple of cases just reward those with high stats across the board. Demi-humans were limited in the first place (in the original rules) because I conceived of a basically human-dominated world. Considering their other abilities, if most demi-humans were put on a par with humans in terms of levels they could attain, then there isn't much question who would be saying "Sir!" to whom. With that in mind, let's move along to the matter at hand.

Once again, Gary makes it clear that, in his mind, demi-humans were always supposed to play second fiddle to humans, which is why he included level limits. One may argue that such limits do a poor job of discouraging the play of demi-humans, but there can be no question that that was the intention behind it.

Despite that, Gygax decides here to give in to "considerable badgering" from players of demi-human PCs and provide the means for demi-humans to reach higher levels of experience. He does this in two ways. First, he allows single-classed demi-humans to exceed the standard level cap by two. Multiclassed demi-humans must abide by the usual limits. Second, he allows demi-humans with exceptional ability scores, whether single or multiclassed, to achieve even higher levels. While I think the first change is reasonable, if unnecessary, the second more or less ensured that every demi-human PC from then on would have absurdly high ability scores. In my opinion, AD&D already had a problem with ability score inflation; these changes only further encouraged such bad behavior. The article also opened up for play several new demi-human races, such as deep gnomes and drow, both of which, in my opinion, are too powerful for use in an "ordinary" campaign.

Throughout the article, Gary makes a couple of asides that suggests that he himself doesn't much care for these rules changes but is allowing them because "the gamers have spoken." It's very odd and makes one wonder why, if he really was so opposed to these changes, he nevertheless went ahead and presented in them. The tone throughout is strange and he ends the piece by not only saying that these are the final, ultimate, never-to-be-changed-again, for-real-this-time alterations to demi-human level limits but also by suggesting demands for further power escalation are inevitable:

To put a cap on things, let us get something straight. Any statistics beyond those shown, for levels and ability scores alike, are virtually impossible. Spells and magic, even artifacts and relics, will not increase statistics beyond what is shown, and no further word is necessary. If some deity likes a character so much as to grant a higher statistic, then that deity should also like the character sufficiently to carry him or her off to another plane. (Rules for quasideities will, I suppose, now be in demand . . . sigh!)

Even more than a quarter-century later, I find Gary's tone odd.

What Makes a Setting?

What Makes a Setting? (Part I) by James Maliszewski

More Questions to Ponder

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Fight On! Issue #17 (Fall 2025)

The latest issue of the legendary OSR 'zine, Fight On!, has been released in both print and electronic formats. Dedicated to the memory of David C. Sutherland III, it's filled with a terrific selection of articles and art from a wide variety of old school creators. I myself wrote a longish piece for this issue, a hexcrawl set in the Eshkom Distict of the Secrets of sha-Arthan setting, which serves as a little preview of some of what I've been working on (though you can check out my Substack for lots more of that, too).

It's good to see Fight On! continuing to release new issues. I consider it a foundational product of the Old School Renaissance, one that quite literally helped to bring this weird little part of our hobby to wider attention. Check it out!

Pulp Fantasy Library: The Other Gods

Written in August 1921 but not published until November 1933 in the pages of The Fantasy Fan, H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Other Gods” provides an earliest and revealing glimpse into the ideas that would later coalesce into his distinctive cosmic mythology. Brief though it is, the story articulates with remarkable clarity a vision of the universe that would come to define Lovecraft’s work. In it, the cosmos is neither ordered for human benefit nor governed by sympathetic or intelligible divinities, but instead dominated by vast, indifferent, and alien powers. In this vision, human ambition is not merely misplaced but positively perilous, for to seek forbidden knowledge is not to advance toward enlightenment, but rather to step, unwittingly, toward obliteration.

The story concerns Barzai the Wise, a venerable sage from the city of Ulthar, who has devoted his long life to the study of the gods. Unlike the fearful or superstitious masses, Barzai is driven by intellectual pride and a desire for direct knowledge. When he learns that the gods of Earth are said to descend upon the summit of the distant mountain Hatheg-Kla in the land of Mnar, he determines to climb the mountain and behold them with his own eyes. Accompanied by his young disciple Atal, Barzai ascends the cold, alien slopes and reaches the peak, where ancient stone seats and mysterious carvings suggest a long-forgotten cult.

At the summit, Barzai performs an invocation to compel the gods to show themselves. What answers this summons, however, are not the gentle, familiar deities of Earth, but the Other Gods, who are vast, formless, and terrifying cosmic entities that exist beyond human thought and earthly divinity. As Atal watches in horror, these beings blot out the moon and sweep down upon the mountaintop. Barzai is carried away into the void, leaving only terror and silence behind. Atal alone survives to stagger back to the world below, forever changed by what he has witnessed.

The strength of “The Other Gods” lies less in its action, of which there is not much, than in what it implies. Here, Lovecraft makes a distinction between the parochial gods of Earth and the greater, indifferent forces that actually rule the cosmos. The story marks a turning point from earlier, more folkloric/Dunsanian fantasy toward the fully developed cosmic horror for which Lovecraft would later become famous. Like many of the stories that would later be deemed part of his dream cycle, "The Other Gods" is a transitional piece, standing at the boundary between wonder and horror. 

Lovecraft's admiration for Lord Dunsany is still evident, particularly in the tale's elevated, archaic prose and fantastical setting. At the same time, it's also clearly a rejection of Dunsany’s romantic treatment of divinity. Where Dunsany’s gods are beautiful, tragic, and ultimately part of a comprehensible cosmic order, Lovecraft’s Other Gods represent something colder and more disturbing. They represent a universe in which even the gods of myth are small and provincial compared to the true nature of reality.

The story is notable too for the way it explicitly references characters, places, and concepts that appear (or later would reappear) in previous stories. The city of Ulthar, the character of Atal, and the distinction between “earthly” and “Other” gods are all examples of this. Likewise, the story is an early meditation on one of Lovecraft’s most enduring themes, namely, that the pursuit of forbidden knowledge is not a heroic quest but a transgression of sorts and that the universe does not reward human curiosity with enlightenment, but only with annihilation.

How Weird is My Mutant?

I have a lot of experience with Gamma World. primarily its first edition, though I refereed a lot of second edition too. Consequently, my default perspective when it comes to generating mutant characters is very much colored by its rules. So, when the players of my new Metamorphosis Alpha campaign started doing so, I simply assumed that MA's rules were similar to those of GW. As it turns out, they are – but similarity does not mean the same, as I soon discovered. Mutant characters, both human and animal (or "monster," as the text calls them), have enough differences in the way they're created that my players and I were often mistaken in our initial understanding of how the rules work (a situation made all the worse by the poor organization of Metamorphosis Alpha).

In both games, players can choose to be either a humanoid mutant or an animal mutant. Also in both games, mutants of both types begin play with 1d4 physical and mental mutations. So far, so good. However, in Metamorphosis Alpha, the player chooses these mutations from the frustratingly non-alphabetized list. Then, the referee (or "judge," as he's inconsistently called in the text) "roll[s] randomly for physical or mental defect (or one of each if the player has 5 or more total mutations)." There are a lot fewer defects to choose from, meaning that, if the group of player characters is large enough, there may be some that recur.

Gamma World, meanwhile, presents two systems for generating mutations, something I've discussed before. The standard system determines the mutations randomly through the use of percentile dice and the (thankfully now-alphabetized) list of physical and mental mutations includes defects among them. In this way, not only is there likely to be a greater variety of mutations among the characters but defects, when they are present, will also be more variable. Of course, Gamma World also includes a system very similar to that of Metamorphosis Alpha as an option, but I don't think I've ever encountered anyone who made use of it. Indeed, the random generation of mutations is, in my experience, considered a signature feature of the game and a big part – mistaken in my opinion – why the game is often considered "silly,"

The game's lack of organization has some bearing on character generation as well. For example, animal mutants must select Heightened Intelligence as a mental mutations or else they are deemed to have mere bestial intellect and are unable to communicate or react logically. This fact is only mentioned in the description of Heightened Intelligence, which makes it easy to overlook. Of course, the sample mutant animal character doesn't have Heightened Intelligence and yet still seems, from context, to be able to communicate via Telepathy. There's also a note that the character's animal species – bear – "can't normally talk," implying that animals might need the New Body Parts physical mutation to be able to do so (though, again, this isn't outright stated). It's all a bit of a mess.

What I noticed was that, since players can choose their character's mutations, certain ones became very popular, like Carapace and Life Leech. Furthermore, many mutations are quite potent when possessed by a single mutant. One of the characters, a mutant human named Mee D'Ochre – yes, it's that kind of group – had Heightened Strength, Heightened Balance, and Military Genius, which together allow him to deal 7d6 damage when striking with a sword! That combination would have an identical effect in Gamma World but the likelihood of rolling all three is much lessened, compared to selecting them.

 I'm fine with this, since, as I said yesterday, this campaign is intended as much as an exploration of Metamorphosis Alpha as it is a campaign in its own right. I suspect, as I did when I played OD&D and Empire of the Petal Throne for the first time, I'll house rule and adapt MA as we discover what works and doesn't work for our particular group and play style. That's part of the fun of these old RPGs: they're, in many ways, outlines for creating your own roleplaying game rather than complete and usable "out of the box." That's not a criticism, just an observation, and one with which I'm quite comfortable.

I'll have more to say on the rules of Metamorphosis Alpha in future posts. It's a rich topic for discussion.

Shackles

Shackles by James Maliszewski

Slavery in the Empire in Inba Iro

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Forward into the Past

I've written many times about the origins of this blog, including just a few months ago. A major component of Grognardia's genesis was my rediscovery of the original 1974 edition of Dungeons & Dragons. OD&D was a game I never played back in my youth, though I did acquire a copy of it in the late '80s, toward the end of my high school years. Back then, I saw it mostly as a not very interesting historical artifact – something superseded by later versions of the game, most especially AD&D, which, at the time, I would have considered the epitome of D&D. 

I no longer feel that way, thanks in large part to a number of people whom I met through the ODD74 message boards over the course of several feverish months between December 2007 and March 2008. I learned a lot from the fine fellows there, including the ability to put aside my AD&D-inflected preconceptions of what Dungeons & Dragons is and indeed ought to be. I really felt like a veil had been lifted from my eyes and that I finally saw not just D&D but roleplaying games more generally in a new and much more compelling light. This change in perspective is what really planted the seeds that would flower into this blog. I was reminded of all of this earlier this week, when I refereed the first session of my new Metamorphosis Alpha campaign. 

Metamorphosis Alpha is an old game. First published in 1976, it was TSR's fourth RPG after OD&D, Boot Hill, and Empire of the Petal Throne. It's also the first science fiction roleplaying game, having been released ahead of both Starfaring and Traveller. Like all of these games – maybe not Traveller, whose design really is both clear and complete – Metamorphosis Alpha is downright primitive in its rules presentation. People (understandably) like to criticize OD&D for its lacunae and infelicities of expression, but, having now had the chance to make use of MA as a referee, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that its rules are much less clear and complete than those of original Dungeons & Dragons.

That's not a criticism, merely an observation. Some of this is probably a function of the fact that MA is presented in a single 32-page booklet. Conceding the fact that it's a full-sized book with very small typeface, I'd still wager that's much shorter than the three volumes of OD&D. Given that, it's no wonder that it would fail to include or explicate all sorts of rules that would probably make playing it easier. Like OD&D, I imagine that some rules were omitted on the assumption that referees and players would simply fill in the blanks themselves. Consider the game's foreword by Gary Gygax and Brian Blume, which explains:

METAMORPHOSIS ALPHA is a free-form system, giving rules and guidelines for the basics of play and setting up the starship, but allowing the players and referee unlimited use of their imagination to create new problems and methods of solving them. Using the guidelines of the rules, the referee "creates" the starship (beginning a little at a time), sets up social structures for his people, plans the various mutations, places clues about the starship for the players to find, and any other of a multitude of possible happenings. They players takes it from there as they explore the starship ("seeing" only what they actually would, as the referee keeps his plans and notes secret), trying to gain the knowledge and technological devices they need to survive. From then on, the referee can add new facets to the game as they become desirable. The game is a continuous adventure which need never end.

Similarly, the book ends by saying:

Remember, however, that these rules (and specific portions thereof) are only intended as guidelines – and that many details are best described by the individual game judge. Science fiction can be completely open-ended, and so too this game of science fiction adventure!

This is all very much of a piece with the conclusion of Volume 3 of OD&D, which famously asked "why have us do any more of your imagining for you?" It's a reminder, too, of the fact that the earliest roleplaying games grew out of a hobbyist culture in which players and referees were not merely encouraged but indeed expected to add, subtract, change, or expand upon what was presented in the rulebook. Viewed from this perspective, Metamorphosis Alpha can't really be called "incomplete," even if it was often occasionally frustrating to figure out how many of its rules were intended to work in play.

Still, we had a lot of fun during our first session and I think a big part of the reason why was the sense that, just like so many of us had done with OD&D, we were now exploring a forgotten and underappreciated part of the early hobby. While confusing and incomplete, Metamorphosis Alpha is a game that needs to be taken on its own terms and understood within the context in which it was not only created but also first appeared. That's what I intend to do over the coming weeks and months as I develop my version of the starship Warden and slowly reveal it to the players. 

Why Grognardia?

Why Grognardia? by James Maliszewski

What's in a Name?

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REPOST: Retrospective: Metamorphosis Alpha

(Because I've started refereeing a Metamorphosis Alpha campaign this week, I have a number of posts planned in which I share my thoughts about the game and its oddities. Before doing that, though, I thought it might be worthwhile to revisit my original Retrospective post about it from July 7, 2010. I stand by everything I wrote in that original post, but I have more to say now that I'm in the midst of planning a campaign using MA, as you'll see in the coming days. –JDM)

Although Gamma World was (I think) the first RPG I played after Dungeons & Dragons, it was with its predecessor game, Metamorphosis Alpha, that I was obsessed for much of the early 1980s. Written by James Ward and first published in 1976, making it, depending on one's definitions, the first science fiction roleplaying game ever published, Metamorphosis Alpha is set aboard a vast generation ship (called the Warden in a typical example of early hobby self-referential hubris/humor). En route to another solar system far from Earth, the Warden passes through a radiation cloud that damages its systems, kills its crew, and mutates most of its surviving passengers, as well as the Terran flora and fauna traveling with them, into monstrous forms.

Over several generations, the descendants of the original passengers forget they're aboard a starship (which still functions, more or less, under the control of automated systems) and new societies arise on its various decks, which are kilometers-long in size and include many areas designed to mimic terrestrial environments for the benefit of the passengers who were supposed to live and work aboard the Warden while traveling for decades to another world. Player characters assume the role of un-mutated humans, humanoid mutants, and mutant animals, as they explore the Warden, ignorant that it's actually a starship. It's a very compelling premise, one that it shares with Robert Heinlein's Orphans of the Sky and Brian Aldiss's Non-Stop (sometimes titled Starship in certain editions). In many ways, it's a much more interesting, if somewhat more limited, premise than that of Gamma World.

My own obsession with the game stemmed from the fact, sometime after I acquired Gamma World, I also acquired the first The Best of Dragon compilation, which included articles about Metamorphosis Alpha in it. These articles were strangely inspirational to me, all the moreso because they were for a game that I'd never heard of, let alone seen, but that clearly bore a lot of resemblance in basic premise and rules to my beloved Gamma World. Thus began my quest to find a copy of the game, a quest that ended in vain. I asked the guys down at my favorite game store about Metamorphosis Alpha, but they told me it was long out of print and my best bet was to go to a convention and win it at an auction. The old grognards who hung out there added that MA "wasn't very good anyway" and that I was better off just using Gamma World and making up the rest.

And so I did. I pulled out my huge graph paper sheets and set to work to mapping out my version of the starship Warden. It was a long and tedious undertaking, filled with lots of missteps and heartache, because I never felt I could get it "right." This vessel was supposed to be 80 kilometers long or so, which meant that even a big map would have to use a very large scale. Moreover, what would a vast generation ship even look like? The only starships I'd ever seen were from movies and TV shows and none of them were generation ships designed to house a huge number of colonists, animals, plants, and machinery for decades of travel across many light years. Eventually, all these worries and concerns got the better of me and I abandoned my maps, something I regret now, even as I fully understand why my younger self admitted defeat.

Over the years, I retained a high degree of interest in Metamorphosis Alpha and kept hoping that, one day, a new edition would be released that'd give me everything I'd hoped for back in the days before I could even take a look at this mythical game. As it turns out, new editions have been published over the years, but each one has been a terrible disappointment to me, utterly lacking in the aura of mystery and possibility that surrounded the original. To be fair, some of that isn't the fault of the new editions -- though some of it is, as nearly all the new editions have been conceptually flawed in significant ways -- as much of the mystique about this game for me is that I could never find a copy.

I've since been able to read it and I'd say that, while it's definitely a very early game in terms of its mechanics and production values, it's nevertheless excellently inspirational. At 32 pages, it contains just enough information to get the referee going but not so much as to prevent him from putting his own stamp on it. I still don't own a copy myself; I keep an eye out for them but they're generally ludicrously expensive and I can't justify spending that kind of money nowadays. In truth, I should probably pick up where my younger self left off and just create my own starship maps and use Mutant Future for the rules. Heck, I have this crazy idea of a supplement for MF called Generation Ship, which would basically be Metamorphosis Alpha with the serial numbers filed off and better production values. Maybe that's something worth considering ...