Retrospective: The Gauntlet

Released in 1984, module UK4, The Gauntlet concludes the two-part series begun in The Sentinel. Like much of TSR UK’s output, it blends folklore, moral nuance, and grounded fantasy with a strong sense of pacing and player choice. Written by Graeme Morris, The Gauntlet stands out for its attempt to transform the traditional gameplay of Dungeons & Dragons into something more focused on infiltration, diplomacy, and layered conflict than on brute-force dungeon crawling. By and large, it's successful.

At the heart of the adventure is the conflict between two ancient magical gloves: the Sentinel and the Gauntlet. Both were created long ago during a struggle for control over the Keep of Adlerweg, a key fortress in the contested region. The evil Gauntlet was forged to destroy the keep, prompting its defenders to create the Sentinel in opposition. Over time, both artifacts were lost and forgotten.

Recently, the Gauntlet has resurfaced, discovered by an ogrillon – the Fiend Folio strikes again! – who becomes enslaved to its malevolent will. Under its influence, he has taken control of Adlerweg and begun building a base of power. As part of a larger plan, the Gauntlet seeks to transfer itself to a more powerful wielder and has kidnapped the daughter of a local fire giant to that end.

The player characters enter the adventure as the bearers of the Sentinel, obtained either in the previous module (or through an alternate means in the event The Sentinel was not played). Drawn to Adlerweg to oppose the growing evil, the characters begin their journey with a detour to a village recently destroyed by gnolls. Though unconnected to the main storyline, the encounter emphasizes the region’s growing instability. A wounded gnoll chieftain offers incomplete and possibly misleading information about events at the keep.

However, the core of the module is the infiltration of the keep itself. A frontal assault is nigh impossible, but the Sentinel reveals a forgotten passage inside, now inhabited by giant ants and laced with traps. This portion of the module is open-ended and rewards stealth, planning, and creativity. The upper levels are occupied by gnolls, an ogre, and the aforementioned ogrillon. Morris provides strong guidance on enemy behavior and the keep’s defenses, making this portion of the scenario quite compelling. It's a nice change of pace from the usual dungeon delving.

Eventually, the keep is besieged, not by the Gauntlet’s forces, but by the furious fire giant and his army, seeking vengeance for his kidnapped daughter. The ogrillon, meanwhile, has hidden himself and the Gauntlet within a magical prison. The players must organize the keep’s defenses, rally any surviving allies, and survive the assault long enough to broker an uneasy peace. Though the attackers number nearly 200, this isn’t a battle meant to be won through force of arms. Instead, it’s a test of timing, survival, and negotiation. The climax involves penetrating the magical prison to confront the ogrillon and release the fire giant’s daughter. It's good stuff, especially for a module written in 1984.

The module's illustrations, once again by Peter Young, are not very good. They're slightly better than those in The Sentinel, but still amateurish in my opinion. Paul Ruiz's maps, however, are attractive and quite usable. Because of its layered structure and multiple factions, the adventure demands a confident and experienced DM, capable of managing them all. This isn’t a flaw so much as a barrier to entry. Like many of TSR UK's modules, The Gauntlet favors subtlety over spectacle. It possesses a quiet confidence and clarity of vision that sets it apart. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's probably the best TSR UK adventure and a fine example of how AD&D can support narrative depth without sacrificing challenge or player freedom.

Retrospective: The Sentinel

Published in 1983, module UK2, The Sentinel, is the first part of a two-module series written by Graeme Morris for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Along with its sequel, which I’ll discuss in this space next week, it stands out as a distinctive offering in TSR’s early ’80s catalog. That’s due in large part to its origin in TSR UK, the British branch of the company, which operated with a surprising degree of independence and a sensibility very much its own.

TSR UK’s adventures have always provoked strong reactions. In my view, they’re a mixed bag, but a fascinating one. Where American modules of the time tended to emphasize dungeon-crawling and large-scale combat, the UK efforts often followed a more eccentric path. They leaned toward investigation over exploration, diplomacy over combat, and mood over spectacle. Instead of clearing rooms of monsters, players were expected to unravel plots, decipher motives, and navigate social situations. This approach didn’t always succeed, but even when it faltered, it offered something offbeat and refreshingly different from the norm.

The Sentinel is a low-level adventure for characters of levels 2–5, centered around the recovery of a magical artifact, the titular Sentinel, a sentient glove created to oppose its darker counterpart, the Gauntlet. The action unfolds around the village of Kusnir, nominally part of the World of Greyhawk, though it feels pretty generic to me. What begins as an investigation into a series of disturbances blamed on a skulk gradually reveals a more complex situation involving half-orcs, xvarts, and a ruined villa that hides a long-buried secret. Eventually, the player characters track down the skulk, who unexpectedly hands over the Sentinel and sets the stage for the events of the module's sequel, The Gauntlet (which I'll discuss in this space next week).

The inclusion of monsters from the Fiend Folio, like the aforementioned skulk and xvarts, deserves comment. TSR UK often seemed eager to showcase that volume’s more obscure entries, and The Sentinel is no exception. Whether these monsters enhance or detract from the module depends on taste, I suppose. For my part, I find many of the Fiend Folio humanoids underwhelming and nothing about the way they're used here really changes my mind. They serve their purpose, but they could easily have been swapped for more familiar creatures without much loss. Of course, your mileage may vary.

Even so, the module has its charms. Chief among them is the Sentinel itself, the magical glove that gives the module its title. Far from a simple item, it acts as a character in its own right, one with an agenda and a role to play in guiding the player characters. This combination of grounded, even mundane rural fantasy with sudden flashes of the mythic or uncanny was a hallmark of TSR UK’s best work. It’s a tricky balance, but when it works, as it sometimes does here, it gives the adventure a distinctive tone that distinguishes it from its contemporary American counterparts.

The larger, underlying plot of the module only emerges through observation, deduction, and careful play. There's a sense that the players are uncovering something hidden rather than being dragged from one set-piece to the next, even though there are several times when UK2 verges on becoming a railroad. Many of the module's encounters hint at something older, deeper, and just a little uncanny. The overall effect borders on folk horror of the kind where the land remembers and the past never quite stays buried. I like that.

Of course, The Sentinel is only half the story. Its sequel, The Gauntlet, continues and ultimately resolves the conflict introduced here. That’s perhaps The Sentinel’s biggest shortcoming as a standalone module: it presents an intriguing premise but offers little in the way of resolution. Earlier AD&D module series, like Against the Giants or the Slavelords series, generally made more of an effort to make each installment satisfying on its own. The Sentinel, by contrast, feels deliberately unfinished, a prolog more than a full scenario. I'll have more to say about this in next week's Retrospective post.

Worthy of mention is the module's presentation. The artwork, by Peter Young, is not particularly strong. The cover and interior art are weirdly stylized and, in my opinion, amateurish. It may not be literally he worst art to ever appear in a Dungeons & Dragons product, but it's a strong contender. By contrast, the cartography by Paul Ruiz is clean, readable, and highly functional. I’ve praised Ruiz’s maps before and those in The Sentinel are up to his usually standard. His maps are among my favorite things in the TSR UK modules.

Looking back on The Sentinel now, I find myself appreciating it more for what it tries to be than for what it actually is. It’s a thoughtful module that respects the intelligence of its players and the subtlety of its world. Compared to more "traditional" approaches to adventure design at the time, The Sentinel hinted at something different – not quite "story"-driven but certainly more consciously aware of a narrative or plot. That has its advantages and disadvantages, of course, which is why I don't like it unreservedly. Instead, I look on it as an experiment with mixed results, especially when taken on its own rather than as the first part of a two-part scenario.

Retrospective: The Book of Wondrous Inventions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, the pain ... the pain!

Retrospective: Bugs in the System

With all the talk of Star Frontiers in issue #9 of Polyhedron, I thought it might be worthwhile to look more closely at what might well be the best adventure ever published for that roleplaying game, Bugs in the System. Some of you may recall that, almost two years ago, I included Graeme Morris's 1985 effort in the list of My Top 9 non-D&D Adventures of All Time. While I still very much stand by that assessment, the module is not perfect – few things are – and I feel that a fuller examination of it lends itself to some interesting topics, both about the history of the hobby and the design of published adventure scenarios.

Bugs in the System is a product of TSR UK, the British division of TSR Hobbies, which closed its doors in 1986. During its brief existence, TSR UK distinguished itself by producing a number of well-regarded and highly imaginative game materials, some of which have long been among my favorites. Though I'm not quite certain I can put my finger on precisely what sets them apart from their American counterparts, there's no denying that there's something unique about even the worst of them. 

That's certainly true of Bugs in the System. Whereas the American Star Frontiers adventures, like the Volturnus Trilogy, draw their inspiration from the pulp sci-fi of the genre's Golden Age, Bugs in the System is a fair bit harder edged and "serious" in its approach to science fiction. By "serious," I mean only that Morris takes seriously Isaac Asimov's belief that science fiction isn't really science fiction if it lacks science. Most of what we reflexively call science fiction, especially in the realm of roleplaying games, doesn't include much in the way of genuine scientific speculation. It's mostly fantasy in space, which is absolutely fine in my opinion, but I still appreciate it when an author puts serious effort into incorporating science and scientific ideas into his story.  

Bugs in the System does just that and in a way that puts the lie to the notion that "real" science fiction can't still be adventuresome. The premise of the adventure is quite simple: the characters are tasked with the job of traveling to a biochemical extraction platform located in the upper atmosphere of a gas giant to determine the nature a disaster that cut it off from contact and, if possible, effect repairs and rescue any surviving members of its crew. It's a classic set-up for an adventure, since it provides the characters with just enough information to understand their ostensible mission and leaves just enough unknown that there's no doubt in the players' minds about the fact that unraveling a mystery is why their characters are truly traveling to the extraction platform.

As I noted, Morris is very committed to the adventure's scientific speculation. The nature of the disaster that struck the extraction platform is an unintelligent, microscopic organism that consists of patterns of electrical impulses. These patterns gather together simple compounds from the atmosphere of the gas giant to build up large biochemical molecules in which they "live." A mutated form of this lifeform has infected the extraction platform's circuitry, causing malfunctions and other anomalies – in short, a living computer virus. That may not seem like an original idea in 2023, but, nearly four decades ago, it was and I remember thinking how clever Morris was to have come up with it.

Of course, the fun of the adventure isn't simply in the high concept of its backstory. The fun comes from the characters wandering around the extraction platform, which is supported by bags of gas heated by nuclear reactors, looking for clues to what might have happened, as well as dealing with the malfunctions caused by the lifeform. Characters with technological skills, particularly computers and robotics, will have a lot to do. Morris put a lot of thought into how the lifeform operates within the computer systems and how the characters can combat it. There are even charts and diagrams, depicting the architecture of the platform's mainframe, programs, and terminals, intended both to visually represent the overall system but also to aid the characters as they attempt to track down and isolate the lifeform.

Overall, Bugs in the System is a thoughtful and challenging scenario, one that rewards characters who pay attention and carefully consider evidence. Even so, that strength is also something of a weakness, in that characters – and players – who are not as scientifically/technologically inclined might become a bit bored. Morris seems to recognize this, hence the inclusion of malfunctioning robots to fight, including one whose outward appearance hides its true nature (shades of Ash in Alien). I can't really fault him for this, since he needs to ensure the module holds appeal for a wider audience, but I found these obligatory combat-oriented threats somewhat jarring even at the time. They only appear more so today.

As I stated at the beginning of this post, I stand by my judgment that Bugs in the System is one of my favorite RPG adventures of all time. Its underlying idea is very solid and its implementation excellent. Graeme Morris put a lot of thought into it and it shows. The maps and diagrams (by Paul Ruiz) are clear and well-done, too, which only adds to the module's overall quality. It's just a pity that, likely as a concession to those who prefer their "science fiction" to be Star Wars rather than 2001, there are all these unnecessary shoot 'em ups sprinkled throughout. Them's the breaks, I guess.

Retrospective: Creature Catalogue

Like a great many players of fantasy roleplaying games – probably most, come to think of it – I am a collector of monsters. The AD&D Monster Manual was the very first RPG product I ever bought for myself and, ever since then, new collections of monsters are usually an easy sell for me. Contradictorily, I'm also largely of the opinion that Dungeons & Dragons has too many monsters. If pressed, I'd walk back that assertion with a variety of cavils and equivocations, in part to justify my continued interest in new books of monsters – I am nothing if not self-justifyingly hypocritical. 

A good example of my hypocrisy comes in the form of 1986's Creature Catalogue. As an avid AD&D player, I believed myself obligated to ritually denounce "kiddie D&D," the truth is that there was a lot of excellent material published for that game line over the years of its existence. I clearly recognized this fact even at the time, because I'd often buy – and use – its modules, accessories, and even boxed sets in spite of my ostentatious repudiation of them. 

I rationalized my purchase of the Creature Catalogue on the grounds that it was simply a monster book and that I might find some new foes in its pages with which to challenge the characters of my AD&D campaigns. To be fair to my youthful self, there was quite a lot of truth in my rationalization. It was indeed very easy to make use of elements of D&D – particularly its monsters – in AD&D, which is what I sometimes did. I did this to go effect with several of the monsters from Castle Amber, for instance, so the Creature Catalogue seemed like a solid investment.

In the end, though, I wound up being somewhat disappointed by my purchase. While the book presents more than 200 monsters, a little less than half of them were previously published elsewhere, generally in D&D modules. This was admittedly also true of my beloved Monster Manual II, but less so, since fewer appeared elsewhere and, there's no denying it, the overall quality was better. The monsters of the Creature Catalogue are simply not as good as those of the Monster Manual II, being by turns mundane or silly. There are naturally plenty of exceptions – with so many monsters, it would've been odd if there weren't – but my overall feeling remains that the Creature Catalogue is underwhelming.

The book is divided into distinct sections, each one of which is devoted to a type of monster. Thus, we get a section on animals, another on humanoids, and yet another on "lowlife," the term adopted for vermin monsters. The size of each section varies, with animals and, frustratingly, humanoids being quite numerous and undead – a favorite of mine – being comparatively less so. I say "frustratingly" with regards to humanoids, because it's long been my feeling that D&D could use a lot fewer intelligent, bipedal beings, but I realize this is an unpopular opinion.

Another disappointing aspect of the Creature Catalogue is how many "new" monsters it includes that are translations of pre-existing AD&D monsters into D&D terms. There are nightmares, hook horrors, umber hulks, and ropers, to name just a few. This is admittedly a continuation of a trend begun by the later Frank Mentzer-authored Companion, Master, and Immortal boxed sets, so I can't lay any special blame on the compilers of the Creature Catalogue (Graeme Morris, Phil Gallagher, and Jim Bambra) for it. However, I felt even in 1986 and feel more so now that one of the genuine virtues of the separate D&D line is that it had its own unique flavor distinct from that of AD&D. It was precisely this flavor that regularly got me to sheepishly buy D&D products in the first place. By "crossing the streams," so to speak, TSR was diluting what made D&D worthy in its own right.

The Creature Catalogue is not bad, so much as less good than I had hoped it would be. That's probably an unfair assessment born largely out of my own overblown expectation that it might be a Monster Manual III, but there it is. In general, I like monster books, even idiosyncratic ones like the Fiend Folio. Unfortunately, I can't count the Creature Catalogue among those for whom I have much fondness today and that's a shame. For all my adolescent snobbery, the Dungeons & Dragons line, at its best, offered another imaginative perspective on fantasy roleplaying that I found valuable; that's why I kept buying its releases. For the most part, the Creature Catalogue lacks that perspective. Instead, it feels tired and played out – and that's a genuine shame.

REVIEW: Fabled Lands

I don't think anyone involved in the hobby back in the 1980s is unfamiliar with "gamebooks," a hybrid between choose-your-own-adventure books and traditional tabletop roleplaying. I've talked about gamebooks before and I even did a retrospective on one of the most famous of them. I read a lot of them during the mid to late '80s, but I largely stopped paying attention to them after I graduated from high school in 1987. Consequently, I had assumed that, like the larger roleplaying hobby out of which they sprang, gamebooks had mostly died out by the 1990s, never mind were alive and well today. How wrong I was!

As it turns out, between 1995 and 1996, Dave Morris and Jamie Thomson released six gamebooks as part of a series entitled Fabled Lands. These six books were only the first half of the twelve gamebooks Morris and Thomson originally planned, but the series was canceled before the remaining volumes could be published. Now, Fabled Lands is again available, with the first four books already in print and with plans for the rest to follow. As I said, I hadn't paid any attention to the world of gamebooks since the late '80s, so I was completely unaware of Fabled Lands when it debuted. I was, however, familiar with the name of Dave Morris from Tékumel fandom, where he was an editor and regular contributor to the excellent fanzine, The Eye of All-Seeing Wonder in addition to having designed the Tirikélu rules for playing in Professor Barker's alien world. With a pedigree like that, I was quite intrigued when I learned about the re-release of Fabled Lands.

In many ways, the four available Fabled Lands gamebooks are quite similar to earlier series like Fighting Fantasy or Lone Wolf. In all of them, you created a character not unlike that used in a tabletop RPG and kept track of his statistics and possessions as you navigated a series of numbered pages/paragraphs based on the choices you, the reader, make in response to the situations you're reading about in the gamebook. Unlike straight choose-your-own-adventure books, gamebooks included random elements, such as combat, that were adjudicated through the use of dice, so it was possible, for example, for a character to die from having been slain in battle or having fallen prey to a trap, in addition to other choices whose dire consequences you can read about on the page. This random element is part of what made gamebooks so much more attractive over simple choose-your-own-adventure books, at least for me, since, while randomness did introduce a greater number of ways to fail, it also held out the possibility that one might somehow beat the odds and achieve an unexpected -- and possibly undeserved -- victory.

What makes the Fabled Lands books so fascinating to me, though, is that, unlike other books of this kind, they're completely open-ended. That is, there's no overarching, epic quest, no grand narrative to provide structure to your characters wanderings. Instead, in sandbox-like fashion, you get to travel across the titular Fabled Lands, going wherever you wish and taking up whatever activities you desire from among the many, many opportunities presented to you. Each gamebook describes a different region of the Fable Lands setting and the books are set up in such a way as to facilitate travel from region to region and book to book. It's a very clever set-up and one that I find all the more intriguing nowadays than I probably would have in my youth.

Note that I said "sandbox-like." Inevitably, there are limits to how many options can be offered through the printed word. Even so, the Fabled Lands books do offer a large number of options, as there are between 600 and 700 separate entries in each book on average. Though perhaps paltry compared to a "true" RPG, it still provides a remarkable scope for individual action, far more than any other gamebook I've read (and far more than even some computer RPGs). Similarly, Fabled Lands introduces the concept of "code words." Code words are acquired as your character adventures and achieves certain objectives. They're noted on your character sheet and then, later, as you go to other places, they may come into play. For example, an entry might note "If you have codeword X, go to entry number such-and-such now; it not, keep reading." In this way, your past deeds, as represented, by the codewords, can have consequences, for good or for ill, later on. Again, it's a simple yet clever way to create a sandbox-like environment without the need for a referee.

The writing of the books themselves is straightforward and solid, more conversational in tone than novelistic, with regular forays into gaming jargon. In that respect, I don't think these books are much different than earlier gamebooks, but, given the vast palette of options available, I didn't mind at all. The books all have attractive color covers by Kevin Jenkins, while the interior artwork is by the always-superb Russ Nicholson. Nicholson's artwork is dark and moody, providing a terrific counterpoint to the fantastic realism of Jenkins's covers, a combination I like very much and that gives the Fabled Lands series a unique flavor of their own -- neither too gritty nor too epic.

Of the original six books published, four are currently available: The War-Torn Kingdom, Cities of Gold and Glory, Over the Blood-Dark Sea, and Plains of Howling Darkness. Each book is self-contained and they can be read in any order, the only significant difference being that, if you start off with one of the later books, your character begins at a higher rank (level) than he would have had you started off with one of the earlier ones. There's thus no need to purchase more than one book to start, though, if you enjoy them, I can pretty much guarantee that you'll want the others, as they greatly expand both the world setting and your character's adventuring opportunities.

Presentation: 7 out of 10
Creativity: 9 out of 10
Utility: 6 out of 10

Buy This If: You're a fan of classic fantasy gamebooks and are interested in trying your hand at a very ambitious and well-done example of the form.
Don't Buy This If: You have no interest in gamebooks or prefer your gamebooks to be less sprawling and more focused.

Pulp Fantasy Library: The Well at the World's End

Had he not written any fantasy novels -- or "prose romances," as they are sometimes called -- William Morris would nevertheless have been a remarkable figure. He was a renowned architect artist, poet, and designer of furniture and textiles. A member of both the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the Arts and Crafts Movement (not to mention the Socialist League), he founded the Kelmscott Press with the aim of producing modern books by traditional methods. Morris was a perfect example of an eccentric, even Quixotic, Victorian renaissance man, who achieved not only fame during his lifetime but great influence after his death. J.R.R. Tolkien is but one significant person in the history of fantasy literature who admitted to admiring Morris and, reading The Lord of the Rings with a knowledge of the older author's writings, there can be no doubt the debt Tolkien owed him.

The Well at the World's End was first published in 1896. It tells the story of Ralph of the Upmeads, a younger son of a king, who becomes bored with his cosseted lifestyle and decides to set off in search of adventure, despite his parents' warnings against doing so. In particular, Ralph seeks the mythical Well at the World's End, drinking from which grants long life and good luck. Ralph's journey across the world to find the Well forms the bulk of the book, as he meets a variety of characters and sees a number of sights along the way. Most notable among these characters are the Lady, who found the Well and drank from it years before, and Ursula the Maiden, who accompanies Ralph to the conclusion of his quest.

The novel is long and, at times, slow-going. I hesitate to call it "tedious," because it's finely crafted and there's scarcely anything within its text that is mere indulgence on the part of Morris. Nevertheless, it's written in an older style -- archaic even in the late 19th century -- and borrows heavily from the circuitous, rambling pace of traditional fairy stories. Anyone who finds Tolkien dull would certainly find Morris equally slow-moving. Nevertheless, there's definitely a power in Morris's prose and it repays sticking with it. In my opinion, starting the book is the hardest part. Once you've weathered the first few chapters, you become acclimated to its style and the rest of the book moves much more quickly.

As to its content, I don't want to say too much here, for fear of spoiling it. Suffice it to say that The Well at the World's End is a classic tale of a youth forever changed by his adventures away from home, so much so that, upon his return, he sees things far differently than he had before. Morris conjures up a number of powerful, moving scenes in the novel; it's easy to see why Tolkien was so taken with it. The book's meditations on the nature and advisability of immortality have influenced me as I work on the Dwimmermount campaign and I suspect most gamers who read the book will find something within its many pages to make them stop and think, if only for a moment. The Well at the World's End is probably an acquired taste, like a lot of older fantasies. Still, it'll repay the effort you put into reading it, something I encourage everyone who has the time to do.