Short-Term

As you know, I'm currently refereeing three different roleplaying game campaigns: House of Worms (Empire of the Petal Throne), Barrett's Raiders (Twilight: 2000), and Dolmenwood (which doesn't have a separate name, despite my long-held practice of bestowing them). Dolmenwood is the newest of the three, having been started a little less than a year ago (November 2024), while the other two of much older vintage – House of Worms has been going for over a decade of continuous play, while Barrett's Raiders will celebrate its fourth anniversary this December. 

Though I never specifically set out to run a multi-year campaign when I began any of these, I nevertheless hoped that they would last for several years. Indeed, it remains my firm belief that roleplaying games are best enjoyed not as some casual entertainment but as something demanding more sustained commitment from both players and the referee. This is, in my opinion, the ideal form of roleplaying, for reasons I've elucidated elsewhere. Consequently, I always feel a little bit defeated when a new campaign doesn't quite take and sputters out after only a few weeks or months.

Of course, if I look back at the more than four decades I've been involved in this hobby, I can see far more "failed" campaigns, which is to say, campaigns lasting a year or less, than those lasting two or more years, never mind a decade. House of Worms is truly unique. Were I to live to be one hundred, I doubt I will ever strike gold the way I have with House of Worms. Even after all this time, its longevity is inexplicable to me – a one-of-a-kind coincidence of elements that I couldn't have planned no matter how hard I tried (and I didn't). As that campaign prepares for its conclusion, I cannot help but be profoundly grateful for the experience of such a long and enjoyable campaign.

I bring all this up as something of a prolog to a conversation I recently had with my adult daughter, who's a bit more plugged into the contemporary RPG scene than I am. We were out somewhere and I saw a new roleplaying game with which I wasn't familiar. I thought the idea behind it was interesting but very focused. I told her that I couldn't imagine anyone being able to play this game for very long, to which she replied, "Not everyone wants to play the same game continuously for years." 

Now, obviously, I knew this to be true. Even so, hearing her say that made me ponder the question a bit more. How many of the games I own are broad enough in concept that I can imagine playing them for years? The truth is fewer than I would have thought. Certainly, Dungeons & Dragons and its various descendants have proved that they can support long-term play. I don't hesitate in saying that about Traveller as well, but what about, say, Call of Cthulhu? Is it possible to play a continuous CoC campaign for years with the same group of characters (more or less)? I know of long-running Call of Cthulhu campaigns but how common are they and are the odds stacked against them, given the frame of the game? 

Mind you, I'd argue that the odds are stacked against most RPGs, not necessarily because of their rules or even their focus but because most players and referees grow bored of them after a while. Gamer ADD is a real thing and always has been, though I think it's gotten worse in the last couple of decades. If I had to venture a guess as to why, I think its roots are twofold. First, I think most people nowadays are much more easily distracted. There are so many shiny things competing for their attention that it's harder and harder to keep them on task. Second, there are so many more RPGs to choose from. Gamers have always been prone to neophilia in my experience, so when there are literally dozens of new games released every year, it's little wonder that they find it difficult to commit to any one of them for more than a few weeks or months. They wouldn't want to "miss out," would they?

My daughter is more charitable than I. She compares many gamers' approaches to a charcuterie board. They want a little of this and a little of that but aren't willing to make an entire meal out of salami. Instead, they want to sample everything. That's fair, I suppose, and I can't really be too critical of this perspective, because, at various times, I've adopted something close to it myself. Still, it's another reminder that my tastes and preferences are increasingly out of touch with what the hobby seems to be about. I guess that's just the nature of getting old.

Architect of the Modern Imagination

E. Gary Gygax died on March 4, 2008, at the age of 69. Just over three weeks later, this blog published its first post. That was no coincidence.

Though I’d begun reflecting seriously on old school Dungeons & Dragons in late 2007, shortly before I joined the ODD74 forums, it was Gygax’s death that galvanized me. His demise marked the end of an era and, for me, the beginning of a personal project to explore, celebrate, and better understand the legacy of the game he helped bring into the world.

Today would have been his eighty-seventh birthday. In light of that, I want to pause and remember the life of a man who, though I never met him, profoundly shaped my own. More than that, he shaped the lives of millions, often in ways so pervasive we no longer recognize their origin.

Volumes have been written about Gygax's career, his eccentricities, his talents, and his failings. Seventeen years later and more than half a century since the release of Dungeons & Dragons, it’s time to say something both bold and, I believe, undeniably true: Gary Gygax was one of the most consequential cultural figures of the 20th century.

That may sound hyperbolic, even to readers of this blog. Gygax didn’t lead a nation, win a war, or cure a disease. What he did do was co-create a game that fundamentally reshaped the imaginative landscape of the modern world. Just as significantly, he popularized it. Through passion, persistence, and a gift for theatrical self-promotion, he took a niche idea, half rooted in wargaming, half in pulp fantasy, and gave it structure, rules, and language. He turned it into something accessible, repeatable, and endlessly expandable. He turned it into Dungeons & Dragons.

In this, Gygax's closest analog is probably Walt Disney. Neither man invented his medium. Animated film predates Disney, just as fantasy games predate D&D. However, both men synthesized their influences into a new form and then made it a fixture of mainstream culture. Disney did it with cartoons. Gygax did it with dungeons, dragons, and rulebooks put together in his kitchen.

From that small seed, a global phenomenon grew.

If that seems overstated, consider where we are in 2025. Playing Dungeons & Dragons is no longer a fringe entertainment. It is a cornerstone of pop culture. It’s referenced in popular films and prestige television. It inspires bestselling novels, hit video games, and streaming series. Its influence is everywhere, from the language of "hit points" and "levels" to the way we talk about our personalities in the shorthand of alignment. "I'm a chaotic good introvert," someone might say, without either irony or the need for explanation.

None of that was inevitable. Without Gygax, it’s possible that some form of roleplaying game would have come into being, but would it have appeared in 1974? Would it have spread as quickly or inspired so many imitators? Would the worlds of gaming and fantasy fiction look anything like they do today?

Gary Gygax’s true legacy is more than a single game. It’s a mode of thinking, a grammar of imagination. It’s the idea that you don't have to be content with simply reading about fantasy adventures; you can go on one yourself. He gave us the tools to build our own worlds, to share them with friends, and to lose ourselves in collective acts of creativity.

That’s not a footnote to cultural history. That is cultural history.

So yes, Gary Gygax deserves to be remembered and indeed celebrated as a visionary, a pioneer, and one of the key figures in shaping how we imagine and play in the modern age.

Happy birthday, Gary. You didn’t just help us imagine new worlds. You showed us how to make them.

Stuck

If you’d told my younger self that, by middle age, Star Wars, Star Trek, Dungeons & Dragons – all the things I loved as a boy – would not only still exist but would be huge entertainment "brands," I doubt I’d have believed you. I certainly wouldn’t have believed I’d no longer care about them. Worse, I never would have imagined I’d feel repulsed by what they’ve become.

And yet, here we are.

Plenty of commentators have observed a phenomenon sometimes called “stuck culture” and I think that captures part of my malaise. Contemporary pop culture seems either unable or unwilling to move on from the past. Instead, it recycles, reboots, and repackages the same "intellectual properties" – a phrase I feel unclean even typing – over and over again, as though what we truly need is just one more sequel, one more origin story, one more “gritty reimagining” of a once-beloved character or setting.

This cultural stagnation is especially glaring in the realm of the nerds, where hobbies were once defined by originality and creativity. Now? They're more often defined by compulsive repetition and the embalmed echoes of past glories.

Don’t misunderstand me: there’s nothing wrong with nostalgia. Remembering the things that once brought us joy is natural, even humanizing. However, there’s a difference, in my opinion, between nostalgia and necromancy. So much of popular culture today, particularly nerd culture, feels like it’s reanimating corpses. Bigger budgets, flashier effects, and algorithmic polish don’t bring these creations back to life. They only parade them around, lifeless and hollow, like mummified icons. The result isn’t a return to something vital or real. Instead, it’s a grotesque simulacrum, stripped of its original context, meaning, and soul.

In the age of content algorithms, our past preferences become templates for future production. Innovation is replaced by optimization – and what’s being optimized isn’t storytelling or artistry, but you. Or rather, your predictable patterns of engagement. If you once loved, say, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, they'll feed you a dozen pale imitations, each more toothless, more risk-averse, and more emotionally flat than the last. If you liked elves and dungeons in 1982, the machine will churn out endless corporate flavors of the same, carefully drained of the strangeness and wonder that once made them sing.

This is apparent even in roleplaying games. There was a time when RPGs were gloriously, sometimes chaotically, diverse. Every few months brought some new idea, some strange world, some half-baked but fascinating mechanic. Some of it was brilliant, some of it was garbage, but all of it felt alive. Today? Most major RPG products are variations on a narrow set of tropes established decades ago. Even the Old School Renaissance, of which I count myself a part, often falls prey to the same trap: remaking, rehashing, repeating.

So when did creativity give way to caretaking? When did our hobby stop being about imagining new worlds and become a museum of preserved brands?

It wasn’t always this way. Nerd subcultures were once genuinely weird – offputting, insular, and proudly obscure. They were difficult to access and defiantly uncool and that very inaccessibility acted as a crucible, forging originality and independence. But the rise of the Internet, and especially social media. has flattened all subcultures. Everything is now accessible, marketable, and smoothed out for mass consumption. Because nerds were among the earliest adopters of these technologies, nerd culture may have suffered the most from this transformation.

The result is a creeping homogenization. “Fantasy” now means elves and dragons. “Sci-fi” means space wizards. Every new game must have a "brand identity," a "product roadmap," a social media presence. Anything that doesn’t fit the mold is quietly ignored, regardless of how original or inspired it might be.

What we’re losing in this cycle of endless recycling isn’t just novelty but meaning. The worlds we once explored, whether in a galaxy far, far away or deep beneath a ruined castle, mattered because they were new. They challenged our imaginations. They opened doors we didn’t even know were there. When everything becomes a remix of a remix, that sense of discovery is lost. That may be the real tragedy – not simply that nerd culture has changed, but that it has ceased to move on. It no longer dares to venture into the unknown. It circles the same drain, hoping that the next familiar logo will somehow rekindle the old spark.

But it won’t. It can’t.

The antidote to stuck culture isn’t rage and it isn’t despair. It’s refusal. Refusal to let our cultural memory be mined for spare parts. Refusal to accept brand management in place of imagination. Refusal to mistake familiarity for worth.

There are still creators out there doing strange, beautiful, uncompromising work. There are still games being written, books being published, ’zines being assembled that don’t give a damn about algorithms or intellectual property portfolios. Seek them out. Support them. Better yet, make your own.

Let the past be the past, not a franchise.

Smoke Rings and Sorcery: An Ode to Wormy

Among the many delights of flipping through issues of Dragon magazine from my youth is getting the chance to see Dave Trampier's Wormy comic strip once again. Long before I was conscious of the names of any of the artists who appeared in my favorite RPG products, I knew Wormy. Even among the clutter of rules variants, advertisements, fiction, and the occasionally bombastic editorials that defined Dragon during the years when I most avidly read it, Wormy stood out, in large part because it was so strange. It was a peculiar, beautiful little world unto itself, filled with pool-playing dragons, cigar-chomping ogres, and an imp who spoke with the laid-back confidence of a veteran hustler. It was, in short, utterly unlike anything else in the pages of Dragon and it fascinated me – in large part because I didn't fully understand it or its continuing storyline, having picked it up many issues after it first began.

Wormy's debut (in issue #9, September 1977) occurred when Dragon was still very much in its formative years. Indeed, the hobby of roleplaying itself was barely out of its own infancy and TSR’s flagship magazine was still trying to figure out what kind of publication it wanted to be. Early issues mixed game material with essays, fiction, and humor. Comics became a regular feature before long, with J.D. Webster's Finieous Fingers being one of the more well-known of the bunch, even though it ended its run about a year before I started reading Dragon. But Wormy stood out as something different. It was never simply an in-joke for gamers nor a gag strip loosely inspired by fantasy tropes. Instead, it presented a fully realized fantasy world rendered in lush color and with a distinct artistic sensibility.

What immediately set Wormy apart was, of course, Trampier’s art. Nowadays, we all celebrate Trampier from his iconic work on the AD&D Player’s Handbook and the Dungeon Master’s Screen. His style is clean, expressive and rich in texture and character. Wormy carried those same qualities into serialized comic form, but with an added flourish of visual wit and playfulness. The strip was never slapdash or haphazard. Trampier’s panels were packed with detail, his character designs expressive, his linework confident. Each page was a feast for the eyes and even when the plot meandered a bit (as it regularly did), the visuals carried the reader along to such an extent that he didn't care. I know I didn't, even though, as I said, it wasn't always clear to my younger self just what was happening in many installments.

The tone of the strip is one of its greatest charms. Wormy is unquestionably fantasy, but it’s fantasy as seen through a haze of cigar smoke and the low hum of a barroom pool table. Its characters speak in a colloquial American idiom that lends the strip a grounded, personable quality. One never gets the sense that Wormy or Ace or the ogres and trolls with whom he shares his world are interested in epic quests or noble deeds. They’re more likely to be plotting a scam, hustling a demon, or arguing about who’s buying the next round. This sense of the fantastical-as-everyday-life gives Wormy much of its charm and humor, not to mention its distinctiveness from the other comics that appeared alongside it in Dragon. 

In this, Wormy mirrors the culture of early roleplaying itself. The early hobby, as reflected in the pages of Dragon, was a strange admixture of wargamers, fantasy and science fiction fans, history buffs, and countercultural weirdos. This was a time before fantasy had hardened into genre orthodoxy, when anything could happen and often did. The world Trampier presented in Wormy feels like a campaign gone delightfully off the rails: a sandbox setting where the players long ago stopped caring about the dungeon and are now embroiled in a decades-long tavern brawl. For me, that was a big part of what I found so compelling about Wormy. It was so unlike my then-narrow conception of "fantasy" that I couldn't help but keep reading.

Over time, Trampier introduced a larger story into the strip. There were plots and schemes in motion and strange characters lurking just out of frame. Readers were teased with glimpses of the larger world beyond Wormy’s abode and the smoky dens of the trolls. Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, Wormy vanished. Trampier’s final installment appeared in Dragon #132 (April 1988), ending mid-story. He never offered a public explanation. Other than the following, which appeared in issue #136 (August 1988), TSR never provided an explanation for what had happened:

Wormy, along with its creator, David Trampier, vanished without a trace.

This abrupt disappearance only deepened the comic strip’s allure. In the years that followed, fans spun wild theories: Was Trampier dead? Had he severed all ties with the gaming world? Or was it something darker? For decades, the mystery endured, unanswered. Then, in 2002, word emerged that Trampier was alive, living a quiet life in southern Illinois as a taxi driver. He had steadfastly declined all invitations to return to art or gaming until 2014, when he agreed to showcase some of his original artwork at a local Illinois game convention. Tragically, just three weeks before the event, he died suddenly at age 59.

In hindsight, Wormy feels like a microcosm of an entire era in fantasy gaming, a time that was raw, personal, and unapologetically chaotic. The strip was a labor of love, brimming with anarchic energy, improvisational flair, and unfiltered creativity. Like the Dragon magazine of its heyday, Wormy was gloriously messy, fiercely idiosyncratic, and utterly brilliant in its refusal to conform or explain itself.

As the hobby grows ever more polished and commercialized, Wormy stands as a vibrant reminder of its roots, a time when oddballs and iconoclasts like Trampier defined its spirit. More than a relic, Wormy embodies the untamed passion and fearless imagination of those who dared to be unapologetically strange. It captures a moment when the heart of gaming pulsed with individuality, free from the gloss of corporate agendas.

Whenever I leaf through old issues of Dragon, I find myself missing Wormy – not just the comic, but what it stood for: the spirit of unfiltered creativity, the joy of irreverence, and the beautiful imperfections of a world made by and for dreamers. In remembering Wormy, we remember that the true magic of roleplaying lies not in polished production values or grand designs, but in the bold, eccentric, and often messy adventures we undertake with one another .

The Paradox of Popularity

A family member recently returned from an extended trip abroad and our conversation about her experiences got me thinking about the strange (and, in fact, melancholy) fate of popular tourist destinations. Travelers seek these places out because they're unusual, striking, even mysterious. They promise something rare or difficult to find elsewhere. However, the act of going there, especially in large numbers, begins to erode the very qualities that made them appealing in the first place. A scenic, secluded village becomes a commercialized maze of souvenir shops. A beautiful natural site is hemmed in by railings, signage, and crowds. A place that once felt secret or sacred now feels almost contrived, curated, or even artificial.

Whether we like it or not, popularity changes things.

This paradox – the destruction of uniqueness through attention – is not limited to travel. Grumpy old man that I am, I’ve long wondered if the same thing hasn’t happened to our shared hobby of roleplaying, especially in recent years.

When I first discovered Dungeons & Dragons over the Christmas break of 1979, the game was still pretty obscure, though it had become a little less so in the aftermath of the disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III in August of that same year. The blue rulebook I rescued from the hall linen closet had almost the air of a grimoire. What advice it offered me as a newcomer was sparse and scattered across its 48 pages, requiring careful study and a lot of inference. Most people I knew at the time had never heard of a "roleplaying game" and, thanks to the aforementioned "steam tunnels incident," those who had regarded it with a combination of confusion and mild suspicion. Because of this, there was a strong feeling among my friends and I that we were discovering something odd and special. Gathering in one another's basements, we did our best to piece together an understanding of this new hobby from obscure rulebooks, rumors, and the occasional older kid who claimed to know how it all worked. The end result was messy, anarchic – and thrilling.

Over the decades, especially in the last few years, RPGs seem to have become much more mainstream. Celebrities openly talk about playing them. Big box stores carry them. There’s an abundance of support material, both official and unofficial. Rules are more clearly presented. The art is slick. Everyone seems to have a better idea of what a roleplaying game is. Dungeons & Dragons is now a brand name in every sense. On the whole, this is a good thing: more people are playing, and that means a larger pool from which to draw new players. But I’d be lying if I said the hobby still feels quite the same as it did before it achieved its current level of popularity.

What was once a secret door into another world is now a well-lit, signposted thoroughfare. The sense of personal discovery, the need to make rather than simply consume, feels less urgent. Much of the weirdness, the danger, the raw possibility that drew me in has been sanded down in exchange for broader appeal. It's easier than ever to play, but in some ways harder to find that old spark that made it feel so alive.

I don’t mean this simply as a condemnation, but rather as a recognition of the very real cost of popularity. Something rare becomes common; something personal becomes cultural property. There’s nothing sinister in this, only inevitable change. The same pattern plays out again and again, whether in travel, music, or games. Once you’ve found something wonderful, it’s only a matter of time before others find it too and the thing begins to change, often to the point that it's no longer the thing you fell in love with in the first place.

For those of us who remember the early days (or who simply seek to emulate them), it can feel like returning to a once-sleepy village only to find it transformed into a bustling tourist trap. The outlines are familiar, but the mood has shifted. The magic isn’t gone entirely, of course, but it’s harder to reach, buried beneath the noise and polish.

Still, it can be found. In a quiet moment around the table. In a forgotten module pulled from a forgotten shelf. In the laughter of friends lost in a world of their own making. The secret may no longer be hidden, but the joy of discovery remains – for those willing to look past the railings and the signage.

Reading Material

One of the many joys of this hobby is the sheer volume of imaginative material it has generated over the last five decades. Even now, I can happily spend an afternoon thumbing through a well-worn module or sourcebook and suddenly find I've lost an hour or more in its descriptions, maps, and background information. Roleplaying games, at their best, can stimulate the imagination in ways few other media can. They seem designed to invite speculation, which makes them a pleasure simply to read.

But they’re also games.

This shouldn't be a controversial statement, but sometimes I wonder. RPGs are designed to be played, yet so much of the hobby nowadays seems oriented around simply reading them instead. You can see this in how games are written, how they're marketed, and how they're consumed. I know more than a few gamers with dozens – sometimes hundreds – of books on their shelves, the majority of which have never seen use in any fashion, except as reading material. I know this because I myself am too often guilty of the same.

Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with reading RPGs for enjoyment. I do it all the time and some games practically demand it. However, I do worry about the habits this encourages. For many gamers, especially since the appearance of PDFs and other digital media, the hobby can become more about collecting and commenting than it is about playing. “Backlog” becomes a point of pride. The latest boxed set or 300-page full-color hardback might get read, maybe even admired, but rarely, if ever, brought to the table.

There is, increasingly, a bifurcation in the hobby between those who play RPGs and those who consume them, often as passive entertainment. It’s now quite common to encounter people who own dozens of games they’ve never refereed or played, who follow RPGs the way one might follow a television show or a comic book line. They discuss scenarios, debate rules, rank publishers, and chase new releases, not unlike fans of any other media franchise. As I said, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that either, but I question whether that mode of engagement still resembles gaming in any meaningful sense.

To be fair, the sheer volume of RPG material produced each year probably makes it impossible for even a fraction of it to be meaningfully used. Nevertheless, I think this overproduction has consequences. Most importantly, I worry that it's fostering a passive approach to gaming, one where we're more accustomed to absorbing information than in making decisions, more practiced in critique than in improvisation. Worse, it creates an expectation that play requires exhaustive preparation and a towering stack of sourcebooks before anyone dares to roll dice. The result is paralysis: we read, we plan, we dream, but we don’t actually play.

The modern glut of RPG material encourages a passive engagement with the hobby, one where reading supplants playing. It fosters the illusion that the essence of the game lies within the glossy pages of a new release rather than in the messy, unpredictable energy of the table itself. Increasingly, we see products crafted less as tools for play and more as artifacts for consumption – lavishly produced, densely written, and satisfying to browse but difficult to use in actual sessions. These works often prioritize information over usability and polish over spontaneity. In doing so, they quietly undermine the fast-and-loose, make-it-up-as-you-go spirit that once defined roleplaying.

It wasn’t always like this. The earliest RPG books were lean, sometimes opaque, and unapologetically practical. They assumed the reader was already gathering friends and dice, ready to dive in. These texts weren’t written to be admired; they were written to be used, bent, scribbled in, and carried to game night. If you weren’t playing, they didn’t offer much. They threw you straight into the action with minimal handholding, trusting that you’d figure it out (or make it up) as you went. That trust in the referee’s imagination and willingness to improvise was not a flaw but a feature, a recognition that the real magic happened not on the page, but in the shared chaos of play.

There’s a lesson in that, I think. Games need to be played to come alive. The rules, the settings, the monsters, the magic, all of it is inert until you put it into action. Reading an RPG can be a fine experience, but it’s not the same as the laughter, confusion, and surprise of a good session. The books may be the door, but the game – the actual game – is what lies beyond it.

So, by all means, read. Marvel at the creativity our hobby continues to produce. Just don’t forget to play. Otherwise, all we’re doing is collecting books and calling it participation.

Letting Someone Else Do Our Imagining

One of the most curious contradictions at the heart of our shared hobby is the tension between creativity and consumption, a topic I've wrestled with many times over the course of this blog’s history. From its very inception, the RPG hobby has encouraged its participants to be creators – of rules, settings, monsters, adventures, and more. Indeed, the earliest editions of Dungeons & Dragons often go out of their way to emphasize this. In OD&D, for example, Gygax and Arneson famously invited referees to take what’s offered and build upon it, adapt it, and, where necessary, discard it. "Decide how you would like it to be," they write, "and then make it just that way!"

This sentiment, perhaps more than any other, is the heart of what we now call "old school" gaming. The referee is not just a consumer or a facilitator of rules, but a world-builder. The rules are scaffolding, not scripture. The game is yours: take what you want and leave the rest, as a wise old man once said.

And yet, not long after those exhortations to freewheeling invention, TSR and other publishers began selling roleplayers pre-made rulesets, adventures, and settings. The Keep on the Borderlands, Tegel Manor, Apple Lane, Buffalo Castle, and more, each is a vision conjured by someone else, lovingly detailed and made ready for us to explore. These modules are often excellent and many of them loom large in our collective memory. They are, paradoxically, personal experiences so many of us share in common, as I discussed here not that long ago. So many of us have cut our teeth on the same classic adventures or flipped through the same dog-eared setting material. There’s thus a strong communal identity wrapped up in those shared artifacts. They’re what unite us across decades and continents. Ask an old school gamer about Bargle or Strahd or Acererak and you're likely to get a grin of recognition and quite possibly a story or two.

This is the foundation of a shared culture – a canon, if you like, not of texts but of experiences. That canon was shaped not just by our own tables, but also by the creative work of others. TSR, Judges Guild, Chaosium, Flying Buffalo, FGU, each added to this rich stew with their own distinctive flavors. Griffin Mountain, City State of the Invincible Overlord, Death Test, Chivalry & Sorcery Sourcebook were all, in their own unique ways, invitations to play in someone else’s dream.

There lies a conundrum. For a hobby so rooted in individual creativity, if you look at its history, you’ll also notice a surprising dependence on the creations of others. We lionize the do-it-yourself ethos even as we buy a megadungeon, back yet another retro-clone project, or download a map someone else has made. We celebrate the idea that each campaign is unique, spun from the mind of a referee and shaped by the unpredictable actions of players – and yet we often start those very same campaigns in someone else’s sandbox. I know this all too well, because I’ve done it myself and indeed am doing so right now. None of my regular campaigns, including my long-running House of Worms campaign, takes place in a setting entirely born of my own imagination.

Is this a contradiction? Perhaps, but, at the same time, it’s also part of the strange alchemy that makes RPGs what they are. When we pick up someone else’s adventure, we’re not wholly surrendering our imaginations. I prefer to think we’re collaborating, whether with a professional designer from the days of yore or with a fellow hobbyist today. A good adventure module isn’t a finished "story," but rather a map, a toolkit, and even a provocation. We bring it to life. We personalize it. We fill in the gaps. Sometimes we’ll even discard half (or more!) of it. The best pre-made materials aren’t necessarily constraints on our creativity but catalysts for them.

Still, I often find myself pondering this seeming contradiction, in part because I’ve played a role, if only a small one, in the commercialization of the hobby. Over the decades, I’ve written and published my own works, contributed to the larger hobby, and of course, I’ve bought more than my fair share of games, modules, and other products, as my regular Retrospective posts can attest. So, I’ve benefited from this strange system, but I’m also wary of what it might cost us in the long run. Are we, little by little, outsourcing our imagination? Are we becoming too quick to look for a pre-packaged solution when we could come up with our own? Or are we, as we always have, simply standing on the shoulders of others to better see the worlds we want to build? I don’t know. There’s no easy answer.

That, too, might be the essence of the hobby. Roleplaying games are not a single thing; they’re an invitation, a process, a shared illusion that depends on both invention and inheritance. The game asks us to imagine, but it also invites us to share. And sometimes – just sometimes – sharing might mean letting someone else do a little of the imagining for us.

Grognards & Gatekeepers

 As you can probably guess from my recent post about combat in Secrets of sha-Arthan, I've been re-reading RuneQuest and other Basic Role-Playing-derived games. Though I was never a regular player of RQ back in my youth, I came to admire it and its setting of Glorantha a great deal during their early 1990s renaissance. That admiration has not only remained to this day but has increased, thanks in no small part to the excellent work Chaosium has done in recent years to revitalize the game. Consequently, I've come to regret my one-time dismissal of RuneQuest as a product of too much Californian air and/or drugs. 

Over the course of the years I've delved into RuneQuest, one of the many things I've learned is that its fans, especially those who've been there since the '70s, have earned a reputation for being grumpy and unwelcoming to newcomers. Glorantha is such a rich fantasy setting, brimming with marvelous details and idiosyncrasies, that it's no wonder it's inspired a lot of devotion in its enthusiasts. At the same time, that detail can make it overwhelming, even intimidating, to those not fully initiated into its mysteries. Fear of being told that one is "doing it wrong" by old time Gloranthaphiles has no doubt been an obstacle to many a neophyte, though I don't believe I've ever directly experienced it myself.

RuneQuest fandom is hardly unique in this regard. The fandoms of two of my favorite settings, Traveller's Third Imperium and Empire of the Petal Throne's Tékumel, have both long had similar reputations as crotchety and inhospitable. For example, I remember well how, in the early days of the consumer Internet, I was very excited to join the Traveller Mailing List (or TML). The prospect of discussing Traveller with other fans across the globe seemed like a dream come true. Alas, one too many arguments over the plausibility of piracy in the Third Imperium, the use of near-C rocks as weapons, and Aslan footwear, among other topics, disabused me of that notion and I soon unsubscribed.

Of course, I was already a longtime fan of Traveller and the Third Imperium by the time I discovered the TML. Though I had no interest in the minutiae that tended to occupy its subscribers, I wasn't put off by the game entirely by their antics. I was already sold on the game and the Third Imperium, since, by this time, I was already a published author in the pages of GDW's Challenge and a member of the History of the Imperium Working Group (HIWG), a Traveller fan organization. Nevertheless, there were parts of Traveller's fandom, like the TML, that even I found a little off-putting and I would later learn that I was not alone in feeling this way.

And Tékumel – well, Tékumel fandom has always been filled with people so in love with its intricacies that they'd almost rather spend all their time and creativity talking about the setting instead of playing in it. I was fortunate, I suppose, that my own introduction to Tékumel in the early '90s was a welcoming one, because I can easily see how a newcomer might find its fans a cantankerous lot. Much like Glorantha and the Third Imperium, there's so much detail that it's exceedingly easy to get lost in it. Tékumel has the added wrinkle that it's a very niche setting, most of whose setting material has either been out of print for years or only available through publishers so small that it's effectively out of print. This lends Tékumel fandom a mystery cult quality to it that seems intended to scare off outsiders.

I thought about all of this recently, because I have a number of contacts within the RPG business and a regular topic of conversation among them is how to bring new players to games with complex settings and existing fanbases that reject any attempts to water down or otherwise alter them. It's a very real conundrum. All three of the games/settings I've mentioned have attempted to grapple with it to varying degrees. How successful they've been is a matter of debate. Of the three, I'd say Traveller is currently the one that's done the best job of it, thanks in part to the second Mongoose Publishing edition of the game. I have my issues with their version of the game, but it's pretty clear that Mongoose has done a good job of promoting and supporting Traveller for newcomers.

Previously, GDW had attempted to make a more accessible version of Traveller in the form of Traveller: The New Era (the subject of an upcoming Retrospective post), to very mixed success. Lots of old timers didn't like TNE and the way it thoroughly wrecked the Third Imperium setting – far more so than even MegaTraveller had – in the interests of wiping the slate clean for new players. The middling sales of TNE was not responsible for the demise of GDW, but many old Traveller hands often imply that it was. More recently, there's the Fourth Edition of Dungeons & Dragons, whose rules and overall approach deviated significantly from its predecessors in an effort to attract a new audience, with similarly middling results – and that's probably being kind. 

The fact is no one lives forever. The audience for many RPGs is aging and, if you're a game publisher, you need to have, if not an expanding customer base, at least not a declining one. That's why you need to find ways to make your games appealing to more than the existing fans. The problem is that many such efforts, while well intentioned, can tick off your existing fans to the point where they abandon your game forever. That's certainly what happened with me and D&D. I'd already jumped ship from Third Edition before Fourth was even announced, but, had 4e been more to my liking, I might well have returned to the game. Instead, I never looked back and, to this day, I haven't bought a single thing from Wizards of the Coast. 

Maybe it's because I'm old and crotchety myself, but I feel like older fans often get a bad rap. Yes, it's definitely true that we're set in our ways. Yes, it's true that we prefer that things never change or, if they do change, that they do so slowly and in accordance with previously established principles. Huge shifts unsettle us, as do repudiations or denigration of what came before. "This ain't your father's D&D!" or similar marketing campaigns are not going to endear your new edition to us. Neither will mocking or belittling the products of the past or those who created them. "You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar" is a good rule of thumb here.

Oldtimers, properly motivated, can be among a company's most dedicated evangelists, singing the praises of your roleplaying game to anyone who will listen. I was inculcated into the mysteries of Tékumel, for example, by several such oldtimers, who pointed me in the right direction and patiently answered my many, many questions about the setting. There's no reason that my experience shouldn't be universal. I love introducing people to Tékumel and Traveller, because doing so means I get more players for games and settings that I love. That's a win-win situation, as far as I'm concerned. 

However, not all oldtimers are like that and I'd argue that it's not always their fault. The trick is to find ways to include the grognards, to draw upon their experience and devotion to help promote the game to the next generation. That means reaching out to them and listening to their concerns rather than just casting them aside. No one likes to feel abandoned, especially by something or someone for whom you have a deep affection. The problem with grognards in my experience isn't that they're necessarily unwelcoming to newcomers; it's that they're rightly suspicious of attempts to chase a new audience at the expense of the existing one – and that seems completely reasonable to me.

The History of TSR

L to R: Mike Mearls, Jeff Grubb, Ed Greenwood, Steve Winter, David Cook

While I was at Gamehole Con, I attended several panels featuring luminaries of the hobby. One of the best dealt with the history of TSR from the late 1970s through its purchase by Wizards of the Coast. Mike Mearls served as its moderator, but the real attraction were the panelists: Jeff Grubb, Ed Greenwood, Steve Winter, and David "Zeb" Cook. They're all depicted in the photograph above, taken by a friend of mine who also attended the panel. Despite my avowed dislike of smart phones, the ability to snap easily photos is something I regret not having. I met so many wonderful people, both famous and otherwise, that I regret I could take photos to commemorate the occasion. As I get older, I suspect that having such mementoes would be helpful in recalling places I'd gone and things I'd done. Oh, well!

The panel was jam-packed with lots of charming anecdotes of the panelists' time working for TSR, either directly, as in the case of Grubb, Winter, and Cook, or as a freelancer, as in the case of Greenwood. Indeed, one interesting story hinges on the fact that Ed Greenwood was never actually employed by TSR, except on a contract basis, even though many people falsely assume that he did (owing to how often his name appeared on TSR products). Ed recalled that he would often spend a week or so after GenCon each year, hanging around the TSR offices so that he could help plan the next year's release of Forgotten Realms products. 

While present in Lake Geneva, Greenwood was often asked by the staff designers and editors to act as their go-between with the dreaded Lorraine Williams, who ran the company after the ouster of Gary Gygax in 1986. According to Ed, Williams would always use the elevator to reach her office rather than the stairs. He would lay in wait near the elevator until she appeared and then get in the elevator with her. Once the elevator's doors had closed, he'd tell her something that needed saying but that none of the salaried employees could dare to say. Williams would listen and then ask Greenwood, "Do you work for me?" He'd emphatically reply, "No," and she'd reply, "I see," the implication being that, if he had been so employed, he no longer would have been. Williams sounds like she was a real piece of work.

Equally interesting was the fact that TSR Hobbies rarely knew what it was doing. The company survived and prospered largely due to just how popular Dungeons & Dragons was. TSR could afford to lurch from one decision to the next without any real plan, because D&D sold very well and TSR's creative staff did a good job of making products that gamers wanted. This lack of planning extended to the company's annual product schedule, many of whose products began simply as titles intended to fill an empty spot rather than anything more detailed. Cook mentioned a couple of humorous examples of this – the Expert-level module, The War Rafts of Kron and the Oriental Adventures scenario, Mad Monkey vs. The Dragon Claw. He came up with both titles, but it fell to the writers ultimately assigned to them to determine exactly what those title meant.

Another topic of discussion was why TSR produced so few products for the World of Greyhawk line. Apparently, it's a popular conspiracy theory among some fans that TSR hated Greyhawk or that there was an intention to slight Gygax's campaign setting. That's not true at all. There were many proposed Greyhawk products over the years that never saw the light of day. What prevented their being developed was Gygax himself. Since he was Greyhawk's creator, he had to sign off on any proposals for the game world. He was often too busy to do so in a timely manner and, as a consequence, these products were among the first to be cut from the schedule (during the annual "St. Valentine's Day Massacre," when, each February, the release schedule was adjusted and certain products were eliminated).

At the other end of the spectrum, the panelists also spoke very fondly of their days working for TSR, as well as the other editors, artists, writers, and designers with whom they worked. Lake Geneva is a small place and, based on the stories they told, very few people in town really understood what TSR Hobbies did, let alone played RPGs. Consequently, the creative staff became more than just colleagues: they were friends, too. I have to say that, more than anything else they said, this fact really touched me. I'm so happy to know that, despite all they had to put up with, they still look back on their days at the company – and at each other – with obvious affection. I've talked before about my own youthful attachment to TSR, so hearing that people who worked felt similarly does my heart good.

Sadly, the panel was only an hour long. I could easily have listened to the panelists talk for two or three times as long about their days at TSR and never gotten bored. Fortunately, Gamehole Con is a small enough con that it was very easy to find and approach these fine gentlemen on my own and chat with them a while about these and related topics. It's one of the best things about GHC – one of many – and I am so happy to have gone this year. I'm already looking forward to October 2025, so I can return.

No Longer a Challenge

Here's another interesting passage from the September 1980 issue of Fantastic Films, where its author, Neesa Sweet, talks to Jeff Urquhart, owner of Sutler's Wagon Hobby Shop in Chicago (any readers remember this place?). 

What I find most remarkable about Urquhart's comments is that, even in 1980, it was already apparent that, as a hobby, RPGs don't actually require players to buy all that much to enjoy them. As he says above, you can "get away with spending $15 ($55 in today's devalued currency) and have enough material to play with the rest of your life." Equally remarkable is that Urquhart doesn't think much of "the newer, complete scenarios," believing that they "rob people of the freedom, energy, and imagination that the game had in the beginning."

The more things change, the more they stay the same!

Be a Creator, Not a Consumer

To say that I was a Star Wars fan during my childhood is something of an understatement. Children are, by nature, given to intense enthusiasms of all sorts, whether for dinosaurs or the planets or ancient Egypt – all of which I was, at various times, as utterly devoted as I was to George Lucas's 1977 space fantasy. During the period between 1977 and the release of The Empire Strikes Back in 1980, I lived and breathed Star Wars. I saw both movies in the theater multiple times, read every newspaper and magazine article about them that I could find, and (of course!) owned a disturbingly large amount of Star Wars-related merchandise. If I hadn't discovered Dungeons & Dragons, I daresay my zeal for the galaxy far, far away would likely have continued unabated well into the next decade.

Looking back on my youthful ardor from the vantage point of jaded middle age, I can't help but feel mildly embarrassed, though, as I already noted, such devotion is in the nature of children. And, to be fair, Star Wars enjoyed a cultural moment of the sort that doesn't happen everyday, so I hope I can be forgiven for being caught up in it. Furthermore, Star Wars was a genuinely good movie, one that simultaneously had a strong connection to earlier storytelling and did things that had never been done before, especially in the field of visual effects. In retrospect, I think it would been more remarkable if I hadn't become a fan of it.

I'm no longer much of a Star Wars fan. Aside from DVDs of the original movies, which I don't think I've actually watched in more than a decade, I don't think there's a single piece of Star Wars merchandise or memorabilia in my home. That's not out of dislike so much as disinterest. I still retain a residual affection for the 1977–1983 films, as I do for many other things I adored as a child, but I no longer devote much mental space – let alone closet space – to Star Wars. Were I to gain the ability to travel back in time and reveal this state of affairs to my younger self, I doubt he would believe me, so important was Star Wars to me as a child.

Even during those three or four years of my childhood, Star Wars wasn't my only interest, but it certainly occupied a pride of place that was immediately evident to anyone who spent more than a few minutes talking to me. Dungeons & Dragons – and roleplaying games more generally – eventually displaced it and indeed surpassed it in staying power. More than four decades after I first cracked open my beloved Holmes Basic Set, I'm still playing RPGs, whereas Star Wars (and lots of other childhood enthusiasms) are now very much in the rearview mirror. 

Allow me to reiterate: this isn't because of dislike on my part, let alone hatred, but largely because of disinterest. I simply don't find Star Wars all that compelling anymore and I suspect it has to do with the way that it's become little more than a brand rather than a vehicle for telling rollicking space fantasy adventures. Arguably, that's always been the case, as evidenced by the large number of Star Wars-branded products available for purchase as soon as the movie was released – a great many of which I proudly owned and displayed. Like a lot of children in the late 1970s, I demonstrated that I was a fan of Star Wars by owning a lot of Star Wars products.

I recall that, at the time, there were critics who complained that George Lucas had "ruined" cinema with the blockbuster success of Star Wars. In their opinion, movie studios would now prioritize crowd-pleasing spectacle over the more serious films that had characterized the early part of the decade. It's an old – and recurring – line of attack that isn't completely without merit. Nowadays, though, I tend to think that the true "sin" of Star Wars is not that it ushered in an era of "dumb" movies, but that it demonstrated just how lucrative merchandising it could be. 

One of the best things about roleplaying games is that, at base, they are vehicles for creating your own rollicking adventures with your friends. I sometimes think we don't recognize just how powerful a thing Gygax and Arneson unleashed upon the world almost half a century ago. There's a reason Greg Stafford likened RPGs to Pandora's Box in the dedication of RuneQuest. After the appearance of D&D, the world was forever changed, in ways both big and small. 

Roleplaying games gave their players the tools to make their own imaginary worlds. Once you had learned their rules, you had everything you could ever need to keep on creating for the rest of your life. This fact has long vexed RPG publishers who, understandably, want to keep selling products, but the truth is that there's absolutely no need to ever purchase anything else. That hasn't stopped game companies from trying to convince you otherwise, of course. If they couldn't get you to buy an adventure or a supplement or a rules expansion, then how about this T-shirt, maquette, or beach towel? Let's equate your hobby with your personal identity to make money!

It's a predictable script, one very similar to that employed by Star Wars merchandising over the years. While there's nothing inherently wrong with this – everyone needs to make a living somehow – it doesn't hold much attraction for me. Been there, done that, literally bought the T-shirt. From my perspective, this hobby is at its best when it's about creating, not simply consuming. If you're a roleplayer, then play – imagine a new setting, generate a character, write up an adventure. That's what makes this pastime so uniquely compelling, especially in a world that seems increasingly hostile to the liberation of the human spirit. Give free rein to your imagination and fight on.

Retrospective: Timemaster

That the history of the RPG industry is filled curiosities should come as no surprise. Then, as now, "the industry" largely consists of small operations big on passion but often lacking in the business sense necessary to channel that passion into a lasting enterprise. Pacesetter Ltd is a great example of this from my youth. Founded in 1984 by a number of ex-TSR staffers, the company lasted only two years before disappearing. However, during those two years of existence, Pacesetter managed to publish four different RPGs, three of them in the same year – Chill, Star Ace, and Timemaster. 

Though Chill was by far my favorite of the three games the company published in 1984, Timemaster was a close second. As a kid, I enjoyed watching reruns of the old Irwin Allen television show, The Time Tunnel. Even though it only ran for a single season, I remember thinking that it was a great premise for an ongoing TV show – like Star Trek, except that time, not space, was the final frontier. Consequently, Timemaster was an easy sell for me.

Like all Pacesetter RPGs, Timemaster came in a box, inside of which was a 64-page rulebook (Travelers' Manual), a 32-page Guide to the Continuum, which explained in greater depth of how time travel worked; and a 16-page adventure, Red Ace High, set during World War I. Also included were some cardboard counters and a hex map to use with the adventure, which dealt with the First Battle of Cambrai in 1917. It's a nice little package that very much appealed to my sensibilities as a TSR fanboy. I've long suspected that this was intentional on the part of Pacesetter, whose games always had a "TSR-but-not" vibe to them – no surprise, given that its staff included Mark Acres, Garry Spiegle, Carl Smith, Stephen D. Sullivan, and Michael Williams, all of whom had worked at TSR in the years prior. 

Mechanically, Timemaster is pretty similar to the other RPGs in Pacesetter's roster. It makes use of a color-coded action table of the sort I most strongly associate with Marvel Super Heroes but which would eventually be found in many other games during the mid-80s. Character ability scores are generated randomly, but the player can choose his character's skills and paranormal talent, a psionic power of limited utility, like telepathy. The design is nothing fancy but I recall it working without too much fuss in play, which is precisely what I've generally wanted out of RPG mechanics.

Where Timemaster really shined was in the execution of its basic premise. The game assumes that characters are members of the human Time Corps, a 72nd century organization tasked with protecting the integrity of "the Continuum" from those who would disrupt it for their own ends. The two primary sources of disruption are renegade humans and a race of shapeshifting aliens called the Demoreans. Adventures thus consist in efforts by the characters, as agents of the Time Corps, to ensure that disruption is, if not stopped completely, kept to a minimum.

What I found most intriguing about Timemaster was that the Continuum was more than just a linear progression of time. Instead, it encompasses a wide variety of parallel timelines, some of them very different from the timelines from which the characters come. This gave the game a much wider scope than just traveling up and down the timeline to visit famous historical events – though the game certainly supported and encouraged that. Characters could also visit odd parallel worlds where magic works or dinosaurs evolved to intelligence, for example, or even where literary characters like Sherlock Holmes or the Three Musketeers were real. 

It's all quite ridiculous, of course, but Timemaster made it work, in large part because the game clearly spells out the Laws of Time and then follows through with them in a way that makes game sense if not necessarily scientific sense (assuming such a thing is even possible when talking about time travel). This makes it easier for both the players and the referee (or Continuum Master) to get a solid handle on how the universe of the game works and that's essential. Otherwise, everyone can quickly get tied up in knots over questions of paradox and time loops and so on. Timemaster recognizes this and lays it all out in a way I found quite helpful. You might disagree with its take on certain aspects of time travel – I was never fond of the "literary" parallels, for example – but there's no question that it all hangs together decently, if you're willing to accept the game's premises.

Timemaster is one of those roleplaying games that I occasionally remember exists and then think, "I should play this again some time," because I had fun with it in the past. As I said, the game won't win any prizes for game design, let alone scientific "realism," but, like many of the best RPGs, it's a delightfully open-ended vehicle for exercising your imagination and that's no small thing.

Retrospective: Dragonlance Adventures

Although there are nearly four thousand posts on this blog, one of the most widely read remains "How Dragonlance Ruined Everything," published all the way back in 2008. Though the title is intentionally hyperbolic, I largely stand behind what I wrote then, namely that the release and success of the Dragonlance series of adventure modules was the crowning achievement of the Hickman Revolution and forever changed the trajectory of Dungeons & Dragons. I don't think this is disputable. Since 1984, D&D – and indeed roleplaying games in general – have been slowly evolving into a much more story-driven, character-focused form of entertainment than the by-blow of miniatures wargaming it was in 1974. Whether one views this evolution as good or bad is irrelevant to the truth of it.

Consequently, it should come as no surprise that, as Dragonlance's star rose ever higher, TSR would attempt to use it as a platform to change the game mechanically as well as conceptually. Dragonlance Adventures demonstrates precisely what I mean. Published in 1987, DLA is a 128-page hardcover volume on the model of previous AD&D tomes like the Players Handbook. Though billed as a "source book," its content is not simply setting material; the book contains many new rules that augment or outright replace those of standard AD&D. In fact, many of these new rules, as we'll see, appear to be dry runs for rules that would later be incorporated into Second Edition when it appeared in 1989. 

The most obvious changes in Dragonlance Adventures come in the form of its character classes. Almost every standard AD&D class is either altered or replaced in DLA, the only exceptions being fighter, barbarian, ranger, thief, and thief/acrobat. Consequently, the book provides quite a few new classes, such as three different types of clerics, wizards, and Knights of Solamnia, all of which tie closely into the history and cosmology of the world of Krynn. Also presented is the tinker class for use by the setting's unique take on gnomes. Other nonhuman races are similarly reimagined or, in the case of halflings, replaced entirely (which has the added benefit of severing some of D&D's most direct connections to Tolkien's Middle-earth – there are no orcs on Krynn, for example). 

Though these changes, as I note, are presented in order to bring the rules more into line with the realities of the setting, they also enable Tracy Hickman, who is credited as the book's "designer," to tinker with some of AD&D's rules in ways that, at the time, were genuinely original. For example, the three types of wizards – White, Red, and Black – are distinguished not simply by their alignment, but also by which "spheres" of magic to which they have access. These spheres are simply AD&D's schools of magic (abjuration, conjuration, etc.) renamed. The effect of this change is to differentiate wizards by their background and training, much in the way that Second Edition would do with specialist wizards. Similarly, clerics would have access to different spheres of spells based on the interests of the gods they served.

The mechanical treatment of Krynn's races is quite similar, fiddling as it does with the verities laid down in the Players Handbook. Not only does Hickman shift the ability score ranges, he alters both the availability of classes and, more significantly, their level limits. Silvanesti Elves, for instance, can be paladins and they're unlimited in their advancement, two remarkable deviations from the Gygaxian canon of earlier AD&D. There are also rules for playing minotaurs, who, while brutal, are not inherently evil or unintelligent – another notable shift away from the "facts" of the game as it was known at the time.

From the vantage point of present day D&D, filled as it is with innumerable new character classes, nonhuman species, and nary a level limit to be seen, none of this likely appears worthy of mention, let alone suspicion. Yet, at the time, these tentative steps away from the humanocentric, pulp fantasy picaresque of Golden Age D&D were truly revolutionary, especially coming from TSR, which had previously resisted – and, under Gygax, mocked – any such attempts to upend the game's presentation and focus. A great many people, myself included, welcomed these changes and felt that they presaged a a great sea change in the game. As it turned out, we were more prescient than we realized and Dragonlance Adventures served as the herald of the new age aborning, just as the Dragonlance adventure modules had done several years previously.

There's a lot more that could be said about this book and the role it played in changing the design of AD&D, such as its inclusion of the non-weapon proficiencies of the Dungeoneer's and Wilderness Survival Guides as baseline features of the rules. While I don't want to minimize the significance of their inclusion, even more significant, I think, is the overall presentation of DLA, which offers the reader – more on that in a moment – a coherent setting whose rules are designed to emulate and reinforce its flavor and themes. Krynn is explicitly a setting that "promot[es] the power of truth over injustice, good over evil, and grant[s] good consequences for good acts and bad consequences for evil acts." The Angry Mothers from Heck would be pleased.

Let me conclude with a brief note about the book's preface, which states that "you can certainly enjoy this book without playing the game." Though Hickman and Weis quickly enjoin the reader to play, I think it's significant that the preface even countenances the idea that one might buy Dragonlance Adventures without wishing to play AD&D. We must remember how popular – and lucrative – the Dragonlance novels were and how many people became fans of the setting and its characters as a result. I'd wager that, while Dragonlance was very profitable for TSR, the number of new players it introduced to playing D&D was not nearly as great. Dragonlance (and, by extension, D&D) was a powerful brand and that's all that mattered. Once again, Dragonlance was a forerunner of what was to come.

D&D Fatigue

Except for a period in the 1990s, Dungeons & Dragons has always been the most popular and bestselling RPG (and, before anyone mentions Pathfinder's brief ascension during the 4e debacle, I pre-emptively respond: Pathfinder is D&D). D&D is most people's introduction to the hobby of roleplaying; it's also the only RPG that non-gamers know by name. D&D is thus the proverbial 800-lb. gorilla of roleplaying games. In a very real sense, the entirety of the hobby (and the industry supporting it) owes its very existence to D&D. 

I don't think I'm being hyperbolic when I say this. Not only is it a historical fact that roleplaying games, as we know them today, are all ultimately descended from Dungeons & Dragons, but I contend that most of them would never even exist were it not for a phenomenon I'm going to call "D&D fatigue." As I'll explain, D&D fatigue takes two distinct forms and each of them plays a vital role in the continued existence of other RPGs – and perhaps of D&D itself.

The first form of D&D fatigue comes is the more rarefied, experienced by those whose weariness with the game compels them to write their own game. For example, the second roleplaying game, Tunnels & Trolls, owes its existence to Ken St. Andre's dissatisfaction with Dungeons & Dragons, but neither St. Andre nor T&T are unique in this regard. Indeed, if you were to look at the history of RPGs, you'll quickly find many examples – many of them quite early – of people who felt that D&D was somehow lacking and resolved to improve upon it. 

The second form of D&D fatigue is more common but no less important. This is a more literal type of fatigue, one experienced by those who've simply played D&D so much that they want to play something different. In my youth, my friends and I suffered many bouts of this kind of D&D fatigue. We'd play D&D furiously for weeks or months on end, enjoying ourselves all the while, and then, at some point, one of us would look up from our copy of the Players Handbook and ask, "Do you want to play something else?" Almost invariably, we did and thank goodness for that; otherwise, we might never have had the chance to play other great RPGs like Gamma World, Traveller, or Call of Cthulhu. 

D&D fatigue is not a bad thing. As I stated at the beginning of this post, the existence of a larger roleplaying hobby depends, in large part, on people becoming dissatisfied with or tired of Dungeons & Dragons and creating and/or seeking out alternatives to it. Very few of those alternatives ever came close to rivaling D&D's popularity or sales – but they didn't have to. During the days of D&D's first faddishness, there were more than enough players to support many RPGs and the companies, large and small, that produced them. Simply by existing, D&D created a demand for alternatives that others stepped forward to fill.

Over the course of the more than four decades I've been roleplaying, I've fallen in and out of love with Dungeons & Dragons multiple times, for a variety of different reasons. In each case, I'd eventually return to playing it, because I do like D&D, warts and all. While I was feeling the full force of D&D fatigue, I'd explore other options, in the process learning to love other games I otherwise might not have noticed. I also learned to appreciate better the things I liked about D&D, so that, when I returned to playing it, I often had more fun with it than I did before. 

As I said, D&D fatigue is not a bad thing. 

The Winner and Still Champion

Last night, while writing, I was suddenly struck with a realization that, while not particularly notable in and of itself, nevertheless says a great deal about the state of our shared hobby and the industry that supports it, to wit: Isn't it interesting that, as we approach the half-century mark since the release of Dungeons & Dragons, D&D remains the most successful and popular RPG of all time? 

In all my life, there has never truly been a rival to D&D, at least not a long-lasting one – and this is in spite of the fact the game has frequently been mismanaged by its current custodians. You'd think that, after nearly five decades, someone would have come up with a RPG to challenge D&D in terms of sales or pop cultural influence, but I don't see much evidence that this is so (feel free to correct me in the comments). I wonder why that is. What is it about Dungeons & Dragons that keeps it on top of the heap?

Go Figure

I've not been paying much -- as in, almost any -- attention to developments regarding the latest version of WotC-era Dungeons & Dragons, so, despite all the requests I've received to weigh in on the subject, I have nothing worthwhile to offer regarding Monte Cook's departure from its design team. What I do find interesting and think is worth talking about is the rumor, as yet unconfirmed, that, in addition to the AD&D reprints in July, WotC is also reprinting v.3.5 in September. If that's true (and I've seen nothing official one way or the other), I think it's a good move on WotC's part.

Here's the thing, though. I still don't understand the purpose behind "D&D Next" or whatever the heck it's going to be called. I think, at this stage, WotC (and D&D itself) would be better served by keeping several versions in print or at least available via print-on-demand, with some portion of each version's support materials also available. Further support (i.e. "new stuff") could be provided by third-party licensees or some similar scheme. Meanwhile, WotC itself can concentrate on other fantasy games (board, video, online, etc.) that use the D&D "brand name" and that could potentially reach a much wider audience than any tabletop version ever could in this day and age.

My feeling is that no tabletop version of D&D is ever again going to sell well enough to be considered a "success" by Hasbro. To them, D&D is a woefully underperforming brand, considering its name recognition. The time and energy being spent on yet another edition, particularly one with the Quixotic goal of uniting the fanbase, could be much better spent making other types of D&D-branded games with true mass appeal. But what do I know?

Monster Manual Foreword

For a number of reasons, I've been spending a lot of my spare time recently re-reading sections of the first three AD&D books, particularly the Monster Manual. The MM is a fascinating book if you're interested in the early development of AD&D, since it actually retains a great deal more from its OD&D heritage than one might think. Equally fascinating is Mike Carr's foreword to the Monster Manual, dated September 27, 1977. He begins by saying:

It is with a certain amount of pride that we at TSR bring you this second part of the new DUNGEONS & DRAGONS releases, the long-awaited MONSTER MANUAL for ADVANCED D & D. We are doubly proud of the format of this book -- i.e., its special hard cover, a "first" in the gaming world and another step in our continuing quest for top quality products.

It's remarkable to remember that, not only were the AD&D rulebooks, starting with the Monster Manual, the first hardcover gaming products I ever saw, they were, for a very long time, the only hardcover gaming products I ever saw. Nearly every other RPG product I bought either came in a box or were softcovers -- including other D&D products. In fact, I'm honestly not sure what the first non-AD&D hardcover RPG book I ever saw was. The Traveller Book perhaps?

Carr goes on in his foreword to take a few shots at other RPGs.

The success of DUNGEONS & DRAGONS has spawned a considerable number of imitations and spin-off products, perhaps inevitably. Some of these have merit; many, however, do not -- and although we may concede their right to exist (however dependent they may be on D & D's audience), we caution the prospective buyer to consider their true value and not to be confused with those items which bear the DUNGEOND & DRAGONS or ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS name and constitute the official D & D family of products. As for value, let the others be measured against the standard of quality we have striven for -- a hardbound encyclopedia of monsters, for instance, as opposed to a low quality collection which is poorly assembled and bound.

Now, I can't say there's anything surprising in the paragraph above. It's boilerplate TSR denigration of its competition, but what is surprising is that it wasn't Gary Gygax who was writing this and that it occurred so early in the hobby's history. People more knowledgeable in the early days of the hobby than I will no doubt be able to provide some context for Carr's comments. Was this around the time of the disputes with Dave Hargrave over his "vacuous grimoire?" Or was there some other controversy that spurred this on?