Thoughts Occasioned by Castle Amber

This post is not, strictly speaking, a Retrospective, since I've already done one on Tom Moldvay's 1981 module, Castle Amber – two, actually, if you count the repost as well. Nevertheless, in honor of The Ensorcellment of January, I thought it more than appropriate to take another look at the only old school Dungeons & Dragons module to take explicit inspiration from the works of Clark Ashton Smith. While I'll endeavor not to repeat much of what I said in my original Retrospective, there will inevitably be a few points to which I'll return, though I hope I'll offer some additional insights to justify doing so.

Despite my repeatedly thinking otherwise, the name of Clark Ashton Smith does not appear anywhere in Appendix N to Gary Gygax's AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide nor does he appear in the expanded list of "favorite authors [and] inspirational sources" in his 1992 Mythus Magick bonus. On one level, it's a very odd omission, as Gygax was quite well read when it came to fantasy and science fiction literature – including lots of early pulp fantasy authors, like Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft, both of whom he considered "among the most immediate influences" on his conception of the game he co-created. 

The fact that Gary Gygax, of all people, could seemingly have either not known or not cared about CAS suggests that, compared to many of his literary contemporaries, he has always been, if not necessarily obscure, something of an acquired taste. Speaking even as an avowed devotee of Smith, I can’t really blame anyone who finds his mellifluous prose, sardonic demeanor, and detached misanthropy a bit much, particularly when set beside the more muscular storytelling of Howard or the raw imaginative urgency of Lovecraft. Smith demands patience and a willingness to luxuriate in language for its own sake. His stories often feel less like adventures than like jeweled relics to be contemplated from a respectful distance.

Consequently, Smith’s fiction is not easily mined for gameable elements in the way Conan’s swordplay or Lovecraft’s Mythos can be. Howard offers clear models for heroic action and conflict. Lovecraft provides a cosmology of forbidden knowledge, cults, and monsters that can be lifted almost wholesale into play. Smith, by contrast, traffics in mood, decadence, and fatalism. His stories often lack conventional heroes, hinge on ironic or poetic reversals, and end not with triumph or revelation but with extinction, transformation, or bitter resignation. These qualities make his work harder to translate into D&D and that difficulty is probably at the root of why Gygax took little notice of him. Smith does not easily become a list of monsters, spells, or magic items.

Fortunately for me, Tom Moldvay did notice him. Although I’m still not absolutely certain that it was Castle Amber that first introduced me to Smith – it may well have been Call of Cthulhu, released the same year as module X2 – I can say with certainty that it was this adventure that solidified Smith’s hold over my imagination. Castle Amber suggested that roleplaying games could evoke not just action or terror, but a sense of dreamlike estrangement and baroque melancholy. It suggested that play could feel uncanny rather than merely dangerous, strange rather than merely challenging, and that those feelings could linger long after the dice were put away.

That lingering quality is a large part of why I still love Castle Amber four decades later. It is, above all else, unsettling. On the surface, it is just another dungeon for characters of levels 3 to 6, complete with monsters, traps, and treasure. Dig a little deeper, though, and the dungeon in question reveals itself as a kind of fun house, governed less by internal logic than by a warped, almost oneiric sensibility. Its 70 keyed locations feel less like rooms in a coherent structure and more like fragments of half-remembered stories stitched together by madness and decay.

One chamber hosts a boxing match against magical constructs; another contains the lair of spellcasting spiders imported from The Isle of Dread (itself another Moldvay creation); elsewhere, there is a kennel of hellhounds. None of these elements really belong together, at least not in a naturalistic way and that disjunction might be the point. The titular Castle Amber resists easy categorization. It feels wrong in a way that is difficult to articulate, as if it obeys a set of esthetic or even metaphysical rules that the players can sense but never fully grasp. Layered on top of this is the grotesque parade of the Amber family themselves – decadent, deranged, and occasionally tragic figures who are, unsurprisingly, closer to characters out of Smith’s own stories than to standard fantasy villains.

Castle Amber thus has a very strange vibe, one that I picked up on even as a twelve-year-old. It made me uneasy in a way that very few D&D modules ever have. How much of that vibe is intentional and how much of it is something I've been projecting onto it is difficult to say, especially after so many years of reading and playing it. I assume at least some of it must have been intentional, because Moldvay was adapting elements of Smith's Averoigne stories for use with D&D and those stories have a similar ambience. 

This brings to mind another question that has longed dogged me about this module: why was this particular module was ever released. Though not a close adaptation of the Averoigne tales, it's close enough that special thanks are given to CASiana Literary Enterprises, Inc. (the estate of Smith) "for use of the Averoigne stories as inspirational material." It's unclear whether TSR acquired or sought out a license from CASiana for use of the stories or not, but, even if it didn't do so formally, Castle Amber is an unusual early example of an RPG product published by TSR explicitly derived from a pre-existing intellectual property. 

Regardless, I count Castle Amber as one of my favorite adventure modules for any edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Not only did it play a role in making me a lifelong Clark Ashton Smith fan but it also forever affected my sensibilities when it comes to fantasy and fantasy adventures. It was, for example, one of the primary inspirations behind my own The Cursed Chateau (an adventure that I am, not coincidentally, in the process of revising for re-release). It's a weird, fun, disconcerting scenario and I think it still holds up today.

The Articles of Dragon: "The Big, Bad Barbarian"

As I've mentioned on multiple occasions, I looked forward to reading Gary Gygax's "From the Sorcerer's Scroll" columns in Dragon whenever they appeared. As Gygax himself regularly reminded his readers, his columns were (usually) the only articles in the magazine whose content was 100% official and approved for use with AD&D. Rabid AD&D player and TSR fanboy that I was at the time, this imprimatur thus meant a lot to me, because it ensured that I was permitted to make use of this new material in my campaign without reservation – and use it I did!

Like many (most?) gamers at the time, I'm not certain I ever played AD&D "by the book." Instead, my friends and I played a cobbled-together mishmash of Holmes, Moldvay, AD&D, and random bits of RPG "folklore" we picked up from Crom knows where. We still called what we were playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, of course, because that was the game to play and we all wanted to play it, but whether we actually were playing something Gary Gygax would have recognized as AD&D is an open question. What's important to understand for our present purposes is that we believed ourselves to be playing AD&D, hence why the new material Gygax presented for use with AD&D in Dragon was so important to us. 

My first experience of Gygax's additions had come in issue #59 (March 1982) with his introduction of cantrips. While these minor spells were interesting, they were never widely adopted in our group, unlike those that began to appear a few issues later. A good example of what I am talking about is "The Big, Bad Barbarian," which appeared in issue #63 (July 1982). As its title suggests, this article gave us our first peek at the barbarian character class that would later be included in Unearthed Arcana several years later. Since this was the first new – and official – addition to the line-up of AD&D character classes, I was very excited to see it.

I also perplexed by it. My own sense of what a "barbarian" was had been informed by two sources: ancient history and fantasy literature, particularly Howard's stories of Conan the Cimmerian. The class that Gygax presented in issue #63, with its proficiencies in survival and suspicion of magic, was vaguely reminiscent of both, but still somehow its own distinct thing. I didn't hate the class, but neither did I wholeheartedly embrace it as I would other new Gygaxian classes. I suppose it's fair to say that, in principle, I was attracted to the idea of a barbarian class. I simply wasn't yet sold on the AD&D version.

Part of the reason why I felt this way is that Gygax's barbarian broke a lot of standard AD&D "rules." For example, the barbarian's ability scores were generated according to its own unique methods, unlike even those presented in the Dungeon Masters Guide. Strength is generated by rolling 9D6 and picking the three highest, while Constitution uses 8D6 (Wisdom, interestingly, is generated by rolling 4d4). Furthermore, barbarians get double the benefit for high Dexterity and Constitution scores, both of which they'll almost certainly have, given the way the scores are generated. The class also began play proficient in even more weapons than a fighter, in addition to many other special abilities. Even to my twelve year-old self, it all seemed a bit much.

Nevertheless, I dutifully attempted to make use of the new class. One of my friends asked if he could convert his longtime fighter into a barbarian, since he'd always imagined him as a barbarian. I agreed, since it gave us the perfect opportunity to give the barbarian a whirl, just as Gygax suggested we do. The results were ... mixed. In play, we found the barbarian exceedingly tough in combat and its various abilities useful. However, in its Dragon iteration, the class was utterly forbidden from using magic weapons, which hampered its ability to take on many powerful monsters. I imagine this was intended to be balance out its other strengths, but, in the end, it proved crippling and my friend asked to return his character to being a fighter, which I happily permitted.

My first experience with a new, official class for AD&D ended in disappointment. This made me wary of all future classes Gygax presented in "From the Sorcerer's Scroll, though, as we'll see in future posts in this series, my wariness did not sour me on the idea of new character classes in general. But the barbarian, in either its original version or its "improved" one in UA, never won me over. I retain a fondness for the concept of a barbarian class, as I've explained before. I simply haven't yet found (or created) one that I like well enough to use. One day!

Polyhedron: Issue #29

Issue #29 of Polyhedron is another April Fool's Day issue, though it actually appeared in May of 1986. The issue features a cover by Tom Wham, which is always a delight. I wish the same could be said of its content. I readily admit that I'm not an ideal audience for issues like this, but that's not because I lack a sense of humor. Rather, I simply dislike forced humor and this issue is full of it. Needless to say, I didn't enjoy re-reading this one. Apologies in advance if my frustration gets the better of me.

"Notes from HQ" is typically ephemeral and focused on RPGA matters. The only genuinely interesting thing in it is the announcement of the Gamers' Choice Awards. "Unlike other gaming industry awards, for which the winners are chosen by manufacturers and special panels, these awards are given to those companies whose products are judged the best by the most qualified judges of all – the gamers themselves." I must be old, because I don't recall ever hearing of these awards before. On the other hand, I was never much of a con goer, so that might explain my ignorance. 

Skip Williams gives us "The Lighter Side of Encounters II," a sequel to his article in the previous year's April Fool's Day issue. Like its predecessor, what makes the article interesting is not so much its content as the origin of the content, namely AD&D campaigns run by the Lake Geneva staff of TSR, in this case Williams himself and Frank Mentzer. Williams presents two different encounters, one involving a mad dash through a dungeon and another about trying to prevent a pit fiend from regenerating, that aren't exactly humorous in context, but that seem so when presented in isolation. They're the kinds of things that happen in any RPG campaign played with friends and I love them for that reason. This article is probably the best in the issue and it's because it's the most "serious."

"The Camel's Nose" by Mike Selinker is an AD&D adventure that takes up 16 pages – half of the issue. It's a humorous scenario for six pregenerated player characters, all of whom are valley elves with ridiculous names like "Tattieboggle Spauldrocky" or "Arglebargle Collieshangle." These characters are tasked with protecting a talking camel (a cleric of the Camel Lord, Camelopardus), on his journey across the Burning Desert to a shrine of his deity. He brings with him a sacred rock called the Camel's Nose and ... well, I think you can probably guess where this is going. The adventure is filled with puns and humorous allusions and general silliness, like the Camels Oasis shopping center. I'm sure someone might find it funny, but that someone is not me.

Selinker returns with "The Ecology of Tiamat," which is a rambling dialog between Feargall the All-Noxious and Greenhorn the dim as they "humorously" discuss Feargall's many encounters with Tiamat. It's strange, self-referential, and fourth wall-breaking and, again, I just found it tedious. Your mileage may vary. "Fractured Spells" by Rick Reid is a collection of goofy spells for all magic-using classes, from neutralize person to detect chum to continual lice and more. As you can see, they're all based on puns or misreadings of pre-existing spells. I'll give the author points for cleverness, but not much else.

"The Gods of the Gamma World Game" by James M. Ward is a very strange article. Ward presents five larger-than-life characters from the setting of Gamma World, each of which represents "a different ideal." For example, Ren – there's that name again – is the archetypal scientist, while Tobor the Unstoppable is the archetypal robot. If I squint, I can sort of see what Ward's getting at with these characters. They're more akin to "tall tales" like Paul Bunyan or Pecos Bill than "gods" in the usual sense. That's kind of interesting. However, Ward saddles them all with absurd Gamma World game stats akin to what you'd find in Deities & Demigods and serendipitously provide additional insight for my recent post about that very book and the drawbacks of its presentation.

The issue ends with Roger E. Moore's "Savage Sword of Lugnut the Barbarian," another "humorous" story, this time about a mighty-thewed barbarian and his quest to save a princess from Skuzzdrool the Ultra-Necromancer. It's not very funny, even as a parody of Conan, but's thankfully short, which is more than can be said of "The Camel's Nose." I still cannot understand why half the issue was devoted to that adventure ...

Oh well. One more issue to go before this series ends, which is probably for the best. My patience is wearing thin, especially after this issue.

White Dwarf: Issue #69

Issue #69 of White Dwarf (September 1985) is one of which I have no memory whatsoever. As I mentioned last week, I'm now looking at issues published after I ceased my subscription to the magazine, so my recollections of them are generally hazy. In this particular instance, they're non-existent, so my reading in preparation for this post may well be the first time I've ever set eyes on the issue. The cover is another by Mark Bromley, featuring what would appear to be a dark elf (drow?) lashing a slave under his charge. 

Ian Livingstone's editorial focuses on the tenth anniversary of the Games Day convention. He notes not just the long queues to enter the event, but also the fact that its attendees now number in the thousands rather than the hundreds that first turned out for it in 1975. I have a vague memory that Games Workshop brought a version of Games Day to Baltimore sometime during the '80s, though I never attended it. I wonder how similar it might have been to the original in the UK.

The issue kicks off with "Rationale Behavior" by Peter Tamlyn. The article is actually an extended discussion of the concept of alignment within Dungeons & Dragons, including its limitations. Tamlyn then notes that GW's superhero game, Golden Heroes, includes a series of "campaign ratings" that measure a character's relationship with the in-game world, such as, for example, Public Status and Personal Status. These ratings, he contends, do a better job of describing a character than a simplistic alignment system. For that reason, Tamlyn puts forward an alternative to alignment that takes into account a character's religious attitudes, social status, public piety, and so on in order to give a fuller picture of his place in the fantasy setting. It's an intriguing idea and not without some advantages over alignment, though its use requires considerably more work on the part of both the referee and the player. Still, it was a thought-provoking article.

The second part of Peter Blanchard's "Beneath the Waves" appears, focusing this time on "developing civilizations." As with its predecessor, this article's purpose is to consider the ramifications of life underwater in a fantasy setting. Also like its predecessor, the second installment is well-done but much too brief. Blanchard wisely looks at many of the obvious considerations of the submarine environment, along with less apparent ones, like writing, working metal, construction, and even magic. Unfortunately, most of these topics get a couple of paragraphs at most – better than nothing but still barely scratching the surface of a huge topic. The article would have done well with more examples of how to employ its principles, I think.

"Open Box" starts off with short reviews of three different adventure modules for TSR's Marvel Super Heroes: Secret Wars (7 out of 10), Lone Wolves (6 out of 10), Cat's-Paw (6 out of 10). Interestingly, reviewer Marcus L. Rowland calls Cat's-Paw his favorite of the three and yet it does not receive the highest rating of the three, another indication that these scores were given not by the reviewer but by someone else on the White Dwarf staff. Also reviewed is Toon Strikes Again (8 out of 10) and the boardgame, Chill: Black Morn Manor (8 out of 10), two products with which I have no direct familiarity, though I remember being very intrigued by advertisements for the latter. Finally, there's a review for TSR's Conan Role-Playing Game. The reviewer, Peter Tamlyn, is generally impressed with the game (7 out of 10), but his enthusiasm is dampened by its many editing, proofreading, and typesetting errors. He hopes that there might be a second edition that corrects its many deficiencies..

Dave Langford continues to do his thing in "Critical Mass." At this stage, I find I most enjoy his reviews when he shares my own prejudices, hence why the only things I can remember about this month's installment is his skewering of both Barbara Hambly and Piers Anthony, two writers whose popularity has always baffled me. "Close Encounters" by Ian Marsh similarly held little interest for me. Marsh presents what he thinks RuneQuest really needs: an expansion of the game's strike rank system that takes into account weapon length ... 

The saga of "Thrud the Destroyer" concludes as it was destined to do so: with Thrud and his fellow mercenaries screwing things up for their peasant patrons. "The Travellers" includes more character write-ups, including game statistics, this time for the characters of Hayes and Gavin. "Gobbledigook" likewise reappears. "The Surrey Enigma" is a solid, if inconsequential, Call of Cthulhu adventure by Marcus L. Rowland (did he write everything in WD in the mid-80s?), in which the characters investigate unfounded rumors of witchcraft only to discover something much more sinister. I find it fascinating that the adventure takes the time to explain the old British, pre-decimal currency system to readers. Had its existence already been forgotten by 1985?

"Plague from the Past" by Richard Andrews is an AD&D adventure for 5th–7th level characters. The scenario is clever in a folkloric way that fantasy adventures frequently are not. The village in which it takes up is built atop the body of a long-dead giant and present-day actions are resulting in the giant's restoration to life. Good stuff! "Battle Stations" by J. Evans and E. Wilson presents an alternate – and more complex – damage system for use with Traveller's High Guard. To each his own, but I cannot say I see the appeal. Mind you, the older I get, the more convinced I am that simple, straightforward rules are usually best if your goal is to sustain a campaign long-term, so I am probably biased against articles of this sort.

"The Starlight Pact" by Peter Haines and David Smith is the latest installment of the venerable "Fiend Factory" column. Up till now, "Fiend Factory" showcased new monsters for use with Dungeons & Dragons. This month, the column instead presents five superheroes for use with Golden Heroes, each of which is inspired by a miniature figure produced by Citadel. The times they are indeed a-changin' at White Dwarf. "Shopping for Inspiration" by Joe Dever briefly offers up the names and addresses of stores that sell supplies of interest to miniatures painters, along with the usual tantalizing photos of some of the author's own handiwork. Finally, "Poison" by Graeme Davis presents yet another "new and easy-to-use" system for handling toxins in AD&D – once again, more complexity than I'd ever need, but your mileage may vary.

White Dwarf: Issue #63

Issue #63 of White Dwarf (March 1985) is graced with a cover by Italian-born artist Gino D'Achille, who is probably most well-known for the work he did on the Ballantine editions of the Barsoom novels from 1973 (or the DAW Gor books, if that's more your preference). In his editorial, Ian Livingstone continues to ponder the state of the hobby, with particular emphasis placed on the peculiar ways that licensed properties are divvied up among companies. He notes, for example, that Games Workshop publishes the Doctor Who boardgame, while FASA publishes the RPG. He also notes that, while TSR publishes Battle System ("which sounds like Warhammer"), Citadel produces the official AD&D miniatures line. Livingstone's correct to note the oddity of this, but it's been pretty much par for the course for as long as the licensing of media properties has existed (and remains so to this day).

The issue kicks off with "Arms and the Man" by Michael Holman, which builds on Andy Slack's article on vehicle combat in Traveller from White Dwarf #43. Holman introduces a number of new vehicle systems, including offensive ones, as well as an expanded vehicle combat procedure. It's all good stuff, though it highlights, as did Slack's article before it, just how much Traveller needed vehicular combat rules simpler than those in Striker. 

Dave Langford's "Critical Mass" occasionally elicits my interest – not so this month, which is why I will pass over it without comment. Much more compelling to me is "Open Box," which very positively reviews Toon (9 out of 10), a game for which I have more affection than is probably justified. Also positively reviewed are a pair of videogames from Triffid Software, The Secret River and The Wizard's Citadel, which score a combined 8 out of 10 (somehow). I must admit I was surprised to see videogames reviewed in "Open Box." In the past, such things appeared in a separate column, "Microview," but I suspect it had been axed sometime prior to this. There's a side by side review of FASA's Star Trek III Starship Combat Game and Task Force's Star Fleet Battles Volume II. The comparison is not completely fair, since SFB Volume II is not a stand-alone product but a supplement. Even so, White Dwarf gives them 8 and 7 out of 10 respectively. Finally, there are reviews of the D&D modules, The Veiled Society (9 out of 10) and Quest for the Heartstone (4 out of 10). I'll be looking at the latter in a separate post tomorrow.

Part 5 of Graeme Davis's Eye of Newt and Wing of Bat concludes by tackling miscellaneous magic items. This is probably the least satisfying entry in the series, because it looks at only a small percentage of the miscellaneous items found in the Dungeon Masters Guide and presents no unified system for handling their manufacture. On the one hand, that's understandable, given the diversity of the miscellaneous magic items. However, the point of the series is to present a system to aid referees and players in adjudicating the creation of magic items. Without that, I think it's a little less useful than it might have otherwise been.

Carl Critchlow gives us the first part of "Thrud the Destroyer," which amusingly riffs off both the awful second Conan movie and The Magnificent Seven – fun stuff, as always. "The Travellers" and "Gobbledigook" are also enjoyable, though neither compares to this month's "Thrud." The third and final part of Jon Sutherland and Gareth Hill's "The Dark Usurper" Fighting Fantasy scenario appears in this issue, too. It's much like the previous parts, which is to say, passable as a solitaire scenario, though nowhere near as good as even an average full-length Fighting Fantasy book.

Much more compelling is Marcus L. Rowland's "Draw the Blinds on Yesterday," a Call of Cthulhu scenario set in the 1980s. The adventure concerns a missing flight between Athens, Grece and London, England, thanks to an unsuccessful attempt to summon Cthugha from Fomalhaut. Also involved is the last surviving Gorgon, an extraterrestrial species that is the origin of the myths of Medusa and her sisters. It's a delightfully bonkers scenario that somehow works, despite (because of?) its strange mix of elements. 

"Setting the Scene" by Joe Dever and Gary Chalk is another fascinating miniatures-oriented article. This time, the authors look at the pitfalls of how best to make use of miniatures and scenery at the table. It's a topic I'd never really considered before, given my limited use of miniatures over the years. As usual, Dever and Chalk do a fine job of briefly laying out the problems and offering solutions, accompanied by useful color photographs. Every time I read one of their articles, I find myself deeply regretting that I never bothered to take up miniatures painting back when I still had the eyesight and hand-eye coordination to make a serious go of it. The folly of youth!

"Howzat!" by Mark Wilkinson, David Bailey, and Richard Bramah is humorous RuneQuest article that presents the rules (and game mechanics) for "elfball," a Gloranthan analog to cricket. There are even a few new spells for use during the game, like batting trance and team spirit, as well as additional spells for use by umpires. It's silly but fun, the kind of thing that I long considered a distinctive aspect of the UK game scene in the '80s. "A Not So Lonely Mountain" presents a pair of short scenarios involving the characters' ascent up a mountain – and the monsters they encounter along the way. I like this style of introducing new opponents in a RPG and wish it was done more often.

"Imperial Trooper" by Nic Weeks is look at the elite military forces of the Imperium of Traveller. It's mostly "fluff," in that it introduces no new rules or equipment for use with the game and, on that score, is good enough, though it does differ somewhat from GDW's own presentation of similar topics elsewhere. Concluding the issue is James Carmichael's "Help for the Hobbit Abroad," which presents some halfling-specific magic items, like pots of cooking and the pipe of the storyeller. (One of these years someone will figure out something to do with halflings that's more interesting than simply being Tolkien's hobbits with the serial numbers filed off – or, better yet, jettison them entirely!)

And so we come to the end of another issue of White Dwarf. As usual, it's a mixed bag, filled with a wide variety of material geared toward an equally wide variety of games. That was always White Dwarf's great strength when compared to Dragon and its relentless focus on Dungeons & Dragons. Of course, this sometimes meant that some issues of White Dwarf might not be as interesting to me as others, but that was a chance I was willing to take at the time. Re-reading these issues remains a delightful trip down memory lane; I look forward to the next one.

Jeff Easley in Savage Sword of Conan

A commenter to my earlier post pointed out that former TSR staff artist Jeff Easley was responsible for the frontispiece to issue #30 of Marvel's Savage Sword of Conan (June 1978). I did not know this, so I poked around online for a little bit and found the image in question. The issue in which it appeared was published almost four years before Easley began work at TSR, so it's a good example of artwork from earlier in his career and I thought others might be interested in seeing it. There are no doubt many more examples of Easley's pre-TSR art to be found.

Know then, O Prince ....

Here's a TSR UK advertisement for the 1985 Conan Role-Playing Game. It's a disappointingly understated ad in my opinion, especially given the subject matter. That said, I have a strange affection for the game, which was, objectively speaking, nothing great, but my friends and I had fun with it and that's the true measure of any RPG. 

(I feel compelled to point out that the tagline of the advertisement, which is ostensibly an excerpt from the Nemedian Chronicles quoted at the beginning of "The Phoenix on the Sword," is wrong. The adverb "then" does not appear in Howard's original text. Mind you, what follows below is itself a paraphrase, omitting certain words and praises, so perhaps we shouldn't judge this too harshly.)

Suspense in the 1920s

One of the fascinating things about Call of Cthulhu, originally released in 1981, is the way that Chaosium's early advertisements tended to, if not actually downplay its connection to the works of H.P. Lovecraft, place it on an equal footing with other elements, such its 1920s setting or a broader "investigation of the occult." 

Anecdotally, this approach seems to have worked. Though HPL was well known in some corners of the hobby at the time, he certainly didn't enjoy the same wide level of fame he now possesses. Given that, promoting it as a more general horror game makes sense. I know plenty of people my age whose first introduction to Lovecraft was through Call of Cthulhu, much in the way that they learned about Robert E. Howard's Conan from the pages of Marvel comics. Likewise, CoC was one of the earliest RPGs set in the 1920s, predating TSR's Gangbusters by a year (though FGU's Gangster! appeared in 1979). I know that certainly appealed to me (and still does – it's my preferred era in which to play the game). 

The older I get, the more I find myself in awe of what Chaosium accomplished in the first decade of the hobby. Better late than never!

White Dwarf: Issue #3

Issue #3 of White Dwarf is dated October/November 1977 and features cover art by Alan Hunter, who did a number of illustrations in the Fiend Folio. Its first article is entitled "Solo Dungeon Mapping" and is credited to Roger Moores – please note the terminal "s." I assume, though do not know for certain, that this is a typographical error and that the author's name is, in fact, Roger Moore, better known as Roger E. Moore, who would later go on to become editor of TSR's Dragon. Moore's byline appeared extensively in the pages of gaming periodicals starting in the late 1970s, so it seems very likely that this is the same person, but I could be mistaken.

In any case, "Solo Dungeon Mapping" is an unusual article. First, though intended for use with Dungeons & Dragons, it makes reference to Empire of the Petal Throne as another game for which it could be useful. Second, the very loose system that Moore presents seems intended to create dungeons with few rooms per level but lots of long corridors and passages up and down between levels. Now, there's nothing wrong with this approach, of course, but it's quite different from the much more cramped style I tend to associate with dungeons.

Fred Hemmings offers another installment of his "Competitive D&D," This time around Hemmings presents more details on the chambers of his competition dungeon, Pandora's Maze, which I welcome, given what he implied about it in his previous two articles. The intention here is to provide examples of the mix of encounters, tricks, and traps he uses in scenarios of this style. Likewise, Don Turnbull continues to plug away at his "The Monstermark System," with a third entry. As before, I found the article long and tedious, with an emphasis on mechanical and mathematical minutiae of little use to me. It's odd because, for years, I had heard people speak so glowingly of the Monstermark and assumed it was easy to use – apparently not!

"Open Box" tackles a large number of Judges Guild D&D products: Ready Ref Sheets, The Judge's Shield, TAC Cards, Tegel Manor, City State of the Invincible Overlord, Character Chronicle Cards, and The First First Fantasy Campaign. By and large, these were all well received by the reviewer, Don Turnbull. For myself, I was struck by how much Judges Guild had already released by this relatively early date. Also reviewed was FGU's Citadel, Fourth Dimension (its original, pre-TSR version), and TSR's Battle of the Five Armies. 

Lewis Pulsipher continues his "D&D Campaigns" series, with a lengthy discussion of his philosophy of refereeing. Early on, Pulsipher describes his vision of the referee as a "friendly computer discretion," who interferes in the course of play as little as possible, because "the referee is neither infallible nor completely impartial." It's an interesting perspective and one with which I am largely in agreement. He then elaborates on just what he means by this, offering many examples of how this philosophy operates in practice. I know that Pulsipher is often regarded as smug and stuffy in his approach to gaming, but I found this article engaging and look forward to future installments.

"Colouring Conan's Thews" by Eddie Jones is an overview of miniatures painting – another reminder of this hobby's roots. "The Loremaster of Avallon" by Andy Holt presents more D&D house rules, most notably his card-based combat system, whose use eluded me somewhat. I shall have to re-read it several more times to get a better sense of how the system, which uses 100 cards, each bearing a symbol on it, actually works. John Rothwell's "The Assassin" is a variant of the class presented in Blackmoor, while Ian Waugh's "New Magic Rooms" presents two chambers for placement in a dungeon whose interiors operate according to unusual rules. 

I have to admit that I was less impressed with this issue than I was with the previous one. Aside from Lewis Pulsipher's article, there was little that stood out to me as being either original or useful to me. That's the nature of periodicals, of course, but I had hoped that White Dwarf, compared to Different Worlds, would hit the ground running. I guess it's still too early to pass judgment on that score.

Different Worlds: Issue #22

Issue #22 of Different Worlds (July 1982) is a special RuneQuest issue, as its cover by Lisa Free, depicting a morokanth setting a trap for herdmen, makes clear. Like the ducks, morokanth are an aspect of Glorantha that's nearly impossible to explain easily and, even then, I'm pretty sure that they'll be baffling to most people (including myself). Regardless, issue #22 is a very good one that's not solely geared toward dedicated Glorantha aficionados.

The first article presents a "gateway" cult for RQ by Michael Kolb, entitled "Cult of Dionysus." As you'd expect, it details the cult of the Greek god for use with the game. I found the article interesting, because, unlike many previous articles presenting new cults, this one includes no new spells or rules. Instead, it shows how to use the existing RQ spells and rules to model an interpretation of the cult of Dionysus. Whether you agree with Kolb's presentation or not, I think there's something very positive about his approach of not using rules as the way to expand the scope of a game.

"Advice from Rurik" by Steve Perrin is a question-and-answer column for RuneQuest. Named after the sample character in the RQ2 rulebook, the column deals with both rules and the setting of Glorantha. "RuneFix1" by Greg Stafford presents a series of changes to the RuneQuest rules "adopted in the Chaosium house campaign." Amusingly, one of the largest changes concerns the acquisition of languages. I can't speak to the utility of any of the changes, but I am always happy to see evidence of RPGs actually being played by the people whose names appear in its byline. 

"Terraforming Part One" by Doug Houseman is a Traveller "source article" that discusses the topic of planetary engineering and includes game statistics and deckplans for a pair of starships. "Hela's House of Dark Delights" by Ken St. Andre is a solo adventure for Tunnels & Trolls. As someone with a growing interest in solo RPG adventure design, I found this useful. "Eight New Weapons for RuneQuest" by Paul Cardwell Jr. does what its title suggests. Most of the weapons detailed are "exotic" ones like atlatls, boomerangs, and caltrops.

This issue's reviews positively covers Worlds of Wonder, 76 Patrons, and Uragyad'n of the Seven Pillars (the last two for Traveller). It also negatively reviews C&S Sourcebook II and The Dungeon of King Lout, the latter of which I've never heard. Reviewer Dave Nalle sums up his feelings in the following way:

This product is ridiculously overpriced, almost contentless, and an affront to my pride as a gamer. There is no reason why anyone would buy this. You can design your own random and unrealistic dungeon (if you want) in the same time it would take you to prepare The Dungeon of King Lout and you would save $5.95.

Ouch!

John T. Sapienza continues to look at cardboard miniatures, this time focusing on Steve Jackson's Cardboard Heroes products. Larry DiTillio's "The Sword of Hollywood" returns, with some brief gossip about then-upcoming movies, like Revenge of the Jedi [sic]. Meanwhile, John Nubbin reviews Conan the Barbarian at length – and he doesn't think very much of it. Nubbin is critical of nearly everything, starting with its story (which "makes no sense"), but expanding to include the editing, acting, even its soundtrack (which he calls "awkward"). I have many problems with the film myself, but, even so, I think Nubbin's review is often needlessly nitpicky and mean-spirited. 

The issue concludes, as most issues do, with Gigi D'Arn's column. This time, she continues her coverage of TSR's purchase of SPI and its subsequent actions, such as the canceling of all SPI game events at Origins. In retrospect, it's not at all surprising how badly things ultimately turned out for SPI and its many excellent games. What a waste! Gigi also relates a darkly amusing story of something she overheard in a game shop: "That's the D&D role-playing game. It's based on Mattel's D&D electronic game."

I really enjoyed this issue and look forward to reading the next issue – though I should note now that I seem to have misplaced part of my collection of these issues, including issue #23. I'll keep digging around in my "files" to find the missing issues, but it's possible I might not be successful before next week, in which case I'll think of some way to continue this series. 

Different Worlds: Issue #12

Issue #12 of Different Worlds (July 1981) is the first monthly issue of the magazine, all previous ones being bimonthly. It also features cover art by William Church, whom I will always associate with RuneQuest and the wonderfully evocative map of Prax that appeared in the game's rulebook. 

"Meaningful Names for Characters" by Jane Woodward is the issue's first article and it's a big one – eight pages – consisting largely of lists of names and name elements from a variety of languages, both real (Old English and Welsh) and imaginary (Quenya and the Black Speech). The idea behind that article is to encourage players to come up with better names for their characters than "bad puns or meaningless constructs." I'm deeply sympathetic to this perspective; I think character names are important. At the same time, I prefer names to be rooted in a game's setting rather than by recourse to whatever language catches one's fancy, regardless of how appropriate it is (and it's never appropriate, in my opinion, to use Tolkien's languages, unless one is actually playing in Middle-earth).

"The Full Circle" by Robert Lynn Asprin is a preview of the upcoming Thieves' World RPG supplement, based on the anthology series of the same name. Asprin talks not just about the supplement itself but the ways that his experiences as a referee and player affected his decisions in putting together the anthologies. The article's title is thus a reference to the way that roleplaying games were influenced by literature, only for literature, in turn, to be influenced by RPGs. Though brief, Asprin provides some fascinating insight into these matters and I was glad to have read what he had to say. "Bersekers" by Laurence J.P. Gillespie is an overview of Norse berserkers from the perspectives of history and myth, with a few suggestions on how to use them in roleplaying games. 

John T. Sapienza reviews several new sets of Zargonian paper miniatures from Bearhug Enterprises. As in his review of earlier releases in this series, Sapienza thinks highly of these miniatures. The issue also includes many other, generally shorter reviews, most notably those of The Isle of Dread (for D&D), Plunder and Rune Masters (for RQ), Thieves' Guild, and the D&D Basic and Expert sets. All these reviews are positive, though, perhaps unsurprisingly, the review of the Basic and Expert sets include a number of cavils about Dungeons & Dragons and its approach to both rules and presentation, even though D&D clearly appeals "to a lot of happy adventure gamers." 

Larry DiTillio's "The Sword of Hollywood" column continues, focusing this time on the still-untitled second Star Trek movie, Clash of the Titans, Dragonslayer, and Conan the Barbarian. There's also mention of multiple fantasy films supposedly in the works, almost all of which DiTillio believes will never see the light of day. His instincts were indeed correct, as the only one that seems to have seen the light of day was The Beastmaster, unless "The Dragons of Krull" was a working title of 1983's Krull. 

Gigi D'Arn makes another appearance, providing some interesting gossip, chief among them being that TSR was rumored to have laid off "a dozen or so employees for 'bad attitude.'" This is no rumor but fact: starting in April 1981, TSR fired Paul Reiche, Evan Robinson, Bill Willingham, Jeff Dee, Kevin Hendryx, and others. There's mention, too, that Dave Arneson "settled (happily)" with TSR and that Greg Costikyan "hasn't been heard from in a while," followed by an appeal to "people who know his whereabouts" to contact the Game Designers' Guild. I have no idea what this might have been about. Gigi also references a "Troll Ball" game from Greg Stafford, which will have miniatures sculpted by Steve Lortz. I assume this never came to pass and that the rules were later incorporated into Trollpak.

Issue #12 is unusual in that, although it's the same length as previous issues (48 pages), it feels shorter. I suspect that has to do with the fewer articles in this issue and the presence of huge numbers of advertisements. Now, I actually like seeing these ads, since they're a terrific way to remind oneself of the state of the hobby in 1981, but, in terms of actual gaming content, this issue seems a slight downgrade to past ones. Here's hoping future issues will see a return to previous form.

Retrospective: Dungeon of Dread

It's increasingly my contention that the years between 1982 and 1984 are among the most interesting in the history of TSR. It's during these years that the company is clearly struggling with the faddish popularity of Dungeons & Dragons, trying to find ways to harness that popularity for both immediate and long-term profit. Consequently, the period is one of wild – and often absurd – experimentation, one not inaptly encapsulated in the metaphor of "throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks." 

There were a lot misfires during this time period, as TSR seemed to adopt a two-pronged approach to broadening the market for their products. On the one hand, there were the bizarre craft items, like D&D-themed needlepoint sets, targeted at non-gamers, while on the other hand, there were the toys and storybooks, aimed at children, presumably with the goal to seed an interest in the kind of fantasy that D&D offered. As a somewhat self-serious middle aged man, it's easy for me to cringe at both these approaches, but, from a purely business perspective, they're not inherently flawed. Indeed, focusing on younger children had great potential, even if I might balk at the specific products that TSR approved for sale under the banner of the Dungeons & Dragons brand.

Part of this strategy involved the publication of a series of "choose your own adventure" style books in a series called Endless Quest, the first four of which appeared in June 1982. All of these initial offerings were written by Rose Estes. I know nothing of Estes prior to her work on this series, except that she was apparently employed by TSR and may have worked under James Ward in the company's Education Department. A few months ago, I wrote a post about this, in which Ward makes reference to "a simplified version of the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS game … geared for the people who have never heard of the D&D game, and don't know how to play it at all." If this is correct – and I have no way of knowing if it is – this "simplified version" of which Ward speaks evolved into the Endless Quest series.

The concept of solo adventure books was not a new one. The aforementioned Choose Your Own Adventure series began in 1979 (based on the earlier Sugarcane Island book by Edward Packard) and Tunnels & Trolls released its pioneering Buffalo Castle in 1976. Producing D&D-branded versions of the same was actually a very good idea, one that Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone also had, releasing The Warlock of Firetop Mountain a couple of months later in the same year. I'd been an avid reader of the early Choose Your Own Adventure books, to which I'd been exposed by a librarian several months prior to my introduction to D&D. Had the Endless Quest books been available at the time, I have no doubt I'd have been a fan of them as well. As it was, they came out a little too late – I was almost thirteen at the time – and scoffed at them as yet another example of "kiddie D&D," tween-age boys being almost as insufferable as middle-aged men.

A few years ago, I picked up a used copy of the first entry in the series, Dungeon of Dread, and read through it. The book assumes that the reader is an adult human fighter, described rather specifically as 5'9" tall and weighing 150 pounds, outfitted with a sword, a dagger, leather armor, and a collection of typical adventuring gear, like rope and flasks of oil (no 10-foot pole, alas). Your adventure begins as you awaken one morning to find a halfling, named Laurus, rifling through your belongings, looking to steal them while you slept. He begs for his life and tells you about an evil wizard named Kalman, whose prisoner he once was, and whose lair is filled with equal amounts of treasure and danger. Naturally, you decide to seek out his lair and explore it with the halfling, hoping to defeat Kalman and enrich yourself in the process.

While far from a great work of fantasy literature, Dungeon of Dread, isn't awful, especially when compared to, say, the Choose Your Own Adventure books. The prose is more sophisticated and the numbered sections longer, more like that of a light novel aimed at older children, than a mere gamebook. Again, I should emphasize that it's nothing spectacular as a work of fiction, but it certainly achieves its goal of painting a picture of what adventuring in the implied setting of Dungeons & Dragons might be like, aided by Jim Holloway's illustrations. The dangers the reader encounters are a mix of classic monsters, along with a goodly supply of vermin, which, I think, firmly anchors it in its time period. Overall, I think Dungeon of Dread is more forgiving in its choices than either Choose Your Own Adventure books or Fighting Fantasy, but I also think that's at least partially a function of its more novelistic style, which sets it apart from its competitors.

I get the impression that, of all the strategies TSR attempted to appeal to a younger audience, the Endless Quest series was one of the most successful. Over the course of five years, the series swelled to three dozen entries by a number of different writers and encompassed multiple game lines besides Dungeons & Dragons, as well as licensed properties like Tarzan and Conan. I don't doubt that they succeeded in their intention of introducing a new generation of kids to roleplaying games.

Imagine Magazine: Issue #20

Alan Craddock provides the cover to issue #20 of Imagine (November 1984), which is dedicated, as its cover proclaims, to "Clerics in the Dungeons & Dragons game." Themed issues like this are always a risk, since, if you're not interested in the theme, it tends to damper your enthusiasm for reading the issue. Fortunately for me, this issue's theme piqued my interest greatly, since clerics might well be my favorite class in D&D. I've always felt that clerics weren't given the love and attention they deserve, being reduced to armored medics respected only for their ability to heal and nothing else. Needless to say, I was curious to see what the writers of Imagine had to say on the subject.

Things kick off with Paul Vernon's "Clerics are People Too." The article rightly notes that, whereas fighters, magic-users, and thieves all have clear literary inspirations, the cleric does not. While I can certainly come up with examples to counter Vernon's specific claim, his larger point remains, namely, that D&D clerics lack fantasy role models and that this contributes to their being played badly and banally. What Vernon suggests is developing fantasy religions better so that players of clerics understand what their character should believe and its impact on their behavior. Nowadays, it's an obvious point – though how often it's actually employed is an open question – but, in 1984, I think it was fairly unusual.

Lewis Pulsipher offers "Alignment, Personality & Philosophy-Religion," an extensive examination of all these factors with regards to playing a cleric. Pulsipher is particularly interested in the subject of alignment, which, as we all know, remains a contentious one even today. He argues for making alignment more important, even to the point of suggesting, for example, that Lawful clerics not roll for their hit points but instead get the average amount per level, while Chaotic ones roll as normal. It's an intriguing notion, though not one I expect to catch on, even if it does succeed bringing alignment front and center rather than leaving it a philosophical abstraction at best.

"As God is My Witness" by Graeme Davis examines the judicium Dei, the various types of trials used during the Middle Ages to determine guilt or innocence. This is a purely historical article but a worthwhile one, full of ideas for use in a campaign. "The Necklace of Lilith" by Phil Gallagher is an AD&D adventure intended for a party consisting only of clerics, which is certainly a novel idea. The scenario concerns the recovery a divine item, the titular Necklace of Lilith, long believed lost. Accompanying the article is another, "New Clerical Spells," which is a reprint of an article from Dragon #58 (February 1982) by Gary Gygax and Len Lakofka. The adventure makes some use of these spells and is, in fact, intended as a means of introducing them into an existing campaign.

"New Flail Types" by Graeme Davis does exactly what its title suggests, providing more weapons for use by clerics (along with stats for these weapons in other game systems, like DragonQuest, Traveller, and Bushido). Carl Sargent's "Looking for an Edge" examines the ban on the use of edged weapons by clerics and argues, as others have done, that the ban should not apply to clerics of every god. In the traditional polytheistic set-up of Dungeons & Dragons, I am sympathetic to this perspective, though I also think the prohibition exists for reasons beyond a hamfisted attempted to introduce a Christian worldview into the game.

This issue's reviews include Grenadier's Disappearance on Aramat, which the reviewer, Stephen Nutt, liked even less than I did. There are also a number of reviews of adventures for Star Frontiers, Space Opera, and The Morrow Project, continuing Imagine's commitment to greater coverage of science fiction RPGs. There's also a very positive review of the revised, boxed version of The World of Greyhawk, for which I have many fond memories. "Chain Mail" discusses the postal version of En Garde!, while Colin Greenland gives a strangely positive review of Conan the Destroyer, a movie most people intensely dislike. Conversely, he gives a negative review to the animated Fire and Ice, which, while no masterpiece, I recall being more enjoyable than Schwarzenegger's second outing as the Cimmerian. 

The comics "Rubic of Moggedon" and "The Phalanx" continue in this issue. Roger Musson's "Stirge Corner" continues the discussion of alignment begun in the previous issue. He rightly points out that Law does not equal Good and Chaos does not equal Evil and riffs off of these matters to good effect. Richard W. Lee's short fiction, "Prince of Thieves," is fine for what it is but nothing special. Much more compelling is the Pellinore installment, "Pablo Fanquay's Fair," which details a group of traveling performers, along with ideas for using them in a game. The Cock o' th' Walk tavern gets a similar treatment, including a map by Paul Ruiz. There are also rules for making a living by street performance – including by breakdancing. Yes, you read that right. Forgive them: it was 1984.

This is another fine issue of Imagine, with much to recommend it. I am particularly fond of the Pellinore setting articles. They evince a terrific combination of creativity, utility, and humor that sets them apart from most other TSR offerings at the time. Seeing as many of those who worked on Pellinore would eventually contribute to Games Workshop's Warhammer Fantasy Role Play, this should come as no surprise. 

Retrospective: The Adventures of Indiana Jones Role-Playing Game

The history of TSR between 1982 and 1984 is a strange and fascinating one. It's simultaneously when Dungeons & Dragons is at the height of its popularity (and profitability) and when TSR seems to have had no idea how to build on that success. Instead, TSR adopted multiple strategies, such as attempting to turn D&D into a brand name with which to sell non-gaming products to re-imagining the game into something more story-driven and, it was assumed, more accessible to potential customers unfamiliar with either pulp fantasy or its wargames roots. Another strategy was one that's still employed to this day, even by the current producers of D&D: license a hot property – or a not-so-hot one – and hope it'll result in expanded sales.

TSR's history with licensed properties is decidedly mixed. For example, Jeff Grubb's Marvel Superheroes is rightly considered an unqualified success, both as a near-perfect RPG design and as an example of the potential value of the right licensed property. On the other hand, the 2001: A Space Odyssey module for Star Frontiers is a classic example of "what were they thinking?" licensing, only slightly more intelligible than Dungeons & Dragons-branded sunglasses. TSR's AD&D Conan modules and Conan Role-Playing Game are, I think, an example of a middle case, namely a good idea poorly – or at least insufficiently well – executed. Throughout the early to mid-80s, TSR was clearly throwing lots of spaghetti against the wall to see what stuck; the results were, more often than not, a mess.

An infamous case in point is 1984's The Adventures of Indiana Jones Role-Playing Game. Designed by David Cook, the game was, like so many others at the time, a boxed set consisting of a 64-page rulebook, a map of the 1930s world, a referee's screen, a collection of player handouts, and cardboard cut-outs to represent characters, buildings, and vehicles, plus dice. Taken purely on these terms, The Adventures of Indiana Jones is a nice package and I can imagine that it would have seemed quite attractive purely on this basis. Of course, the main reason anyone bought the game – myself included – is because the pulp-inspired action-adventure world of Indiana Jones was very appealing. I have little doubt that every gamer who saw Raiders of the Lost Ark in the summer of 1981 (or even The Temple of Doom three years later) thought, "This would make a great roleplaying campaign."

So, unlike, say, 2001: A Space Odyssey, which still baffles me to this day, I don't wonder why TSR grabbed this license as soon as it was feasible for them to do so. The world of Indiana Jones is definitely the stuff from which a game RPG could be made. Alas, The Adventures of Indiana Jones was not that RPG – and it's not because of its game mechanics. Mechanically, the game was fine, if nothing special. Like many games at the time, Indiana Jones uses another variation on the color-coded results chart that Marvel Super Heroes employed to such great success. There are even small moments of brilliance in its particular take on the chart, with exceptionally good and bad results being called Lucky and Bad Breaks respectively and each having unique effects, depending on the attribute being checked. 

The game's real problem, the one that utterly cripples it is its lack of character creation rules. Instead, there are a total of seven pre-generated characters from which players can choose: Indiana Jones, Marion Ravenwood, Sallah, Willie Scott, Short Round, Jock Lindsey (the pilot from the beginning of Raiders), and Wu Han (Indy's ally at the start of Temple of Doom, who dies). Now, I can understand including these characters as examples and even encouraging people to use them, but not including any rules for creating your own characters? That's a bizarre design choice, especially since the movies themselves imply that the world of Indiana Jones is much bigger than him and his immediate circle, filled with lots of other heroic and dastardly people trekking across the world in pursuit of valuable ancient artifacts. (There are also no experience rules; characters earn "player points" that enable them to reduce the severity of damage – that's it)

It's such a pity, because, as I've said several times now, there's a great deal of potential in the pulpy 1930s the movies presented. Further, the game itself is a decent introductory RPG that provides not only lots of fun little components but also a few interesting little sub-systems like the Chase Flow Chart intended to aid the referee in conjuring up the action of the movies. There's nothing revolutionary here, to be sure, and no one should think otherwise. This is not a forgotten gem of a roleplaying game, unfairly maligned despite its virtues. Rather, The Adventures of Indiana Jones is a textbook example of a missed opportunity – a nigh-perfect setting/world that could have, with a bit more imagination, have been a fun and successful RPG. Alas.

(And before anyone brings it up in the comments, no, TSR did not try to trademark the word "Nazi." TSR and this game can legitimately be criticized for many things; this is not one of them and I wish this particular urban legend would go away for good.)

Conan the Ape Puncher

Conan the Buccaneer (1985) was the first published module for TSR's Conan Role-Playing Game. Written by Kim Eastland, it's not especially memorable, except for this full-page illustration depicting the titular Cimmerian besieged by a quintet of golden baboons. What could I possibly say that tops the illustration itself? 

Retrospective: Conan Unchained!

Robert E. Howard's Conan the Cimmerian and Dungeons & Dragons have been connected since the beginning. Volume III of 1974's OD&D makes explicit reference to him in the section describing the "Angry Villager Rule," for example, while 1976's Gods, Demigods & Heroes includes one interpretation of his game statistics. Gary Gygax offered up a different interpretation of the character in issue #36 of Dragon (April 1980). And, of course, the barbarian character class, which Gygax first presented in issue #63 (July 1982) seems to been greatly inspired by Conan, right down to his distrust of magic. 

Consequently, it probably came as little surprise when the AD&D module Conan Unchained! appeared in 1984. If anything, one might have reasonably wondered why it took so long for something like to have occurred. I suspect that it was the increased pop cultural presence of Conan following first the 1982 John Milius movie and then its 1984 sequel that led to this formal marriage of Howard and TSR, as the still of Arnold Schwarzenegger on the cover makes clear.  

Written by David Cook, Conan Unchained! is a fascinating module – and, by "fascinating," I mean that it in its fullest sense. To begin with, simply seeing an official Conan module for AD&D is enough to hold my attention. Conan is given game stats that are very impressive. He's a 13th level fighter and 7th level thief, in addition to having ability scores ranging from 10 (for Wisdom) to 18 (90) (for Strength, obviously) and 100 hit points. Statted up alongside Conan are Valeria of the Red Brotherhood, Juma the Warrior (possibly based on a comics character of the same name), and Nestor the Gunderman (from REH's unfinished story "The Hall of the Dead," who also appears in the Conan the Barbarian comic from Marvel). Naturally, one might ask: why are these character included at all? As written, they're intended to be used as player characters, though Cook does allow for the possibility that players might wish to use their own characters, provided they're adapted to the rules changes intended to reflect the Hyborian Age.

Chief among those rules changes are the addition of "luck points," which can be used in a variety of ways, from making an extra attack per round to knocking an opponent unconscious with a single blow (armed or unarmed) to performing "a heroic action beyond the scope of the rules." My natural inclination is to look askance at such things, but I suspect that, in play, these luck points work reasonably well, emulating the action of the Conan movies, if not necessarily Howard's original tales. Also introduced are fear checks to simulate the "instinctive fear of the unnatural" felt by characters like Conan. Failing a fear check results in the inability to attack for a round, with new checks being allowed every round. Again, it's not a terrible idea, though I do wonder why a saving throw, such as paralyzation could not have been re-purposed for this. Other rules changes include an accelerated healing rate, since healing magic is rare or non-existent in the world of Conan.

Equally fascinating is this section, which I reproduce here:

The most relevant portion of the above is "the choices the characters have will be very limited. You must be careful to gently control plot encounters." As you know, I'm no fan of heavily plotted adventure modules, but I am willing to make some allowances in limited circumstances. This, however, goes far beyond anything I can countenance and is very much in keeping with the style championed by Dragonlance. It's too bad, because I'm a huge fan of David Cook's work at TSR. 

The adventure itself isn't especially notable, consisting of a mix of exploratory encounters, random encounters, and the aforementioned plot encounters. The action pushes the characters along from Turan, where a war is brewing, to the Sea of Vilayet, to the mysterious citadel of an evil sorcerer. It's a bit of a mess, even viewed through the forgiving lens of pastiche and I found it hard to care much after a while. The only real interest to me was that the action takes place roughly in the same location as "The Devil in Iron," which I discussed earlier this week. 

At the end of the day, Conan Unchained! is yet another oddity from the period between 1982 and 1984, when TSR was casting about mightily in an effort to harness the burgeoning mass market popularity of D&D so as to secure its long-term profitability. The results were decidedly mixed and quite possibly laid the groundwork for TSR's decline and eventual demise. That future is more than a decade in the future at this point, but, even so, I can't help but feel that chasing licenses like Conan was energy better spent on other creative avenues that might have yielded more fruit.

Claw the Unconquered

Back in the mid-80s, my friends and I were very briefly – but intensely – enamored of TSR's Conan Role-Playing Game by David Cook. At the time, I don't think any of us were all that familiar with Conan outside of Marvel's comics or the Schwarzenegger movies, the second of which had come out the summer before the RPG was published. (I had read some of the Lancer Conan books by this point, but they didn't make a huge impact on me)  As I recall, the game had a fun and easy to use character generation system that produced appropriately pulpy characters. One of my friends generated a character who had a physical deformity – a claw on one hand – that was the result of a curse or black magic or something similar. He called the character Talon, which, at the time, I thought was pretty clever, and had many adventures during the Hyborian Age.

Many years later, I learned of the existence of Claw the Unconquered, DC comic that ran for only a dozen issues, beginning in June 1975. Like my friend's character, Talon, Claw is afflicted with a curse – an ancestral demonic pact, we eventually learn – that results in members of his family having a bestial claw in place of his right hand. I don't know if my friend ever read Claw and based his character on it or it's a case of independent invention.

Claw's real name is Valcan, an outlander who has come to the realm of Pytharia, seeking fame and fortune.

Let say right now that the art in Claw is excellent, nearly the Platonic form of what I associate with the comics of my youth. That's not surprising, since it's the work of the late, great Ernie Chan (credited as Ernie Chua, at the time), who worked on many comics during the time, including Conan the Barbarian for Marvel. The writer was David Michelinie, best known for his time at Marvel Comics, a few years later.

Claw's titular appendage is something Valcan hides with a red gauntlet, largely because of the reaction it elicits in others, as we learn early in the first story.

The ruler of Pytharia is named Occulas of the Yellow Eye, who dwells within Castle Darkmorn. As a young prince, Occulas learned of an omen that "the hand of justice," which is "webbed like a dragon's paw," would one day threaten his rule. Concerned for his future, Occulas scoured the world looking for anyone who bore such a mark. Eventually, his agents succeeded, finding the farmer Kregar, who possesses a hand like that foretold by the omen. They first accuse him of treason and then slay him, along with his wife, leaving their infant son an orphan. I trust no one will be surprised to learn that that infant grew up to be Valcan, who was apparently raised by some mysterious individual, who found him shortly afterwards. 

Naturally, when a now-older Occulas hears of a demonic-handed outlander wandering about the streets of his capital city, he takes a keen interest in him and places a bounty of 10,000 dreknars on his head and right hand. 

Truthfully, it's a solid set-up for a sword-and-sorcery comic. Since the title only ran for twelve issues, I assume it nevertheless failed to catch the reader public's imagination. As is so often the case with unsuccessful characters like this, Claw has made cameo appearances in other comics over the years, including in the pages of The Warlord. I wonder if part of the reason for the comic's demise was its perceived similarity to the incredibly popular Conan the Barbarian and The Savage Sword of Conan over at Marvel. If so, I can understand that, given the visuals, but it's a shame nonetheless, since, even in the very first issue, it's clear that Michelinie intended to take the series in a very different direction than did Roy Thomas with his own magazines. At the same time, the 1970s is a graveyard for failed fantasy comics and the fact that Claw the Unconquered is among the dead says little about the quality of its core concept.

Interview: Rick Priestley (Part I)

For gamers of a certain age, especially in the UK, Rick Priestley needs no introduction. Designer of 1983's Warhammer Fantasy Battle (with Bryan Ansell and Richard Halliwell), he also had a hand in many of the many games that derived from it, such as Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and Warhammer 40,000. Mr Priestley worked at Games Workshop until 2009, when he left to join Warlord Games, which has published several of his designs, perhaps most notably Bolt Action. He very kindly agreed to an interview, the first part of which I am pleased to present below. 

As you will see, Mr Priestley's answers are quite thorough and touch upon many aspects of not only his own experiences but the early days of UK gaming. Since the process of answering my questions in such a fashion takes time, there will be gaps of several weeks between installments of this interview. Nevertheless, I have no doubt readers will agree that what he has to say is worth the wait. I learned a great deal from his answers and am grateful he took the time to provide them.

1. How did you first become involved in the hobby of miniatures wargaming?

It’s the usual story for players of my generation and nothing out of the ordinary. Like every other boy in the 60’s, I was brought up with Airfix models and Britains/Timpo toy soldiers, all sold through Woolworths and commonly available across the nation. Boys’ comics were full of war stories and war themes made for popular TV and films. For many of us, our relatives had served in either the second or first world wars and our parents certainly lived through the second war. Our fathers had probably done national service after the war. Even as infants we routinely played 'war’ in the playgrounds using stick guns and imaginary hand grenades. Children’s magazines like Look and Learn and World of Wonder often had military themes and history was still respectably a tale of battles and kings, with proper dates and all.

At the same time, games were pretty much universal parts of growing up, especially board games, which we all treasured as Christmas and birthday presents. Even as kids we would congregate in each others' houses to play whatever new and exciting games were about. That continued as we turned into teenagers, and we would start to buy and play SPI and Avalon Hill games – the latter were very expensive through – quite an investment at the time! At the same time we’d be putting together more advanced plastic kits, so it wasn’t just wargaming: it was always a mix of military modelling, board gaming and miniatures-based wargames. Many of us would lean one way or the other – perhaps dabbling in miniatures wargaming whilst being primarily a modeller or board gamer, for example. 

I don’t think there was much of a leap from assembling and painting Airfix kits and collecting toy soldiers to devising games with them. I guess the moment when ‘playing’ turned to ‘gaming’ for me was with the discovery of ‘proper wargames’ in the form of the books written by Charles Grant, Donald Featherstone, and Brigadier Peter Young. There was also a series of little booklets in the ‘Discovering’ series (part of Shire publications – pocket-money books on a variety of subjects). Anyway, I came across a copy of Charles Grant’s Battle! Practical Wargaming in a local book store, and that was the loose end of a ball of string as far as I was concerned. That was the first time I encountered proper rules. Afterwards I made friends with other lads at my school who had started wargaming in a similar fashion. Military Modelling began publishing in January 1971 and quickly became the ‘go to’ resource for young wargamers, with adverts from all the leading manufacturers and publishers of the day. I suppose I would have been 12 years old when I came across that first book, towards the end of my first year at secondary school I think.

2. What about RPGs? When and under what circumstances did you first encounter roleplaying games?

Role-playing games didn’t really exist as a genre until quite late in my wargaming day. Before D&D came along in – I guess it must have been 1975 – there was a style of wargaming with miniatures that you might characterise as ‘skirmish’ wargaming. In skirmish wargames a figure was one man rather than representing a portion of a larger formation. Often our men would have names and they would take part in a series of adventures with a continuous narrative, and individuals would survive wounds, gain experiential bonuses and buy, steal or make new weapons and so on. These were ‘role-playing’ games after a fashion, even if we didn’t use that name, and often they would be based upon adventures in the American West or the high days of Empire in Africa. At that time it was reasonably common to have an ‘umpire’ running even ordinary tabletop wargames, so it was usual for someone to work out a game and others to play it out. In essential details this kind of wargaming was the ancestor of all role-playing games.

If you read about the history of D&D, you’ll see that it was a very similar route that led the TSR team from publishing wargames rules to role-playing games via their Chainmail system. Some of my friends and I were already playing similar fantasy games – skirmish fantasy wargames with named characters and a story arc worked out by an umpire. When the first copies of D&D appeared in the UK we did feel a bit as it we’d been beaten to the post! I did go on to play D&D though and created dungeons: this was with the imported rules – I think it was the second edition – three books in a brownish box. A friend of mine had the rule book and some of the early supplements, which was just as well because it was a damned expensive affair! That early version of D&D was extremely free-form, which was very appealing, and beyond that I would just make up stuff – great fun. I never got any further than that with D&D or any commercial RPGs that came afterwards. They all seemed over-regulated and rule-driven to me. Some of the background was nicely done though – RuneQuest especially – and the RuneQuest percentage driven mechanic was considered pace-setting at the time. Some skirmish wargames rules had also used a similar mechanic, as did the first published set of rules that I was involved with – Reaper. I think by the time D&D developed into a phenomenon my gaming had taken a back-seat to college life. Afterwards it was more a question of earning a living so my interest became more professional than hobby.

3. Would you mind talking more about Reaper? You designed this set of rules with Richard Halliwell. What was the origin of the game? Were you happy with the published version?

Reaper was born from two things: a fantasy campaign that Hal ran, and our mutual ambition to publish a set of wargames rules. I think that ambition  to write and publish our own rules – was something that we nurtured all through our teenage years. Hal had a set of science fiction space combat rules printed in a fan magazine called Dragon’s Lair – an irregular newsletter for fantasy wargamers, the first of its kind in the UK as far as I know. We worked on rules together and would invent games using the models we had. I remember coming up with a science-fiction boarding action game that used gridded floor plans to represent different parts of a space ship – something like what would become Space Hulk. Obviously, as teenagers, we were convinced we could do a better job than any of the published rules writers out there. Such is the arrogance of youth.

Not that there was much for fantasy wargames at that time. There was a set of fantasy amendments for the Wargames Research Group ancient rules, which we adapted and used for most of our early fantasy games. These would be games in Tolkien’s Middle-earth using the Minifigs ME (Mythical Earth) range of models. Later on we would prefer to write our own rules to go with whatever fantasy projects presented themselves. Both Minfigs and Garrison produced a range based on Robert E Howard’s Conan stories that included some nice monsters and unusual ‘fantasy’ types.

I don’t remember exactly when the first percentile dice arrived in the UK, although I recall they were sold by Skytrex and were quite expensive. These were actually 20-sided dice numbered 0-9 twice – one red and one black making a pair. There were a few games that featured these dice. I remember in particular a set of WW2 naval rules that used a series of complicated charts and graphs in conjunction with a percentage mechanic to determine the effect of gunfire. These dice suggested rules mechanisms different from those associated with usual six-sided dice. Percentage dice – D100s if you like – imply a mathematical profundity and precision that I believe we found appealing at the time. They give a feel of a serious and proper game – something more realistic than could be achieved with a D6. I still maintain that D100s give that feel to a game, though I would also suggest that it is a ‘feel’ only and in fact such mechanics are neither more realistic nor more accurate in terms of simulation. D100s can be remarkably unhelpful because of the even spread of probability, making fluky scores rather more common that you might wish. I would go on to use a D100 system for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, but we had to ameliorate the fluke element with ‘fate points’ to protect players from erratic dice swings.

Anyway, we started to use a percentage system as the basis for our own fantasy wargames. I think the game that inspired us to do so more than any other was The Old West Gunfight rules by Mike Blake, Steve Curtis and Ian Colwill. This was an inspiring set of rules with snippets of history and lovely sketches to accompany the text. For the time this was rather unusual. We are in the age of rulebooks that were solid text and roneo’d sheets stapled together rather than printed and bound. As for photographs and even diagrams… dream on! Our games evolved as a mixture of rules that we’d transposed from other games together with our own percentage driven combat system. In essence they were skirmish wargames with heroes and followers, and usually fixed upon a scenario where our gallant warriors had to travel across a blighted wilderness enduring the onslaught of mutant monsters, rescuing allies from the clutches of ne’er-do-wells, capturing ancient or mystical towers to uncover mysterious artefacts, and so on. Although ostensibly a ‘fantasy’ campaign, events were to reveal a world that was in reality a post-apocalyptic earth where magic had developed in the clutches of psychic mutants following some catastrophic nuclear war. The action eventually took us to a semi-terraformed Mars via a matter transporter. So, I say fantasy… but there was a lot of science-fiction. To some extent this setting was inspired by Michael Moorcock’s stories, notably the Count Brass books which are part of the History of the Runestaff series.

I can’t remember exactly at which point our collection of rules and notes became Reaper but the name was taken from the Blue Oyster Cult song "Don’t Fear the Reaper," a jukebox favourite following its release in 1976. Asgard Miniatures was also founded in 1976, and we’d started to incorporate some of the first Asgard releases into our games. Asgard were based in Nottingham – which is not all that far from Lincoln where Hal and I lived – and I think we had this notion that maybe Asgard would publish our rules. Of course, we had little idea of what publishing amounted to at that time, let alone how to sell something you’d published, but – as I said before – we were ambitious! Hal phoned the number on the Asgard advert and spoke to Bryan Ansell, who every generously invited us over to Nottingham to demonstrate our game. Bryan showed us round the Asgard workshop, which was a small unit round the corner from where he lived, little more than a double garage really. That was the first time we’d seen casting machines and mould presses and all the paraphernalia of manufacturing wargamers figures. I seemed to remember I bought some figures ‘hot’ out of the mould! Bryan was very encouraging, not just with the rules but also with painting and modelling. I’d painted a lot of the models we took over for our demo and I’d also made conversions of some of them. I think in those days Bryan was keen to see if anyone half-promising could design figures. I did subsequently paint a few models up for the Asgard display and even made a few bits and pieces that found their way into the range. It was Bryan who hooked us up with the owners of the Nottingham Model Soldier Shop – who eventually published Reaper.

I got the job of putting the book together having been introduced to the concept of ‘camera ready copy’ by Bryan. Basically, I typed the rules up onto A3 sheets which would then be reduced down to A4. We had a typewriter at home and it happened to have a ‘legal’ carriage, i.e. an extra wide carriage that could take bigger sheets of paper. I left spaces for illustrations which would be added by Hal and Bryan using stock artwork from the Asgard adverts. I think by this time – probably late '77 and early '78 – Hal was at Nottingham University, so he was travelling a lot between Nottingham and Lincoln, acting as go between. I was out of school but wouldn’t go off to college until late '78, so I guess I had some time on my hands. Anyway, I did the basic production work, finalising the text and drawing up the few diagrams, adding the headers using rub-down Letraset transfers. Hal sorted out the cover and a friend drew the cover illustration. Bryan added a nice sketch of Hal onto the credit page – not a bad likeness either!

Hal handled the final stage over in Nottingham. It was printed by the Nottingham Model Soldier Shop – although often described as ‘Asgard’ at the time – and was supposedly the longest set of British wargames rules published to date! Much of that was down to a rather lengthy set of magic rules, which I’d developed as a kind of ‘build your own spell’ system. The rules were quite expensive and I don’t think they exactly set the world on fire, but it’s amazing how many people say they played and enjoyed them back in the day. Later on a second edition was published by Tabletop Games – essentially a tidied up version of the game – and these are fairly easy to find. The second edition is easy to spot because it’s only A5 size compared to the original A4, and it’s saddle-stitched rather than slide bound as was the original.

Mechanically, Reaper suffered from being a little too predictable in terms of combat resolution, basically because of the accumulated percentages. For example, ten men fighting with a 17% of scoring a hit would calculate out at 170% or 1 hit and a 70% chance of a second. In essence, you would inflict 1 or 2 hits every time and that was that. Hits were moderated by a ‘toughness’ role – a sort of saving throw – but even so things were a bit too predictable really. Later on I tried splitting the results out into 50% chances and taking rolls for each, but with D100’s that’s a bit cumbersome so I reduced the percentages to a D10 system with some loss of detail. At the end of the day you lose a lot of the advantages of a D100 system doing that and if you’re going to go for 50% rolls you might as well be throwing a D6.

The Reaper rules were actually more of a battle game than the games we were actually playing, mostly because our role-playing elements were pretty much done free-form by the umpire without any rules as such. There was a lot of ‘it’s up to you’ in the game system and that’s something I think both of us felt was key to the game. I think we were rebelling against the ‘rules are rules and must be obeyed as holy writ’ style of game that was more usual at the time (and since!).

Reaper was the gateway that introduced Hal and myself to the world of miniature manufacture and rules publishing, and most importantly to Bryan Ansell who would later go on to recruit both of us into Citadel and hence Games Workshop. Two other players who took part in our Reaper games (members of what we called LOON – the Lincoln Order of Necromancers) also joined Citadel – before me – Paul Elsey, who became a mould maker, and Anthony Epworth, who became the shop floor manager and subsequently a mould maker. So really, we have a lot to thank Bryan Ansell for, and none of it would have happened without Reaper.