One Man's Nostalgia

By now, I'm pretty sure everyone in the old school community is very much aware of Goodman Games's upcoming Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, which is currently in open playtest and is on schedule for a February 2012 release. I haven't paying as close attention to the playtest as I'd intended to, in part because I've got my own projects to work on. But another part of my inattention is that, while there's a lot I do like about the DCC RPG, there's also a lot I don't and, perhaps more importantly, I'm not really in the market for another fantasy roleplaying game right now. So, I keep half an eye on DCC RPG's development, checking in every now and again to see how things are unfolding.

One of the more intriguing aspects of the game line's development are the upcoming adventure modules to support it. Take a look at the covers of a couple of them:

Those are both really awesome, right? They scream pulp fantasy in a way that adventure module covers haven't since I first entered the hobby. That they're reminiscent of the covers of both Weird Tales magazines and 1970s paperback novels, without being apes of either, is also a point in their favor. For me, they hit that sweet spot between nostalgic evocation and unique vision.

On the other hand, this does nothing for me. Indeed, it almost looks like a parody cover.

It looks like a crossover between Luke Cage, Hero for Hire and Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser -- and while that's probably awesome in some people's eyes, I find it silly. Of course, even sillier in my opinion is another DCC adventure module:

Now, winged apes are cool and, of course, Michael Curtis is even cooler, but basing an adventure off Tramp's iconic DMG illustration? That's not so cool. I find myself uncomfortably reminded of some of those HackMaster adventures of old, the ones that turned me off them to such a degree that I never bothered to give the game a fair shake. That's what Emirikol Was Framed! does for to me: it turns me off DCC RPG and it's not even out yet.

I'm just one guy, of course. I'm sure many other old schoolers looked at those second two covers and pumped their fists in enthusiasm. They looked at them and found them as delightfully evocative as I found the first two. Nostalgia, just like esthetics, is a funny thing; one man's "delightfully evocative" is another man's "Hell, no!" I bring this up not as a criticism of DCC RPG at all. Despite my own qualms, I'm actually glad that Goodman Games has decided to forge ahead with a game that looks like it's the product of a clear and idiosyncratic vision of fantasy. It's hard not to applaud that, even when it's not wholly something I would have done -- but then, that's part of the point.

A Hargravian Oddity

I'm not an uncritical admirer of Dave Hargrave's Arduin Grimoire series. There's a lot of creativity in the pages of these books, but also a lot of nonsense. Despite that, I find myself regularly re-reading them, because, like the LBBs, I regularly find new things in them that I'd either not noticed before or that I had noticed and somehow had forgotten. Last night, when I was paging through the "General Notes on Monsters, Combat and the Like" from the original Arduin Grimoire, I came across this odd little note:

6. All fireballs and other offensive area effect weapons, have their damage points divided among all of those that are caught inside its limits. That means that if there are 4 people caught in a 6 dice fireball that does 20 points of damage on the dice roll, then each of the four takes 5 points of damage if they fail their saving throw, and 3 points (2-1/2 rounded up) if they make their save, NOT 20 point [sic] each!!!

Among old schoolers, Arduin has a reputation for being both gonzo and deadly, so I was bit surprised to read the passage above, because it severely weakens the power of spells like fire ball. It's also an interpretation of area effect damage in D&D that I don't think I ever encountered back in the day. That's not surprising, since I didn't start playing till late 1979, by which point AD&D had been released and this issue, among others, had been definitively clarified. But back in '77, using only the LBBs, Hargrave's interpretation wasn't implausible (though examination of Chainmail would have shed further light on the matter).

I won't be adopting Hargrave's interpretation in my own campaign, but I like reading about rules variants like this. One of the great things about OD&D is the way that it unintentionally demands judgment calls and interpretations to make it playable. And Arduin, for all the things about it I dislike, is nevertheless a terrific example of one referee's "deciding how [he] would like it to be, and then mak[ing] it just that way!" 

Table of Contents

As a further preview of the nearly finished first volume of the Dwimmermount Codex, here's the table of contents.

Open Friday: Fear and Horror

It being October, my thoughts naturally turn to horror and fear. Mind you, I'm a big fan of horror and suspense movies, so it's not unusual for me to be thinking about such things. Of course, I'm also (obviously) a fan of roleplaying games. What I've concluded is that, unfortunately, RPGs aren't a very good -- or, at least, very reliable -- medium through which evoke feelings of horror and fear (or, indeed, any particular emotion). That's not to say that it's impossible to have a creepy or edge-of-your-seat gaming session, but there's no way to ensure this.

In truth, that doesn't bother me at all. I'm increasingly of the opinion that the quest for genre emulation is one of the great banes of our hobby, so the fact that no RPG can guarantee an emotional response of any type isn't a cause of concern. But there have been times when I have played or refereed RPG sessions that did elicit feelings of horror or fear from the participants. Such times are easily replicable; they can't be reduced to a formula, let alone a set of mechanics.

So, for today's question: have you ever had a game session that was memorably frightening or horrific and, if so, was there anything you or your fellow players did that contributed to this feeling? Or was it just one of those things that happened without any real explanation?

The Articles of Dragon: "Cantrips: Minor Magics for Would-Be Wizards"

The appearance of a new article by Gary Gygax was always a special treat for me. Back in March 1982, when issue #59 of Dragon was published, I was still very much enthralled by the idea that Gary's word was law when it came to Dungeons & Dragons. Needless to say, I ate up articles like "Cantrips: Minor Magics for Would-Be Wizards" and dutifully incorporated them into my campaign -- or, rather, I tried to.

The problem was that, much as I liked the idea of 0-level spells, they simply never caught on with any of my players. And, really, who can blame them? Even at an exchange rate of four cantrips per 1st-level spell, they aren't particularly attractive, at least not to an adventuring magic-user. I honestly can't recall a single time that a player ever made use of a cantrip. For that matter, I don't think I ever made use of them for NPCs either.

Looking back on it now, I recognize a couple of things. First, I think Gary came up with cantrips because they were a natural outgrowth of his world-building. That is, he'd given a lot of thought to what a magical society would be like and the existence of minor spells to teach neophyte magicians seemed perfectly logical. Second, I think Gary had tired of dungeons and much of his thinking was occupied with the world outside them. If you look at his output from at least 1981 on, what you see are rules expansions and elaborations that make more sense if one imagines a campaign where dungeons are, at best, a sideshow compared to other adventuring activities. In such contexts, cantrips might have a place.

This specific article didn't undermine my devotion to Gary Gygax; as I said, I liked it a great deal. But it was one of the first times where something Gygax wrote went over like a lead balloon in my gaming group and that was significant. For that reason alone, this article was a significant one for me.

Historical Armor

The other day I was browsing the website of the Sierra Toy Soldier Company, specifically its Medieval Knights Collection. Their products are much too expensive to even consider buying, but they're nice eye candy. They've got a very wide selection of stuff and I found myself wasting way more time just staring at its images than I ought to have done.  Plus, how can anyone not waste time on a website that includes 54mm miniatures of St. Bernard of Clairvaux and Jacques de Molay at the stake?

Anyway, the website reminded me of just how much I like the look of historical armor. It's one of the things I like most about David Sutherland's early D&D artwork: his fighting men and clerics are usually wearing armor that, while it probably wouldn't stand up to close scrutiny by medievalists, is nevertheless close enough for my purposes. There's a "groundedness" to this sort of armor that I actually think helps to heighten the fantasy elements of the game, something that I think has been missing in it since the 2e era at least.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Mark Allen is doing a historically-armored fighting man for me in an illustration that will accompany my first Dwimmermount release ...

Retrospective: Shadowlord!

My post last Friday about Dragonmaster elicited some commentary that reminded me of another fantasy-themed game I used to enjoy as a younger man: Shadowlord! Shadowlord! was a Parker Brothers boardgame published in 1983 intended for 2-4 players. It was took place in a weird fantasy/sci-fi amalgam setting once ruled over by the benevolent Starmaster, whose power to move planets and create starships from dust was contained within a mystical Power Stone. The Starmaster hoped, upon his death, that one of his four children, the Masters of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, would take up his mantle and use the Power Stone to continue to rule the universe wisely. Unfortunately, when the Starmaster finally did die, it was not one of his children but the evil Shadowlord who seized the Power Stone, which he used to rule as a nigh-omnipotent tyrant.

It's an interesting set-up for a game, in which each of the players takes the role of one of the four Element Masters and attempts to wrest the Power Stone from the Shadowlord and hold it long enough to win the game. As they attempt to do so, players recruit followers -- warriors, merchants, diplomats -- each of which has not only a special ability based on their class but also a card with a name and illustration. Again, it's easy to see why I had such a fondness for this game: it had a lot of great components, including the first use of non-standard dice outside of an RPG that I can recall. Shadowlord! used d8s for its resolution mechanics.

Ultimately, though, what I remember most about Shadowlord! is the way that it unabashedly mixed wizards and spaceships with reckless abandon. Back in 1983, this was a novel concept to me. Back then, people often used the term "science fantasy" or "space fantasy," but that was usually in reference to something like Star Wars, which was for all intents and purposes science fiction, merely of a very non-rigorous sort. Seeing characters dressed like wizards or elves and flying around in spaceships was something else entirely. Or at least it was to me, but then it was long ago established that I have a limited imagination.

It's been years since I looked at Shadowlord! let alone played it. I played it a lot back when I first got my copy and enjoyed it. It'd be interesting to play it again someday and see if it still holds up after all these years.

Book Lust ... Rising

It's not for nothing that S.T. Joshi's H.P. Lovecraft: A Life is lauded as a great biography of the Old Gent. I've read the thing from cover to cover several times (this summer being the most recent time) and I always find something new and insightful in its pages. I really can't say enough good things about it. So, when I discovered that Joshi had written a second biography of HPL -- and a two-volume one at that -- I was dumbstruck.

I Am Providence was apparently published last year and I had no idea. That's probably a good thing, since I would have been awfully tempted to buy it. Still, at $100, it's a bit pricey for me, especially when I already have his earlier biography. On the other hand, biblio- and Lovecraft-ophile that I am, it's so very enticing. And my birthday is coming up too ... Damn.

Naming Your Campaign

I was chatting with Victor Raymond the other night and he noted how common it used to be to name one's campaign. You didn't ask your friends, "Hey, you want to go over to Bob's place and play D&D tonight?",  you said, "Hey, you want to go over to Bob's place and play in his Everwhen campaign tonight?" When I was younger, I remember the older guys used to talk this way and so it was something I consciously imitated. It made sense, too, since I'd always read about Gary Gygax's "Greyhawk campaign" and, much later, Ed Greenwood used to speak of "Forgotten Realms campaign" in the pages of Dragon. Plus, gamers were always saying stuff like, "In my Emaindor campaign, I don't allow Neutral-aligned clerics" or "In my Dark Realms campaign, I allow half-elves to take up any class."

Until Victor reminded me of this, I'd forgotten about this phenomenon, even thought I've actually talked about it before, if only obliquely. My gut instinct is that naming one's campaign is a way of clearly establishing it as its own unique thing. Sure, the referee may use the D&D rules, but those rules are subservient to the campaign itself, as imagined by the referee. So, if the referee doesn't like demihuman level limits or wants to introduce level 10 spells for magic-users, he does so and no one gives it much thought, because this is his campaign. I'm always gladdened when I see this tradition of old continued today. It's a small thing perhaps, but I like the practice of naming one's campaign and all that it implies.

The Articles of Dragon: "A Special Section: Dwarves"

For issue #58 (February 1982) of Dragon, I'm going to cheat a little -- well, a lot -- by focusing on not just one but four different articles. I think it's justified, though, because the articles cover closely related topics and three of them were written by a single author, the inestimable Roger E. Moore, in those days not yet the editor-in-chief of Dragon. "A Special Section: Dwarves" is also an important collection of articles, one that, in my opinion, marks a turning point in the history of D&D. Indeed, it's a collection that makes me wonder if perhaps the Silver Age didn't begin sooner than I have suggested in the past, for these articles were extremely influential and ushered in not just explicit follow-ups by Moore himself, but also a growing codification of not just D&D's non-human races but many other aspects of its fictional milieu.

The first of the four articles is "The Dwarven Point of View," which presented a psychology of the dwarves, explaining aspects of their thoughts process and, by extension, the society and culture that arose from them. "Bazaar of the Bizarre" featured two new (and forgettable) dwarven magic items, while "Sage Advice" answers a battery of increasingly nitpicky questions about dwarves. "The Gods of the Dwarves" is probably the most well-known of the four dwarf articles in issue #58, if only because it was officially canonized by Gary Gygax, who included it in his 1985 Unearthed Arcana expansion to AD&D. I'll also never forget "The Gods of the Dwarves" because it included an illustration depicting Berronar, the dwarven goddess of safety, truth, and home, with a beard:

I've long had a fondness for this piece of artwork, both because I relentlessly used it to bludgeon those who denied that female dwarves had beards (in contravention of both Tolkien and Gygax -- so you know it had to be true!) and to emphasize that dwarves weren't just short, stocky humans. They were, effectively, an alien race and to expect them to conform to human ways was absurd, not to mention demonstrating a severe lack of imagination.

When this quartet of articles was released, I adored them and made every effort to incorporate as much of them into my ongoing campaign as I could. Nowadays, I have much more mixed feelings about them, chiefly because they, almost certainly unintentionally, became the fount from which subsequent discussion of dwarves flowed. That is, later writers -- and even TSR itself -- treated Moore's ideas as normative, the result being that, as the '80s wore on, the portrayal of dwarves in D&D became less diverse. At the time, I didn't care; indeed, I was very happy with "official" information on dwarves and all the demihuman races, because I wanted my campaign to conform to the conceptions of my betters in the hobby. In retrospect, though, I feel less happy with these articles and wish their influence had been more limited.