POD Pics

I've had a surprisingly large number of people email me, expressing interest in buying copies of Thousand Suns, but expressing some skepticism at the quality of print on demand books available through RPGNow and DriveThruRPG. I find that a bit odd, since the POD books from those sites are produced by Lightning Source, the same company that does Lulu's books and hardly anyone bats an eye about Lulu (anymore). But, in the interests of assuaging any lingering fears about POD from RPGNow/DriveThru RPG, let me offer you some photos of a batch of Thousand Suns books I just received in the mail today:

The bottom four books are hardcovers and the top two are softcovers. I've found that, while I much prefer the hardcover as a reference book at my desk as I'm writing, the softcover is easier to use in play.

There's the cover of one of the hardcovers.

Here's a side view of a hardcover.

And here are two different interior shots.

I hope these photos will give a better sense of how nicely produced these books are. I was quite frankly blown away by how well they turned out. If anyone has any more questions about these books, leave a comment or drop me a note and I'll do my best to answer them.

The Articles of Dragon: Physics and Falling Damage

And so we return to falling damage once again.

Issue #88 (August 1984) presents a lengthy article by Arn Ashleigh Parker that uses physics -- complete with equations! -- to argue that neither the as-published AD&D rules nor the purportedly Gygaxian revisions to same from issue #70 adequately reflects "the real world." Here's a scan of some of the equations Ms Parker uses in her article:

I'm sure it says something about my intellectual sloth that my eyes just glaze over when I see stuff like this in a roleplaying game. The very idea of having to understand acceleration, terminal velocity, and the like to arrive at a "realistic" representation of falling damage is bizarre enough. To do so as part of an argument against earlier rules is even more baffling. D&D's hit point system doesn't really stand up to extensive scrutiny if "realism" is your watchword. In my opinion, devoting so much effort to "prove" that terminal velocity is reached not at 200 feet as in the Players Handbook system or at 60 feet as in the revision but at 260 feet is a waste of time better spent on making a new monster or a new magic items -- things that actually contribute meaningfully to fun at the game table. But I'm weird that way.

Amusingly, issue #88 also includes a very short rebuttal to the above article by Steve Winter. Entitled "Kinetic Energy is the Key," Mr Winter argues that, if one considers the kinetic energy resulting from a fall, you'll find that its increase is linear, thus making the original system a surprisingly close fit to the "reality." He makes this argument in about half a page, using only a single table (albeit one that draws on the earlier equations). While I agree with Winter that the original system is just fine for my purposes, it's nevertheless interesting that the author also makes his case on the basis of physics, as if the important point is that AD&D's rules map to facts about our world. It's a point of view I briefly held as a teen and then soon abandoned, for all the obvious reasons. Back in 1984, though, this was the height of fashion and many a Dragon article proceeded from the premise that the real world has a lot to teach us about how rules for a fantasy roleplaying game ought to be constructed ...

RIP Samuel Youd (1922-2012)

Though I usually keep on top of such things, I'd failed to take note of the fact that, last Friday, British author Samuel Youd, better known by his pseudonym of John Christopher, died at the age of 89 (thanks to reader Daniel Eness for bringing this to my attention). Youd was, of course, most famous for his "Tripod Trilogy," which began with the novel The White Mountains in 1967, but he had previously written the equally famous The Death of Grass more than a decade earlier. Both it and the Tripod Trilogy were of a post-apocalyptic nature and, as such, exercised a big influence over my imagination as a younger man. I first learned of the Tripod Trilogy in the pages of Boys' Life magazine in the early '80s, which serialized the books in comic book form. This led me to seek out the actual books, which I adored (and still do).

Rest in peace, Mr Youd.

Pulp Fantasy Library: Pledged to the Dead

Among the many lessons of history is that tastes can vary greatly over time. I've oft-lamented, for example, that the name of Abraham Merritt is not better known and lauded today, as he was in his own lifetime. Another author who is, if anything, even more obscure than Merritt is Seabury Quinn. Among the small number of people who still recognize his name, Quinn is often dismissed out of hand as a hack of the lowest sort. This may be due to the fact that, during his lifetime, Quinn wrote over 500 short stories, a great many of which appeared in the pages of Weird Tales (indeed 60% of all issues between 1923 and 1954 include at least one story him). And while it's true that not all of Quinn's output is worthy of consideration, even his worst work often has, in my opinion, clever ideas and obvious authorial enthusiasm. In his day, Quinn was, by far and away, the most popular author writing in Weird Tales and even H.P. Lovecraft, who was no fan of his stories, found him an "exceedingly tasteful & intelligent" man.

One of Quinn's longest running series (nearly 100 stories in all) concerned the detective Jules de Grandin. De Grandin is a French physician, police officer, and expert on the supernatural. Traveling with his companion, Dr. Trowbridge, who plays Watson to his Holmes, he investigates crimes and solves mysteries in which the occult seems to be involved. One of the interesting things about the De Grandin stories is that, while the occult often is involved, that's not universally the case. Some mysteries are revealed to be the work of ordinary, albeit unhinged, human beings and it's this quality that I think contributes to the series's longevity. Starting a tale, you never know at the outset whether there actually is a werewolf on the prowl or if it's all an elaborate hoax concocted to throw De Grandin off the scent.

Like the Sherlock Holmes stories, the De Grandin mysteries are told from the perspective of Trowbridge, who acts as a first-person narrator. The October 1937 story, "Pledged to the Dead," provides a good example both of this device and Quinn's style:

The autumn dusk had stained the sky with shadows and orange oblongs traced the windows in my neighbors' homes as Jules de Grandin and I sat sipping kaiserschmarrn and coffee in the study after dinner. "Mon Dieu," the little Frenchman sighed, "I have the mal du pays, my friend. The little children run and play along the roadways at Saint Cloud, and on the Ile de France the pastry cooks set up their booths. Corbleu, it takes the strength of character not to stop and buy those cakes of so much taste and fancy! The Napoléons, they are crisp and fragile as a coquette's promise, the éclairs filled with cool, sweet cream, the cream-puffs all aglow with cherries. Just to see them is to love life better. They——"

The shrilling of the door-bell startled me. The pressure on the button must have been that of one who leant against it. "Doctor Trowbridge; I must see him right away!" a woman's voice demanded as Nora McGinnis, my household factotum, grudgingly responded to the hail.

"Th' docthor's offiss hours is over, ma'am," Nora answered frigidly. "Ha'f past nine ter eleven in th' marnin', an' two ter four in th' afthernoon is when he sees his patients. If it's an urgent case ye have there's lots o' good young docthors in th' neighborhood, but Docthor Trowbridge——"

"Is he here?" the visitor demanded sharply.

"He is, an' he's afther digestin' his dinner—an' an illigant dinner it wuz, though I do say so as shouldn't—an' he can't be disturbed——"

"He'll see me, all right. Tell him it's Nella Bentley, and I've got to talk to him!"

De Grandin raised an eyebrow eloquently. "The fish at the aquarium have greater privacy than we, my friend," he murmured, but broke off as the visitor came clacking down the hall on high French heels and rushed into the study half a dozen paces in advance of my thoroughly disapproving and more than semi-scandalized Nora.

"Doctor Trowbridge, won't you help me?" cried the girl as she fairly leaped across the study and flung her arms about my shoulders. "I can't tell Dad or Mother, they wouldn't understand; so you're the only one—oh, excuse me, I thought you were alone!" Her face went crimson as she saw de Grandin standing by the fire.

"It's quite all right, my dear," I soothed, freeing myself from her almost hysterical clutch. "This is Doctor de Grandin, with whom I've been associated many times; I'd be glad to have the benefit of his advice, if you don't mind."

She gave him her hand and a wan smile as I performed the introduction, but her eyes warmed quickly as he raised her fingers to his lips with a soft "Enchanté, Mademoiselle." Women, animals and children took instinctively to Jules de Grandin.

It's all fairly typical pulp prose, right down to the rather stereotypical way that De Grandin is portrayed. But, like a lot of pulp authors, if one can look past this -- or, alternately, luxuriate in it -- what one often finds is an engaging mystery filled with spectacle and creativity. In the case of "Pledged to the Dead," the story concerns the young woman, Nella Bentley, whom Dr. Trowbridge has known since she was a child. Nella is engaged to be married to Ned Minton, whom Trowbridge also knows. The two have been sweethearts since they were quite young, so their engagement and eventual marriage was a surprise to no one. However, after a trip to New Orleans, Ned calls off their engagement, claiming that he is no longer worthy of Nella's affections, a situation that his headstrong fiancée does not accept, which is why she turns to Dr. Trowbridge and his associate for help in determining just what has happened to him.

I don't think I'm giving anything away by revealing that the plot concerns Voodoo and its possible hold over Ned. Why else make the New Orleans connection if not to introduce Voodoo into the tale? Of course, what makes a good Seabury Quinn story worthwhile is not necessarily its originality of its basic ideas but rather the cleverness with which he takes well-worn tropes and plays with them. He does that in "Pledged to the Dead," employing Voodoo and all its paraphernalia in a fun way that makes for a good, if light, read. No one's going to be mentally challenged by a Quinn story -- that was never his intention -- but I do think people will enjoy them. If you've never read any of Seabury Quinn's fiction, it's worth doing so, even if it's just to see why he was so well regarded by the readers of Weird Tales. He's not to everyone's taste but he was very good at what he did.

Open Friday: Other Reprints

Last Friday, I posted a poll about how likely buyers of WotC's upcoming AD&D reprints were to use them to play an AD&D adventure or campaign. Of the nearly 800 respondents, about one-quarter said they planned to do so while another quarter hoped to do so. That's fairly impressive if you ask me and makes me think that, while the numbers are unlikely to be vast, there is a market for reprints of TSR era gaming materials.

So, for today's Open Friday question, I'm doing another poll. This one is about what other types of TSR era material you'd like to see Wizards of the Coast reprint, in the unlikely event that they choose to do so. This poll allows for multiple answers, so feel free to choose as many options as suit you. Likewise, feel free to use the comments below to elaborate on your choices.

Old D&D Movie

Lots of people emailed me today asking me if I'd seen Ethan Gilsdorf's latest post over at Wired. Mr Gilsdorf, you may recall, wrote Fantasy Freaks & Gaming Geeks, which I reviewed back in 2010. His post at Wired includes a recently unearthed video shot back in 1981, showing him and his friends in New Hampshire playing D&D together. It's a very short movie, but well worth a look, especially if, like me, you were involved in the hobby back in those days.

Everything you'd expect to find is there -- dice, a DM's screen, goldenrod record sheets, even Mountain Dew -- so it's a real blast of nostalgia for me and I'm very happy he posted it. Makes me wish I had some photographic records of my early gaming, though, judging from the attire and haircuts in Mr Gilsdorf's video, perhaps it's just as well that I can't share such a thing with the world.

Sci-Fi and the Book

Perhaps because of the average age of my readers, it's often uncritically accepted around here that the 1970s represented a unique flowering of science fiction. Now, it's certainly true that there were a lot of SF movies and TV shows produced during the '70s, especially after the success of Star Wars. And, of course, being kids at the time, many of these movies and TV shows probably exert powerful pulls over our imaginations even now. The awful truth is, with few exceptions, much of the Hollywood SF being made in those days was both terrible and short-lived. Battlestar Galactica, perhaps the quintessential '70s SF series, lasted a single season and, fond of it though I am, most of its 24 episodes are woeful. The track records of other science fiction series aren't much better and many are much worse. The same can be said of the decade's movies.

Consequently, if you were a sci-fi fan back then, as I was, you got the majority of your fix from reading. The 1970s were a great decade for literary SF and many of my favorite authors -- Poul Anderson, Frank Herbert, Larry Niven, Frederick Pohl, to name just a few -- produced some of their best and most compelling works during this time. It's thus no surprise to me that, even more than 30 years later, it's the books and authors of this period that still scream "Science Fiction!" to me. I've encountered other since that I've also enjoyed, but few of them have had a lasting impact on my conceptions of the genre.

So, when I wrote Thousand Suns, I did so with the express intention of promoting an "old fashioned" style of SF, one that I first encountered in the 1970s but whose roots stretch back into the '50s and '60s (and even earlier). Take a look at the game's Appendix N to see what I mean:

I also begin each chapter of the book with an appropriate quote from a story I liked from the period. For example:

I bring this up in part because I'd like some assistance. The first supplement to Thousand Suns I'll be producing is a revision to the Starships book. In this case, "revision" may be too strong a word, since very little will be changed in the text of the original version. Rather, the new version will simply incorporate a few small bits of errata, along with a new layout and additional interior art so that it matches the rulebook.

To do that properly, I'm going to need some quotes from science fiction short stories and novels from prior to 1980. I've already begun searching on my own and have some good ones, but having more from which to choose is always better. Each quote should pertain to the subject matter of the chapter with which it's associated. The four chapters of Starships are: The Navy (dealing with the nature and organization of interstellar navies), Operations (dealing with the operation of starships), Combat (dealing with starship battles), and Design (dealing with starship construction). There's also an introduction.

So, if you can find or think of a good quote from pre-1980 literary SF -- no movies or TV shows, please -- that you think fits one or more of these chapters, send them my way. If I use them, I'll happily credit you and send you a copy of the book in a format you prefer (PDF, softcover, or hardcover) when the book is released (likely in March or April). Thanks in advance!

Adventurer. Conqueror, King Now Available in PDF

The Adventurer, Conqueror, King System is now available in PDF for $9.99. For those of you unfamiliar with this game, it's an old school fantasy roleplaying game designed by Alexander Macris, Tavis Allison, and Greg Tito. What makes ACKS unique is that it makes good on D&D's largely unfulfilled promise to take characters from lowly insignificance to the heights of power. There are rules for building castles, establishing and ruling domains (as well as wizard's sanctums and thieves guilds), and trading -- just about anything a high-level, power-hungry fantasy character might be interested in pursuing. Adventurer, Conqueror, King is a very cleverly designed game whose rules are quite compatible with most retro-clones, particularly Labyrinth Lord, making it extremely valuable to any player or referee looking to add any of its rules to their existing campaigns. This is good stuff and well worth a look.

Thousand Suns Art

I'll have some Thousand Suns-related posts coming over the next few days, but, for the moment, I wanted to share this piece of art Liz Danforth did for the upcoming Thousand Suns: Technology, which I'm hoping will be available sometime this summer. It's the opening illustration for the robots chapter and I was very pleased with how it turned out. Liz was a joy to work with and beautifully captured the slightly retro "imperial SF" vibe that inspired Thousand Suns. With luck, this won't be the only piece by Liz in either Thousand Suns: Technology or other future projects of mine.

©2012 Liz Danforth

Retrospective: Dragon Dice

The first polyhedral gaming dice I ever owned were a set of multi-colored, low impact ones I bought in a Kay-Bee Toys. I bought them because my printing of the Holmes Basic Set came with chits and a voucher for dice from TSR, apparently because such dice were still in short supply at the time. Though my friends and I tried using the chits -- we separated them into little bathroom Dixie cups -- we quickly found them unwieldy and, frankly, not very fun. Rolling dice is an enjoyable experience, whereas picking little pieces of laminated cardboard out of a cup is not.

So, I sought out a set of dice and found them wherever I could. As it turns out, the dice I bought were identical to the ones some people got in their Holmes sets. I later acquired a duplicate set in my copy of Gamma World. When I got those dice, I thought they were the coolest things in the world, not knowing any better. I used them for a couple of years, since I hadn't yet succumbed to dice fetishism and saw no need to buy more, even though the D20 was rapidly losing its edges and becoming spherical through continued use.

After that initial set of dice, the next set I acquired came in the Moldvay-edited Basic Set. They were blue, like the ones pictured above (those in my Expert Set were yellow), and they also exerted a strange fascination for me. For one, they came with a little black crayon to color in the numbers. This struck me as peculiar, since my original dice came pre-inked. Also of interest was that the D20 was actually numbered 1-20 as opposed to 0-9 twice, a fact that TSR proudly proclaims in its advertisement. I honestly don't know if the ad is correct in its claim, but, if so, it wasn't until 1981 that the hobby saw a "true" D20. I can't speak to the truth of it one way or the other, only that I personally never saw one numbered 1-20 until 1981.

Over time, I acquired several more sets of "Dragon Dice," as TSR called them. For some reason, I really liked them, even though they weren't of the greatest quality. Over time, they too started to show signs of wear, losing their edges through regular use. But they were smaller than my original dice and were of uniform colors, two qualities my younger self found very appealing. Indeed, Dragon Dice were my gateway to the wider world of matched dice sets. When I started playing, I never saw anyone with matched dice sets, only hodgepodge collections of them. Once I acquired my Dragon Dice, though, I found it harder and harder to use "mismatched" dice and slowly started acquiring a sizable collection of dice sets.

Eventually, I stopped using my Dragon Dice, moving on to dice produced by Gamescience or The Armory, both of which were much, much better made and available in a wider variety of colors and materials. But I still have a certain fondness for these TSR dice, as they introduced me to one of the weirder aspects of our hobby (at least to outsiders): its fascination with dice.