Underground

I'm not dead, but I am deep in the proverbial salt mines, working hard to complete the first draft of the second edition of Thousand Suns. I'm making excellent progress on this particular project and don't want to slow the momentum, so that means that I'm devoting myself fully to it. That also means – unfortunately – that daily blogging is lower on my priority list and will remain so for a bit longer. How much longer, I can't rightfully guess.

Rest assured: I shall return when I've completed the draft. In the meantime, I may make a few posts at Grognardia Games Direct about the state of the second edition and will continue to share my drafts at Advanced Grognardia during this pause. I may even pop in here with a post or two if an idea gets into my head that I feel compelled to share. However, for the next few weeks, Thousand Suns owns me.

See you soon!

Lingvo Tera

Lingvo Tera by James Maliszewski

Thoughts on Language in Thousand Suns

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Retrospective: Earthshaker!

I mentioned in yesterday's "The Articles of Dragon" post that, by 1985, I had begun to sense a nebulous but nevertheless real shift in TSR Hobbies and its games, though I could not then have really articulated what precisely it was that I was sensing. Even now, with the benefit of hindsight, I'm still not entirely sure I can pinpoint what my younger self was picking up on – but I don't think I was mistaken in my hunch. That's why I thought it might be worthwhile to take a look at some of TSR's releases around this time to see what they were like and what, if anything, they might reveal about the early years of the Silver Age of Dungeons & Dragons.

That's where the subject of today's Retrospective post comes in. David Cook's Earthshaker!, written for use with 1984's D&D Companion Rules, is a very unusual adventure module, containing many of the elements that mark this transitional period for TSR and its games. It's very clearly an attempt to try something different, both in terms of subject matter and tone. For example, Cook, in the "How to Run This Adventure" section, notes that "this is not an entirely serious adventure." That's not to say it's a "joke" module, but neither is it self-serious in its presentation. Like I said, it's an attempt to try something different and, on that front at least, it succeeds.

The module takes its name from a massive, magically powered war machine that trundles across the landscape, leaving destruction in its wake. At once a fortress, a vehicle, and an engine of conquest, the Earthshaker is a mobile threat that cannot simply be ignored or bypassed. In some ways, it's also an interesting inversion of the traditional dungeon. Rather than the character venturing into a static, well established locale, the "dungeon" comes to them in the form of an Empire State Building-sized steam-powered robot. Most of the adventure takes the form of the characters have to infiltrate this immense machine and stop its relentless march across the domain of a local lord (who can either be an NPC or, if the Companion rules are being fully used, one of the player characters). 

The adventure begins with the arrival of traveling impresario, Formiesias of Thyatis, who has made his way to the Kingdom of Norwold with his Exhibition of Wonders. Chief among these wonders is Earthshaker. Formiesias does not know the origin of the device, though he recounts several legends about it, one of which claims that it was once an evil giant who, upon having the gem that contained his soul stolen, he turned to iron. A clan of gnomes dwells within Earthshaker and they're responsible for its operation. In fact, Formiesias doesn't really understand its operation himself, though he does command a unique spell that enables him to transport the giant machine from place to place without its having to walk across – and destroy – the countryside.

Enter a group of villains who've managed to obtain the soul gem Formiesias mentioned. Turns out that it's not merely a legend but real and the key to seizing control of Earthshaker. The main action of the adventure, therefore, is the characters attempting to stop them from reaching the Brain Deck of the machine and, with it, command of the ancient device. It's a pretty straightforward premise for a scenario, all things considered, even conventional. What sets it apart is the locale in which it takes place.

A map is provided of the Earthshaker’s interior, divided into a series of decks stacked on top of each other. Unlike a more traditional dungeon, most of these decks aren't keyed with encounters or treasure. Instead, they're simply described as environments in which battles against the villains can take place, as the characters try to foil their plan. There's also some information on the inner working of the Earthshaker, too, but it's limited in scope. The Earthshaker is supposed to be this mysterious, ancient thing rather than something explicable.

Despite Cook's suggestion that Earthshaker! is not entirely serious, I don't detect too much in the way of humor. Certainly the gnomes who inhabit it possess a degree of whimsy that's reminiscent (probably intentionally) of the tinker gnomes of Dragonlance, but their presence here does not overwhelm the overall situation the module describes. Likewise, some of the NPCs, like Formiesias and even the villains, have a flamboyance that borders on comical, yet I don't feel they cross the line into parody. It wouldn't be wrong to call Earthshaker! "light hearted" in its overall tone, though. The Tomb of Horrors this is not!

I’d even go so far as to say there’s a certain exuberance to Earthshaker! There’s a sense that Cook was exploring the outer limits of what D&D could encompass. The presence of a gigantic, walking war machine in a fantasy setting harkens back to a time when the game’s identity was still fluid and the boundaries between genres were porous. I find that aspect of the module appealing now, though I recall being somewhat irked by it at the time. Even so, the environment Cook presents is sufficiently intriguing that I was willing to overlook any reservations I had about its blending of fantasy and quasi-technological elements.

That said, I never actually ran Earthshaker! Like many modules of this period, it offered compelling ideas but never quite rose to the level of a “must play” scenario for me. Re-reading it forty years later, I’m no longer certain whether that judgment reflects a shortcoming of the adventure itself or simply my own preferences, both then and now. Indeed, I can’t help but wonder whether some of the shift I perceived in TSR during the mid-1980s was, in fact, a shift in me. I turned sixteen in 1985 and had already been playing Dungeons & Dragons for nearly six years. It’s possible I was simply growing restless and, without quite realizing it, projected that restlessness onto the game.

Viewed in that light, Earthshaker! might be less a misstep than a sign of a game stretching beyond its earlier boundaries, sometimes awkwardly, but not without imagination. It may never have compelled me to play it, but its central idea was clever nonetheless, a testament to the power of a strong conceit even when its execution is uneven. If nothing else, it serves as a reminder that D&D has always been at its most interesting when it dares to be a little strange.

The Articles of Dragon: "Update from the Chief"

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that, for all the fanfare that accompanied the publication of issue #100 of Dragon (August 1985), it nevertheless felt like the end of an era – at least to me. At the time, I couldn't have meaningfully articulated precisely why it felt this way, but I felt it nonetheless. Something intangible had shifted and I don't think I was alone in sensing it, even if its ultimate source remained nebulous.

I was reminded of this fact as I cracked open issue #101 (September 1985) and read it for the first time in decades. The very first article in the issue is "Update from the Chief" by Gary Gygax himself. Subtitled "About the past, the present, and a bit of the future," it's a very interesting snapshot of the state of TSR during the period between Gygax's return from California in late 1984 and his loss of control of the company in late October 1985. 

Take note of those dates, particularly the second one. This article appeared less than two months before Lorraine Williams snatched TSR from Gygax's grasp, doing so just as he had begun to right the company's finances after years of mismanagement by the Blume brothers. TSR wasn't out of the woods yet. There were still plenty of problems to be addressed and it's far from a certainty that, had Gygax remained in charge of TSR, they would have been. That's precisely why I find this article so notable: it's the last gasp of the pre-Lorraine Williams TSR, for good and for bad, and, in retrospect, I find it fascinating that it somehow aligns with my own adolescent sense that the wheels were indeed coming off the wagon in 1985, even though there is no way I had any inkling of what was happening in the boardroom at Lake Geneva.

The article begins with Gygax continuing to report on the possibility of a D&D movie, something he'd been pursuing while during his exile in California. From what he says here, the project was, by this time, still not very far along. He mentions that there is still no finished script, nor any actors or director attached to it. I've never really understood the point of a D&D movie. However, it's clear that getting one made was personally important to Gygax and he beat that particular drum right up until he departed TSR for good before the end of the next year.

Next up, Gygax crows about how well Unearthed Arcana sold – and rightly so. For all my grousing about the book's shortcomings, I know it was very popular at the time of its release. For many months, it was indeed a very hot property and often difficult to find. Gygax mentions that it outsold TSR's expectations. Those purchases, along with the release of Oriental Adventures no doubt played a big role in helping to fill the company's coffers. Say what you will but Gygax understood well what would appeal to the AD&D audience at the time. He also announces the upcoming release of Temple of Elemental Evil. While I don't personally think much of this "supermodule," like UA, it sold well. After all, AD&D fans had been waiting for the conclusion to The Village of Hommlet for more than five years by this point. Pent-up demand probably served it well. 

Though focused more on matters at TSR Hobbies itself, Gygax was still shepherding other D&D-related entertainment projects beyond the aforementioned movie. He notes that the D&D cartoon had been renewed for another season and expressed hope that it would be renewed again after that. Obviously, that didn't come to pass. Beyond that, there is talk of Amazing Stories and his own Greyhawk novels featuring Gord and Chert. 

More interesting to me is mention of "a game and companion book series based on modern-day action adventures." The game, about which few details are given, was to be written by Gygax and his son, Ernie, with assistance from Jim Ward, and Paul Yih (whoever that is). He calls the game "different" and "family-oriented." If anyone has any idea what this game might have been or if any work on it had ever begun, I'd love to know more. Could it, perhaps, have been an early version of Cyborg Commando or something in that general vein? 

Finally, Gygax takes a moment to once again excoriate "unscrupulous attacks and baseless accusations pertaining to role-playing games in general and D&D in particular." I certainly can't blame him for his distemper. There was a lot of nonsense circulating about Dungeons & Dragons in the mid-1980s and, while I personally never ran afoul of it, I've met enough people over the years who have that I can understand why Gygax was so angry about it all. The mendacity of these attacks is galling. I'm all the more grateful that my introduction to the hobby, just a few years prior, was free of this sort of thing.

"Update from the Chief" isn't really an article in the usual sense. Rather, it's just a collection of news items and musings from the time right before Gygax was booted from his own company. It's thus a remarkable historical document in its own small way. It's also a window on a period in my own personal involvement with the hobby when I began to sense a change in the wind.

Chronicle

Chronicle by James Maliszewski

A Brief History of the Thousand Suns

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Pulp Science Fiction Library: Deathworld

Though not my original intention, apparently I am going to be writing more posts about the stories that gave birth to the characters described at the back of the Traveller supplements 1001 Characters and Citizens of the Imperium. Taken together, these stories form something I elsewhere dubbed "Appendix T," being for Traveller what Appendix N was for AD&D: a window into the kinds of tales characters, and situations the creator of the game found notably enjoyable and/or influential on his thinking as he created it. 

A couple of years ago, I noted a "problem" with Appendix N and the putative Appendix T suffers from a similar problem. Marc Miller provides no commentary on the books and authors he cites, leaving it to us to figure out what and in what way they were inspirational to him. This is in contrast to, say, the literary appendix found in RuneQuest, which is much more explicit about the debts owed to its contents. This fact in no way lessens the value of reading any of these books, but it does sometimes make it harder to declare definitively that this or that element of a roleplaying game was based on something from a particular book.

And sometimes it's quite obvious. That would seem to be the case for Harry Harrison's 1960 novel, Deathworld, which was originally serialized over the course of six issues of Astounding Science Fiction before being collected under a single cover and published separately by Bantam in September of the same year. The book's success would result in two sequels, both of which were also serialized in Analog (the new name of Astounding) in 1964 and 1968 respectively. Though I've read all three of these novels, this post focuses primarily on the first and, in my opinion, best of the trilogy.

Deathworld follows the adventures of Jason dinAlt, a gambler with limited psionic abilities that prove useful to him in his chosen vocation. Jason travels to the planet Pyrrus after impressing its ambassador with his skill at gambling. Pyrrus possesses an extraordinarily hostile environment, consisting of high gravity, violent weather, seismic instability, radiation, and a biosphere in which every organism, from animals to plants to microbes is lethally adapted to kill humans. Pyrrus is quite literally a deathworld and Jason seeks to test his mettle against its many dangers. Gambling is not just his profession, it's also representative of his character. He's a risk taker by nature and the deadliness of Pyrrus intrigues him on almost a primal level. 

The planet's settlers survive there only through constant training and militarized discipline. Despite this, enough of them still die that their numbers continue to dwindle. Consequently, Jason becomes intrigued by why the planet is so uniformly hostile and why the colony is failing despite the extreme measures it has taken. While doing so, Jason discovers a second group of human colonists, the “grubbers,” who live in the wilderness in relative harmony with Pyrrus. Unlike the city dwellers, whom they call "junkmen," the grubbers use psionic “talkers” to coexist with the planet’s life and kill only when necessary. Jason then comes to realize that the biosphere of Pyrrus itself is psionic and reacting collectively to the behavior of the colonists who have settled on it. Thus, around the city, all life is telepathically unified in hostility, responding to their constant aggression with coordinated, evolving attacks. Attempts by the city dwellers to destroy the source of this hostility only worsen the situation, confirming that the conflict is systemic rather than merely localized.

Having discovered this, Jason theorizes that Pyrrus is not inherently a deathworld but has only become such in response to human attitudes. The city dwellers' indiscriminate violence has triggered the planet’s ecosystem into treating them as an existential threat, while the grubbers’ more balanced approach allows a degree of coexistence. Jason's solution is, therefore, not technological but cultural. He proposes the gradual integration of the two groups of colonists, with exchange of knowledge and a shift toward living in harmony with the planet's environment. In this way, Jason offers them a path by which Pyrrus can cease to be a deathworld and become a home better suited to human life.

As I said, it's pretty easy to see what this book inspired in Traveller. First, there's Jason dinAlt himself, who's an archetypal space-going adventurer, driven by a desire to challenge himself against whatever the galaxy throws at him. Second, there's the low-level psionic abilities, something Traveller has included since the beginning. Third, and probably more importantly, there's the mystery surrounding the deadly nature of Pyrrus and its environment. Traveller adventures are full of planets like this, where its society, history, or environment (or some combination of them) are presented as problems to be solved. Taken together, Deathworld strikes me as having obvious connections to Marc Miller's masterpiece.

On a personal note, I came to Deathworld and its sequels because of having read Harrison's other series of pulp sci-fi romps featuring the Stainless Steel Rat. Though different in both their content and overt style, the two series share certain traits, most notably their social satire and use of Esperanto. Though I can't be certain, I believe it was one or the other of these series that first introduced me to the constructed language and I've been an admirer of it ever since. That's why Thousand Suns employs Esperanto as a stand-in for the universal Terran language of the setting. Regardless, Deathworld is a quick, fun read and worth your time if you can find a copy. It's short and unpretentious, both of which I consider cardinal virtues in a literary age replete with their opposites.

Keep Them Hungry: Fading Suns Edition

One of these days, I'll need to do a proper campaign update for my Dark Between the Stars Fading Suns campaign, which I've been refereeing since October of last year. We're only twenty sessions in, but things are evolving quite nicely. The players have all settled into their characters and the characters are now well established within both the setting and the group. They've even added a new companion, an amnesiac Vorox named Guron, who'd previously been employed as a chef by Count Ennis, the governor of Pandemonium, the planet on which they're currently staying. We're still in the early days, especially compared to House of Worms, but things are going well and I have every reason to expect this campaign has taken root and will still be ongoing for some time to come.

However, there were a couple of minor incidents in yesterday's session that reminded me of a post I wrote almost a year ago. In that post, I noted that it's important to keep the characters "hungry," which is to say, they should always want more than what they're capable of acquiring. It doesn't matter what it is that they want – money, status, knowledge, etc. – only that their reach should exceed their grasp. I say this, because experience has shown me that it's a good driver of both individual adventures and the larger campaign. Want keeps the characters (and players) focused and motivated, which is important, particularly in the early weeks and months of a campaign, before other more "elevated" goals take center stage.

Which brings me to yesterday's session. The characters, led by Sir Yamashiro Li Halan, had returned to The Hub, Pandemonium's capital, after a sojourn in the Badlands. They'd come back to the city for several purposes, most importantly the acquisition of new equipment to replace gear used during their expedition. Initially, they thought this would be a simple matter, since Yamashiro is wealthy. However, as they soon discovered, he's only rich according to the prevailing standards of the Known Worlds. His annual income is 15,000 firebirds – not bad for a wandering wastrel and very good compared to, say, a skilled laborer whose monthly income is probably 20fb a month, but nowhere near as much as everyone had previously assumed.

This meant that the characters' upcoming spending spree was more constrained than anticipated. After several combats against various foes in the Badlands, it was decided both Father Kosta and Holai liTarken needed standard shields (at a cost of 500fb each). Additionally, they needed more ammunition. These small purchases alone added up to nearly 1500fb. That's nearly half of what Yamashiro had on hand. On top of that, the characters had "requisitioned" an air yacht registered to House Gilgar and needed to replace its transponder with one that recognized their current possession of it. This was beyond Iskander Ecevit's skills to on his own. Instead, he turned to his contacts in the Supreme Order of Engineers, who were suspicious of Yamashiro's claims to own the yacht (rightly so) and thus demanded 2000fb to replace the transponder in a timely manner.

Added to the other expenses already accrued, this exceeded Yamashiro's available funds. Never fear, though, as, at the same time the characters acquired the air yacht, they also acquired a case of blaster rifles that could easily be sold to the right people in the Hub – or so they thought. The task of fencing these weapons feel to Orphos the Scraver. It was a simple enough job that should have taken no effort at all. Unfortunately, a roll of 20 on any action is a critical failure and that's exactly what Orphos' player rolled. That brought the attention of the local constabulary, who after failing to extract a bribe from the Scraver to overlook his criminal activities, threw him in jail for the night, during which time they tried (without success) to find out who he was working for and how he'd obtained so many blaster rifles. Though he managed to throw them off the scent, he'd failed to find a buyer, leaving the characters without sufficient funds for all their expenses (and he was incarcerated).

The characters now have some choices to make and those choices will have consequences. Most likely they'll forgo a new transponder, the reasoning being that, so long as they continue to operate in the Badlands, they need not worry about anyone questioning whether they actually own the vehicle they're piloting. That comes with risk, of course, but probably smaller ones than having insufficient ammo or defenses. Choices like this may seem small but they're nonetheless important and I relish them, especially in the early days of a campaign. 

Lowlife

Back in the far-off days of the early Old School Renaissance, when Labyrinth Lord was everyone's go-to B/X Dungeons & Dragons retro-clone, Goblinoid Games published two supplements to it that I really liked: the Advanced Edition Companion and Realms of Crawling Chaos. Among the many admirable qualities they shared were illustrations by Sean Äaberg. As I say in my linked reviews, it took me a little while to warm up to Sean's punk, underground comix-inflected artwork – I am, after all, a stodgy traditionalist about many things – but its anarchic energy eventually won me over. His illustrations remind me a bit of Erol Otus's early work mixed with some of the stuff I saw in White Dwarf and other British fantasy from the '80s but with its own unique sensibility. I love it and think it's a great evocation of the DIY spirit of the early hobby.

That's why, when I found out a couple of weeks ago, that Sean has been working on a tabletop RPG called Lowlife based on his previously published co-op boardgame of "swords, sausages, and sorcery," Dungeon Degenerates, it caught my attention. Though I'd never played the boardgame, I knew of it and liked its garish colors and funky artwork. Likewise, the reviews of the game I found online were all very positive, praising both its mechanics and the world if presented, which piqued my interest. Plus, as I mentioned, Sean has a long history of involvement in the OSR, so I knew I wanted to give his new project a shout-out.

If you follow the link above, you can find out more about Lowlife and Sean's plans for it. There's even a preview primer of it that'll give you a bit more information, along with sample layouts of the rulebook. Elsewhere, Sean talks about the game and its inspirations – a blend of "classic fantasy tropes, the scenes you’d find airbrushed on the sides of vans, the scenes of metal record sleeves, black light posters, the grit of Oldhammer with the fun & unexpected twists of the classic Japanese Role-Playing Video Games." It's precisely the kind of gleeful goulash of elements and influences that have always characterized the best old school RPGs and I look forward to see what comes of it. 

Retrospective: Mage: The Ascension

I know that, for some readers, White Wolf's World of Darkness games represent a definitive break with the early days of the hobby and, therefore, aren't a fit topic for discussion on this blog. I won't argue the larger point, even though I think White Wolf's RPGs represent less a revolution than an evolution of trends begun many years before. What I will say is that these games played an important role in helping me to better understand what I liked and what I didn't in roleplaying games and, for that reason, I cannot simply dismiss them. 

Even so, I was never a big fan of Vampire: The Masquerade. For a variety of reasons, it never quite clicked with me and its immediate successor, Werewolf: The Apocalypse held even less appeal. Mage: The Ascension was a different matter entirely. Released in 1993, it was the World of Darkness game that made me finally take serious notice of the line. Like its predecessors, Mage presented a contemporary setting shot through with supernatural elements and an emphasis on mood, theme, and personal struggle. Unlike them, however, Mage was not content merely to reframe familiar folkloric monsters. Instead, it aimed at something more ambitious: the reimagining of Reality itself as a mutable construct, shaped and constrained by human belief.

This is the beating heart of Mage: The Ascension. As presented in the game, Reality is not fixed, but rather the product of consensus. What humanity collectively accepts as possible becomes so; what it rejects becomes difficult or even impossible to achieve. The titular mages are those rare individuals who have awakened to this truth and, through force of will, can impose their own understanding of Reality upon the world. It's an absolutely terrific premise and one that works well within a modern-day setting. It allows for a conception of magic – or magick, the rulebook rather portentously calls it – limited only by imagination. At the same time, this conception also includes the risk of paradox, the backlash that occurs when a mage’s actions too flagrantly contradict the already established consensus of the world.

Mechanically, Mage divides magic into "spheres," which are broad domains such as Forces, Mind, and Time. In principle, the system grants players remarkable freedom to devise magical effects on the fly, constrained only by their characters’ knowledge of the relevant Spheres and their own imaginations. In practice, however, this freedom comes at cost. The system demands a degree of negotiation and interpretation that can prove taxing, particularly for referees accustomed to clearer guidelines. Where most roleplaying games offered more concrete procedures for adjudicating actions, Mage often substituted a framework that must be continually interpreted and, at times, reinvented every time a character attempted to employ magic.

That's not necessarily a criticism, since Mage attempted to incorporate some of this tension into its setting as well. The conflict between boundless possibility and practical playability is mirrored in the conflict between the various Traditions to which characters belong and the agents of a rationalized, scientific consensus known as the Technocracy. The Technocracy is both a terrific adversary and brilliant bit of worldbuilding. Not entirely villainous, its agents are committed to the preservation of a stable and predictable Reality, one in which even "sleepers" (i.e. non-mages) can enjoy the fruits of magic in the form of technology. Consequently, the central struggle of Mage is not a simple battle between good and evil, but a more nuanced contest between competing visions of how the world ought to function. It's this philosophical battle that drew me in all those years ago and still compels me even now.

Despite – or perhaps because of – this, Mage is not an easy game to run or to play. Its rules, while evocative, are often vague, leaving much to the discretion of the referee. This can result in a lack of consistency, as similar situations may be adjudicated differently from one session (or one group) to another. Moreover, the demands placed upon both players and referee are considerable. To make effective use of the system requires not only a firm grasp of its mechanics but also a willingness to engage with the underlying assumptions of its worldview. Even then, if my experiences with the game are any indication, it was often tough going. 

That's why, in the end, I judge Mage: The Ascension as a flawed masterpiece that's very much of its time. Its themes of subjectivity, relativism, and the limits of objective truth remain compelling, of course, especially to the more philosophically inclined segment of the gaming population. Likewise, I can't help but admire its boldness in attempting to expand the scope of what roleplaying games might address, both mechanically and thematically. However, I think it's fair to say that its reach exceeded its grasp – but at least it was reaching for something genuinely new and imaginative. When I first read the game back in the '90s, I thought that was worth celebrating and I still do.

The Articles of Dragon: "The City Beyond the Gate"

Though I haven't devoted many posts to the subject, Dragon magazine published quite a few adventures in its pages over the years. Most of these were, of course, for Dungeons & Dragons or its "big brother," AD&D, though there were also a handful for other RPGs, like Gamma World, Traveller, and Top Secret. I used some of them from time to time, but, if I'm honest, almost none of them made much of a lasting impression on me, hence why I've never (so far as I can recall) had much to say about them on this blog. That's not necessarily a comment on their quality, since, as I said, I remember using a few of them, but simply a statement on how little I remember them.

Perhaps the only exception to this is Robert Schroeck's "The City Beyond the Gate," which appeared in issue #100 of Dragon (August 1985). There are a number of reasons why this is the case, as I'll explain, but I suspect the most likely is the image accompanying this post (by Roger Raupp). Take a good look at it and you'll immediately understand what I mean. Yes, that's a bunch of AD&D fighters tussling with a punch of punks and Bobbies, including several in riot gear. Just what the heck is going on?

The adventure, intended for use with high-level characters, is, at base, an elaborate fetch quest, with the characters tasked to find and bring back the legendary relic, the Mace of St. Cuthbert. What sets it apart – and why I still remember this adventure at all – is a bit of cleverness on Schroeck's part. Rather than, as one might expect, state that the relic is hidden away in the treasury of some powerful villain from whom it must be rescued, he instead places it on 20th-century Earth. More specifically, he places it in a historical display within the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England!

The characters still have to locate and abscond with the Mace, of course, but now they must do so while contending with the realities of the real world – or at least a RPG facsimile of it. Most obviously, they must contend with the fact that, for the most part, the real world is not a magical one, which means many of their spells and items will have limited utility. Just as importantly, their appearance – wearing armor and strange robes, not to say anything of the presence of demihumans – will raise more than a few eyebrows. To even begin to succeed in their mission, they'll need to keep a low profile or find a way to blend in with the locals, whose customs and technological society will be utterly alien to them.

It's a great set-up for an adventure and one I enjoyed greatly in my youth. Morgan Just, a character about whom I've written in the past, was among the characters who stepped through the gate into 1985 London and he did a very poor job of disguising himself to my amusement (and that of the other players). Most of the fun comes not from fighting deadly foes but from contending with the completely bizarre (to an AD&D character) nature of the real world. Nearly everything will be unfamiliar to them and even interacting with potentially helpful NPCs becomes fraught, since the characters' ability to explain who they are and what they want will raise lots of questions, not to mention opposition.

That said, the adventure is not without certain flaws, chief among them being its treatment of the "real world." As depicted in the adventure, London is something of a cartoon version of itself. For example, its encounter charts include street urchins out of Dickens, as well as beer wagons and the aforementioned punks. Tom Baker's Doctor also makes an appearance too, but I'm more than willing to forgive that, since it actually seems much more plausible than the Artful Dodger. I'm probably being unfair about this, since the spirit of the scenario is already somewhat campy and I doubt most players, even London natives, will care too much about how realistically it depicts the city.

That's why I still look back fondly on "The City Beyond the Gate." The situation it depicts has a lot of potential for great gaming. There's an overall "rollicking" quality to the thing that's charming, even with its off-kilter version of London. Plenty of fantasy stories were about people from our world crossing over into a fantasy world, but comparatively fewer are about the opposite. That alone makes the adventure unique and memorable, but I also find the overall concept to be quite compelling in its own right. I'm a big fan of the adventure, warts and all.