Wednesday, February 25, 2026
Retrospective: The Ruins of Myth Drannor
I know that, for many fans of old-school Dungeons & Dragons, Ed Greenwood’s Forgotten Realms represents a decisive (and unwelcome) break from the game’s early days, both in content and especially in presentation. I don’t agree with that assessment, though this isn’t the place to rehearse that entire argument. What I will say is that revisiting TSR’s Forgotten Realms products from the late 1980s through the 1990s, I find a body of work that is not the betrayal its detractors claim, but is instead a mixed bag – occasionally frustrating, frequently ambitious, and at times genuinely impressive.
A good case in point is The Ruins of Myth Drannor, a 1993 boxed set detailing the fabled elven “City of Song.” Myth Drannor had long loomed large in the background of the setting. For years prior to this set’s release, Greenwood referenced it repeatedly as a shining example of magical harmony undone by hubris and catastrophe. Consequently, when the boxed set finally appeared, I eagerly snapped it up.
From the first time I read about it, I imagined Myth Drannor as one of the great fallen cities of the Realms. Its destruction defined much of the Forgotten Realms’ melancholy grandeur. The Realms, at least as I understood them, were not a setting on the ascent but a world in decline, a place of fading glories and lingering ruins, closer in spirit to pulp fantasy than to high heroic triumphalism. Myth Drannor is where this comes into sharp focus.
Transforming such a mythic ruin into a playable location was no doubt a challenge. Myth Drannor is not a megadungeon in the traditional sense. Rather, it is a shattered metropolis sprawled across the forest of Cormanthyr. Its districts, academies, towers, temples, vaults, and magical zones warped by a magic effect that once protected the city. TSR had previously attempted little else on this scale. One might point to Dwellers of the Forbidden City as an early precursor, though the comparison only goes so far. In spirit, its closest analog may be Chaosium’s Big Rubble for RuneQuest, which is still, in my opinion, the gold standard for “ruin crawl” locales.
In many respects, The Ruins of Myth Drannor succeeds admirably in its goals. Greenwood presents the city as an environment. It is effectively a mini-sandbox, a vast urban wilderness suitable for exploration, salvage, factional conflict, and long-term campaigns built around survival amid arcane devastation. The conceptual foundation is solid. The boxed set offers history, factions, current inhabitants, and numerous adventure hooks. This is all good stuff. Where it falters is in execution.
The set does not consistently provide the Dungeon Master with the tools necessary to bring so large a space to life in play. The maps are expansive and the descriptions evocative, but there is surprisingly little in the way of random encounter tables, stocking guidelines, event generators, or even name lists to help a referee improvise within such a vast environment. Instead, we are given several more fully fleshed-out adventures and a handful of small, somewhat uninspired mini-dungeons that can be dropped in as needed. Those adventures are serviceable, but they do not quite match the promise implied by the scale of the city itself.
This absence of these kinds of referee tools is all the more striking because the physical presentation of the boxed set is impressive. The poster maps are sweeping, delineating districts and geography. They convey scale beautifully. One can easily imagine months of play wandering the overgrown avenues and shattered towers. Yet, that same scale exposes a weakness. Much of the city is described in broad strokes. The maps suggest more than the text delivers or indeed could deliver.
The background material is quintessentially Greenwoodian, dense with names, lineages, magic, and history. For readers invested in the Realms as a setting, this lore is rich and rewarding. For referees seeking immediately usable material, however, it can feel overwhelming. Even as someone who once delighted in “Realmslore,” I occasionally found myself wishing that some of the word count devoted to ancient history had instead gone toward practical game tools.
One element the boxed set gets absolutely right is its intended level range. The Ruins of Myth Drannor is not for novice characters. The ruins teem with formidable threats, like elven and mind flayer liches, demons, devils, magical constructs, and strange, magic-eating abominations. These are adversaries suited to mid and high-level characters. For referees who enjoy high-level play – and who know how difficult it can be to challenge powerful characters – Myth Drannor fills a genuine need. It offers a compelling and dangerous playground for experienced adventurers.
In the end, I think The Ruins of Myth Drannor exemplifies much of TSR’s output during this period. It is ambitious, atmospheric, and lavishly presented. It's also frustrating. It gestures toward an open-ended and exploratory style of play that strongly matches old school sensibilities, but it stops short of fully embracing the procedural support such play demands.
Even so, I still very much like this boxed set. When it was released, I used it and mined it for material to use in my campaign. Its flaws required work on my part as referee, of course, but the raw material was there, waiting to be shaped. Perhaps that is the most old-school aspect of it after all: not a perfectly engineered product, but a rich, uneven trove of ideas demanding engagement.
Myth Drannor, both as a fictional city and as a boxed set, stands as a monument to a fallen age – within the Realms and within TSR itself. Imperfect, excessive, occasionally exasperating, yet grand in conception, it reminds us that decline and greatness are not mutually exclusive. Sometimes they are, in fact, the same thing viewed from different angles.
Tuesday, February 24, 2026
The Kythireans
Over at Advanced Grognardia, I've got another post in which I provide game stats and a description of "monsters" from my Telluria campaign setting, along with some commentary on their origins. I've been writing a number of these posts over the past few months and it's been fun revisiting some of my early work and sharing insights into their creative origins.
The Articles of Dragon: "Deities and Their Faithful"
I'm on record as disliking the general approach to religion and gods Dungeons & Dragons has taken since the beginning. I've always found it weirdly reductive and, for lack of a better word, "game-y." Certainly, I can understand that a more nuanced and complex approach probably wouldn't have sold many books, but I still can't help but think D&D deserved better than what we got in Deities & Demigods. I suspect this is a minority opinion, but it's not one without precedent in the annals of the hobby.
With this as background, I think you can easily guess my reaction to Gary Gygax's "From the Sorcerer's Scroll" column from issue #97 of Dragon (March 1985). Entitled "Deities and Their Faithful," it's very close to the Platonic ideal of what I don't want in a discussion of the gods in the context of fantasy roleplaying games. In it, Gygax introduces a new set of game mechanics intended to quantify a deity's power on a particular plane of existence, as well as provide some (very rough) guidelines on divine favor and disfavor. Even taken as an example of Gygax "thinking out loud," the article is a mess.
Gygax begins by stating gods' power "comes from those who believe in them." He suggests this idea is not a new one, having been "put forth often by others, whether seriously or as a device for literature." I cannot be certain this is the first time this idea appears in connection with D&D, but, even if it's not, having Gygax's name associated with it lends it a great deal of weight. I do know that, by the time the Planescape campaign setting was released almost a decade later, this line of thinking was uncontroversial, even commonplace. I think it's fine in certain contexts, though it's still a weirdly rationalist approach to the subject of belief.
In any case, Gygax proposes that a god's hit points derive from the number of his believers at a ratio of 1:1000. That is, for every 1000 believers, the god has 1hp on a certain plane. Thus, a god with 400hp must have 400,000 believers. Further, a god's "power points" – a new concept for "the stuff from which all deities of the same alignment draw to use their spell-like powers, issue and enforce commands, and perform other abilities they may have" – has the same ratio but only for believers of the same alignment. Thus, a Lawful Neutral believer of a Lawful Good god contributes only to the god's hit points, not his power points. Gygax adds that level/hit dice also plays a role here. A believer of 2nd level is worth twice as much as one of only 1st level, while one of 3rd level is worth three times as much, and so on. Clerics (and only clerics) are worth twice as much on top of everything else, so, for example, a 15th-level cleric is worth 30 points.
The article doesn't go into any detail about the nature of power points, so it's a very abstract way of quantifying a given deity's power. However, Gygax does note that, since gods derive power from believers of the same alignment, this is the reason alignment is so important – and why the gods look with disfavor on those who change alignment, since it literally takes power away from them. I can see how this sort of metaphysical set-up might have interesting consequences in certain kinds of settings, but I'm not sure it's a good model for most, where the relationship between gods and mortals isn't so nakedly mechanistic.
Speaking of disfavor, Gygax also offers, at the end of the article, some ideas for minor and major banes and boons that might be conferred by the gods to those especially devoted to them. These range from extra hit points to bonuses to attacks/saving throws to magic resistance. He provides no clear thresholds or conditions for when a believer earns favor/disfavor, but that's not surprising. The whole article feels very much like Gygax is tossing some ideas out there to see what people think about them.
As I said earlier, I think "Deities and Their Faithful" isn't my favorite article. I can see what Gygax was probably intending to do with it, but I'm not sure I see the point. Mind you, I treat religion and the gods differently in most of my RPG campaigns, so perhaps this approach was always going to be a hard sell for me. If you liked this article/approach, I'd love to know more about why and what, if anything, you did with it in your campaigns.
Monday, February 23, 2026
Chamber of Chills
I mentioned in my earlier post today that there was a Marvel comics adaptation of "The Thing on the Roof" in issue #3 of Chamber of Chills (March 1973), scripted by Roy Thomas (of Conan the Barbarian and The Savage Sword of Conan fame, among many others) and drawn by Frank Brunner. Here's the cover – and, no, nothing like this happens in either the story or the adaptation.
The adaptation is broadly faithful to Howard's story, though it eliminates the first part of it, where Tussmann comes to the narrator (here given the name of Mr Erwin rather than being unnamed) and asks his help in procuring a copy of the 1839 edition of Nameless Cults, instead launching straight into the narrator's visit to Tussmann's Sussex manor. It's also a bit more melodramatic, adding little flourishes here and there that I assume were intended to heighten the tension and horror of the tale.
Likewise, the comic ends with an actual revelation of the creature that is responsible for Tussmann's demise, something Howard intentionally leaves vague:
I can certainly see why Thomas and Brunner decided to depict the unseen Thing on the Roof, but, as is so often the case, I'm not sure it could ever have done justice to anyone's imagination of what the creature looked like. In any case, I'm nonetheless pleased to draw your attention to another comic book adaptation of a pulp writer. I think the role comics, especially Marvel comics, played in introducing a new generation to the works writers from decades before. Come to think of it, that'd a worthy topic for a post all its own ...
Pulp Fantasy Library: The Thing on the Roof
Because I'd devoted the first month of the year to Clark Ashton Smith rather than to his colleague and fellow January baby, Robert E. Howard, I thought a good way to solve my immediate problem was to find one of his stories I'd never covered before. REH was a prolific writer and, while his tales of Conan and Solomon Kane are probably his best and most well-known, there's still a wealth of options to choose from, especially if I wanted something a little off the beaten path. That's when I remembered "The Thing on the Roof."
Originally published in the February 1932 issue of Weird Tales, "The Thing on the Roof" is a horror story in the vein of Lovecraft's tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. I first came across it in the early '90s in an anthology of Howard's horror fiction edited by David Drake and then, later, encountered an adaptation of it from an early '70s Marvel comic book (Chamber of Chills issue #3). Compared to, say, "Pigeons from Hell," which is likely the most celebrated of Howard's horror yarns, "The Thing on the Roof" is a much more modest affair, but it's still interesting nonetheless, if only for its slightly different take on "Lovecraftian" subject matter.
The story itself is quite short and fairly straightforward. Its unnamed narrator is a scholar and book collector. He is unexpectedly approached by his academic rival, Tussmann, who offers to publicly retract his previous aspersions on his work in exchange for help obtaining the rare 1839 “black book” edition of Friedrich von Junzt’s Nameless Cults. Tussmann has become obsessed with a passage describing a remote “Temple of the Toad” in Honduras, where a mummy wearing a toad-shaped red jewel supposedly guards a hidden treasure and believes only the 1839 edition contains a full description of the temple. After months of effort, the narrator secures a copy and Tussmann confirms that the original text contains crucial details omitted from later editions. Claiming firsthand knowledge of the temple from a previous expedition, Tussmann then departs for Central America determined to recover the treasure of the temple, convinced that the jewel is, in fact, a key to a store of gold concealed beneath the altar.
Months later, Tussmann summons the narrator to his Sussex estate, where he reveals that he found no gold, only the mummy and the strange jewel, which indeed opened a hidden passage beneath the temple. His account of what lay below is evasive and unsettling and he appears increasingly unstable, hinting that he may have awakened something when he used the jewel to open a subterranean crypt. The narrator, rereading von Junzt, realizes the horrifying implication: the “treasure” was not gold but the temple’s monstrous god. That night, amid strange noises and signs of an unseen presence, Tussmann locks himself in his room with the jewel. The narrator later breaks in to find him dead, his skull crushed by what appears to be the imprint of a gigantic hoof and the jewel missing, suggesting that whatever was released from the temple has followed its key back to England.
As a story, "The Thing on the Roof" is a modest affair. Most of the story consists of conversations between the narrator and Tussmann, as the two discuss historical details about von Juntz, the Temple of the Toad, and related matters. For a Robert E. Howard tale, it's devoid of almost any action, which is probably its most remarkable quality. As a story, it's fine – nothing special but perfectly serviceable for the kind of story it is. For whatever reason, Howard himself really like the tale, writing in a 1930 letter to his friend Tevis Clyde Smith that "this story is by far the best thing I have ever written and one which I am really inclined to believe approaches real literature, distantly, at least." Even overlooking an author's inevitable blindness about his own material, REH's self-assessment is overly charitable.
"The Thing on the Roof" is worth a read, because it's quick and has a few interesting elements, even if it's far from Howard at his best. Sometimes, even Homer nods.
Friday, February 20, 2026
Urheim
Some of you may recall that, shortly after I resumed blogging in the late Summer of 2020, I began a public project – the Urheim megadungeon. Though the posts relating to it were well received, I eventually lost interest in continuing it, largely because I wasn't running Urheim. Instead, it was a purely theoretical pursuit, an attempt to do what I had hoped to do with Dwimmermount. Because I was doing it without any intention of making use of it, I didn't feel a connection to the megadungeon and abandoned it.
Recently, though, an opportunity to correct this has arisen. The Metamorphosis Alpha campaign I began last year is on hold, owing to the departure of a couple of players for several months. That led to some discussions with the remaining players, who felt it might be worthwhile to play something else until the absent players returned. When one of them admitted that he had never played a megadungeon-based campaign, the conclusion was obvious: I should referee one for him and, rather than returning to Dwimmermount, I would pick up Urheim where I left off.
For this campaign, I'll be using Old-School Essentials as its base, modified with some house rules I've assembled over the years. The house rules bring it closer to OD&D + Supplements – what I have, in the past, referred to as D&D 0.75 – which is my preferred version of the game. It's closer to the simplicity of pure LBB-only OD&D while also possessing more of the flavor of AD&D that I think a lot of people have as the default frame for conceiving of Dungeons & Dragons. Also included in my house rules are some unique races like the Gargantuas and unique classes like the beggar.
Of course, what really excites me about this is the opportunity to continue my development of Urheim in the context of actual play. While I don't think it's absolutely necessary that every piece of game writing must arise out of regular campaign play, I do think that writing that does is generally better and more vital. This is, I think, especially so in the case of megadungeons, which are generally so large that the only way to build them is a couple of steps ahead of the player characters – or so I have come to believe (perhaps I'll write about that in another post).
It's been a while since I last regularly refereed a megadungeon, so this will be a good experience for me as well. As the campaign develops (assuming it lasts for any length of time), I'll no doubt have thoughts to share, including additional details about the Telluria setting in which Urheim exists.
Thursday, February 19, 2026
Tea Parties and Terror
Last week, I wrote briefly about events in my ongoing Dolmenwood campaign – which, strangely, still doesn't have a name – and the way those events brought humor to the fore. Today, I wanted to look at a slightly different aspect of the campaign: the ways in which I have changed the "official" setting and made it my own. To be clear, Dolmenwood's setting, the eponymous Dolmenwood itself, is very broadly drawn. Even though its amazing Campaign Book is over 450 pages long, most of the detail it provides is pretty sketchy, leaving lots of room for individual creativity. (To be even clearer: about 275 pages of the Campaign Book is devoted to one-page hex descriptions from which the referee can improvise. Dolmenwood is not Tékumel or Glorantha when it comes to source material.)
As I mentioned before, the characters are currently operating in and around Cobton-on-the-Shiver, a strange little village nestled in the Valley of Wise Beasts that's home to the Cobbins, small anthropomorphic animal-people given sentience by the nine-legged chaos godling known as the Nag-Lord – or Atanuwë to those who worship him, which the Cobbins do. The Nag-Lord is, for all intents in purposes, a Lovecraftian eldritch horror, equal parts Shub-Niggurath and Nyarlathotep. The Nag-Lord has is responsible for the creation of both the Crookhorn goat-men and the Cobbins, both of whom revere it as the Lord of Creation.
Atanuwë created the Cobbins as a lark, a dark joke. After all, what's more amusing than a bunch of talking, clothes-wearing, tea-drinking animal-people out of Beatrix Potter or Kenneth Grahame who worship and adore a hideous abomination like itself? While there are a few Cobbins who seek to throw off the yoke of the Nag-Lord and his Crookhorns, the vast majority of them do not. They're content to go about their usual business – fishing, sailing little boats, smoking pipes, etc. – because it's the only thing they know and the way it's always been.
The characters were hired by a member of the aforementioned Cobbin resistance, known as the Grey League. The characters went in, believing that the League, was a potent underground movement who only need some weapons and outside assistance to succeed in their goals. What they discovered, however, was that the League consisted of less than ten Cobbins, though their leader assured them that more could probably be roused to join them if they demonstrated the Crookhorns could be beaten. This did not fill the characters with hopeful feelings and indeed worried them somewhat.
With good reason, too! One of the things I've expanded upon in my version of Dolmenwood is that, because the Cobbins were created by the Nag-Lord, they genuinely, sincerely revere it as the Lord of Creation. Atanuwë did, after all, create them and they owe their very existence to it. This is not in spite of their cruel and darkly humorous treatment at the hands of the Crookhorns but because of it. My reasoning was that the Cobbins know nothing of the world beyond the Valley of Wise Beasts. Their frame of reference is completely warped, twisted by their limited experiences. To them, the Nag-Lord is a god and, because of that, the way it behaves is the way gods behave. Most simply can't conceive of a benevolent deity, nor can they imagine rebelling against the Lord of Creation.
None of this is, strictly speaking, contrary to anything that's stated about Cobbins in Dolmenwood, but it's not something that's explicit. It's something I teased out and developed for my campaign and it's been fun watching the players (and their characters) come to the realization that most of the Cobbins are content with their pathetic lot. Getting them to question their priors, let alone, take up arms against the Crookhorns, is going to take a lot of work on their part. Fortunately, they're very clever and have begun hatching a scheme they believe might get them some way toward this goal ...
Wednesday, February 18, 2026
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