Wednesday, August 3, 2022

Retrospective: The Gem and the Staff

An aspect of the Little Brown Books of OD&D that's often commented upon is the statement, early on in Volume 1, that a single campaign consists of "from four to fifty players." By contemporary standards, that's quite a large number of players. In truth, it was quite large even in my own youth, though it wasn't at all uncommon to encounter RPG groups of a dozen or more. I can't speak to how common that was, outside of organized game clubs, but I get the impression that, in the first few years of the hobby, there was an expectation that a "typical" adventuring party consisted of six to twelve characters.

At some point, though, that expectation started to change. I can't pinpoint precisely when the shift occurred, but it's clear that it did so. By the 1990s, if not before, I started to notice that gaming groups (and, by extension, adventuring parties) were getting smaller and smaller, with three or four characters being much more typical. I have lots of unsubstantiated theories about why this shift might have occurred. Regardless of the reason, I contend that gaming groups in the second decade of the hobby were smaller than those in the first decade.

Circumstantial evidence in support of my thesis is the fact that, throughout the 1980s, TSR experimented with multiple formats to facilitate the playing of solo and one-on-one Dungeons & Dragons. There were modules like Blizzard Pass and Midnight on Dagger Alley, not to mention the D&D-branded Endless Quest books, which, while not as genuinely game-like as, say, the Fighting Fantasy series, were nevertheless an attempt to present a solo D&D "experience." Another approach was the one adopted by 1984's The Gem and the Staff by John and Laurie Van De Graaf. Written for a single player and a Dungeon Master, module O1 is the only example of this kind of module from TSR. I assume, based on the fact that there were never any similar modules, it was not as well received as the company might have hoped.

Like TSR's previous solo efforts, The Gem and the Staff comes with a pregenerated character, Eric the Bold. Also like TSR's previous efforts, Eric belongs to a class with thief abilities (in this case, being an actual thief). I find it fascinating that every TSR module in this general class of adventures relies on the player character being a thief or thief-like class. I'm certain this is because thief abilities provide an obvious way to handle non-combat actions. Indeed, all these modules are structured in a way that's reminiscent of the 1980 video game, Rogue, which has proven extremely influential in the decades since.

In the case of The Gem and the Staff, the module consists of two distinct scenarios, "Tormaq's Tower" and "The Staff of Fazzlewood." In each, Eric is expected to steal a valuable item in the possession of the wizard Tormaq. To succeed, the player must use stealth and quick wits to overcome not just traps (both mundane and magical) but also monsters and other opponents (such as Tormaq himself). To aid in visualizing the various rooms Eric must navigate, the module includes a map book for players that's somewhat akin to the cardboard dungeon floors I occasionally used as a kid. Also included are little cut-out figures to mark the locations of Eric and his potential opponents. This is a nice little feature in my opinion and it certainly helps both the player and referee to get a good handle on Eric's progress.

As presented, the idea behind The Gem and the Staff is that, after the completion of the first adventure, the player and referee swap places with one another. I'll admit that it's an odd conceit and I have no idea how many people who bought the module ever followed its instructions in this regard. Of course, because of its set-up – a single pregenerated character of 8th level and very limited scopes for the two scenarios – I have to wonder how many people ever made use of it at all. I certainly never did, though I repurposed the player's maps for something else entirely.

I'm not really sure what to make of The Gem and the Staff. The module has its origins in a tournament event from the late 1970s, which may explain its "boxed in" feel, not to mention the slightly "adversarial" nature of its one-on-one presentation. The result is something that's a lot more explicitly "game-y" than many D&D modules, more like a puzzle that needs to be solved than an exercise in roleplaying as I typically understand it. In that respect, my earlier reference to the video game Rogue is not far from the mark, though The Gem and the Staff predates it (in its original form, prior to TSR's publication of it). In the end, I suspect this is simply another failed experiment from a period seemed to be throwing lots of ideas against the wall to see what might stick. 

20 comments:

  1. Only the Fazzlewood section is from the original tournament.module, which is ludicrously expensive. I did a review of it based on the fragments viewable on eBay auctions and it's clear that most of what was interesting about it was removed in the TSR version. I'd play that original version anytime.

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  2. This wasn't the only example of a one-on-one module - there was O2 Blade of Vengeance, out of the UK team. That's a fantastic adventure that became a big part of my home campaign back in the day. The pregen character is an elf (fighter/magic-user, as per BECMI format) on a mission of vengeance. It's heaps of fun!

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    1. You are correct. Thanks for pointing that out.

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    2. I'll be excited to see what you say about it if & when you get your hands on a copy, as you can guess from my comments it's a favourite of mine :-)

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  3. RPGing since 1977 and -- outside of conventions -- I've never seen groups of more than six PCs. The standard number was usually 3-4 PCs. They were normally backed by a like number of PC-controlled NPCs and a DM-controlled NPC or two (which gets you up to a party size of ~7-10). Occasionally, we would have core groups as large as 6 PCs, but this was definitely the rare occasion. I've never taken part in organized local groups so can't address what happens there.

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    1. It would be neat to see some research on group sizes. When I started, we had small groups playing at peoples homes. Then I joined MIT's game club (as a high school kid) and saw larger groups AND movement of characters between campaigns. In college (RPI) I played in a variety of size groups, some small and some larger. My Fantasy Hero campaign had to be split into two groups because I was regularly having 11 or 12 players at the table. Even after the split we still sometimes hit 10 players at the table (this eventually shrunk). Since then it has been rare for me to muster more than 6 players, though I do have to keep turning down folks who are interested in my RuneQuest campaigns. VTT, Roll20 in my case, makes it much easier to recruit players than running out of one's home like I did from 1991 to 2007.

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  4. I didn't own this, but Blade of Vengeance was epic. I DMed it to two different players and was a blast each time.

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  5. Another one on one module is UK5 Eye of the Serpent. This isn't that bad in my view, though it does require a wee bit of easily implemented improvement. Its premise is that you the player are leading a small party of four characters down the mountain through different zones (in Minecraft terms my kids would call them biomes).

    It's a fine wee low level adventure for low level parties.

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    1. UK5 is a favorite of mine. I have used it twice in RQ campaigns with giant eagles capturing one or more PCs and depositing them in the nest at the top (standing in as Tada's High Tumulus in Prax). I have also used it at least one if not two other times, once for sure in my home brew system and perhaps once actually for D&D. Always as a group adventure not a one on one. When I run this way, I leave most if not all of the pathways open to allow it to be a bit more of a sandbox.

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    2. TSR UK certainly produced some of the most distinctive modules published under the (A)D&D banner during the 1980s.

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  6. I think that there may be some confusion between 'campaign' and 'party'.

    From my understanding of accounts of Blackmoor and Greyhawk:
    they both involved a large number of people in the campaign though not all of them were necessarily involved in dungeoneering,
    the players were not all in a single party (nor, necessarily, on the 'same side'), and
    as the campaigns involved people in several locales, the term dungeon master was used to refer to the local games master as opposed to the campaign game master.

    While parties were often quite large, hence the need for a 'caller', I'm not sure how everyone in a two dozen party could even feel tangentially engaged in the passage of play?

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    1. That's almost certainly the case. I doubt there were ever groups of two dozen people gathered around Gary's table at one time. However, I still get the sense that those early forays into Castles Greyhawk and Blackmoor had more people participating than do most gaming groups nowadays.

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    2. Maybe not so many around Gary's table, or generally in any domestic or organised setting, but out in the wild numbers could escalate. Mark Barrowcliffe, in The Elfish Gene, talks of twenty in a party at a wargames club (possibly leading to the fractious divide between 'historical' and 'fantasy' gamers).

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    3. The divide you mention is important, I think, and almost certainly worthy of further examination.

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  7. In the beginning of the pandemic, from March to July of 2020, Paul and Dan of Wandering DMs played through several solo and this one on one modules in one on one format while live streaming.

    They did BSolo (Ghost of Lion Castle) first, M1 (Blizzard Pass), O1 The Gem & the Staff, and then switch systems, first to the intro Call of Cthulhu scenario The Haunting, then Thunder Over Jotunheim, for Marvel Superheroes. :) It's a fun series.

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  8. Forgot to include a link! https://youtu.be/4qIJ8ZcuxI0

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  9. Oh nostalgia! I had Blizzard Pass, and we ran it as a module rather than a solo adventure.

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  10. As mentioned in the comments before, there was very likely a difference between "the number of players participating in camapign" vs "the number of players participating in a game around a gaming table". Cfr. wargaming campaigns in the 60s and 70s (Tony Bath comes to mind): campaigns were multi-player affairs, but actual battles fought were often 1-1.

    Another factor that might have contributed is the evolution from D&D as a pure tactical wargame towards a more story-driven (actual roleplaying) game. The duties of the GM are different in both types of games, and if players can do more than simply saying "I hit an orc with my axe", the GM has to give more attention to each individual player, and hence, can deal with less players.

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  11. For those interested in one player scenarios - a number of them were published in fanzines in the UK in the late 70s called "The Halls of Testing" - each targetted a different character class, and were designed so that if the PC survived they'd be second level. I got permission to share the one for the White Dwarf Barbarian class here - https://explorebeneathandbeyond.blogspot.com/2022/06/original-scenarios-resurrected-ii.html

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  12. I had bought it back in the day and quite disliked it, but a few years ago I decided to run it for my kids, who were rather young at the time, and we enjoyed it immensely. Growing older I have become much more inclined to gamey stuff in rpgs. My younger self was more of a simulationist than I am.

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