Wednesday, December 21, 2022

Retrospective: Booty and the Beasts

1979 is an important year in the history of roleplaying. Not only did it mark the completion of Gary Gygax's AD&D system (with the publication of the long-awaited Dungeon Masters Guide), but it also saw the disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III. Of the three, Egbert's disappearance is probably the most important, in the sense that it demonstrated the truth of the old adage that "there's no such thing as bad publicity." D&D soon became a household name across the USA and TSR's sales benefited immensely from this sensational news story. As I've recounted here many times before, my own involvement in the hobby is directly related to my father's taking an interest in stories of a "weird game" supposedly played in steam tunnels beneath Michigan State University.

From the vantage point of 2022, it's easy to forget just how new the hobby still was in 1979. Original Dungeons & Dragons had only been released five years previously. Depending on how you count them, there were only about thirty RPGs published by this time, only a handful of which would be remembered even five years later. This was a period of wild, reckless invention when any imaginative fantasy or science fiction fan with access to a typewriter and a photocopier could potentially create something that might potentially take the hobby by storm the way that OD&D did within not-to-distant memory.

Into this environment stepped three high school friends from California: Erol Otus, Mathias Genser, and Paul Reiche III. To anyone familiar with the early history of RPGs, the names of Otus and Reiche should be very familiar, if only for their all-too-brief stints at TSR Hobbies at the tail end of the Golden Age of D&D. Prior to their employment by TSR, Otus and Reiche both contributed to the creation of a couple of generic RPG supplements, the most substantial of which is entitled Booty and the Beasts – subtitled "Monsters and Treasures for Fantasy Role-Playing Games."

Of course, even in 1979, D&D was more or less synonymous with "fantasy roleplaying game" and, while Booty and the Beasts is not specifically written for it, a quick look at its monster descriptions makes it pretty clear the game for which it was written. They include "Hit Dice," "Armor Class," and movement ratings delineated in inches. There's also an entry for "Dexterity," expressed as a range, which might suggest the influence of the Holmes edition of D&D, which used Dexterity for handling initiative, though it could just as easily demonstrate the influence of either Warlock or Arduin, two D&D variants popular in California that used Dexterity in this fashion. (It's also worth noting that Otus had contributed illustrations to the Arduin Grimoire series.)

In any case, Booty and the Beasts definitely expresses the wild and reckless invention of this period of gaming history. Its monsters are completely unlike the rather staid and conventional ones found in the AD&D Monster Manual, for example. Rather than drawing on myth or folklore, the majority of them are whimsically original, such as Living Hills, who "feed upon unwary travelers who camp upon their seemingly benign summits;" the Malevolent Mana Muncher, whose "only desire is to steal the characters' magical items, as it eats them;" and Tortillas, which "look like large yellow gorillas with tortoise-like shells." This is in addition to monsters unashamedly drawn from the works of Jack Vance, such as the Deodand, Leucomorph, and Erb. 

Looking over the nearly 90 new monsters included in its pages, what strikes me most about Booty and the Beasts is how many of its entries have a science fictional bent to them. There is, for instance, an entire section of the book devoted solely to robots and many of its creatures are noted as hailing from another planet, solar system, or even galaxy. The Xenomorph from Alien even makes an appearance under the "clever" name of the Neila – get it? Also among the monsters is the Fling Fern, a plant monster that would later make an appearance in the mini-adventure included with the Gamma World Referee's Screen, written not coincidentally by Reiche while he worked at TSR.

This science fictional and indeed post-apocalyptic bent carries over into the magic items section of Booty and the Beasts. There is an entire section devoted to technological items, like the United States Army Pulse Laser Rifle and the Universal Translator. As you might expect, a great many of these are inspired by SF literature, television, and movies, as was the style in gaming products at the time. There are, of course, more "traditional" magic items as well, like the Unpilferable Pouch and the Helm of the Heinous, but I can't help but feel these are overshadowed somewhat by the sci-fi items, perhaps because they're so obviously different from what you'd typically have found in a D&D product at the time (Expedition to the Barrier Peaks having not yet been published.)

I'm not completely sure what more to say about Booty and the Beasts, because it's such a quirky product with a very distinct vision that it defies easy categorization. I suppose that's ultimately why the book, long out of print and sadly unavailable today (except through used booksellers and auction sites), still fascinates me: it possesses a rough, even raw, quality that is clearly the work of individuals with their own notions of what "fantasy" can and should be. Because these notions don't completely comport with my own, I find them in equal parts repellent and alluring. Booty and the Beasts is, like so many products of the early hobby, a labor of mad love that gives us a glimpse of what the hobby was like before brandification and "lifestyle gaming" carried the day – what a time! 

What did I tell you?

17 comments:

  1. Thanks for highlighting these - I really enjoy looking at these old snapshot one-shot manuals from the early days of the hobby. There was another similar book from California, but I forget the name (not Arduin), full of monsters and stuff as well. Difficult to get these days if I recall.

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    1. That's it - thank you! Wish they would put it out as a scanned PDF on DriveThru because I would pay for it.

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  2. "From the vantage point of 2022, it's easy to forget just how new the hobby still was in 1979."

    Even more so when you remember that the internet wasn't even on the horizon yet. Gamer culture was far more fragmented and info spread at a snail's pace compared to the situation even 15 years later, much less the 2020's constant online churn. Five years wasn't the distant past back then. Today it's widely regarded as the probable lifespan of an entire edition, with no guarantee of another to come after you stop being the hot new thing. Most folks who lived through the era know that, but it's alien to an awful lot of younger folks who've grown up with the internet always within easy reach.

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    1. I've often wondered if role-playing/Dungeons & Dragons came out today, if it would have stood a chance. As in, no RPGs exist yet, and Dave & Gary developed D&D with the Internet around... All other culture being essentially the same.

      So any online gaming is wargaming, even more advanced as it would not be the red headed stepchild. Then these guys come out with this "role-playing" tabletop game. Primitive, uses dice, people play around a table, poorly written rules. Obscure fantasy references.

      Would it even be noticed? Would it be torn apart in reviews? Would it be "cleaned up" by online groups, or would local variants still develop?

      Would the Glorantha Wargamers adopt it to play personas from their Massive Multiplayer Wargame? Or would they find the lack of verisimilitude in the combat system off-putting? After all, their game systems were developed by some of the best generals in the Society for Creative Historical Recreations. And of course, the Napoleonics Recreationists Pooh Pooh the entire fantasy setting...

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    2. I often feel that pen-and-paper RPGs could only have developed at the time that they did. A little earlier might have been possible, I suppose, but definitely not later, since, even in the 1980s, video and computer games were sucking a lot of the creative oxygen out of the room.

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    3. That's very true regarding the snail's pace of news back then. You had to get it either in a publications like Different Worlds or Ararmus & Excursions, or be lucky enough to have someone tell you what was going on in the Industry. I didn't even know Gygax was out from TSR until ten years after he left.

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    4. "...even in the 1980s, video and computer games were sucking a lot of the creative oxygen out of the room."

      True, but it's almost impossible to imagine what the e-gaming scene would have looked like without TTRPGs. Most historians who've studied the subject agree that D&D and (to a lesser extent) Traveller were both enormously influential to early PC games. In particular, the entire JRPG genre looks like it does now because it started out copying from TSR back in the 80s - and through JRPGs, the entirety of the wider category of eRPGs.

      I literally cannot guess what a TTRPG-free world would have looked like even in the 80s, much less today. Its effects on other forms of entertainment media are just incalculable.

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  3. I had the privilege to flip through a copy of this book just a few days ago (along with Otus' other early publication, The Necronomican (sic)). Publications like this one and All the World's Monsters are some of my favorite old-school resources when you need an "out there" monster to surprise your players. They might be rough and raw, but amateur books like these, often produced by teenagers, are the crucibles of the game.

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    1. I could not agree more. (I'll be looking at the Necromican next week in a separate post)

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  4. I would love copies of this, and Necromican. prices are simply too much for a game

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  5. Never heard of this publication before, so thanks for sharing your thoughts on it. Even before I read the first sentence I said to myself that the cover image just shouted out Erol Otus, which is a sign in itself.

    I really like these sorts of publications from enthusiastic amateurs. Most of them might be awful or not to your gaming tastes but they offer the insights on early gaming that I couldn't have accessed at the time.

    The closest I've come to one of these was the red fronted All the Worlds' Monsters a copy of which a pal nicked off another pal's big brother. Full of weird monsters and drawings from diverse fantasy and SF sources.

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  6. B&B has great artwork by Erol Otus throughout. I've always preferred early, more "primitive" RPG artwork. The commercial art stylings that became the TSR norm beginning with Unearthed Arcana still leave me cold.

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  7. I own a copy of this book. And the Manual of Aurania. And all volumes of ATWM. I love all of them, even though I'll never some of their contents. I have used something from each of them IMC.

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  8. From the examples you provide, this seems a lot closer in spirit to 1E Gamma World than any version of D&D. Gamma World was out by now, so perhaps this was originally designed with that in mind.

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