Thursday, February 23, 2023

Gygax vs Gygax

Earlier this year, I commented on the fact that most of Gary Gygax's published D&D modules were aimed at the higher levels of play. Yet, he also wrote two adventures geared toward beginning-level characters that are widely recognized as absolute classics, The Village of Hommlet and The Keep on the Borderlands. Indeed, they're among the most well known Dungeons & Dragons adventures ever published and, even now, exercise considerable influence over how both game designers and game players conceive of a beginner's adventure.

As one might imagine, there are a number of similarities between the two adventures, starting with the fact that they both first appeared in 1979. In addition, each proclaims itself to be an "introductory" module. Further, their basic scenarios are very much alike: the titular isolated community is menaced by the lurking threats of Chaos and Evil and it is up to the newly arrived player characters to investigate and, if possible, stem their growing tide. In prose to rival his description of the Drow city of Erelhei-Cinlu, Gygax explains the broad situation thusly in The Keep on the Borderlands:
The Realm of mankind is narrow and constricted. Always the forces of Chaos press upon its borders, seeking to enslave its populace, rape its riches, and steal its treasures. If it were not for a stout few, many in the Realm would indeed fall prey to the evil which surrounds them. Yet, there are always certain exceptional members of humanity, as well as similar individuals among its allies – dwarves, elves, and halflings – who rise above the common level and join battle to stave off the darkness which would otherwise overwhelm the land. 
Truly evocative stuff in my opinion, providing some insight into how Gygax conceived of the "world" of Dungeons & Dragons and the role of adventurers within it.

Nevertheless, there are quite a few differences between the two modules and it's these that most interest me. The most immediately apparent one is the game line for which each was published. The Keep on the Borderlands bears a banner in its upper lefthand corner, "For Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set," while The Village of Hommlet prominently displays the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons logo – a logo so large, in fact, that it dwarfs the actual title of the module itself. Though I cannot be certain, I suspect that it's this difference – Basic D&D versus AD&D that might explain many of the other differences.

Take, for example, the quote from The Keep on the Borderlands above. The equivalent bit of background in The Village of Hommlet is much longer and not nearly so evocative, reading more like a history – and a dry one at that – of Hommlet and the battle against the forces of the Temple of Elemental Evil: "Hommlet grew from a farm or two, a rest house, and a smithy. The road brought a sufficient number of travellers and merchant wagons to attract tradesmen ..." and so on. There's nothing wrong with this, of course, but it's not particularly inspiring. It comes across like a lecture by a sage rather than a call to adventure.

On the other hand, Hommlet's background is so much more specific than that presented in The Keep on the Borderlands. Whereas module T1's background section gives us lots of names – Oerik, Verbobonc, Nyr Dyv, Dyvers, Nulb, and more – B2 instead offers us "the Realm of mankind," "the Keep," "the Borderlands," and "the Caves of Chaos." Certainly these have a mythic quality to them, like something out of a fairytale or legend, but their purposeful lack of specificity works against the kind of groundedness I feel is necessary to prevent a fantasy setting from "floating away," if you get my meaning. 

This lack of specificity applies to the entirety of The Keep on the Borderlands. There are, for instance, no named NPCs in the entire module. Gygax only gives us "the smith," "the barkeep," "the scribe," "the castellan." Even "the Mad Hermit" lacks a name, as does "the evil priest" who oversees "the temple of evil chaos" within the Caves of Chaos. In Hommlet, though, we meet many named individuals, like the brothers Elmo and Otis, Ostler Gundigoot, proprietor of the Inn of the Welcome Wench, Black Jay the herdsman, Canon Terjon, Burne and Rufus, and many more. Hommlet feels very much like a real place, one whose inhabitants are more than just cardboard cut-outs..

Mind you, these differences might simply reflect different intentions. The Keep on the Borderlands is much more clearly intended to be a teaching module, as the extensive Notes for the Dungeon Master make clear. The lack of specificity may have been intended so that individual referees could more easily alter the module and its contents to suit his own tastes and the nature of his own campaign. Meanwhile, The Village of Hommlet, while still introductory in nature, is intended, at least in part, to The World of Greyhawk setting and its conflicts. 

Also, as I mentioned earlier in this post, I suspect the fact that B2 is a Basic module while T1 is an Advanced one likewise plays a role. While both The Village of Hommlet and The Keep on the Borderlands are intended for beginning characters, only module B2 is also intended for beginning players. Module T1 is an adventure for the 1st-level characters of already experienced players overseen by an already experienced referee. The Keep on the Borderlands, contrariwise, truly was written as "Baby's First D&D Module" for everyone involved, hence its lack of specificity. Neither approach is inherently superior to the other. Rather, they are written according to the needs of very different audiences, as they should be.

9 comments:

  1. I know others are going to comment on this, but Hommlet comes directly from play, his own campaign. and many of the NPCs were PCs previously (burne was played by Luke G seems to me). and that gives an extra layer of real

    like in early WoW when you saw closed off "Failed" dungeons, etc. the game felt lived in, not so artificial.

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  2. I still love the village of Hommlet, and most of the adventures I wrote in the mid to late 80's were based in part on the template it presented: there is a town that is laid out with some logic and populated by the sort of people who would live in such a town. There is evil afoot, and indeed some of the residents of the town are involved in that evil to one degree or another.

    Then there's the moathouse and its associated dungeons/caverns, with denizens that are as logically placed therein as can be expected of a fantasy game. There's a reason the monsters are there; the "dungeon" includes barracks and kitchens etc. It's all a part of the Gygaxian "naturalism" I think you've discussed before and while one can go too far with that sort of thing, I think T1 is a great example of how it's done correctly.

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    1. I also respect T1 a lot, and tried to imitate it in designing my own introductory adventures. I always felt like my imitations were too similar to their source, though; I guess I just can't make a Hommlet without faking EGG's!

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  3. I may be overly cynical, but I suspect that a major reason for the lack of specificity in B2 is that it was written quickly to replace B1, the original "Baby's First D&D Module," so that TSR wouldn't have to pay Mike Carr the rather generous royalties he was getting for all the copies of B1 sold in Basic Sets. In the interview printed in Goodman Games's OAR volume Into The Borderlands, Carr himself says that that's why B2 replaced B1.

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    1. I was thinking the exact same thing. In addition, B2 appears to have been designed as a one-off; Gygax wasn't planning on writing a follow up to that, whereas T1 was written as a intro the the Temple of Elemental Evil, and thus deserved a more grounded and fleshed out design.

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  4. The list of names (Oerik, Verbobonc, Nyr Dyv, Dyvers, Nulb...) only helps ground the setting if you have read more information about them -- and Hommlet was published a year before the World Of Greyhawk folio. Otherwise, they just sound fantastical and far-off, like the places mentioned but never visited in a Dunsany or Clark Ashton Smith tale.

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    1. But they still make the setting more grounded than B2's is, because they make it seem more real. Actual places have names (like Hommlet), not just titles (like the Keep); this is even more true of people (none of whom have names in B2).

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  5. Well-worth diving into are Timrod's analyses connecting T1, B2, and the DMG monastery dungeon: see https://unfrozencavemandicechucker.blogspot.com/search/label/Comparative%20Dungeonology.

    And of course Trent Smith's Hommlet and ToEE work at https://mystical-trash-heap.blogspot.com/search/label/T1-4/.

    Allan.

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