Things That Go Bump in the Night

Back at the end of June, I wrote a post about the representation of bugbears in the various TSR editions of Dungeons & Dragons. My examination of the topic revealed that, by and large, bugbears had a fairly consistent appearance over time, unlike, say, orcs. On some level, that made sense, since bugbears, as a distinct "type" of monster, are unique to D&D. They don't have a clear folkloric origin, leaving to TSR's artists the responsibility of establishing what they look like.

While looking through some old issues of Dragon magazine, I came across an advertisement from Ral Partha that showed off some miniatures sculpted by Tom Meier, including some identified as bugbears. Here's one of them, as shown on the Ral Partha Legacy website.

Seeing this figure awakened some old and forgotten memories. Though I never owned any of Ral Partha's bugbear minis, I saw them in one of the glass display cases at a hobby shop and found them strangely unnerving. There's something about the combination of oversized ears, goggling eyes, large, leering mouth, and spindly, apish body that I find unpleasant on some subconscious level. I'm not really sure I can explain it, except to say that I find these take on the bugbear creepy and nightmarish – maybe I'm easily frightened.

Despite this, I was glad to have been reminded of this miniature. I remain very committed to the idea that good fantasy is and indeed should be frightening. I can't help but feel that fantasy, as a genre, has become increasingly domesticated to the point that it's becoming boring. That needs to change. We need more terrifying monsters and horrific situations in our fantasies – and in fantasy gaming. Perhaps this is a topic worth returning to next month, as Halloween approaches.

Rutskarn's Gambit

Serendipity is a real phenomenon. Just as I'm looking more closely into Boot Hill's discussion of campaigns, Dan and Paul over Wandering DMs interview Adam DeCamp, who refereed a political campaign using those rules several years ago and shared his perspective on the experience. DeCamp's got some genuinely interesting stuff to say and I found the episode was well worth my time.

Boot Hill Introduction (Part II)

The question of whether Boot Hill is actually a roleplaying game is an interesting one, especially since the introduction to the game addresses this:

Playing BOOT HILL is quite simple. Since it is a role-playing game, each player participating takes on the persona of an individual character and controls his actions. In some cases, henchmen or associates will also be under his direction. In any event, the player takes the role of his character for the time that that individual is involved in the game situation (death, for instance, or a long jail term could remove that character from the game). The player makes the same decisions his character would make in the conduct of affairs (either in the heat of a gunfight if such a game is being played out on the tabletop, or the day-to-day activities if it is a campaign situation), and the combined actions of the entire cast of players as a whole (plus actions by non-player characters_ make up an ever-changing game situation which is much like the unfolding story of a novel or movie script – except that no one knows exactly what might result or how the story might ultimately turn out!

While there's a lot to unpack in the quote above, I want to focus on only two portions of it. First, the introduction is quite clear that its author (Gary Gygax and/or Brian Blume) unambiguously sees Boot Hill as a roleplaying game and explains what he means by that. Second, and relatedly, the author seemingly makes a distinction between "tabletop" play and "campaign" play. The former he associates with gunfighting, while the latter he associates with "day-to-day activities," though he doesn't (yet) explain he means by that. I can't recall this distinction ever being made in any other RPG, so this caught my attention.

This unpredictability and open-ended nature is what makes any role-playing game enjoyable, and the often fast and furious action of BOOT HILL gives it an excitement all its own. Players should strive to take on the role of their game character and fully immerse themselves in the very enjoyable fantasy aspect of the game. If they do so, they will enjoy it even more ...

I very much agree with this, of course. 

Pre-arranged scenarios can be used for individual games (two such scenarios, THE GUNFIGHT AT THE OK CORRAL and THE BATTLE OF COFFEYVILLE, are included as appendices in this booklet) – and these games can be historically-based or constructed in any way desired. Setting up a bank robbery scenario, for instance, would be easy – splitting up the players as outlaws, citizens, sheriff, deputy, bank personnel, etc., arranging the location of buildings involved (using the town map provided or one drawn especially for the scenario), and handling any pursuit cross-country by using a hex map (which could be the fictional area map within the game). The abilities and rating of individual players are determined by dice rolling in the manner described in a following section (see SETTING UP GAME CHARACTERS), and once this is done, the starting location of each character is noted, and play begins. It is suggested that the first few games played be unrelated games of this type which (while enjoyable) will basically serve as training sessions.

Here, the author makes it clearer what he might mean by "game," namely a "pre-arranged scenario" with a very specific purpose, like a bank robbery or other gunfight. 

Once players are familiar with the game rules and mechanics, they will find that the most enjoyable games are those that are tied together as part of a larger campaign (see CAMPAIGNS). In such a situation, past events are reflected as closely as possible in successive games, and each player has a stake in the future as well as a place in the status quo. Since platers are in different positions with different objectives (as well as on both sides of the law), there will be enough conflict and contention to provide for plenty of interesting action (which will include the inevitable gunfights and shootouts which can be played as tabletop games). Some typical character roles (depending on the size of the campaign) would be: outlaws, lawmen (sheriff, deputy, Texas ranger, etc.), ranchers (cattlemen or sheep rancher), Indian chiefs, gamblers, bounty hunters, hired guns, drifters, and so on. 

Here, "game" would seem to be a synonym for a "session" of play, in contrast with a "campaign," which is a series of successive games linked by past events. In any case, it's worth noting that a Boot Hill campaign as envisaged here involves, as I pointed out in my earlier post, player conflict, since the interests of the characters will not always align. Furthermore, this conflict is intended to be one of the drivers of "interesting action" within the campaign, leading to, among other things, "inevitable gunfights and shootouts" – in short, a wargame-y "player versus player" frame.

My friends and I never played Boot Hill for very long and thus never had the chance to use it for a campaign. What we did do was run one-off scenarios in which players took on different roles that were often at odds with one another – outlaws versus lawmen, etc. – and played out their battles with the map and counters the boxed set included. We had fun with this, but we treated it not much differently than we did other tabletop battle games rather than as an adjunct to something more, as the introduction suggests.

We'll wrap up our look at the introduction in my next post, but there's still a lot more to examine about Boot Hill beyond that, as subsequent posts will show.

25 Years Ago Today ...

... we lost the Moon in a tragic accident involving nuclear waste and a previous unknown form of magnetic radiation. Along with the Moon, all 311 personnel stationed aboard Moonbase Alpha were also lost.

Thanks to my friend and referee, Aaron, for reminding me of this important date.

Retrospective: Ballots & Bullets

Since Boot Hill has unexpectedly caught my interest this month, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at one of its better adventure modules, Ballots & Bullets. Written by David James Ritchie – whose name I most strongly associate with the second edition of Gamma World, as well as some of the Blackmoor modules for D&D – this "special campaign module" first appeared in 1982, just as TSR was transitioning between one era in its history and another. That makes Ballots & Bullets notable on multiple levels and, therefore, a worthy subject of examination.

Like most TSR modules of its era, this one consists of a 32-page staple-bound booklet wrapped inside a cardstock cover. The inside of that cover contains a map of Promise City, Arizona in the year 1882. The map is designed to be used in conjunction with the foldout map included in the Boot Hill boxed set, which forms the central "hub" of Promise City. There are over 200 locales on the combined map and each is described in at least a couple of sentences in the module's booklet. 

Though he's not mentioned in the credits, Jim Holloway provides all the art for Ballots & Bullets, including its front and back covers. Though there aren't as many individual pieces in this module as there might be in most TSR modules of the era, what art there is plays to Holloway's strengths as an illustrator of dubious, unscrupulous, and faintly ridiculous roughnecks. In many ways, Holloway is the perfect artist to depict the Old West, especially as depicted in a roleplaying game. I feel compelled to point out that many of the characters in Holloway's pieces are based on TSR employees at the time, including Holloway himself. I suspect that's also true of rustler Mongo Bailly, who features on the module's back cover, but, if so, I'm not sure which staffer he's based upon. If anyone knows his identity, I'd be grateful.

Making off with the ballot box ...

Slightly more than half of the module – 18 pages – consists of the "Guide to Promise City" and "The People of Promise City." I alluded to the former earlier: it describes every locale on the map, from the Great Western Boarding House and Cafe to the County Assay Office to the Silverbell Mining Company and more. Some locales are detailed more extensively than others, but all provide information not just on the locale itself but also on the NPCs found there. "The People of Promise City" is an alphabetical listing of nearly all 250+ people who live there, along with their Boot Hill game statistics. Also listed is each person's associated faction within the town, how committed he is to that faction, and whether or not he is a registered voter (or candidate).

These factions are important and play a part in "The Election Campaign," which provides the backbone of the module. Promise City is preparing to hold its first election after its town charter was approved by the Territorial Governor of Arizona. The election is three months in the future and two factions face off against each other in the upcoming contest. The first is the Law and Order Faction, supported by merchants and land owners, who want an end to the lawlessness of Promise City. The second is the Cowboy faction, supported by miners and prospectors, who believe the Law and Order faction is just a front for Big Business. The player characters enter Promise City just as things are heating up.

The characters can become involved in a variety of ways, supporting – or undermining – one of the factions for their own purposes. There are discussions and guidelines for handling canvassing the town, putting up campaign posters, running rallies, heckling the opposition, and outright bribery, not to mention spreading rumors and hiring goons to intimidate the voters. The characters can likewise make use of newspapers, churches, and endorsements to advance their chosen cause. At the end of it, there's voting day itself, for which the module also provides rules to adjudicate. Whichever faction wins will impact the subsequent development of Promise City and the fortunes of its inhabitants.

I have never made use of this module, so I can't rightly say how well its contents work in play. I can only say that I found the scenario presented and the information provided to support it quite compelling. In some ways, it reminded me of Trouble Brewing for Gangbusters, a favorite module of mine from my youth and one I used extensively. Despite some surface level similarities, Ballots & Bullets is less a description of Promise City – though it is that – and more of an outline for an entire campaign set during a major event within the city. It's also a great example of the kind of thing that, according to the game's introduction, you're supposed to do with Boot Hill. I found it very compelling and wished I had the time and players to give it a proper whirl.

It's been a long time since I've read a module that made me feel that way. Make of that what you will.

Would you trust this man with the future of Promise City?

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "Pages from the Mages"

Ed Greenwood catches a lot of grief among a certain segment of the old school community, usually for things for which he was not himself responsible. Perhaps these old schoolers associate his Forgotten Realms campaign setting with 2e and 2e with the regime that ousted Gygax or ... something. It's always been rather unclear to me what crimes against gaming Greenwood was supposed to have committed, especially when my earliest memories of his name are indelibly connected to articles like "Pages from the Mages," which appeared in issue #62 (June 1982).

The article presents four "long-lost magical manuals" – the tomes of powerful and famous magic-users, each of which is unique in some way. All four books are given a name, a description, and a history in addition to a list of their contents. Every one of these entries made these librams much more interesting than just a simple catalog of, say, the spells they contained or the magical effect they conferred upon their reader. Thus, we learn that the eponymous author of Mhzentul's Runes was slain at the Battle of the River Rising and that Nchaser's Eiyromancia contains not one but two heretofore unknown spells.

Greenwood's articles always impressed me with their feigned depth. That is, they seemed to be part of a rich and complex setting, whose every little nook and cranny had been detailed beforehand so that he could just pluck them from his mind and present them whenever required to do so. As I learned later, this is a parlor trick, one that I learned to perform in time, too, but it doesn't make me any less fond of "Pages from the Mages" or its later sequels. In the span of comparatively little space, Greenwood provided readers with not only some new magical items to insert into their own games but models for how to make almost any magic item a locus of information about a campaign setting and, by extension, an inspiration for adventure.

Flighty Elves and Bearded Dwarven Ladies

The astute among my readers might have noticed that the Boot Hill advertisement I shared earlier today appeared in the August 1979 issue of Dragon, the same month that the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide was released. To mark this occasion, issue #28 includes an article in which TSR employees who had even a small hand in the completion of the DMG offer their opinions on the finished product. There's a lot of interesting stuff in the article, some of which might make good fodder for a future post. For the moment, though, I want to draw your attention to the comments offered by Jean Wells:

The section to which Wells refers is actually entitled "Player Character Racial Tendencies" and begins at the bottom of page 15 and continues on to page 16. Here's the section about elves that she so disliked:

It's pretty innocuous stuff in my opinion. Gygax explicitly calls his descriptions "guidelines" Moreover, he points out that many other factors, such as alignment, will have an impact on a character's personality. For myself, this description of elves is perfectly fine, if somewhat different than the one that was probably already common in 1979. The same holds for his description of dwarves:

The question of whether female dwarves have beards in Dungeons & Dragons is much an ancient one, as evidenced by the last sentence of Wells's comments. In truth, I have no strong feelings about it myself, but I do find it fascinating the strong emotions, pro and con, that this rather esoteric dispute elicits in some corners of the hobby. 

Now Available from Your Favorite Game Dealer

Since I'll be looking more closely at Boot Hill over the next couple of weeks, I thought it might be useful to share this advertisement for the game, which appeared in issue #28 of Dragon (August 1979). 

With luck, you can read the two paragraphs above, because they make no mention of campaign play and indeed suggest that Boot Hill is anything more than a roleplaying game as the term had come to be understood at the time. Even though my friends and I never did much with the game beyond run gunfights and similar mayhem, we nevertheless considered it an RPG little different from others available at the time (except perhaps that its rules were thinner). I doubt we were alone in this.

Boot Hill Introduction (Part I)

One of the (many) fascinating things about Boot Hill is that its presentation is quite different from TSR's other RPGs of similar vintage, like Dungeons & Dragons or Gamma World. Consider what the introduction to the 1979 second edition has to say on the matter:

BOOT HILL is designed to function as a game in two ways – as a set of rules for man-to-man gunfighting action, and as an outline guide for setting up quasi-historical or fictional role-playing campaigns for an ongoing series of events. Although in the first context alone BOOT HILL will provide many hours of exciting action, it is in the latter way that the game fully reveals all its enjoyable possibilities – as player characters pursue their individual goals and interact with each other in a continuing game situation. With a good mix of interesting players and a competent gamemaster/referee there will certainly be no lack of action – as sheep ranchers and cattlemen pursue outlaws and rustlers, unscrupulous businessmen expand their holdings, hostile Indians threaten and much more.

This is an important paragraph. The most immediate statement of note here is that Boot Hill is intended to be used in two ways, first as a traditional RPG focused on a small group of characters and second as a vehicle for campaign play in which characters and groups of characters contend with one another. Equally notable, in my opinion, is the statement that Boot Hill "fully reveals" itself through campaign play, which is a statement I fully endorse. 

The introduction continues:

Players will find that, once learned, the mechanics of play for BOOT HILL will be easily handled. This means that tabletop games can be played with a minimum of trouble and preparation, either with a referee or without.

Pay close attention to that last prepositional clause: either with a referee or without. If one is only familiar with the way RPGs are typically played today, that's got to be something of a shock.

The larger campaign games will require a gamemaster. This individual is not a player himself, but rather functions as a moderator of all the game activity – from devising the details of the setting and campaign situation and the player characters' part within it, to moderating and overseeing all game action (not only that which is to occur on the tabletop, but also the considerable pursuits and intrigues which go on "behind the scenes"). No more than an average knowledge of the "Old West" is needed, since the game is designed to be flexible and can be set up as desired with the information and suggestions given in this booklet. If the game is set up and conducted in a way which will be challenging and enjoyable to the players (as well as interesting to the referee), then it will be a success.

Reading this, I find myself reminded of Diplomacy, a game that was very popular with many early roleplayers, including Gary Gygax. An aspect of what makes Diplomacy unique is that there is a "roleplaying" element to it, in that each player acts as a diplomat for a European nation in the early 20th century and engages in public and secret negotiations with the other player diplomats with the goal of advancing his nation's interests and the expense of the others. Diplomacy is, to use contemporary parlance, a PVP game in which a player can only succeed at the expense of others. 

I won't go so far as to claim that Diplomacy is the hidden key to understanding how many campaigns were played in the early days of the hobby, but I nevertheless do believe that it's an oft-forgotten part of the context out of which roleplaying games evolved. As near as I can tell, early campaigns were freewheeling, chaotic affairs in which players often pitted themselves against one another and campaign events were just as likely to be the results of this player-versus-player struggle as referee-created situations. The early history of Gygax's Greyhawk campaign is instructive here, in which Rob Kuntz's fighter, Robilar, frequently acted in his own self-interest and against those of other player characters in the campaign. 

This seems to be the kind of play that the introduction to Boot Hill is advocating and that the game was designed to facilitate. In my next post, I'll take a closer look at a later section of the introduction, which provides additional detail about how campaign play of this sort was envisaged.

Boot Hill Credits

I've been re-reading the second edition of Boot Hill recently. There's a lot in it that I'd forgotten and that I think worthy of comment, but I'll save that for an upcoming post. For now, I simply want to draw attention to the game's credits. In addition to crediting the game's designers, editors, and artists, it also lists the names of its playtesters, along with the characters they played. For anyone interested in the history of the hobby, it's fascinating stuff:

Jim "Gatling Gun" Ward (Julio Diego Garcia)
Mike "Hellfire & Brimstone" Carr (Dwayne De Truthe, and the Douglas Gang)
Rob "Shoot 'Em Up" Kuntz (The Moonwaltz Kid)
"Dastardly Dave" Megarry (Dastardly Dave Slade)
Dave Arneson (Ben Cartwheel of The Ponderous Ranch)
Gary "I Own It All" Gygax (Mr. G)
Terry "Hotshot" Kuntz (Mason Dix)
Tim "Elect Me!" Kask (Tim McCall)
Ernie "Scatter Gun" Gygax (Ernie Sloan)
Brian "Buckshot" Blume (The Referee)

The list is a veritable who's who of the early days of TSR Hobbies, which I suppose shouldn't really be a surprise, since this edition was released in 1979. The player nicknames are quite amusing and I suspect they relate to events from the campaign. 

Appendix D of Boot Hill includes a list of fictional non-player characters, many of whose names match those listed in parentheses above, suggesting they're the names of player characters. This list includes not only these characters' names but also their game statistics and profession. For example, Mr. G, Gary Gygax's character, is described as a "rancher." That probably explains the "I Own It All" nickname above. Meanwhile, Mike Carr's character, Dwayne De Truthe, is a preacher and Tim Kask's Tim McCall is a saloon keeper and gamber (and presumably a would-be politician).

I absolutely adore lists like this. Frankly, I wish we knew more about the play of early RPG campaigns by people who'd eventually go on to make an impact on the hobby. I wish, for example, that I had a similar list for the Traveller campaigns played by the GDW crew. Perhaps I'll have to press Marc Miller about this when I see him at Gamehole Con this October.

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Kirktá? (Part IV)

While the House of Worms Empire of the Petal Throne campaign may be winding down, it's still far from over. As discussed in three previous posts, the player characters have stopped in the city of Koylugá on their way across the kingdom of Salarvyá on their way to explore Mihálli ruins to the northeast. While in Koylugá, one of the characters, Kirktá, has found himself engaged to be married to Chygár, niece of the city's ruling prince, Kúrek. The engagement is a stratagem intended to force the characters to act as his agents as part of his bid to secure the Ebon Throne, when the current – and insane – king vacates it in death. Neither he nor his niece has any real intention of seeing this marriage take place. It's part of a typically Salarvyáni scheme to achieve a much greater end.

The characters do not like being used as pawns in someone else's game. This turn of events has stiffened their spines and so they have decided to use it as a way to advance their interests. Rather than simply acquiescing to the terms of the marriage dictated to them by Kúrek, they have fought hard for their terms. Nebússa's wife, Srüna, a formidable woman in her own right, has acted as their negotiator and pushed for a number of things Kúrek seems opposed to. Chief among these is that the marriage happen before their departure from Koylugá and that Chgyár should accompany her husband when they do so.

Kúrek was reluctant to accept these terms. He preferred that the marriage only happen after the characters had headed to the lands of the Gürüshyúgga clan to which he was sending them. Further, he was quite adamant that Chgyár should remain in Koylugá until then. These facts led the characters to suspect that they were being lied to about the Kúrek's true plans, but they had insufficient evidence to determine his true motives. So, they simply instructed Srüna to push even harder for an earlier wedding date and having Chgyár join their expedition once it was completed. Surprisingly, Kúrek eventually agreed.

Not long after this happened, Chgyár asked to speak with Kirktá. She begged him not to go through with the wedding – at least not until after his journey. Kirktá saw no reason to agree and told her so. This made her increasingly angry, to the point of panic. Once it became clear that Kirktá had made up his mind to marry her, despite her protestations that she had no interest in doing so, she finally sent him away in exasperation, saying, "I have grown tired of you and these endless conversations. If dying with you is the only way to end them, I am resigned to that fact. Begone."

It took a while before Kirktá understood what she had just said. Nebússa was now worried. Chgyár's use of the phrase "dying with you" suggested that, as they suspected, Kúrek had something more in mind than a simple marital alliance. Srüna was then dispatched to speak with Chgyár, in the hope that she might clarify matters. While she would not answer certain questions directly, she did explain that Kirktá was being sent to the Gürüshyúgga clan not merely as an emissary of her uncle but as a sacrifice. More significantly, the word she used was a very specific, technical term in the Salarvyáni language for a kingly sacrifice of the kind that occurs when the ruler of Salarvyá is judged too infirm to sit upon the Ebon Throne any longer. He is then impaled as a sacrificial offering to Shiringgáyi, their supreme goddess.

This put a very different spin on things! It also explained Chgyár's extreme reluctance to marry and accompany Kirktá eastward, since she likely believes that she, too, will be sacrificed. While none of the characters yet knew precisely with Prince Kúrek had planned or why, it didn't matter: he was plotting to have them killed under the cover of employing them as his agents. That was enough for the characters to decide that they needed to escape Koylugá as quickly and quietly as possible. The longer they waited, the more likely they were to be captured and sent to the Gürüshyúgga under armed guard. 

It was time to act.

The Bishop Returns

Another piece of Will McLean's Wizardry artwork featuring the bishop (and the Lord).

Hidden Details

In a comment to my earlier post about level titles beyond Dungeons & Dragons, Tamás Illés pointed out that the later installments of the computer game Wizardry included level titles (as did EverQuest). Not being well versed in the history of the Wizardry, this comment naturally piqued my interest. I spent some time yesterday looking into the matter by seeking out scans of the original manuals online. In doing so, I not only confirmed the truth of the comment – more on that in a future post – but also stumbled across something equally interesting.

I never owned Wizardry myself. When I played it, I did so on a friend's computer after having watched him play it. Consequently, I don't think I ever saw the game's manual or, if I did, I have no recollection of doing so. That's too bad, because the manual contains notable artwork, like this one, depicting the four basic character classes:

Then, there's this illustration, depicting the four elite character classes:

Leaving aside the very odd illustration of the samurai – he looks more like a soldier in Cromwell's New Model Army than a Japanese warrior to me – what immediately caught my eye was the bishop on the far right. He reminded me of this famous illustration from the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide:

I initially assumed that the Wizardry illustration was an allusion or homage to the DMG piece, since it seemed unlikely that the distinct appearance of the bishop's "miter" was an independent creation (unless perhaps they were both referencing a third source). However, the question was very quick resolved when I finally noticed the artist's signature – McLean. This was clearly Will McLean, the very same artist who provided all those humorous little cartoons scattered throughout the Dungeon Masters Guide (though he is erroneously credited in the Wizardry manual as "Will Mclain."

This discovery made me happy, because I've been a fan of Will McLean's cartoons for years. I'll post some additional examples of them in an upcoming post.

Retrospective: Sabre River

Despite my generally negative feelings toward Frank Mentzer's 1983–1986 revision of the Dungeons & Dragons rules, I have a special place in my heart for the Companion Rules. Indeed, I still consider it one of the best things ever produced for any edition of D&D, largely because it made a serious attempt to provide answers to the question of just what characters do when they reach the lofty heights of level 15 and beyond. While the Companion Rules themselves were only partially successful in this regard, TSR also intended to provide additional ideas and guidance for campaigns at this level of play in the form of the CM-series of adventure modules, of which there were ultimately nine.

Of course, as I mentioned in my Retrospective post about one of the modules in this series, this intention wasn't as easy to fulfill as TSR might have wished. Nearly all of the CM modules were flawed in one way or another, especially when it comes to providing a model for campaigns in which many, if not all, of the player characters have risen to rule their own domains. Despite that, many of them nevertheless include clever ideas and interesting concepts that could, if reworked, be useful to the harried Dungeon Master of a Companion-level campaign.

Take, for example, Sabre River, co-written by Douglas Niles and Bruce Nesmith and released in 1984. The module begins with the following:

Have all of your characters settled down and started dominions? Have you wondered if they'll ever get the chance to fight their way through an old-fashioned dungeon again? Yes, they will! 

The premise of Sabre River is that a group of four to six characters of levels 18–22 must venture into the Tower of Terror, a dungeon within a volcano, in order to deal with a curse that's been laid upon the land. The land in question is the domain of either an NPC ruler or – preferably – that of one of the player characters. In this respect at least, Sabre River is already an improvement over its immediate predecessor, Death's Ride, which more or less rejected the very idea that a player character's domain should be subjected to the undead invasion depicted in that module. 

The idea of a dungeon capable of challenging a party of 18th–22nd-level characters is intriguing. In the D&D circles with which I was familiar at the time, it was generally assumed that, as a character achieved double-digit levels, he would find his challenges in domain rulership and all that that entailed, like mass combats, power politics, and faction play. I suspect that explain why I so rarely saw anyone continue to play a D&D character at such exalted levels: the implied style of play wasn't very appealing to most players and indeed seemed to be a break from what Dungeons & Dragons was assumed to be about. What most players of my acquaintance wanted instead was more of the same, albeit at a great degree of challenge and, in principle, that's what Sabre River provided.

The Tower of Terror is indeed challenging. It's populated by powerful and deadly monsters, like a red dragon, elementals of various types, a beholder, and swarms or flocks of lesser creatures. There's also a commensurate level of treasure, some of it truly staggering, like a roomful of gold ingots worth 800,000gp in total. That only makes sense, of course, since high-level characters need huge amounts of experience points to advance and treasure is the surest source of such XP. Still, I was quite shocked to see these numbers as I re-read the module. For me, these astronomical sums have long been an impediment to my enjoyment of a D&D campaign of this level. Others may feel differently, of course.

Sabre River's challenges also include a handful of tricks, traps, and unusual tactical situations intended to test the players' skills in combat. There's also the central mystery of the curse, how it can be lifted, and what the characters must do to achieve that. It's all very serviceable but far from outstanding – certainly nothing on par with adventures like White Plume Mountain or The Ghost Tower of Inverness when it comes to imagination (and frustration). Mostly, Sabre River is about everything being BIG, from monsters (and their hit point totals) to treasures, which is a little disappointing, especially because I know that Doug Niles is a good designer who's penned some enjoyable stuff over the years.

Sabre River is not a terrible module; it simply doesn't stand out as anything special. Its worst sin, in my opinion, is that it doesn't deviate too much from the mediocre track record of the CM-series, almost none of which take full advantage of the new opportunities and vistas that the Companion Rules opened up to player characters of levels 15 to 25. A shame!

Limited Edition

Authentic Dungeon Masters Prefer ...

During the period between 1979 and 1982 when Grenadier Models held the license to produce official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons miniatures, the company ran lots of advertisements in the pages of Dragon magazine and elsewhere. Because they frequently made use of people dressed up in fantasy garb, I've always found them quite memorable (and silly – but in a good kind of way). Here's one I came across from issue #61 (May 1982) while preparing my earlier post from today.

The Articles of Dragon: "Call of Cthulhu is a Challenge"

"Dragon's Augury" was the name given to Dragon magazine's recurring review section. At the time I first encountered it, "Dragon's Augury" had no single, dedicated reviewer. A different contributor reviewed each featured gaming product, though there were often contributors whose names I'd see quite regularly, such as Tony Watson and Ken Rolston. 

Sometimes, though, there'd be a review from a notable figure within TSR, like Gary Gygax, and these naturally caught my attention. A good example of this occurred in issue #61 (May 1982), in which David Cook, author of one of my favorite AD&D modules, wrote a review of the newly released Chaosium RPG, Call of Cthulhu. By the time this review appeared, I already owned a copy and was a great fan of it. Nevertheless, I was very curious to hear what Cook might have to say about it.

Though Cook had a lot of positive things to say about Call of Cthulhu, the overall tenor of his review could probably be called "mixed." After providing a nice overview of both the works of H.P. Lovecraft and the intended playstyle of CoC, he launches into his dissection of the game's flaws. For example, he points out that, while short, Basic Role-Playing, is not very complete, with many ambiguous rules. The same is true of the Call of Cthulhu rulebook itself, which, in addition to ambiguity, includes editorial errors that further contribute to its lack of clarity. In particular, Cook notes that the game's combat system lacks, among other things, "rules for how to deal with cover, movement, surprise, or other situations" that might come up in a fight. 

Cook singles out A Sourcebook for the 1920's as "the weakest part" of the boxed set. Its contents, he believes, appear to be little more than "notes and unfinished design work." He finds the alternate character generation rules – one of my favorite parts of the book – to be "inadequately explained" and a source of confusion. Another bone of contention is the game's lack of rules for generating and handling human NPCs, whom Cook imagines will play important roles in any Lovecraft-inspired adventure. Speaking of which, Cook speaks highly of the sample scenarios included in the rulebook.

The review is fairly lengthy and detailed, but it generally goes on in this direction. I get the impression that Cook, as a fan of Lovecraft, may have had high, or at least very specific, hopes for what Call of Cthulhu should have been like and those hopes were not fully met. Even so, he acknowledges that "when played, it's fun." He does caution that, because of its rules gaps, it demands a lot of the referee. Consequently, Call of Cthulhu "is a good game for experienced role-playing gamers and ambitious judges, especially if they like Lovecraft's type of story." 

As I mentioned, I already owned a copy of Call of Cthulhu by the time I read this review and was slightly baffled by it. My friends and I had been enjoying it without noticing any of the problems Cook pointed out in his review. That's probably because, as young people – I would have been twelve at the time – our grasp of the rules as written was not always the best and so we frequently made things up when we needed to do so. By contrast, Cook was already an accomplished game designer with a lot of experience both as a writer and a player of both wargames and RPGs. This undoubtedly colored the way he wrote his review, something I didn't appreciate at the time.

I also couldn't fathom why Cook had so many critical things to say about the game, despite his admission that he had found Call of Cthulhu fun in play. If he enjoyed the game, I thought, why point out its flaws? For that matter, how had he even noticed them in the first place? I thought about these and other related questions for some time afterward, which is precisely why I still remember this review more than four decades later. David Cook challenged my own assumptions and blind spots. He'd dared to say critical things about a new game my friends and I had enjoyed. In retrospect, I realize I learned a lot from his approach, even if, in 1982, it made little sense to me.