Adventure Games from TSR (Part II)

Following yesterday's post, here are some more pages from the 1983 TSR UK catalog, courtesy of reader Martin Williams, starting with this one. There are several noteworthy details here. For example, the modules Blizzard Pass and Maze of the Riddling Minotaur are included in the list of AD&D adventure modules, possibly because of their code being "M" rather than "B" or "X." Meanwhile, The Temple of Elemental Evil is assigned the code T2A/B rather than the T1–4 it received upon its actual release in 1985. Further, Dungeonland and The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror are listed as modules GC 1 and GC2 respectively rather than EX 1 and EX2 (see also this post for another discussion of their changing module codes).

This next page is interesting because it includes the AD&D Fighting Wheel among the play aids available for sale, despite the fact that, so far as I know, it was never sold except to RPGA members.

Good to see some of TSR's other games given a page to themselves.

One can sometimes forget that TSR also published a wide range of boardgames intended for a wider audience, as this page demonstrates. At the bottom left, there's a note of "exciting news" regarding TSR's then-recent acquisition of the wargames publisher, SPI – an acquisition that ultimately proved to be an unhappy one for almost everyone concerned. There's also a striking bit of art by Rodney Matthews, depicting either a man in a very strange spacesuit or a robot of some kind.

Finally, we get not just more Matthews art, but a page devoted to books and magazines, with a passing mention of TSR's minigames. 

As someone much more familiar with the brown TSR "Gateway to Adventure" catalogs, I found the UK catalogs fascinating – especially for the original art included with it. Thanks again to Martin Williams for sharing this piece of history with me.

Adventure Games from TSR (Part I)

Speaking of TSR UK: reader Martin Williams recently informed me of a catalog from the company's British division released in 1983, whose pages he kindly scanned. The catalog is notable both for its original art by Rodney Matthews, as well as its actual content. Matthews also worked with TSR UK through Imagine magazine, for which he provided the covers to issues 9, 12, and 22. 

The center spread of the catalog showcases both the Dungeons & Dragons (in its B/X variety – apparently this was prior to the release of the 1983 Frank Mentzer-edited version) and the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons games.

Of note is the use of the term "adventure games," which seems to have been particularly popular in the United Kingdom. Also noteworthy is that the section on AD&D, which it pronounces "an entirely different game ... for more experienced players."

Here's a better view of the Matthews illustration in all its glory.

I'll post more scans from the catalog tomorrow. Thanks again to Martin Williams for sharing these with me, as I'd never seen them before.

Retrospective: Dark Side of the Moon

In my musings on Traveller's birthday earlier this week, I reflected briefly on my introduction to what is not only my favorite science fiction RPG but also my favorite RPG period. However, in doing so, I mentioned that Traveller was not my sole SF RPG. For some time, it vied with several other science fiction games for my affection, including Star Frontiers, which I, as a TSR fanboy, snapped up eagerly when it was published in 1982. 

Aside from surface similarities, Star Frontiers and Traveller aren't all that similar. Traveller has always had a somewhat serious, almost literary tone, whereas Star Frontiers seemed to have more in common with SF movies and television shows. I don't mean that as a criticism, since there's no one-size-fits-all RPG for any genre or subject matter – especially science fiction, which encompasses a huge swath of possible ideas, concepts, and situations. 

That said, Star Frontiers could be more "serious," or touch on more serious subject matter. That's very much in evidence with 1985's Dark Side of the Moon by Jim Bambra. Like its immediate predecessor, Bugs in the System, this adventure was a product of TSR UK, whose approach to nearly everything, from subject matter to tone to artwork, cartography, and even layout was noticeably different than their Stateside counterparts, which had a pulpier, Saturday morning matinee vibe to them that was probably deemed more suitable for its "ages 10 and up" target demographic. 

The adventure takes place on the world of Kraatar, a world in the Tristkar star system, whose primary colonists are the insectoid Vrusk – at least according to the Star Frontiers expanded rules book. Bambra, however, postulates that Kraatar was originally colonized by humans some 200 years before the present, where they established a self-reliant, agrarian society. A little more than a century later, the Vrusk arrived, bringing with them their high technology and megacorporations. As a consequence, the original human colonists experienced culture shock that displaced many of them from their rural settlements and left others disaffected and angry, as Vrusk corporations came to dominate the planet.

The adventure proper kicks off when Jack Lagrange, a human scientist and businessman who heads up Trojan Enterprises, is assassinated while receiving a prestigious award for his work in advanced organ and tissue regeneration. His assassins are two former members of the Vrusk corporate security forces and this revelation alone threatens to throw Kraatar into political and social turmoil. Riots then break out between humans and Vrusk after a Vrusk terrorist organization claims responsibility for Legrange's death. The characters, whom the module assumes are working with Pan-Galactic Holo-News, soon find themselves enmeshed not just in inter-species hostility but also a grand conspiracy in which little is what it first seems.

Dark Side of the Moon's reach exceeds its grasp. Bambra's ideas are mostly quite good, but the execution leaves a bit to be desired, starting with the somewhat ham-fisted way the characters become involved. As presented, the situation on Kraatar is somewhat nuanced, with plenty of blame to go around. Despite this, there's still a supervillain worthy of James Bond behind it all, plotting something cartoonishly horrific. That's not necessarily a terrible thing; it's very much in keeping with the general tenor of Star Frontiers. At the same time, I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed, because there's a lot of good stuff here about social alienation and non-human psychology that I wish had been further developed. Perhaps it was inevitable that such topics could never be properly explored in a RPG module, but I had high expectations nonetheless.

Dark Side of the Moon is still a solid adventure, one of the better ones produced for use with Star Frontiers. Unfortunately, it doesn't treat its chosen subject with the same degree of sophistication or polish as did Bugs in the System. All the same, it's yet another example of TSR UK's willingness to innovate and push boundaries within the products they produced. The division's closure was a real loss for TSR, which would have really benefited from the industry and talents of its British writers and designers in the latter half of the 1980s. That's an alternate universe I'd like to have seen ...

The Mystery of Todd Oleck

I've gotten a couple of emails and comments asking about the artists responsible for the artwork accompanying the "From the Sorcerer's Scroll" column in Dragon. In most cases, I unfortunately have no idea who produced those pieces. However, in the case of the second to last illustration, the one showing a wizard seated at his desk, I know the artist is named Todd Oleck. Here's a bigger, full color version of the illustration:

The interesting thing is that the version above didn't appear until issue #47 (March 1981) of Dragon, about a year and a half after it was first used in conjunction with "From the Sorcerer's Scroll" in issue #30 (October 1979). 

As for Oleck himself, I know next to nothing about him. He is credited as an artist in several issues of Dragon and also produced a single piece of artwork that appeared in early printings of the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide before being replaced. Here it is:

My version of the DMG is the so-called "revised" version from December 1979, so it doesn't include this piece. In its place is the Erol Otus illustration found at the top of this post. Beyond this, Oleck is a mystery to me. I can only assume that, like a lot of people involved in the hobby, he eventually drifted away from it and pursued other things. Still, I'm curious about him. Does anyone else know anything they can share?

Gamma World Figures

One of my biggest complaints about first edition Gamma World was that its rulebook included very few illustrations of its mutant creatures. Sure, there were verbal descriptions of most of them, but many of those descriptions were vague or equivocal, which made it difficult to describe them in the course of play. That's why I was so keen to see Grenadier's line of GW miniatures: I hoped they'd give me a better sense of what all these weird mutants looked like.

Unfortunately for me, I never saw most of the "over 150 figures plus accessories" promised in the advertisement above. I did find the large "Denizens" boxed set, which I happily purchased, partly because it had such evocative box art, featuring a trio of tribesmen facing off against a Yexil.

I don't know for certain, but I suspect the artist is Ray Rubin, who was one of the cofounders of Grenadier Models. He did a lot of box art for the company's miniatures, including those produced for its official AD&D line. This one looks similar, so it's probably his work.

As I said, I never saw most of the Grenadier Gamma World miniatures in the wild, so to speak. There is, however, a terrific website that includes photographs of most of them. When I first came across the site, I goggled at what I saw, because many of them are exactly the kind of thing I so wanted back in the day. Instead, I had to wait until the release of Gamma World's second edition in 1983 to see at last what all the game's mutant monsters actually looked like (lovingly drawn by Larry Elmore at, in my opinion, his best).

The Articles of Dragon: "Protection Circles and the Like ..."

One of the ways that this new version of The Articles of Dragon differs from its predecessor is that I'll linger on a single issue of the magazine if there's more than one article I consider worthy of comment. Perhaps because issue #56 (December 1981) is the first one I remember reading, I can also recall multiple articles from its pages. In addition to "Singing a New Tune," which I discussed last week, another that left a lasting impression on me was Gary Gygax's "From the Sorcerer's Scroll" column, entitled "Protection Circles and the Like, plus News of the North Central Flanaess" – quite a mouthful!

The article begins, as its title suggests, by briefly touching on the six types of protective circles available to AD&D spellcasters. These circles consist of the pentacle, magic (protection) circle, magic circle, thaumaturgic triangle, thaumaturgic circle, and the pentagram. Each one is accompanied by an illustration and a very brief description of its purpose (e.g. "This inscription is effective against lesser devils and lesser hostile sendings."). There are, however, no game mechanics associated with any of these circles. Gygax indicates such information will appear in the forthcoming The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth module (which would appear sometime the following year, 1982).

Though this section of the column was very small and devoid of much in the way of specifics, it nevertheless left a strong impression on me, probably because of the accompanying artwork, which expanded upon what can be found on page 42 on the Dungeon Masters Guide.

Over the years, Gygax was inconsistent on the matter of just how much (A)D&D drew on real world occultism for inspiration (depending, no doubt, on who was inquiring about it). My friends and I, however, had no doubt that the game frequently took pages from such things – that was part of its appeal! So, even though there's not much meat to this part of "From the Sorcerer's Scroll," it's stuck with me even after all these years.

That said, the next part, which is quite substantial, stuck with me even more. In it, Gygax presents news and updated information about The World of Greyhawk, specifically about events following the return of the half-demon demigod Iuz to the domain that bears his name in the aftermath of his long imprisonment within Castle Greyhawk. Now, at the time I read this, I didn't yet own a copy of The World of Greyhawk, though I was vaguely familiar with some of the names and places associated with it through other AD&D products, like the DMG and The Village of Hommlet. Despite this, I found this section strangely compelling.

A big part of it, I think, was that it implied that Greyhawk was a dynamic setting in which Things Happened and had an impact on the setting. In addition, Gygax rattled off the names of important NPCs within the setting, along with their races, classes, and levels. He tallied up military units and their strengths and locations. He mentioned battles and geographic features. In short, he made Greyhawk come alive, as if it had a real (and deep) history. I loved it and wanted to learn more.

Of course, that's not what's included in The World of Greyhawk at all. The original folio – and even the later boxed set – were short on these kinds of nitty-gritty details, focusing instead on Big Picture stuff. I learned to appreciate that as one of Greyhawk's greatest virtues as a setting, but what initially drew me to it was this article and all the stuff Gygax implied was happening in his own campaign. In retrospect, I suspect that's exactly what Gygax was doing: recounting how his campaign was unfolding, but I had no real understanding of such a distinction in 1981 and wouldn't for many more years. Regardless, I loved this article.

Can You Spot the Hidden Deathtrap in this Room?

While looking for the illustration of the mind flayer that appears in issue #78 (October 1983), I came across this classic bit from Phil Foglio's What's New comic. I've hidden the answer below a break.

Happy 47th Birthday, Traveller!

Today is the real Traveller Day: 47 years ago, on July 22, 1977, at the third Origins Game Fair, held on Staten Island, New York, Game Designers Workshop released its science fiction roleplaying game, Traveller and the rest is history. 

Though, like most people, Dungeons & Dragons was my introduction to the hobby, Traveller became (and remains) my favorite RPG and the Third Imperium my favorite imaginary setting. I didn't discover the game until around the time The Traveller Book was released in 1982 – the same year TSR released Star Frontiers and just a year before FASA released Star Trek. I played and enjoyed them all, but it was ultimately Traveller that won my heart for its simple, flexible rules and serious tone reminiscent of so many of the sci-fi books I loved. 

My first professional writing credits were for Traveller when I was still in college. Through Traveller fandom, I met some of my oldest and dearest friends. And of course some of my best gaming memories relate to playing Traveller. Consequently, I'm inordinately fond of this roleplaying game and think the day of its release is every bit as worthy of celebrating as that of D&D. 

Happy Birthday, Traveller! Just three more years till your golden anniversary ...

A (Very) Brief Pictorial History of Mind Flayers

The people have spoken, which means I shall continue this series for a while longer. In reviewing the suggestions offered by readers, one of the more popular ones was the mind flayer. Since this tentacled monstrosity is also my favorite Dungeons & Dragons monster, I thought it'd make sense to kick off the next round of these posts with a look at mind flayers (or illithids, as they were called in Descent into the Depths of the Earth). 

Though the mind flayer first appears in issue #1 of The Strategic Review (Spring 1975), the first illustration of it does not appear until a year later, in Supplement III, Eldritch Wizardry (1976), as drawn by Tracy Lesch. Despite how early it is, this is clearly recognizable as the monster of later depictions – a rare instance when someone other than Dave Sutherland laid the esthetic foundations upon which later artists would build.

Speaking of Dave Sutherland, here's his take on the mind flayer from the Monster Manual (1977). You can see that he was riffing off Lesch's original conception, right down to having four facial tentacles and a preference for high-collared robes of the sort favored by Ming the Merciless.

Like the kobold, the mind flayer gets two illustrations in the Monster Manual. However, this second illustration is not by Sutherland but rather by Tom Wham. Though humorous in tone, Wham's art shows a mind flayer that looks very close to its predecessors. He even includes the skull on the monster's belt. (Also of interest is that one of the illithid's victims is a halfling.)

The aforementioned Descent into the Depths of the Earth (1978) not only gives us the name illithid but also this terrific illustration (by an uncredited artist that I nevertheless think is Dave Trampier). Again, note the similarities to its predecessors.

1980 gave us several different illustrations of mind flayers, starting with this one from The Rogues Gallery by Erol Otus:

We get another, from Jeff Dee this time, in Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. It's one of my favorites of all time, probably because it's different. Rather than showing the illithid in a high-collared robe like every previous artist, Dee puts him in a sci-fi uniform, wielding technological devices – and it feel right. I can't be certain, but I suspect this illustration is the origin of the widely held notion that mind flayer are from another world (or even the future).

1980 also brought us the first mind flayer miniature from Grenadier Models. By most standards, it's pretty goofy looking, but you can see, if you look carefully, that it's heavily inspired by Sutherland's Monster Manual illustration. For example, the mini has similar sleeve decoration and he's wearing the same strange harness seen in the MM.

The next year, in 1981, AD&D modules D1 and D2 were combined together under a single cover, with the addition of some new art. One of those pieces of art appeared on the back cover of the module. Drawn by Bill Willingham, this is the first time we've seen a mind flayer in color.

In October 1983, in issue #78 of Dragon, Roger E. Moore's "The Ecology of the Mind Flayer" appeared, accompanied by a Roger Raupp illustration. What's notable about this illustration is that the illithid is not wearing a high-collared robe, but he is wearing that harness seen in previous illustration.

Citadel Miniatures briefly held the license for AD&D miniatures and produced several mind flayers in 1985, such as the one below. The high-collared robe returns once more.

By 1987, the license passed to Ral Partha. The company held the license for almost a decade and, during that time, they produced this mind flayer miniature:

I don't know precisely when this mini was produced, so, if anyone knows, please let me know in the comments. This is important for a reason that will become apparent shortly.

For the 1989 Second Edition Monstrous Compendium, we get an illustration from James Holloway. Though some of the details are different – notice the brain you can see inside the mind flayer's head – but it's still not far from what we've seen many times before, including the high-collared robe.

Finally, there's 1993's Monstrous Manual whose depiction was done by Tony DiTerlizzi.

The illustration looks just like the Ral Partha mini above – unless it's the other way around. That's why I'm curious about when the miniature was released. My suspicion is that the DiTerlizzi illustration came first, but I cannot prove it.

With that, we come to the end of my brief look at mind flayer artwork from the TSR era of Dungeons & Dragons. I know I've probably overlooked a lot of illithid illustrations from Second Edition, like the one on the cover of Spelljammer, but I've already presented enough, I think, to give a good sense of how these monsters were presented during the first two decades of D&D. However, if you can recall any illustrations of mind flayers you think are especially worthy of comment, let me know. 

REVIEW: The Lair of the Brain Eaters

The first few years of the Old School Renaissance were marked by a renewed appreciation not just of early roleplaying games but also of the pulp fantasy stories that inspired them. This was the time when Appendix N of Gary Gygax's AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide became a frequent topic of discussion on blogs and forums, much to the satisfaction of those of us who felt a strong injection of sword-and-sorcery was the perfect antidote to what we felt was an increasingly video-gamified hobby (remember: this coincided with the release of D&D Fourth Edition) that had lost sight of its literary roots.

This is the backdrop against which many of the earliest D&D retro-clones – emulations of earlier editions – appeared, including Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Calling itself a "weird fantasy role-playing game," LotFP took seriously the goal of bringing more pulp fantasy-inspired content into fantasy gaming, especially in its adventures, which quickly gained a reputation for being, by turns, imaginative, grotesque, challenging, deadly, and prurient – among many other extravagant adjectives. 

However, as LotFP's creator, James Raggi, found his strange Muse, its adventures moved away from generic pulp fantasy scenarios of the sort one might have found in Weird Tales during the Golden Age of the pulps and toward a weirder, even more brutal version of Earth's 17th century. This new focus on historical fantasy helped LotFP distinguish itself from its fellow retro-clones, but it also, I think, narrowed its appeal somewhat, since most fantasy gamers, old school or otherwise, are looking for adventures they can easily drop into campaign settings other than Earth during the 1600s.

While I am a big fan of LotFP's pivot to historical fantasy, I miss the ahistorical strangeness of stuff like Death Frost Doom, Hammers of the God, or The Monolith from Beyond Space and Time. Consequently, when I learned about D.M. Ritzlin's The Lair of the Brain Eaters, I was intrigued. Unlike most recent LotFP releases, this adventure didn't seem to be set in the 17th century. Rather, it seemed more like something from Robert E. Howard's Hyborian Age or perhaps Clark Ashton Smith's Hyperborea – a lurid, necromantic pulp fantasy scenario of the kind we haven't seen for LotFP in a while.

That should come as no surprise. Ritzlin is the proprietor of DMR Books, a small press dedicated "fantasy, horror, and adventure fiction in the traditions Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, and other classic writers of the pulp era." Indeed, The Lair of the Brain Eaters shares its title with a short story Ritzlin wrote for the collection, Necromancy in Nilztiria. According to the author, some of the story's details have been changed (and "a great many more have been added"), so this adventure is less directly adapted and more inspired by its source. Even so, it's quite unusual by the standards of contemporary Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

The adventure concerns a cult dedicated to the consumption of human brains. Called the Yoinog – supposedly an ancient term meaning "knowledge seekers" – the cult serves the necromancer Obb Nyreb, furnishing him with a fresh supply of corpses as he attempts to unravel the mysteries of Veshakul-a, the goddess of death. Nyreb and the Yoinog have established themselves in a network of caves beneath a graveyard of the city of Desazu. Unfortunately, in their zeal for graverobbing, the cult has drawn attention to their master's activities, thereby providing an opening for the player characters to involve themselves in the adventure.

The Lair of the Brain Eaters is short and to the point. The cult's cave network consists of only twenty keyed areas, with Nyreb's chambers occupying an additional nine. Most of them are described briefly, with little in the way of extraneous detail. Do not, however, mistake its comparatively spartan descriptions for a sparseness of ideas – quite the contrary. The florid prose of many adventures is often chalked up to the designer's desire to be a writer of fiction. Here, the opposite is the case: the text's concision signals that its designer is already a skilled fictioneer and understands well that less can be more.

For example, this is part of the description of a "bottomless pit": "This pit is not really bottomless, but it amused Obb Nyreb to tell the Yoinog it was, and they never doubt him." Elsewhere, a kitchen is described thusly: "Grimy pots, pans, and plates litter the floor. A cauldron large enough to contain a man sits in the center of the room, while smaller ones dangle from the ceiling." Speaking as someone whose personal style tends toward the aureate, I admire Ritzlin's ability to convey description, vital information, and mood through so few words. This approach also makes the descriptions easy to use at a glance, which is very helpful in play.

Designed for character levels 1–3, The Lair of the Brain Eaters is challenging. There are a lot of Yoinog within the caves, as well as other creatures, such as the apelike Skullfaces and mutant rats (some of which breathe fire – yes, it's a bit silly, but so what?). Fortunately, the caves contain lots of opportunities for the characters to act stealthily or otherwise use the environment to their advantage. In addition, there's a captive within who, if freed, can aid the characters in navigating the place. These factors, combined with some clever tricks and obstacles, creates a memorable locale for both exploration and combat. 

The Lair of the Brain Eaters is an inventive, evocative, and unpretentious "meat and potatoes" adventure that I'd like to see more of – from Lamentations of the Flame Princess or any other publisher. I think it'd be an especially great fit for anyone playing North Wind's Hyperborea RPG, but it'd work just as well with any other fantasy game that draws inspiration from the pulps. I really enjoyed this one.

Arduin Map Collection

Dave Hargrave's The Arduin Grimoire (1977) and its two immediate sequels, Welcome to Skull Tower and The Runes of Doom (1978), are important artifacts from the first few years of the hobby of roleplaying and thus of great interest to all fans of old school gaming. These three books, often known collectively as The Arduin Trilogy, were not just mere flights of fancy by their creator, but outgrowths of Hargrave's home-brewed fantasy roleplaying game campaign, among whose hundreds of players was none other than Greg Stafford of RuneQuest fame. The Trilogy not only delighted many roleplayers during the '70s, but also included some of the earliest published artwork of Erol Otus.

Emperor's Choice Games, the current publisher and rights holder of Arduin, has big plans for Dave Hargrave's legacy, starting with the release of a large collection of maps based on those he made for his RPG campaign almost a half-century ago. These maps include not only the titular County of Arduin (an earlier version of which I positively reviewed fifteen years ago), but also maps of the continent of Khaora in which it is situated and the country of Chorynth as well. The new County of Arduin map is gorgeous and filled with lots of interesting and useful details.

If you're a fan of Arduin or just a lover of fantasy maps, please take a look.

Gamescience?

Can anyone recommend a reliable source of Gamescience precision polyhedral dice? They seem very difficult to find these days. Gamescience seems to maintain a website, but, based on its appearance, I'm not convinced it's still active. More to the point, the selection available there is quite limited. 

Alternately, are there any other manufacturers who make dice of similar appearance and quality? I'm not wedded to Gamescience as such. However, I don't like dice with rounded edges and most dice these days seem to be in that style. I'd happily acquire precision dice from another source if I knew of one.

Any suggestions?

From the Sorceror's [sic] Scroll

Way back in issue #11 of Dragon (December 1977), a new column appeared entitled "From the Sorcerer's Scroll." This was the image that accompanied the first appearance of the column.

The first three columns were penned by Rob Kuntz. With issue #14 (May 1978), Gary Gygax took over the column and a new image accompanied it.

Interestingly, the table of contents to issue #14 includes this:

In case the image above is too small to read, the title of Gygax's column is called "Sorceror's [sic] Scroll." That's a misspelling, albeit a very common one. In the next issue, the table of contents spells the word "sorcerer" correctly. However, in issue #18 (September 1978), the misspelling returns – before being fixed again in issue #19 (October 1978). However, the misspelling returns again in issue #23 (March 1979) and remains. The situation gets worse in issue #30 (October 1979), when the column gets new art.

Unlike the previous two bits of accompanying art, which spelled sorcerer correctly even when the table of contents was in error, the appearance of new art enshrines the misspelling permanently. You can even see it in the next iteration of the column's art, from issue #68 (December 1982).

I'm admittedly a stickler for correct spelling, so maybe I'm more sensitive to this sort of thing than are most people. Even so, "sorceror" is a pretty egregious misspelling, all the more so when it's clear that someone working on Dragon knew the correct spelling and would make adjustments to the table of contents when he saw the error. Interestingly, the magic-user level title of "sorcerer" is consistently spelled correctly throughout the history of Dungeons & Dragons, even in OD&D, which is notorious for its misspellings, typos, and other orthographical blunders. This makes me wonder what was going in the editorial offices of Dragon.

The Bad News Bugbears

While perusing issue #60 of Dragon (April 1982), I stumbled across yet another image of a bugbear I should have brought to your attention. This one appears in an April Fool's edition of the "Dragon Bestiary" with art by (I think) Jim Holloway.

Retrospective: Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords

Since I've already done Retrospective posts about the first, second, and fourth modules in the "Slave Lords" series, I thought it only proper that I should finally do one on the third, Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords. Written by Allen Hammack (best known for The Ghost Tower of Inverness) and released in 1981, module A3 is probably my least favorite of the four, perhaps because it reveals its origins as a tournament module even more obviously than do the others in the series. So much of its content and structure is contrived to test the skills of its players that it feels obviously artificial. That's a shame, because there are some genuinely good ideas here that, presented differently, might have been more successful. 

Having destroyed a caravan fort of the slavers in the previous module, the characters are now investigating a hidden mountain city reputed to serve as one of their main bases of operation. Reaching the city first requires a trek through cave tunnels to find its entrance. Once there, the characters must then descend into its sewers to locate the council chamber of the slave lords. Only at this point can they face off against them and hope to put an end to their depredations. 

If all that sounds convoluted, even improbable and tedious, you're right. There's a reason I called this module contrived. It's presented as a series of gauntlets – make it through the caves to find the city; through the city to find the sewers, etc. – the characters must run, each one filled not only with a lot of enemies but also with tricks and traps of all kinds. This probably works really well in a tournament, where each gauntlet is part of a different round of play, but, as a module to be used in campaign play, it leaves a lot to be desired.

The situation is made worse, I think, by the fact each section includes elements that strain credibility. For example, the mountain "caves" the characters must navigate to reach the city are actually a mazelike series of worked stone corridors. The slave lords clearly went to a lot of trouble to make them and then fill them with monsters and traps. The "city" of Suderham that serves as their base is really quite small (about 70 locations), a great many of which are taverns and "houses of ill repute." The referee is encouraged to flesh it out more fully, based on some limited details provided in the module. Perhaps that's enough, given its purpose here, but I find myself wishing for more. Almost nothing in this module feels naturalistic to me. Instead, it's all here to support a tournament experience and it shows.

Worst of all is the ending. Because this is the penultimate module in the series, the characters clearly cannot defeat the slave lords once and for all. Likewise, the next and final module in the series, begins with the characters defeated, stripped of their equipment, and thrown into a dungeon from which they must escape. Consequently, the module provides numerous ways to ensure that, no matter what else happens, the characters are captured so that they be thrown into said dungeon. I fully understand why this is the case, especially in a tournament situation, but it's deeply unsatisfying nonetheless. 

Despite all of my complaints, there's still a lot to like here. Suderham, while smaller and less detailed than I'd have wanted, has potential, given its location in a volcanic crater and nefarious character – a pity that it's unceremoniously destroyed in the next module. Likewise, the idea of exploring the sewers and encountering weird monsters, like a killer mimic and a crossbow-wielding minotaur, is great, even if its execution leaves something to be desired. Then there's the art by TSR's stable of Electrum Age artists like Jeff Dee, Bill Willingham, and Erol Otus, most of which is quite good and probably deserving a post of its own. Such a shame they weren't put to better use!

Speaking of halflings ...

The Articles of Dragon: "Singing a New Tune"

In starting this new iteration of The Articles of Dragon, I struggled a bit with deciding when to begin. The very first issue of Dragon I remember buying for myself – from Waldenbooks, no less – was issue #62, which features a phenomenal cover painting by Larry Elmore. However, I'd been reading the magazine for a few months prior to that purchase, largely thanks my friend's older brother, who acted as one of our gaming mentors. He had a collection of Dragon issues and we'd often sneak into his basement bedroom to read them when he was out of the house. 

Issue #56 (December 1981), with its memorable Phil Foglio cover, was among the issues in that collection and is thus the first Dragon magazine I ever read. It's not a great issue, at least in comparison to many of those that followed, but it has two articles in it that I remember quite vividly, the first of which I decided would be the first entry in this new series, whose purpose, after all, is to use old Dragon articles as an occasion to share memories of my early days in the hobby.

Written by Jeff Goelz, "Singing a New Tune" offers up "a different bard, not quite so hard" for use with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. AD&D's bard, as presented in the Players Handbook, is a bizarre and unprecedented multi-class/split class thing. A prospective bard begins play as a fighter. Then, after achieving a level between 5 and 7, he takes up thievery. He then abandons the thief class sometime between 5th and 9th level and becomes a bard proper. Why Gygax opted for this scheme is unclear, since Doug Schwegman's original bard class from Strategic Review, Vol. 2, issue 1 (September 1976) is a straightforward class without multiclassing. So different is this class than any other in the game that it's stuck in an appendix at the end of the PHB.

In his article, Goelz proposes to return bards to something closer to what was seen in the Strategic Review, albeit with numerous tweaks of his own. He begins with an amusing exchange between a DM and two half-orc NPCs, in which they discuss bards.

I was so taken with this dialog that, all these years later, I can still quote sections of it from memory. The idea of a Dungeon Master chatting with two non-player characters, who call him "boss," is quite funny to me for some reason. The dialog also serves the purpose of pointing out the problems with both previous versions of the bard class.

Goelz opted for a middle road between a wholesale rewriting of the class and a simple reworking of what had come before. He looked to the Welsh bard, both historical and mythical, for inspiration, using it as a guide for what aspects of previous bard classes to retain, to omit, or to alter. The result is, in my opinion, pretty good – simpler, more playable, and with a power level that's comparable to the other AD&D classes. Most importantly, Goelz's bard has a clear niche for itself as a loremaster with strong social skills and a smattering of druid and illusionist spells.

That list bit is important, because I think the real judge of whether the existence of a class is justified is its role within the game. Both previous versions of the bard were very broad classes with a wide range of skills and abilities that stepped on the toes of several other classes. This new one is much more unique, carving out a specific role that is not clearly served by any other class. That it's also mechanically less onerous is another point in its favor. That's why I was quite taken with it when I first read this article more than forty years ago.

At the same time, I've never been a huge fan of any version of the bard class. The bard has always felt weirdly specific – Goelz's version especially so – in much the same way that the monk did. In some campaign settings, a bard is perfectly reasonable and appropriate, while in others it would stick out like a sore thumb. My dislike is also probably a function of the people I've know who are boosters of the class: flamboyant, theatrical types with a penchant for extemporaneous poetry and song. I readily admit this is a me problem, not a bard problem as such, but it's there nonetheless. That's why I cannot recall the last time I've permitted a bard in any of my D&D campaigns. Were I to do so, however, I wouldn't hesitate to use the version in this article (or some variation thereof).

Tired of "Travelling?"

From issue #56 of Dragon (December 1981) comes this advertisement for Star Rovers, a science fiction RPG from Archive Miniatures & Game Systems. Nowadays, the game is mostly notable for the fact that Dave Hargrave of Arduin fame was one of its designers. I never saw it back in the day, so I can't comment on its contents or quality. However, the ad below suggests it was interesting ...

What Next?

Based on the reader response to the "A (Very Brief) Pictorial History" posts, this has proven to be a very popular series, which pleases me. With the publication of today's post on halflings, I've come to the end of those I'd originally had in mind to examine. However, I'm open to the idea of continuing the series, if there's still interest in my doing so. To do that, though, I need suggestions. About which Dungeons & Dragons monsters would you like to see pictorial history posts? 

As a reminder, here are the posts I've done so far:

• Bugbears
• Drow
• Elves
• Gnolls
• Goblins
• Halflings
• Kobolds
• Orcs
• Trolls

As you can see, there aren't even ten posts in this series, so there is plenty of scope for additional ones. My interest thus far has been in humanoid monsters and races, since they're often the ones whose appearances have varied the most over the years and that's fascinating. Of course, when their appearances don't vary, that's equally interesting and also worthy of examination. 

Before making any suggestions of possible additions, keep one thing in mind: the monster in question has to be commonplace enough to have appeared in multiple illustrations over the course of the TSR era of D&D. That means you won't be seeing "A (Very) Pictorial History of the Water Weird" or "A (Very) Brief Pictorial History of the Brain Mole" anytime soon – unless there really is some vast store of illustrations I've somehow overlooked. Stick to well used and iconic monsters and there's a better chance I can be swayed to write about them.

No – don't even ask.

Mesmerized by Sirens

Though I've now been blogging for almost as long (if not as prolifically) as I had prior to my break, I still can't help but think of the period between 2008 and 2012 or thereabouts as something of a Golden Age for the Old School Renaissance. While the seeds of what would become the OSR were planted on forums like Dragonsfoot and ODD74, its true flowering occurred on blogs. By the time I started Grognardia in March 2008, there were already many blogs devoted to old school RPGs, particularly Dungeons & Dragons. Over the course of the next couple years, their numbers were swelled by many, many more, leading to a remarkable intellectual ecosystem where the history of our hobby was remembered, celebrated, and debated with incredible vibrancy. It truly was an incredible time and I often find myself nostalgic for those days.

An important aspect of those days was how often bloggers would refer their readers to posts on other blogs, whether to comment upon or even criticize them. Despite the claims by some that the OSR was an "echo chamber," anyone who was deeply immersed in the scene at the time can easily refute that. Far from being a hivemind, the early Old School Renaissance was a fractious, cantankerous place, filled with big ideas and big personalities, not all of whom saw eye to eye on every issue. Back then, it seemed as if there were a new "controversy" every week and, while that could be vexing, these squabbles regularly provided an opportunity to hash out questions of wider interest. 

I used to read lots of other blogs, because I felt it was important that I keep abreast of what others were writing. Sometimes, that was a lot of work and I won't deny that the first iteration of this blog eventually wore me out to the point of disaster. Consequently, when I returned to blogging in 2020, I vowed I wouldn't exhaust myself in the way I had previously. I'd write less often and only when I felt I had something of interest to say. Grognardia was an avocation, not an occupation and I should treat it as such. For the most part, that's worked out well enough, but there's still a part of me who misses the roiling, chaotic ferment of the old days. They burned me out, yes, but they also produced a lot of great stuff.

That's why I was cheered to discover that a blog I've long enjoyed, Mesmerized by Sirens, has a new post for the first time in three years. Subtitled "the Sanctuary of Old Fantasy Role Playing Games," Mesmerized by Sirens is a great resource for information about not merely old RPGs but obscure ones – games like Bifrost, Melanda, Phantasy Conclave, Castle Perilous, and more. If you're at all interested in the dark corners of the hobby's history, I recommend you take a look. I hope that, if enough people do so, it might encourage its author to keep writing.

Do you have any defunct blogs you'd like to see return to life?

Juego de Rol de Ciencia Ficción Imperial

As many of you know, I wrote a science fiction roleplaying game called Thousand Suns. While not strictly speaking an old school RPG, it is my love letter to the "imperial science fiction" literature of the period between the 1940s and '80s – authors like Poul Anderson, Bertram Chandler, Frank Herbert, Larry Niven, H. Beam Piper, and Jerry Pournelle, among others. 

Outremer Ediciones recently published a translation of the game into Spanish. I received a copy of the translated version last week and was so pleased by how nicely it turned out that I had to share a few photos.

Here's a chapter spread:

Outremer also sent me a pair of special D12 dice for use with the game. That's something I wanted to have made for the original English version, too, so I was tickled to receive these.

This is (I think) the first time that something I've written for publication has been translated into a foreign language. It's been a fun experience and I'm grateful to Outremer Ediciones for having done such a terrific job with Thousand Suns.