Ruins

Blogs were the tinder from which the fire of the Old School Renaissance was sparked. In the late 2000s and early 2010s, there was a genuine explosion of creativity across the RPG blogosphere, fueled by enthusiasm for old school Dungeons & Dragons and its many descendants, both literal and spiritual. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of blogs appeared, written by referees, players, professional designers, and amateur theorists eager to share ideas, reminiscences, house rules, and reflections on what made the earlier, pre-3e versions of D&D so compelling.

Grognardia was one of them and, like many others, it eventually went quiet. Real life has a way of asserting itself and even the most passionately pursued hobbies often yield before it. I was away from this blog for nearly eight years before returning and, somewhat to my surprise, the years since are more numerous than those before my hiatus, even if I no longer post at the same manic pace that nearly destroyed me. Unfortunately, many other wonderful blogs from that era haven’t returned. Most still exist in some fashion. You can find them if you look, but they are, for all practical purposes, ruins: silent, abandoned, and sometimes crumbling under the slow decay of broken image links and expired widgets.

That saddens me.

The OSR blogosphere was, in many ways, the intellectual and creative heart of a movement none of us fully understood while it was happening. Before social media transformed everything into a fast-scrolling feed of ephemeral opinions and algorithmic noise, blogs allowed for longer, more thoughtful engagement. There was conversation between blogs, even, perhaps especially, when we disagreed, as we frequently and passionately did. Posts would spark responses, build on shared ideas, or spin off in wild new directions. Someone would post a new take on alignment or a character class, and within days, if not hours, half a dozen other blogs would riff on the idea in a cascade of strange and wonderful interpretations. That kind of idea-driven collaboration was a joy to witness and to be part of.

Every so often, I revisit some of my old bookmarks: Sham’s Grog & Blog, Planet Algol, The Nine and Thirty Kingdoms, Beyond the Black Gate, The Society of Torch, Pole, and Rope, Malevolent & Benign, The Mule Abides, A Paladin in Citadel, Dreams of Mythic Fantasy, and many more whose names, sadly, I can no longer recall. Some blogs ended with a fond farewell. Far more simply stopped. A few sputter back to life from time to time, like torches catching momentarily in the damp before going out again.

I don’t blame anyone for moving on. We all have our seasons and many of those who once blogged now create elsewhere or simply play games without publicly sharing their thoughts. I did the same for a long while and there’s definitely something to be said for it. Still, I miss that earlier era, not just the quantity of content, but the spirit behind it. I miss the curiosity, the delight in obscure mechanics and half-forgotten rules, and, above all, the reckless, unfiltered creativity. I think a lot of us needed that back then. I know I did.

Much of that creative energy has since shifted to platforms like Discord, Reddit, Substack, or YouTube. Each has its own strengths, but none really replicates what the old blogs offered. Blogs were open and long-form. They rewarded thoughtfulness over immediacy. They were searchable and, maybe most importantly, linkable. You could stumble across a blogroll and find yourself falling into a rabbit hole of interconnected creativity that might last hours. That’s much harder to do now, where so much is hidden behind logins or paywalls or simply submerges into the stream of slop.

We can’t go back to 2009. I know that. Still, it’s worth remembering what was lost or at least what was left behind. Maybe, if a few more of us keep our torches lit, something like it can grow again – not a recreation but a continuation of the same spirit.

As any D&D player knows, ruins are places where treasure is found.

Memories of Game Stores Past (Part III)

I'm old, old enough to remember a time when the local game store was not merely a place to buy things. It was a crossroads, a hub for roleplayers, wargamers, and fans of genre fiction of all stripes. In those days, game stores felt weird in the best possible way: crammed with strange titles, eccentric proprietors, and regulars who treated the place like a second home. They were cluttered, often a bit dingy, and absolutely magical.

I spent countless hours in such stores. I remember walking through their doors and being hit by the smell of old cardboard and newsprint and the sight of wooden shelves bowed under the weight of too many Avalon Hill and SPI boxed wargames. You could browse freely, picking up games you’d never heard of, flipping through rulebooks that transported you to strange new worlds. If you were lucky, someone might be running a game in the back room – and if you hung around long enough, you might even get asked to join.

That’s how I discovered many of the games that shaped my tastes and interests. This was long before carefully curated social media feeds or electronic publisher newsletters, when sheer chance might introduce you to a captivating cover, a staff recommendation, or a game in progress that caught your attention. The old game store was a vehicle for discovery. It introduced me to lots of games I might never have found otherwise.

That kind of store, the kind I knew in my youth, is largely gone.

Certainly, there are still game stores out there, some of them excellent in their own way – but they’re not the same. Most of them survive today by focusing on collectible card games, miniatures wargaming like Warhammer, and modern boardgames. Roleplaying games, if present at all, are often confined to a few shelves of familiar titles from major publishers. The walls of obscure and idiosyncratic RPGs I once browsed for hours have mostly vanished.

The reasons aren’t mysterious. The Internet changed everything. Online retailers offer discounts and immediate availability that physical stores can’t hope to match. Digital publishing has displaced print in many cases. Perhaps most significantly, online play, something I myself participate in weekly, has made many of the accessories that once sustained game stores obsolete. Why buy dice, for example, when a VTT takes care of it?

None of this is inherently bad. In fact, I think it's great that it’s never been easier to find people with whom to play, no matter where you live. As regular readers know, I referee or play in several weekly online campaigns with friends scattered across the world. Likewise, the indie RPG scene is thriving in ways that would been nigh impossible back in the 1980s. Yet, despite all this richness, I can’t shake the feeling that something important has been lost.

Serendipity. That’s what’s missing.

In my experience, the Internet is great at showing us more of what we already like. It’s less good at surprising us. In the absence of physical spaces where different genres, systems, and subcultures once collided, the RPG hobby has become more siloed. It’s entirely possible now to spend years playing RPGs and never stray beyond a handful of familiar games. That wasn’t the case when every trip to the store might reveal something you’d never seen before.

Back then, I had a much more eclectic gaming diet and not just because I was young and had more free time, though that’s certainly part of it. No, the environment encouraged it. Game stores were chaos. They were cluttered with possibilities and they invited you to take risks, to try something new. They were social, too, places where you talked with strangers, traded recommendations, maybe even rolled some dice together.

Today, many of the stores that still exist feel lonelier, at least to me. They’re quieter, more sterile, less open to chance. They sell games, but they rarely feel like places to do anything else.

I don’t say this to complain about change for its own sake. Much as I dislike it, change is inevitable and not all of it is unwelcome. However, I do think we’ve lost something intangible but important. The video rental store analogy fits here. It's true that streaming services offer more movies than any Blockbuster ever did, but no algorithm has ever replicated the joy of stumbling across something unexpected on the shelf or the spontaneous conversation with a fellow customer that convinced you to give it a try.

I miss that. I suspect I’m not alone in doing so. We may well be richer in options than ever before, but in some that I think matter, we are also poorer.

Grognardia Plus

Grognardia Plus by James Maliszewski

Some Additional Thoughts about Anthologies

Read on Substack

Retrospective: The Sentinel

Published in 1983, module UK2, The Sentinel, is the first part of a two-module series written by Graeme Morris for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Along with its sequel, which I’ll discuss in this space next week, it stands out as a distinctive offering in TSR’s early ’80s catalog. That’s due in large part to its origin in TSR UK, the British branch of the company, which operated with a surprising degree of independence and a sensibility very much its own.

TSR UK’s adventures have always provoked strong reactions. In my view, they’re a mixed bag, but a fascinating one. Where American modules of the time tended to emphasize dungeon-crawling and large-scale combat, the UK efforts often followed a more eccentric path. They leaned toward investigation over exploration, diplomacy over combat, and mood over spectacle. Instead of clearing rooms of monsters, players were expected to unravel plots, decipher motives, and navigate social situations. This approach didn’t always succeed, but even when it faltered, it offered something offbeat and refreshingly different from the norm.

The Sentinel is a low-level adventure for characters of levels 2–5, centered around the recovery of a magical artifact, the titular Sentinel, a sentient glove created to oppose its darker counterpart, the Gauntlet. The action unfolds around the village of Kusnir, nominally part of the World of Greyhawk, though it feels pretty generic to me. What begins as an investigation into a series of disturbances blamed on a skulk gradually reveals a more complex situation involving half-orcs, xvarts, and a ruined villa that hides a long-buried secret. Eventually, the player characters track down the skulk, who unexpectedly hands over the Sentinel and sets the stage for the events of the module's sequel, The Gauntlet (which I'll discuss in this space next week).

The inclusion of monsters from the Fiend Folio, like the aforementioned skulk and xvarts, deserves comment. TSR UK often seemed eager to showcase that volume’s more obscure entries, and The Sentinel is no exception. Whether these monsters enhance or detract from the module depends on taste, I suppose. For my part, I find many of the Fiend Folio humanoids underwhelming and nothing about the way they're used here really changes my mind. They serve their purpose, but they could easily have been swapped for more familiar creatures without much loss. Of course, your mileage may vary.

Even so, the module has its charms. Chief among them is the Sentinel itself, the magical glove that gives the module its title. Far from a simple item, it acts as a character in its own right, one with an agenda and a role to play in guiding the player characters. This combination of grounded, even mundane rural fantasy with sudden flashes of the mythic or uncanny was a hallmark of TSR UK’s best work. It’s a tricky balance, but when it works, as it sometimes does here, it gives the adventure a distinctive tone that distinguishes it from its contemporary American counterparts.

The larger, underlying plot of the module only emerges through observation, deduction, and careful play. There's a sense that the players are uncovering something hidden rather than being dragged from one set-piece to the next, even though there are several times when UK2 verges on becoming a railroad. Many of the module's encounters hint at something older, deeper, and just a little uncanny. The overall effect borders on folk horror of the kind where the land remembers and the past never quite stays buried. I like that.

Of course, The Sentinel is only half the story. Its sequel, The Gauntlet, continues and ultimately resolves the conflict introduced here. That’s perhaps The Sentinel’s biggest shortcoming as a standalone module: it presents an intriguing premise but offers little in the way of resolution. Earlier AD&D module series, like Against the Giants or the Slavelords series, generally made more of an effort to make each installment satisfying on its own. The Sentinel, by contrast, feels deliberately unfinished, a prolog more than a full scenario. I'll have more to say about this in next week's Retrospective post.

Worthy of mention is the module's presentation. The artwork, by Peter Young, is not particularly strong. The cover and interior art are weirdly stylized and, in my opinion, amateurish. It may not be literally he worst art to ever appear in a Dungeons & Dragons product, but it's a strong contender. By contrast, the cartography by Paul Ruiz is clean, readable, and highly functional. I’ve praised Ruiz’s maps before and those in The Sentinel are up to his usually standard. His maps are among my favorite things in the TSR UK modules.

Looking back on The Sentinel now, I find myself appreciating it more for what it tries to be than for what it actually is. It’s a thoughtful module that respects the intelligence of its players and the subtlety of its world. Compared to more "traditional" approaches to adventure design at the time, The Sentinel hinted at something different – not quite "story"-driven but certainly more consciously aware of a narrative or plot. That has its advantages and disadvantages, of course, which is why I don't like it unreservedly. Instead, I look on it as an experiment with mixed results, especially when taken on its own rather than as the first part of a two-part scenario.

The Articles of Dragon: "Preventing Complacency in Traveller Gaming"

As I explained last week, the Ares Section of Dragon was an absolute favorite of mine during the period when I subscribed to the magazine. Consequently, many of the articles I remember most vividly from those years appeared within it. That should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me, since science fiction is my true love and, until the advent of the Ares Section, sci-fi articles in Dragon were comparatively rare. Now, I had several of them every month and I couldn't have been happier.

Issue #85 (May 1984) contained a good example of the kind of article that stuck with me for years afterward. Entitled "Preventing Complacency in Traveller Gaming," it was written by Roger E. Moore. Though only two full pages long, it packs a lot of great ideas and advice into it. Moore's premise is that it's easy, after years of playing Traveller, to start seeing the universe it depicts solely through the lens of its world generation tables. For seasoned players, the shorthand of the Universal World Profile (UWP) is both strangely comforting and something of a straitjacket. 

That's why Moore issued a friendly but firm warning in this article to veteran referees and players alike: don’t let those numbers lull you into a false sense of understanding. The UWP might provide a useful framework, but the real work of building compelling science fiction locales lies in what you do with that framework. In fact, he argues, the surface-level rigidity of Traveller’s world generation system presents a terrific springboard for the imagination, if you’re willing to embrace ambiguity, interpretation, and the joys of contradiction.

The article is thus something of a manifesto for imaginative refereeing. Moore gleefully dismantles the idea that a world with a size code of 0 must be "just an asteroid colony," instead proposing alternate interpretations. Perhaps, he suggests, it’s a massive orbital station or a rogue moon or even a city-sized relic orbiting a dead star. A tainted atmosphere might not just mean smog; it could signal hallucinogenic pollen, post-volcanic ash clouds, or trace gases that cause skin to fluoresce. Hydrographics might imply steaming oceans or acidic lakes or frozen continents skated across by iceships. His point is not to throw away the UWP, but to complicate it and to turn it into a prompt rather than a constraint.

What Moore suggests here is, of course, accepted wisdom among longtime Traveller referees nowadays, but, at the time, I don't recall its being so. Consequently, I found the article almost revelatory in the clever way it reminded the reader that the numbers of the UWP are just the beginning. The real act of world building comes from asking, “What else could this mean?” A participatory democracy on a low-tech world? Maybe it’s a direct voting system controlled by a sentient AI with its own motives. A law level of 9? That could mean total disarmament – or an arms-free society hiding behind widespread telepathic enforcement or ritualized violence. The possibilities are endless.

Perhaps Moore’s greatest gift in the article is his encouragement to take nothing for granted. He delights in the idea that official UWP data could be wrong, misleading, or faked. He points out that tech level is a poor predictor of what’s available, let alone what’s culturally important. He reminds us that a government can call itself one thing and behave like another. He also notes that rapid change, chaos, and revolution are just as true to a science fiction setting as any neat planetary entry in a subsector catalog.

What I found especially useful when I read the article forty(!) years ago is that Moore doesn’t reject the UWP system or advocate abandoning this distinctive aspect of Traveller. Rather, he shows how to deepen and expand it. His is not a call for gonzo chaos or narrative fiat, but for interpretive richness and contextual layering. This is particularly useful in slower-paced campaigns, where the referee has time to imbue each world with history, nuance, and surprise. A jump-2 merchant route then becomes a journey through half a dozen genuinely unique cultures, each shaped as much by what's not revealed by the UWP as by what is.

What makes “Preventing Complacency in Traveller Gaming” still worth reading decades after its publication is not just the soundness of Moore’s advice, but the spirit in which it’s offered. As he so often is, Moore is playful, generous, and imaginative. He invites Traveller referees to breathe life into the game by treating each world as an adventure waiting to be discovered rather than a string of stats to be decoded. As a teenaged fan of Traveller, Moore’s article gave me permission to push beyond the rules as written and encouraged me to make the Traveller universe feel as strange as I could imagine it to be. This why this article has stayed with me all these years and why it still deserves to be remembered.

Best Introductory Scenario(s)

Let’s keep this short and sweet: what do you think is the best introductory scenario ever written for a roleplaying game and why?

At the end of last month, I posed a similar question focused on Call of Cthulhu. This time, I’m widening the scope to include any RPG published from 1974 to the present. I already have a few favorites of my own, which I’ll be sharing in some upcoming posts, so I won’t give away my picks just yet.

What I am eager to hear are your choices, especially the reasons behind them. As I’ll explain later, it’s the why that really interests me. What makes a scenario a great introduction to a game or even the hobby as a whole? What stuck with you? What worked for your group?

If a Game Falls in the Forest

In discussing the possibility of roleplaying games being invented in another era, I soon found myself thinking more and more about the actual history of the hobby, particularly its beginnings. That’s because every so often, someone unearths an obscure set of notes or recalls the private campaign of a long-forgotten hobbyist and claims that roleplaying games were created before Dungeons & Dragons, sometimes long before. According to these accounts, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson merely popularized the form, while others were its “true” inventors.

I understand the impulse. Recorded history often overlooks lesser-known figures and it's right to acknowledge the contributions of pioneers who laid the groundwork for later developments. That said, I have difficulty crediting anyone as the “father” of a hobby unless he shared his creation in a way that made it accessible, intelligible, and, most importantly, replicable by people outside his immediate circle.

This may seem a narrow definition of invention, but I believe it’s essential, especially in the case of roleplaying games. A private amusement, even if it includes characters, rules, and imaginative scenarios, does not a new hobby make. Countless clever diversions have lived and died in obscurity, forgotten or never known at all. If no one beyond its creators can play, understand, or build upon it, then its significance is limited at best. To put it bluntly, if a roleplaying game existed in, say, 1958 but was never published, never disseminated, and never expanded beyond its original group, it may as well have never existed.

To put it somewhat flippantly, this is the creative equivalent of the old philosophical question, "If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?" Did a roleplaying game “exist” in any meaningful way before D&D if no one else could participate in or reproduce it? My answer is: not really.

To invent something isn’t simply to stumble upon a novel idea. It’s to realize that idea in such a way that others can use, learn from, and transform it. That’s the true achievement of Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax, an achievement no one else can claim. They didn’t just play a new kind of game. They wrote down its rules, organized them, and, however clumsily at first, published them so that others could do the same. No one else had done that before. Here, I think we must be honest: it was Gygax who did the lion’s share of this work. Arneson brought his imaginative brilliance and the experience of his Blackmoor campaign, without which roleplaying games as we now know them would have been impossible, but it was Gygax who hammered the concept into something others could use and got it into print.

With Gygax's efforts in this respect, Dungeons & Dragons would probably never have been published. Instead, we might still be sifting through the remnants of the Twin Cities wargaming scene, piecing together anecdotes about some curious experiment in fantasy miniatures Arneson and his friends played in the early '70s. Because of Gygax, we got three little brown books that any reasonably curious teenager could pick up, read, and use as a blueprint to build worlds of his own. That’s invention in the fullest sense.

None of this is to diminish the role of earlier innovators like Dave Wesely, creator of Braunstein, or others whose names have been lost to time. They’re worthy of celebration. Each, in his own way, added ideas to a growing stew of influences out of which roleplaying coalesced. However, none of these predecessors synthesized those ideas into a coherent, replicable form, let alone shared them widely. They didn’t transmit the concept.

I think that's a distinction that matters. Creativity is common; invention is rare.

The history of games is full of apocrypha and alternate claimants. Perhaps someone did play something like D&D in the 1940s. Maybe there’s a letter buried in an archive describing a fantasy parlor game with a referee and evolving characters. If so, that’s fascinating, but it’s not the same as creating the roleplaying game as we know it today.

Invention isn’t about who got there first. It’s about who made it possible for others to follow.

Freedom Friday

Despite having refereed roleplaying games for more than four decades, I still suffer from what can only be described as stage fright. It’s not a new affliction. In fact, if I’m honest, I think I’ve felt it for most of my life as a referee and it hasn’t diminished much with time or experience. At the moment, I’m running three separate campaigns: House of Worms, Barrett's Raiders, and Dolmenwood. The first has lasted more than a decade, the second is entering its middle years, and the third is still in its relatively early stages. Yet, with each of them, without fail, I feel a familiar anxiety in the hours (and sometimes days) before every session.

My fear isn’t so much that I’ll “do it wrong” in some technical sense. It’s more that I’ll let my players down – that I’ll fail to be imaginative, that I won’t keep the game engaging, or that I’ll be caught flatfooted, like a deer in the headlights, with no idea what to do next. Mind you, my players aren’t strangers. In most cases, I’ve known my players for years, sometimes decades. They’re friends and long-time collaborators in this shared hobby of ours. Despite this, the fear persists: that I’m wasting their time, that the spell will break, and the game will sputter out.

The irony is that this fear tends to fade during the session itself. Once the game begins, once I see the players reacting, asking questions, scheming, laughing, I usually – usually – find myself caught up in the moment. The game world takes over and real-world anxieties fade into the background. But before the session (and sometimes afterward)? That’s when the doubt creeps in.

Fridays, for example, are often my most relaxed days of the week, not because of anything inherent to Friday, but because they’re farthest from my next scheduled session. I run games on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursdays, which means that, by Saturday, an internal countdown has already begun. The butterflies stir. I start second-guessing myself. Do I have any idea how I’m going to handle what may happen next?

To some extent, this isn’t really about preparation, at least not in the usual sense. I’ve long admitted that I’m a lazy referee. I don’t spend hours poring over notes or crafting detailed plans. Most of my prep consists of a few scribbled bullet points, some half-formed ideas, and a handful of hopeful notions about what might happen. I suspect that’s partly a defense mechanism. Too much planning stresses me out and tends to make me rigid at the table. I’ve learned that, for me, the best sessions are the ones where I stay loose and follow the players’ lead. Improvisation keeps me responsive. It keeps things alive.

Improvisation also leaves me exposed. When you haven’t mapped out every possibility, it’s easy to feel unready or worse, like you’ve been caught bluffing. Maybe that’s the root of the stage fright. It's the sense that I’ll be found wanting, that I’ll freeze up, that I’ll have nothing of value to offer when it matters most. I sometimes think there’s an unspoken belief that veteran referees, especially those with a lot of campaigns under their belt, must always feel confident in their role. To some degree, I do. I’ve run a lot of sessions that my players have told me they enjoyed. I’ve done this for a long time. I know I can do it.

Of course, knowing and believing in the moment are two very different things.

I'm sure I’m not alone in feeling this way. I suspect many long-time referees harbor similar doubts but rarely speak them aloud. In a sense, we’re all performers. Our "stage" is small, our "scripts" unwritten, and our "audience" made up of fellow performers who are just as invested as we are. Like all performers, we fear falling short, letting others down, not being good enough.

I’ve reluctantly come to accept this fear as just part of the process. I can’t say I enjoy it, but I’ve learned to live with it. If nothing else, it’s a reminder that what we do at the table matters. It matters to our players, certainly, but it matters just as much to us. We care. We want to do a good job, because the shared world we build with our friends is worth the effort and, yes, even the worry.

That’s why I love Fridays. I let myself enjoy that brief moment of calm before the tide of self-doubt rolls back in. I also remind myself that fear isn’t failure, but evidence that I still care a great deal about these games I play with my friends each week.

From the Brontës to Braunstein

The history of roleplaying games is, by now, well known, at least in broad outline. In the early 1970s, a handful of imaginative wargamers, drawing on a variety of inspirations, both literary and ludic – I hate jargon like that but I can think of no better word – devised a new kind of game. What began as an offshoot of miniatures wargaming blossomed into something wholly novel: Dungeons & Dragons, the first roleplaying game and the start of an entirely new hobby. What’s less often asked is whether something like D&D could have arisen earlier. Could roleplaying games have been invented, not merely in embryonic form, but recognizably so, decades before their actual debut?

It’s a question I was recently asked by a reader via email, though, as I told him in my reply, it's also one I've mulled over many times myself. On the one hand, it seems completely plausible. Human beings have always told stories, assumed roles, and imagined themselves as other people. On the other hand, roleplaying games, as we understand them today, require more than just imagination. They require rules, structure, and a framework for shared storytelling that’s open-ended but repeatable, not to mention playable by groups of people. That’s a tall order and one, I suspect, that might not have been fulfillable much earlier than it actually was.

Even so, I think it's a question worth exploring, as I told my correspondent. That's why I decided to devote this post to the topic, including some brief speculation about just what a roleplaying game produced prior to 1974, had it been created, could have looked like.

Before doing that, though, I wanted to offer a rough definition of what I mean by a "roleplaying game." To my mind, a roleplaying game is not just a game with characters or a narrative, but one in which players assume the roles of imaginary personas within a shared, evolving, fictional world. There must also be open-ended interaction with that world, adjudicated by a set of rules or by a human referee (probably both). In other words, the game must provide a mechanism for ongoing collaborative storytelling that can generate new situations, rather than merely following a pre-written script.

We can quibble about my definition and, truth be told, I'm not entirely happy with it, but I think it's good enough for my present purposes. Given the parameters, then, under what conditions could such a thing even arise?

To start, there must be a culture of play – not just childhood play, but adult leisure time devoted to structured, often abstract, pastimes. This criterion, I think, narrows the field considerably. While games of all kinds are ancient, hobby gaming of the kind that leads to things like miniatures battles, science fiction conventions, or fanzine communities is a fairly recent phenomenon. Prior to the mid-20th century, hobbies tended to be solitary (e.g. collecting stamps, building model trains) or social but formal (e.g. cards, chess, sports). The idea of imaginative, improvisational group play as a serious adult pursuit was likely a bridge too far for most societies until not all that long ago.

Then there is the economic component. RPGs are, by their nature, complex. They typically involve rulebooks, paper, dice, pencils, maybe miniatures, and a steady stream of new materials to read and incorporate. All of this presupposes access to affordable printing, widespread literacy, and sufficient disposable income to indulge in what is, quite frankly, a non-essential pastime.

Add to this the influence of fantasy literature, particularly the kind that fosters immersion in imaginary worlds. While such literature absolutely existed prior to the 20th century – my Pulp Fantasy Library series includes multiple examples of what I'm talking about – the genre had not yet reached the critical mass needed to inspire a broader movement of readers-turned-creators. That wouldn't come until the rise of the pulps and, later, the mass popularity of J.R.R. Tolkien.

All of which is to say: I don’t believe roleplaying games were inevitable. Nor do I believe they could have arisen all that much earlier than they did. Nevertheless, there are a few intriguing possibilities worth considering.

Of all the earlier eras that might have given rise to something resembling a roleplaying game, the Victorian period is perhaps the most plausible. The Victorians were inveterate hobbyists, fond of catalogs, elaborate parlor games, and gentlemanly pastimes pursued with a zeal that often bordered on the obsessive. More significantly, they were among the first to develop formal wargames, none more famous than H.G. Wells’s Little Wars, published in 1913 (technically, post-Victorian, but I'm OK with that).

While Little Wars lacks the improvisational openness and character-centered focus of a true roleplaying game, it nevertheless offers tantalizing glimpses of the path not taken. For example, it encourages the invention of fictional armies and, by implication, fictional countries to support them. Wells himself recounts some of his battles in narrative terms, portraying himself and his opponents as imaginary generals leading imaginary forces, complete with strategic dilemmas and dramatic turns of fate. In this, one can detect the germ of roleplaying. With a slight cultural shift and a bit more emphasis on character over campaign, one can almost imagine Little Wars evolving into something more like a roleplaying game.

One might also consider the games of the Brontë children, consisting of invented worlds, described through stories, poems, and letters. Inspired by a set of toy soldiers given to Branwell Brontë in December 1827, the siblings each created an imaginary kingdom, complete with its own geography, history, and cast of recurring characters. These were private amusements rather than games in any formal sense. There were, for instance, no rules or adjudication, but they demonstrate that the impulse for immersive, serialized storytelling existed, even among children raised in relative isolation. The Brontës' creations are reminiscent in some ways to a referee’s campaign setting, continuously expanded and revised over time and in response to changing events within it.

What’s striking about these two examples is how each contains one half of what roleplaying games would eventually become. Wells provided rules and structured play, but his battles lacked characters in the personal, individual sense and unfolded largely without narrative continuity beyond what the players themselves imposed. The Brontës, by contrast, created intricate, evolving worlds filled with characters and stories, but they did so without any formal rules or mechanisms for shared adjudication. In both cases, the essential components were present but disconnected: storytelling without structure and structure without storytelling. What was lacking was a bridge between these imaginative impulses and the domain of systematized, collaborative play, a framework that could make private fantasy into a repeatable, transmissible experience shared by many. The alchemy of open-ended narrative bound to procedure – the heart of roleplaying games in my opinion – had not yet been discovered.

It was not until the interwar period that some of these conditions began to change. The rise of pulp magazines introduced vast new audiences to tales of fantasy, science fiction, and weird horror. These stories, though often formulaic, laid the groundwork for shared genres and tropes. Even more important were the fandoms that grew up around them, through letters columns, conventions, and amateur press associations. Consider, for example, that H.P. Lovecraft met some of his closest friends, many of whom went on to become influential writers of fantasy and science fiction themselves, through APAs to which he belonged.

These fan communities did more than read. They created. They wrote fiction, debated continuity, argued over setting and character details, and occasionally even imagined themselves in the worlds they loved. This tendency only deepened after World War II, as mass printing and distribution became cheaper and more accessible and science fiction and fantasy matured as genres. Early versions of LARPing, the Society for Creative Anachronism, and the first fantasy board games all emerged from this stew of fannish creativity. It is no accident that Gygax and Arneson also came from this world. Without it, Dungeons & Dragons could never have been created or, if it had been created, would never have found a large audience.

Had someone in the 1930s or 1940s attempted to create a roleplaying game, I suspect it would have looked very different from what we know today. Possibly, it might have taken the form of an elaborate correspondence game, with players sending letters in-character to a central referee, who adjudicated events and mailed back results. Alternately, it might have resembled a parlor game with scripted outcomes. In any case, I suspect it would have remained confined to a small circle of friends, passed between them alone and never published. All of these are intriguing counterfactuals, of course, but they also highlight how contingent the birth of the RPG truly was. It required more than creative individuals. It required the right cultural, economic, technological, and especially social context.

Could roleplaying games have been invented earlier than they were?

In theory, yes. In practice, I highly doubt it. Too many of the prerequisites simply weren’t present until the 1960s and early ’70s: the widespread embrace of fantasy fiction, the do-it-yourself ethos of fandom, the democratization of leisure, and a new cultural openness to improvisation and play. It’s tempting to view RPGs as inevitable, as something that had to happen, but history rarely works that way. In another timeline, Gary Gygax might have remained an insurance underwriter and Dave Arneson a gifted but obscure tinkerer with wargames rules. The creation of Dungeons & Dragons was, in many ways, a happy historical accident.

Even so, it's fun to imagine a world in which Edwardian gentlemen gather in a smoky drawing room, taking on the roles of Martian adventurers or subterranean explorers, while a bespectacled referee consults a sheaf of densely typed rules from behind a screen and invokes the power of the d12. Alas, it never happened nor was it likely to have done so.

The Shadow Over August

August marks the birth month of H.P. Lovecraft, whose peculiar vision has cast a long and often unsettling shadow over the realms of fantasy, science fiction, and horror. In recognition of this, I’ve decided to devote the coming month here at Grognardia to what I’m calling The Shadow Over August, a series of posts exploring the life, legacy, and influence of the Old Gent from Providence.

As I mentioned earlier this week, Pulp Fantasy Library will be returning in August on a trial basis, in part to honor Lovecraft and his contributions to the weird tale. However, I’ve since come to feel that this alone isn’t enough. Lovecraft’s presence deserves to be felt more widely across the blog. In addition to literary retrospectives, I’ll be delving into Call of Cthulhu and other Lovecraft-inspired roleplaying games, considering both their origins and their enduring impact on the hobby. I’ll also be sharing thoughts on Lovecraft’s broader influence on gaming, fantasy, and science fiction, along with outlines for two Call of Cthulhu projects I began many years ago but never finished. With luck, they may yet prove useful (or at least thought-provoking) to others.

This isn’t intended as an exhaustive or scholarly treatment of Lovecraft’s work. Rather, The Shadow Over August is a personal exploration of the ways his idiosyncratic imagination continues to shape the creative pastimes so many of us enjoy, often in ways we scarcely notice. Whether you’re a long-time admirer of Lovecraft or simply curious about his lasting presence in the hobby, I hope you’ll join me in the weeks to come as I shine a light, however briefly, on this strange and enduring figure.

The Shape of the Heavens

Sing, Muse, of the noble dodecahedron, twelve-faced and true, 
So oft neglected in the clattering chorus of polyhedral dice! 
Raise now a hymn to the least loved of gaming’s solids.

Pity the poor d12! Always the bridesmaid, never the bride. The d20, that lumbering golf ball of chance, sees far more use, while even the d4, a caltrop in disguise, is remembered (if only by the soles of our feet). But the d12? Forgotten. Neglected. Dare I say underappreciated?

Yet, what a die it is! Twelve equal pentagonal faces, each meeting at broad angles. Indeed, the dodecahedron is the shape Plato associated with the heavens themselves, the cosmos rendered in acrylic or resin. According to some ancient sources, the gods used d12s when rolling for Fate. Who needs the Pythia when you’ve got precision-milled polyhedra?

Physically, the d12 may be the most satisfying die to hold. Substantial without being bulky. Perfectly symmetrical. It rolls with purpose. It doesn’t skitter like a d4 or overdo it like percentiles. The d12 knows what it’s about. It rolls once and rolls well. There’s something reassuring in that.

But what is it usually asked to do? Calculate long sword damage against large opponents. Serve as the hit die for the barbarian. It's the gaming equivalent of being called in to move a couch. Even the d10, that irregularly-shaped interloper, has muscled its way to the top of the pile, if only for percentile rolls. The d12? Banished to the edge of the table, like some exiled aristocrat.

I've done my part to rectify this injustice in Thousand Suns, where the d12 takes its rightful place at the center of the action. Why? Because it deserved better. Because it felt right. Because when I picture futuristic exploits in a sprawling interstellar empire, I don’t want to roll a pyramid or a cube. I want a Platonic solid whose geometry is touched by the divine. I want the Golden Ratio embedded in plastic.

So, here’s to the d12: noble, overlooked, and elegant. May we find more uses for it at our tables – and more excuses to hear its satisfying clatter. After all, if it's good enough for the heavens, it ought to be good enough for us.

The Best of Grognardia

I promise it's not my intention to constantly steer readers toward my new Substack newsletter. That said, since it’s still a relatively new venture, I want to make sure regular readers of the blog know what’s happening. I’m using the newsletter as a dedicated space for my RPG writing and design content, while this blog will continue as always with its usual fare. Think of the newsletter not as a replacement, but as a companion to Grognardia, another outlet for ideas that might not always fit here.

With that in mind, I’ve just posted a sort of follow-up to last week’s Preserving Grognardia, where I share more of my current thoughts and early plans for a possible Grognardia anthology (or even a series of them). If that sounds intriguing, you can check it out via the link below.

The Best of Grognardia by James Maliszewski

What Are You Favorite Posts?

Read on Substack

Retrospective: Hall of the Fire Giant King

Like its predecessors, Steading of the Hill Giant Chief and The Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl, Hall of the Fire Giant King (AD&D module G3) casts the player characters in the role of elite agents tasked with stopping a wave of giant-led attacks against civilized lands. At first glance, G3 seems to follow the familiar pattern established by the earlier modules: a dangerous foray into the stronghold of a powerful giant chieftain, bristling with guards, traps, and treasure. However, Hall of the Fire Giant King subtly but significantly shifts the tone and scope of the series. In the volcanic fortress of King Snurre Ironbelly, the stakes begin to change. The fire giants are stronger, more disciplined, and clearly part of a larger, more organized force. Most crucially, they are not acting alone. Hidden deep within their halls are strange and powerful allies – the drow.

The appearance of the drow, mysterious and only briefly described here, marks a pivotal moment not just in the G-series but in the history of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons itself. This is their first true introduction into the game, beyond a cursory reference in the Monster Manual, and it opens the door to something far more expansive. In retrospect, the drow are the most significant legacy of this module and G3 is the seed from which they (and the subterranean realm from which they come) would grow. The drow would, of course, go on to take center stage in the celebrated D-series (Descent into the Depths of the Earth, Shrine of the Kuo-Toa, and Vault of the Drow) and in Queen of the Demonweb Pits. While those later adventures are better known and more ambitious, it is here, in Hall of the Fire Giant King, that the broader arc first begins to unfold. Gary Gygax’s decision to place these enigmatic figures behind the scenes of the giants’ uprising was a masterstroke, one that quietly expanded the narrative scope of what a D&D adventure could be.

In terms of presentation, Hall of the Fire Giant King also reflects the transitional state of adventure design in 1978. Like its predecessors, it was originally created for tournament play, which explains both its high level of difficulty and its emphasis on tactical combat. There is little in the way of exposition or character development. The fire giants certainly have motivations, but Gygax rarely dwells on them. Instead, they exist primarily as obstacles to be overcome. Much of the module consists of populated chambers, heavily guarded halls, and defensible choke points, all spaces presented for intense, deadly conflict. Success demands planning, coordination, and no small amount of caution. This is adventure design in its raw, uncompromising form, rewarding player skill and punishing incaution.

Yet even within this sparse and utilitarian framework, there are hints of something more. Secret doors lead to hidden levels. Mysterious altars and magical portals suggest the influence of otherworldly forces. Cryptic symbols and strange alliances point to deeper mysteries. Gygax may not linger on these details, but their presence invites speculation and discovery, encouraging referees to build upon them. In this way, G3 foreshadows the more expansive and narrative-driven modules to come, not only the D-series, but later experiments in long-form storytelling such as Dragonlance in the 1980s and the “adventure path” format popularized by Dungeon magazine in the early 2000s. Hall of the Fire Giant King doesn't tell a story in that modern sense, but it gestures toward one and that gesture proved enormously influential.

From the vantage point of the present, G3 may seem narrower in scope or rougher in execution than the adventures it leads into. I actually think that's part of its importance. As both the climax of the "Against the Giants" trilogy and the prelude to the D-series, it bridges two different modes of adventure design: the brutal, self-contained dungeon crawl and the broader, interconnected campaign. Without Hall of the Fire Giant King, the drow might never have become one of the game’s signature antagonists. More broadly, the ambition and structure of later adventures might have taken a very different form without this model to follow.

In the end, I feel Hall of the Fire Giant King is best appreciated not just as the finale of the G-series but as a threshold. It marks a turning point where the possibilities of adventure design began to expand, where dungeon crawls started evolving into epics. With its hidden depths, emergent story, and quiet worldbuilding, Gygax showed that even a tournament module could hint at vast, subterranean empires and the demon-goddess who ruled them. Its influence is subtle but foundational and its legacy lives on in the continuity it helped establish across TSR’s early adventures and the ambitions it inspired in generations of designers to follow.

The Articles of Dragon: "Luna: A Traveller's Guide"

 I subscribed to Dragon from issue #68 (December 1982) till #127 (November 1987). During that five-year period, my favorite section of the magazine – by far – was the Ares Section, which appeared in its pages each month from issue #84 (April 1984) until issue #111 (July 1986). That's because the Ares Section, as its name suggests, was devoted entirely to science fiction roleplaying games and, being even more of a sci-fi nerd than I am a fantasy one, this held a great deal of appeal for me. As you'll know doubt learn over the course of the coming weeks, many of my favorite and most beloved articles of Dragon appeared in the Ares Section and left a lasting impact on both my memories of the magazine as a whole and one my youthful imagination.

One of the interesting things the section's editors occasionally did was run series in which a topic was given an article devoted to showing how that topic was handled in a particular science fiction RPG. One of the first one (and one of the best) concerned Earth's satellite, the Moon. Over the course of five articles, the Ares Section treated readers to depictions of the Moon in Gamma World, Star Trek, Space Opera, Other Suns, and, finally, Traveller, the last of which is the subject of today's post. I found all these articles incredibly interesting, though, as you'd expect, the one for Traveller, appearing in issue #87 (July 1984), is the one most dear to my heart.

To begin with, the article in question was penned by none other than the creator of Traveller, himself, Marc W. Miller. That immediately lent it a high degree of importance in my young eyes. Miller was to Traveller as Gary Gygax was to Dungeons & Dragons: the final authority. Consequently, when his byline appeared on an article – which was rare, much rarer than Gygax – I took it very seriously. I took "Luna: A Traveller's Guide" as absolutely official and duly incorporated the information contained in it into my Traveller adventures and campaigns. 

Furthermore, the article described the Moon – or Luna, as it's called here – within the context of GDW's Third Imperium setting. For those unfamiliar with the intricacies of that setting, Earth (or Terra) is the homeworld of the Solomani, the "original" human race that evolved naturally on that planet. All other human races, like the Vilani and the Zhodani, descended from Terran humans transplanted to other worlds by the mysterious Ancients, a technologically advanced alien race that once roamed the galaxy 300,000 years ago. Terra and Luna are currently under military occupation by the Third Imperium, a consequence of losing the Solomani Rim War more than a century ago, when the Solomani attempted to secede from the Imperium.

It's against this backdrop that Miller presents his vision of Luna as a lightly populated scientific colony in orbit around the homeworld of humaniti (as Traveller spells the name of the human race taken as a whole). Miller provides information on the population and demographics of the Moon, its settlements and transportion, its politics, and, of course, its history. The latter is especially interesting, as it helps to provide additional details about the deep background of the Third Imperium setting, such as the Solomani discovery of jump drive and its role in the Interstellar Wars against the Vilani First Imperium. As a teenager, this was catnip to me, both as a Traveller fan and as someone who'd grown up in the afterglow of the 1969 Moon landing.

I loved it all, of course, but, re-reading the article now, I do wonder what people not as immersed in the Third Imperium setting would have thought of it. For example, there are lots of adventure seeds throughout the article, but almost all of them tie into some aspect of imperial history or some other unique aspect of the Third Imperium. That's not a unique "problem" to this article; the other treatments of the Moon are similar in this regard. However, it's something I noticed now and started to think about: how does one present an adventure locale that simultaneously leverages its connection to a particular setting while also providing something of interest/use to people who don't use or know much about that setting? This is a question I still struggle with to some degree and I suspect I'm not the only RPG writer who does so.

But, as I said, I didn't even notice it at the time. I was simply excited to learn more about the Moon in one of my favorite imaginary settings. From that perspective, "Luna: A Traveller's Guide" gave me everything I wanted and more. 

What's Next for Thousand Suns?

What's Next for Thousand Suns? by James Maliszewski

A Look at Plans Past and Present

Read on Substack

The Return of Pulp Fantasy Library?

Starting in August, I plan to revive the Pulp Fantasy Library series – at least for a month – as a bit of a trial run. Longtime readers will recall that this series was once a mainstay of Grognardia, where I looked at older works of fantasy, science fiction, and related media that either directly influenced or ran parallel to the early days of roleplaying. For this trial revival, I’ll be posting four entries, one for every Monday in August, each devoted to a story by H.P. Lovecraft I’ve never previously written about directly. August, after all, is the month of Lovecraft’s birth, making it an ideal time to give him his due.

Whether Pulp Fantasy Library continues beyond that will depend largely on reader interest.

As I’ve noted before, these posts are among the most time-consuming I write. They require not only re-reading the stories but also researching their backgrounds, thinking about their content, and then writing something worthwhile about them. That’s time I could otherwise be spending on Thousand Suns, Secrets of sha-Arthan, or any number of other creative endeavors.

To be clear, I’m not complaining: I wouldn’t even consider bringing the series back if I didn’t think it had value. However, I do want to make sure that value is shared by readers. If this is something you’d like to see more of, I’d appreciate hearing from you, whether through blog comments, emails, or other means. Grognardia has always thrived on the feedback and enthusiasm of its readers and your encouragement helps me decide where to focus my limited time and energy.

I’ve been feeling more creatively energized lately than I have in many years, perhaps even since the earliest days of the blog. Between that and the addition of my Substack, I have more outlets for my writing than ever, but also more decisions to make about what gets my attention. If Pulp Fantasy Library is something you'd like to see more of, this is the time to say so.

In the meantime, I hope you’ll enjoy this August’s quartet of Lovecraft posts. I’m looking forward to writing them.

Dungeons & Dreamscapes

I’ve often said I feel fortunate to have discovered Dungeons & Dragons when I did, before the dead hand of brandification settled over the game and drained it of the wild, untamed esthetic that once made it so visually compelling and culturally strange. In the years before D&D became a polished entertainment “property,” its visual identity was a chaotic collage of influences drawn from unexpected sources: psychedelic counterculture, turn-of-the-century Art Nouveau, underground comix, pulp magazines, and outsider art. Monsters leered with extra eyes and boneless limbs, while dungeons sprawled like fever dreams. There was a visual lawlessness to early D&D (and to roleplaying games more broadly) that mirrored the creative freedom of its rules. That freedom invited players to imagine fantasy worlds that were not simply adventurous, but also surreal, grotesque, and deeply personal.

These thoughts came back to me recently while flipping through some of the Dungeons & Dragons materials I encountered shortly after I took my first tentative steps into the hobby. Looking at them now, decades later, I’m struck not just by their content, but also by their form. Much of the art did not resemble anything I had seen before. It was crude at times, even amateurish by the standards of commercial illustration. Yet, it was also evocative in a way that transcended technique. These images did not so much depict a fantasy world as suggest one, obliquely, symbolically, even irrationally. Many felt like fragments from dreams or relics from some lost visionary tradition and, on some level, they were.

That tradition was a subterranean one, largely outside the orbit of mainstream fantasy art. Psychedelic poster designers, Symbolist painters, and zinesters working on the margins of the counterculture all contributed, consciously or not, to the strange visual DNA of early roleplaying games. Before branding demanded consistency and legibility, Dungeons & Dragons was porous enough to absorb all of it. The result was an esthetic that was both wildly eclectic and, paradoxically, cohesive in its weirdness. It didn’t feel like a mainstream product; it felt like artifacts from another world.

Today, it’s common to point to Tolkien as the primary visual and thematic influence on early D&D. His mark is real and unmistakable (despite what Gary Gygax wanted us to believe). However, when you examine the actual artwork that filled TSR’s products in the late 1970s and early ’80s – the era when I entered the hobby – you find yourself far from Middle-earth. Instead of noble elves and stoic rangers, you see grotesque creatures, warped anatomy, anatomical impossibilities, and alien geometries rendered in flat inks and, later, garish colors. This wasn’t the Shire. This was something older, more primal, and far stranger.

Where did this esthetic come from?

As I’ve already suggested, part of the answer lies in the psychedelic explosion of the 1960s. This was a cultural moment that sought to dissolve the boundaries between consciousness and art. Psychedelic artists like Rick Griffin and Victor Moscoso developed a visual language rooted in abstraction, distortion, and saturated color, a kind of sensory mysticism meant to evoke altered states. Concert posters and album covers became portals to other dimensions. Meanwhile, underground comix, like those of Robert Crumb or Vaughn Bodē, combined sex, satire, fantasy, and absurdism into worlds that gleefully rejected the conventions of good taste or coherent storytelling.

While Gygax and Arneson were not themselves products of this milieu, the audience they attracted often was – college students, sci-fi fans, and other oddballs shaped by the psychedelic visual environment of the late ’60s and early ’70s. I was younger than that cohort, a child in fact, not a teen or adult, but even I absorbed some of its esthetic currents. They filtered into my world through album covers, comics, cartoons, toys, and the hazy, low-fi look of the decade itself. I didn’t yet know what most of these things meant, but I nevertheless felt their strangeness. They stuck with me, shaping my imagination in ways I only later came to understand.

TSR, for its part, didn’t initially reflect these influences. Much of the earliest D&D art was traditional or utilitarian, inherited from the wargaming scene. As the game’s popularity exploded in 1979, TSR began to draw on a new crop of young illustrators, many of them influenced, directly or indirectly, by underground comix, countercultural poster art, and the lingering weirdness of the 1970s. Their work didn’t smooth out the chaos from which early D&D was born – it amplified it.

No one embodied this more than Erol Otus. His illustrations for the Basic and Expert boxed sets are among the most iconic in the history of the hobby, as well as some of the strangest. Otus’s monsters don’t just look dangerous; they look wrong, like something glimpsed in a fever or half-remembered from a dream. His color palettes are lurid, his anatomy grotesquely playful, his compositions uncanny and theatrical. His esthetic doesn’t belong to heroic fantasy. It belongs to a blacklight poster, hung next to a velvet mushroom print and a battered copy of The Teachings of Don Juan.

Otus, whether intentionally or not, brought the visual grammar of psychedelia into the core of D&D. In doing so, he captured something essential about the game: that it wasn’t just a fantastic medieval wargame; it was a tool for exploring the irrational, the liminal, the transformed. Other artists took up different parts of this same sensibility. Dave Trampier’s work, for example, especially his iconic AD&D Players Handbook cover, radiates a stillness and mystery more akin to myth or ritual than heroic adventure. Other similarly restrained pieces of early D&D likewise seem caught between worlds.

The same spirit is evident in third-party publications. Judges Guild modules are packed with crude, surreal illustrations that throb with symbolic weirdness. David Hargrave’s Arduin Grimoire goes even further. It's a deranged collage of cybernetic demons, magical diagrams, flying sharks, and bizarre maps that reads like D&D filtered through Zardoz. It’s no coincidence that Hargrave gave Otus his first professional credit. They were kindred spirits, working not within a genre, but along the outermost fringes of it.

Beyond psychedelia, another artistic thread ran through the background: the ornate, esoteric elegance of Art Nouveau. The flowing lines of Aubrey Beardsley, the sacred geometry of Alphonse Mucha, and the decadent mysticism of Gustav Klimt all haunt the margins of early RPG art. Beardsley’s illustrations for Salome or Le Morte d’Arthur look, at times, like direct ancestors to early D&D's depictions of witches, sorcerers, and demons. These fin de siècle influences were rediscovered during the 1960s counterculture and found their way, through posters, tarot decks, and zines, into the strange visual stew of early roleplaying games.

Even the dungeon itself is shaped by this visionary impulse. Early dungeons aren’t realistic structures. They’re mythic underworlds. They don’t obey architectural logic but symbolic logic, filled with teleporters, talking statues, secret doors, and fountains of infinite snakes. They’re not places so much as thresholds. To descend into a dungeon is to cross into a space where transformation of one kind or another is not only possible but expected.

That’s why so many early modules have such power decades later. Quasqueton, Castle Amber, White Plume Mountain, The Ghost Tower of Inverness – they’re not just combat arenas. They’re almost spiritual landscapes, mythic spaces presented as keyed maps. The artwork used to depict them conjures a mood, a worldview, a sense of mystery, inviting players to see fantasy not as genre convention, but almost as a moment of altered perception.

However, as D&D became a brand, this strangeness was steadily scrubbed away. Style guides were introduced. Idiosyncratic artists gave way to professionals. The game’s visuals became cleaner, more representational, more standardized. With that polish came a flattening of the imagination. D&D no longer looked like a vision; it looked like product.

This, I think, is what so many of us in the early days of the Old School Renaissance were reaching for, even if we couldn’t name it at the time. We were looking for the weirdness again, for the ecstatic, chaotic, sometimes unsettling energy that marked those early years. We remembered when fantasy didn’t have to be safe or heroic or respectable. We remembered when D&D looked like a door to Somewhere Else.

That's because fantasy, properly understood, is not an esthetic. It is a vision of the world tilted just enough to let the impossible shine through. Like the pioneers of science fiction and fantasy, the early artists of Dungeons & Dragons understood this. Otus understood it. Trampier understood it. So did Beardsley, Griffin, and countless anonymous illustrators working on mimeographed zines and early rulebooks in the 1970s. They weren’t just drawing monsters or dungeons. They weren’t just illustrating rules. They were revealing other worlds.

Epistle

Epistle by James Maliszewski

A Secrets of sha-Arthan 'Zine?

Read on Substack

CleriCon 2025

While I'm looking forward to attending Gamehole Con in mid-October, I have often bemoaned the fact that there aren't more RPG conventions I'd like to attend closer to home. That's why I was very pleased to discover the existence of CleriCon, now in its third year. Organized by The Dungeon Minister – a real-life cleric – it's a small but growing old school-focused convention in Glen Williams, Ontario (about an hour outside Toronto). 

I'll be running a Dolmenwood adventure at the con on Saturday, October 25. If any Grognardia readers should find their way to CleriCon, please drop by to say hello. That's probably my favorite thing about gaming conventions: the opportunity to meet my fellow roleplayers in the flesh rather than just online.

Interrogation Transcript

UNITED STATES MILITARY EMERGENCY AUTHORITY
INTERROGATION TRANSCRIPT
SUBJECT: Dennis Lagrange
AFFILIATION: Suspected New America insurgent
LOCATION: Fort Lee Temporary Holding Facility
DATE: 8 December 2000
TIME: 1934 EST
INTERROGATOR: Lt. D. McAllister
TRANSCRIPTION OFFICER: PFC R. Valdez
CLASSIFICATION: SECRET

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

LAGRANGE:

So that’s it, huh? You finally figured it out. Congratulations. Really. You're quicker than most of the grunts in that junta you call USMEA.

But let me ask you something: what are you gonna do about it?

Throw me in prison? Make another report to General Summers? None of it changes the math.

You think you're preserving something here. Order. Civilization. America. But you're guarding a corpse, friend. You're dressing up a dead empire and pretending it can still give commands. That flag you're flying? It's just a rag someone left behind when the bombs fell.

[Subject paces.]

You want to know the genius of it? No matter what you do, no matter what your bosses do, we win.

You try to be humane, feed a few starving mouths? Makes you look weak. Makes people ask why you’re feeding outsiders when your own patrols are running dry.

But maybe you get smart. Maybe you crack down. Shut the gates. Round people up. Shoot a few looters. Then you're the tyrants. The bad guys. You do our work for us.

That's the beauty of it. You're trapped in the old rules. We're writing new ones.

[Subject leans forward.]

You still don’t get it, do you? The war’s over. Not the fighting. Sure, that’ll drag on a while. But the war? That ended the moment your leaders ran out of answers and reached for the launch keys.

What’s left now is the reckoning. And New America ... we’re the future. The people know it. Hell, even you know it. You’re just too scared to admit it.

So go ahead. Lock me up. Kill me if you’ve got the guts.

Doesn’t matter.

We’re already inside the gates.

END TRANSCRIPT

NOTES: Subject displayed no signs of physical distress. Tone throughout was defiant and confident. No direct operational intelligence volunteered. Recommend psychological evaluation and further containment protocols.

FILED BY: Lt. D. McAllister
APPROVED: MAJ J. Whittaker, USMEA Intelligence Division
DISTRIBUTION: USMEA Command; Fort Lee Intelligence; NCR Threat Assessment Unit
CLASSIFICATION: SECRET
DO NOT DISTRIBUTE OUTSIDE CLEARED CHANNELS

Campaign Updates: Into the Woods

After a few weeks when the frequency of the Dolmenwood campaign was more sporadic than it had been in the past, we seem to be back on track. Meanwhile, the House of Worms and Barrett's Raiders campaigns continue to barrel along, with the former rapidly heading toward what is soon likely to be the consummation of more than ten years of play. 

Barrett's Raiders

The next scheduled supply run was in the late afternoon of December 7, 2000 – the date on which MLG-7 told General Summers they'd be leaving Fort Lee to head westward to Fort Pickett. Since Lt. Col. Orlowski doesn't like leaving work half-done, he decided it would be in the best interests of everyone involved if he and his unit made sure that no more supplies from the base were being funneled to New America. To that end, he asked Corporal Forest to accompany Specialist Huxley on the run. Meanwhile, other members of the unit would scout ahead, checking out the area where the hand-offs of supplies had been happening in the past, in order to be prepared.

The scouting party consisted of Lt. Cody, Sgt. McLeod, Michael, and Radosław. According to Huxley, the hand-offs happened near a side road accessible from the highway. The side road led to several industrial parks, where small businesses of various sorts were located. Most of the businesses looked to have been looted some time ago. Cody and McLeod split off to look more closely at these parks, while Michael and Radosław headed further down the road. One of the industrial parks contained a self-storage facility whose door was closed. Two men in an irregular mix of civilian and military garb, armed with rifles, stood near it. Further down the road was a large, concrete building that was apparently part of the local water authority. Michael observed two men with rifles patrolling that area as well.

The two groups radioed back to Orlowski, who told them to keep observing the guards. Once the supply truck arrived, there'd be a delay of a couple of minutes before the rest of MLG-7 arrived in their vehicles to prevent the escape of the guards and, presumably, anyone else associated with the hand-offs to New America. Everything more or less went as planned. The supply truck arrived at its designated spot near the side road. Shortly thereafter, five men, led by Denny Lagrange, appeared, with the goal of removing a couple of crates from the truck. This time, however, MLG-7 showed up, firing a warning shot from one of its vehicles. Lagrange and his men quickly surrendered.

The sound of the shot alerted the guards at the self-storage. One of them opened up a shed, went inside, and then, after a couple of minutes emerged. He then carefully closed the shed and the pair fled. Cody and McLeod shadowed them from a distance. To prevent the guards' from revealing anything to others, Sgt. Farley jammed their walkie-talkies. Cody alerted Michael and Radosław about the guards coming their way. They then laid in wait to surprise and capture them. Then, all four members of MLG-7 worked together to do the same to the guards at the water authority building. This left only their boss, a man called Layton, inside. He surrendered without a fight, just like the others. With all ten men captured, Lt. Col. Orlowski decided to return to Fort Lee so that they could be processed and interrogated.

Dolmenwood

With Emelda Wishorn now safely in their care, the question back what to do next. While Sir Clement thought that now was the time to confront Lord Malbleat and denounce him for his nefarious crimes, his companions were none too sanguine about the prospects of that working. Instead, it was suggested that perhaps it might be best for all concerned, especially Emelda, to flee the area of the Shadholme Lodge and head eastward toward Castle Brackenwold, with the goal of seeking the protection of the duke or some other powerful figure (perhaps Abbot Nedwynne?). 

Everyone agreed this was the best solution and, after a quick visit to Sir Clement's pavilion on the festival field, they departed, bringing everyone, including Sidley Fraggleton with them. Sidely desperately wanted to escape his impending nuptials to Celenia Candleswick, as well as evade the tender mercies of Sir Shank Weavilman, who had taken an intense dislike to him. In Sidley's mind, being on the run from Lord Malbleat was preferrable to that fate.

The plan was to avoid using the Ditchway road east, since, if Malbleat wanted to overtake them, it would be much easier to do so. Instead, they would brave the forest and marshes to the east, hoping to make their way to the Woodcutters' Encampment on the verge of Hag's Addle as a stopping-off point before continuing to Brackenwold. Waldra, in her travels, was somewhat familiar with the Camp and its people, so she suggested it would be a reasonably safe place to rest before resuming their journey to Castle Brackenwold. 

Along the way, the group traveled through an area reputedly inhabited by a murderous magician, another infested with the feared nightworms, and another containing trees ravaged by a recent fire. While all of these could well have been worthy of closer investigation, Waldra instead kept her companions moving forward. She did not want to slow down, lest Lord Malbleat's servants – if indeed they were coming – any opportunity to capture them. Just before nightfall, they reached the marshes outside the Camp, where the local vicar, Father Horsely, was out foraging for herbs with his dog, Clewyd. He welcomed them and accompanied back to the settlement, offering to find them a place to stay for the night.

House of Worms

With Prince Eselné's attack on Béy Sü's Temple of Sárku to begin at first light of the next day, it became ever more urgent that Kirktá figure out just what the seven items left to him by Míru did and how they might be useful in dealing with the problems at hand. Nebússa, in particular, was very keen that this matter be resolved and resolved quickly, since there was no longer much time left to investigate. Up till now, they had the luxury of being able to take their time and put things off until later. Now, they had to act. The very fate of Tsolyánu – and their place within it – hung in the balance.

One of the first items to which Kirktá and Keléno devote any effort is the thin scroll of leather that is warm to the touch and gently pulsating. After some experimentation, it becomes clear that the scroll is keyed to the thoughts of the person(s) looking at it. Any text the viewer knows to exist appears in full on the scroll, even if it's something he cannot read. The funerary mask, when placed in front of one's face, generates a low hum that affects the wearer's vision, hearing, and sense of touch, causing pain that increases over time. Kirktá eventually took it off once the pain began to induce actual physical damage to him. 

The amount of time spent experimenting with just these two items began to frustrate Nebússa, who repeatedly suggested that they needed to focus more deliberately on figuring out what all of the items did. Míru had clearly set them aside for a purpose. What was it? This led to much discussion – some of it paranoid – about whether or not Míru, as a secret priest of the One Other, had an ulterior motive in giving these items to Kirktá. What if he hoped he'd use them in a way that benefited the pariah god whom he served? Nebússa would have none of this. "Leave paranoia to the professionals," he joked.

That's when the group turned its attention to the mummified finger kept within a reliquary. Chiyé, as a lay priest of Sárku, could communicate with the dead, so long as he had the person's body or a part of it present. Why not use his sorcery to talk to whoever the finger belonged to? Perhaps he or she could shed some light on many of the questions that so vexed them? With everyone's agreement, Chiyé performed the necessary rituals and contacted the spirit-soul of the person whose finger it was – the First Tlakotáni, founder of Tsolyánu and the mysterious man who supposedly entered into a pact with the One Other millennia ago. If anyone could give them some answers, it was probably him ...