Dream-Quest: Character Origins

This is the first proper post about the Dream-Quest project I alluded to yesterday, for those of you who are interested. Like my other RPG projects, I'm keeping this one segregated from what I write here daily at Grognardia, especially now that The Shadow over August is drawing to a close soon. However, from time to time, I'll still make a post like this in order to remind readers about the existence of Dream-Quest and its progress.

More HPL in Astounding Stories

A story by H.P. Lovecraft appeared twice in the pages of Astounding Stories, the first of which was At the Mountains of Madness, serialized over three consecutive issues (February–April 1936). Later that same year, in June, another HPL story appeared, "The Shadow Out of Time," which is, in some ways, a thematic sequel to At the Mountains of Madness. (They both feature Professor William Dyer of Miskatonic University, for example).

Like its predecessor, "The Shadow Out of Time" was published with multiple illustrations, several of which are quite worthy of examination, like the one that appears opposite the first page of the story. Here, you can see two examples of the Great Race.

The next two illustrations depict several non-human species Professor Peaslee presumably encounters while a guest of the Great Race. Take note of the creature in the middle, which is similar, though not identical, to the artwork of the Old Ones (Elder Things) that had appeared in previous issues.

The checkerboard flooring in these illustrations is quite striking, though I don't believe Lovecraft's text suggests anything at all like it. In fact, as I recall, the floor is made up of octagonal stones. 

Here, we see the Great Race again. I find the fact that, despite their advanced technology, they still use books – and ones suitably large for their size. To be clear, this is a detail that Lovecraft himself includes in the story, so it's not an embellishment of the artist. That doesn't make it any less silly, though.

Lovecraft the Fantasist

When most people think of H.P. Lovecraft, I imagine most of them think of cosmic horror, with its visions of an indifferent universe, ancient alien gods, and humanity’s fragile place within the vast gulfs of space and time. They're not wrong to make that connection. After all, it’s the foundation of HPL's reputation and the source of his continued influence.

However, it’s only one side of him.

Alongside "The Call of Cthulhu" and At the Mountains of Madness, Lovecraft also wrote tales that are not horror at all but fantasy adventures after the fashion of Lord Dunsany or The Arabian Nights. These are the stories of the so-called "Dream Cycle" – "The White Ship," "The Doom That Came to Sarnath," "The Cats of Ulthar," and, of course, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, as well as many more. 

These stories are not about terror and despair but about journeys, quests, and the exploration of strange lands. Lovecraft's recurring literary alter ego, Randolph Carter, sails with merchants from far ports, climbs mountains to speak with gods, and braves enchanted cities. He is, in every sense, a pulp fantasy protagonist, however much his adventures unfold in dream. Likewise, Basil Elton, the protagonist of "The White Ship," travels to exotic islands “where dwell all the dreams and thoughts of beauty that come to men once and then are forgotten.” It is less a tale of horror than a fantastical voyage into the unknown, reminiscent of the voyages of Sinbad or Jason and the Argonauts.

Viewed in this light, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath looks very much like a full-fledged fantasy quest. Carter’s journey is replete with allies and adversaries, strange locales, and even battles. At one point, he sails “past the basalt pillars of the West,” at another he becomes entangled in the politics of Ulthar and the ghouls beneath the earth. His is a perilous but wondrous quest:

“Carter resolved to go with bold entreaty whither no man had gone before, and dare the icy deserts through the dark to the Cold Waste where Unknown Kadath veiled in cloud and crowned with unimagined stars holds secret and nocturnal the onyx castle of the Great Ones.”

It is difficult to read such passages and not see the outlines of a RPG adventure. Here are dangers, quests, treasures, and mysteries aplenty – all the standard ingredients of fantasy roleplaying, simply flavored with Lovecraft’s dreamlike melancholy.

Even Lovecraft’s shorter dream tales carry the same sense of fantasy adventure. In "The Doom That Came to Sarnath," we hear of an ancient city destroyed for its hubris, a lost civilization waiting to be explored by bold wanderers. In "The Cats of Ulthar," a law is established through the agency of uncanny allies, reminding us of the strange but binding rules that often govern a mythic setting. These are not horror stories in the usual sense at all but fragments of a larger imagined world, glimpses into a fantasy setting that could be as rich as Howard's Hyborian Age or Tolkien's Middle-earth.

Despite having certain similar trappings, like swords, sorcery, and epic struggles, Lovecraft’s Dreamlands tales have a somewhat softer focus. There are more quests and voyages than outright battles, more enchantment and peril rather than the struggle between good and evil. Where Howard’s Hyborian Age shows readers a world of raw survival and Tolkien’s Middle-earth a world of moral conflict, the Dreamlands are realms of longing, beauty, and half-remembered wonder. HPL's heroes rarely slay monsters to claim kingdoms. More often, they seek hidden truths, forbidden cities, or the distant gods of Earth.

Even so, there are similarities, too. Like Howard, Lovecraft peopled the Dreamlands with decadent civilizations, perilous sorceries, and monstrous foes. Like Tolkien, he gives us a secondary world with its own geography, history, and laws. The difference is perhaps one of emphasis. Howard’s heroes carve their fates with the sword, Tolkien’s with the burden of virtue, and Lovecraft’s with the dreamer’s restless desire to glimpse what lies just beyond the horizon.

It’s easy to imagine a roleplaying campaign shaped by these differences. A Dreamlands campaign would not be about conquering kingdoms like Conan, or saving the world like Frodo, but about exploration, discovery, and the pursuit of strange and beautiful mysteries. Characters would bargain with cats, ally with ghouls, cross seas to forgotten isles, and climb into the heavens in search of Kadath. Victory would mean glimpsing the ineffable, not necessarily surviving with treasure in hand.

Lovecraft the horror writer gets plenty of attention. Lovecraft the fantasist deserves some, too.

Lovecraft the Blogger

One of the curiosities of H.P. Lovecraft’s literary career is how little of his work was actually published during his lifetime. Only a modest number of stories appeared under his byline in Weird Tales or elsewhere. Despite this, his typewriter was rarely still. He was, after all, a writer, and writing, as any writer will tell you, is not something one can simply turn off.

What makes this paradox even more striking is the sheer volume of his correspondence. Lovecraft is estimated to have written somewhere between 60,000 and 100,000 letters. The exact number is impossible to know, since fewer than 10% survive today. Even if we take the lower estimate, it still makes him one of the most prolific epistolarians of the 20th century. These were not perfunctory notes dashed off in haste. Many ran to dozens of pages, dense with his thoughts on history, politics, philosophy, architecture, literature, science, and, of course, his own dreams and nightmares. For many of his correspondents, a letter from Lovecraft was less a personal communiqué than a miniature essay.

It was in these letters, more than in his published tales, that Lovecraft revealed himself most fully. Through them we glimpse the breadth of his interests, the peculiarities of his mind, his recurring dreams, his everyday concerns, and, inevitably, his darker and less creditable opinions. If his fiction shows us his esthetic vision, his correspondence shows us the man behind it.

Perhaps I am biased because of my own proclivities, but Lovecraft’s letters remind me of blogging. He had no blog, of course, but his endless correspondence functioned in much the same way. The letter was his medium of self-expression, his way of thinking aloud to an audience that was at once personal and diffuse. Many of his letters were, in fact, shared among friends or passed from hand to hand, much as a blog post today might be reposted, linked, or shared across social media.

Nor was this his first experiment with a pre-digital mode of communication. Before his vast correspondence, Lovecraft had already been active in something that feels strikingly like a low-tech precursor to blogging, namely, the world of amateur journalism and the Amateur Press Associations (APAs). In the 1910s, he was deeply involved with the United Amateur Press Association (UAPA), editing its official organ, The United Amateur, and publishing some of his earliest fiction and essays there. As anyone familiar with the early history of roleplaying games knows, an APA is a kind of distributed network. Members submit their work, which is then collated, printed, and mailed out as a collective periodical. In the pre-digital age, this was often how people with literary ambitions, eccentric opinions, or obscure interests found one another and shared their work. For Lovecraft, the UAPA provided a forum, an audience, and, most importantly, a community.

It’s not hard to see the connection. To be anachronistic, the UAPA was Lovecraft’s early “platform,” while his letters became his lifelong “feed.” Both offered him a way to connect, exchange ideas, and keep writing, whether or not the commercial magazines accepted his fiction. That’s one of the reasons we know Lovecraft better than we know most of his contemporaries. His fiction reveals his artistic ideals, but his correspondence and amateur journalism reveal his mind. Just as blogs today offer insight into their authors’ lives, passions, and obsessions, so too do Lovecraft’s letters and UAPA writings.

I’ve often thought of Grognardia in similar terms. This blog has never been my fiction, nor even my formal criticism, however much I’ve sometimes tried to make it so. Instead, it is an extended conversation with others who share my interests. Lovecraft would have understood that impulse. He may have written comparatively few stories, but he never stopped writing, leaving behind a record of himself more complete than almost any of his contemporaries. That’s not a bad model for the rest of us who also feel compelled to share our thoughts, fears, and dreams with others.

Pulp Fantasy Library: "The Music of Erich Zann"

First published in The National Amateur (March 1922), “The Music of Erich Zann” is one of H.P. Lovecraft’s most haunting short stories, and one he himself ranked just behind “The Colour Out of Space” as a personal favorite. It's easy to see why. Unlike his larger, more expansive tales, this story operates on a smaller, more intimate scale and it is precisely this narrow focus that gives it so much of its enduring power. Though not literally derived from a dream, as several of Lovecraft’s stories were, it nevertheless possesses a distinctly dreamlike quality, a quality that, I would argue, heightens rather than diminishes its effect.

The plot is straightforward. A poor student takes a room on the Rue d’Auseil, a street so narrow and steep that it seems scarcely real. Indeed, the narrator later admits to the "singular and perplexing" fact that he has never been able to locate the Rue d'Auseil again. It's within this uncanny setting that he meets his neighbor, Erich Zann, an aged, mute viol player whose nightly music he finds as compelling as it is disturbing.

The tale that follows is less concerned with action than with revelation or perhaps more accurately, with the withholding of revelation. The narrator is drawn to Zann’s strange playing, which he describes as “weird harmonies” and “vibrations suggesting nothing on this globe of earth.” Lovecraft underscores the uncanny not by explanation but by stressing its alienness, evoking a sound beyond human experience. This method of suggestion – describing the indescribable by circling it – is one Lovecraft would refine throughout his writing career, but it's already well in evidence.

Zann himself is an enigma and his muteness only deepens the mystery. He can communicate only by gesture or, in one crucial moment, through a note. He is portrayed as a man consumed by terror but equally by duty. His music is not artistic expression but desperate necessity. As the narrator observes in one of the story’s most chilling lines, “He was trying to make a noise; to ward something off or drown something out – what, I could not imagine, awesome though I felt it must be.” Zann’s nightly performances are revealed as acts of resistance against an unnamed intrusion, his bow and strings a fragile bulwark against the void.

The climax comes when the narrator, finally left alone in Zann’s garret, dares to look out of the high barred window. Expecting to see the city below, he instead beholds “only the blackness of space illimitable; unimagined space alive with motion and music, and having no semblance to anything on earth.” The juxtaposition of Zann’s frenzied playing with this abyssal vision conveys intrusion from Beyond, but Lovecraft never specifies what lies outside. The horror is not defined but suggested, leaving the narrator (and the reader) with only a glimpse into the abyss before the curtain falls.

What makes “The Music of Erich Zann” remarkable is not simply its atmosphere, but its economy. The tale unfolds in a handful of tightly constructed scenes. There are no digressions into history, no catalogs of forbidden tomes, no elaborate mythological scaffolding. Instead, it is a study in mood, memory, and the limits of human perception. Even in its restraint, however, the story anticipates many of Lovecraft’s enduring themes, such as the fragility of the human mind when confronted with the unknown, the inadequacy of language to capture the truly alien, and the inescapable persistence of memory. The disappearance of the Rue d’Auseil when the narrator later searches for it reinforces the dreamlike quality and denies any possibility of closure. Both the place and its terrible secret have been effaced, leaving only recollection, an echo, much like Zann’s music itself.

Despite how early it was written, “The Music of Erich Zann” remains one of Lovecraft’s most polished and effective works. Its imagery is unforgettable: the steep vanishing street, the mute musician, the barred garret window opening onto infinity. More than a century after its publication, it continues to demonstrate that Lovecraft’s genius lay not only in constructing elaborate mythologies of cosmic horror but also in crafting stories where suggestion, atmosphere, and ambiguity achieve the same, if not greater, effect.

Interview: Geoffrey McKinney

The release of Geoffrey McKinney's Carcosa, an imaginary fifth supplement to OD&D, in 2008 caused quite a stir at the time – so much that I devoted four posts to reviewing it on this blog. What set Carcosa apart was its singular vision of old school fantasy roleplaying seen through the lens of an idiosyncratic interpretation of H.P. Lovecraft. Since I was already devoting the entirety of this month to HPL and his legacy, I thought it might be interesting to ask McKinney a few questions about Lovecraft, Carcosa, and roleplaying games. 

1. What first drew you to the works of H. P. Lovecraft, and how did they shape your vision for Carcosa?

In the spring of 1980, I bought the D&D Basic Set (with the rule book edited by Dr. Holmes and with module B2) and the Monster Manual, and I started playing D&D with some friends who had already been playing for a few months. In the second half of August 1980, I had enough money to buy the Players Handbook, but when I got to the toy store, I decided to instead buy the brand-new Deities & Demigods Cyclopedia (DDG). The Cthulhu Mythos section melted my 10-year-old brain. The gloppy Erol Otus illustrations are still my favorite Mythos illustrations of all, and his Shub-Niggurath is one of the best D&D illustrations of any sort.

The dark, mysterious text accompanying Otus’s art deepened my fascination. In fact, the sixth word of the first sentence left me unsure whether the Mythos was a 20th-century creation or whether some unhealthy ancient men actually believed in and worshiped these beings: “The Cthulhu Mythos was first revealed in a group of related stories by the American writer H. P. Lovecraft.”

The six pages of the Cthulhu Mythos immediately seeped into our D&D games, adding a generous helping of Cthulhoid gods and monsters; dark magics to conjure, dominate, and banish them; and human sacrifice.

Carcosa is basically D&D seen through the lens of “DDG’s Cthulhu Mythos, all the time”.

2. In what ways do you see Carcosa as diverging from Lovecraft’s cosmic horror, and in what ways do you think it reinforces it?

Carcosa is definitely the version of the Cthulhu Mythos presented in Deities & Demigods, and as such does not strive to be “true” to Lovecraft’s stories. Carcosa is pulpy, sword & sorcery D&D fun. Sure, the setting is dark and bleak, but you can (for example) blow Cthulhu away with technetium pulse cannons rather than cower and hide.

3. You incorporate many of the Great Old Ones and other Mythos entities. Did you approach these beings differently from how Chaosium might?

All the monsters in Carcosa were taken from the 1974 D&D game, inspired by the Cthulhu Mythos section of Deities & Demigods, or they crawled out of the dark corners of my own imagination. I have never played Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu, so I am not familiar enough with it to compare it with Carcosa.

4. The setting of Carcosa feels like a fusion of Lovecraft, planetary romance, and pulp science fiction. Do you think Lovecraft’s legacy fits naturally into that blend, or did you have to reshape it?

I like to refer to Carcosa as “weird science-fantasy”. Virtually everything in it grew from the seeds in the Cthulhu Mythos section of Deities & Demigods. Carcosa’s psionics sprang from DDG’s description of the Great Race. Carcosa’s high-tech grew from DDG’s descriptions of the Primordial Ones and of the Great Race. Of course, Lovecraft’s “The Shadow out of Time” and At the Mountains of Madness include these elements. I would not say I reshaped Lovecraft’s legacy but rather fleshed it out.

5. Do you think there is room for wonder in Lovecraft’s cosmos or is everything inevitably tainted by dread? Does Carcosa reflect that?

There is definitely room for wonder in Lovecraft’s cosmos, particularly when looked at through Dunsany’s Pegana and some of his other early tales. My own favorite of my books is the Carcosa module, The Mountains of Dream. I tried to infuse it with that Dunsanian/Lovecraftian sense of wonder and awe.

6. In traditional D&D, magic is a tool. In Carcosa, it is a moral and metaphysical hazard. How much of that came from Lovecraft, and how much from your own take on sorcery?

At risk of sounding like a broken record, it came from the Cthulhu Mythos section of Deities & Demigods. Of DDG’s seventeen pantheons, only the gods of the Cthulhu pantheon are unanimous in demanding human sacrifice (DDG, pp. 136-137). Couple that with DDG’s description on page 48 of the spells contained in the Necronomicon. For example, “It would appear that spells are given for summoning all of the Old Ones and their minions, and some spells for their control and dismissal, although these latter are not always effective. The spells are very long and complicated, and not entirely comprehensible without long study and research.” Carcosa’s sorcery attempts to flesh out these four paragraphs from DDG.

7. How did you approach the balance between evoking Lovecraftian horror and making a setting that is actually playable and engaging at the table?

The gods, monsters, sorcery, and setting itself of Carcosa evoke Lovecraftian horror just by existing. The player characters can arm themselves with advanced technology and/or with sorcery and psionics to lay waste to the blasphemous abominations that are practically everywhere on Carcosa. It is not about being afraid of Cthulhu and his ilk. Instead, the player characters can strive to amass enough might and firepower that Cthulhu and everything else becomes afraid of them.

8. Would you ever consider returning to Carcosa or Lovecraftian themes in a future project or is that ground you feel you have already covered?

Generally speaking, every time a DM puts something such as purple worms, black puddings, mind flayers, Juiblex, Kuo-Toans, gibbering mouthers, slaadi, etc. into his campaign, he is injecting some good old Lovecraftian horror into his game. As for me writing additional Carcosa books, that is out of my hands. If the Muses sing to me again the dark songs of Carcosa, then yes. We must wait and see what implacable Fate decrees for the future.

9. Have your thoughts on Lovecraft’s work or worldview changed over the years?

I have read and re-read Lovecraft since the early 1990s. While I enjoy his works as much as ever, I have come to agree with Lovecraft that his four favorite authors (Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen, and M. R. James) are even better. I highly recommend the following:

by Lord Dunsany:

• The Gods of Pegana
• Time and the Gods
• The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories
• A Dreamer’s Tales
• The King of Elfland’s Daughter

by Arthur Machen:

• “The Great God Pan”
• “The Inmost Light”
• “The Shining Pyramid”
• The Three Impostors
• “The Red Hand”
• The Hill of Dreams
• “Ornaments in Jade”
• “The Great Return”

by M. R. James:

• Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
• More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
• A Thin Ghost and Others
• A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories

by Algernon Blackwood:

A great many of his weird stories, preeminent of which are:

• “The Willows”
• “The Wendigo”
• Incredible Adventures

Lovecraft and Adventure Fantasy

My friend and fellow creator, Zzarchov Kowolski, wrote a very interesting – and, in my opinion, largely correct – post over on his Patreon entitled "Lovecraft and Adventure Fantasy." Don't worry, it's a public post, so you don't have to become a member to read it. Of course, Zzarchov makes good stuff worthy of your support, so you should probably become a member anyway (modesty precludes my bidding you to do the same for me). 

I mention this because some of what Zzarchov writes in his post dovetails with things I'll be saying in an upcoming post of my own and thought it'd provide additional food for thought on a topic that's increasingly becoming near and dear to me. More on that next week!

The Dream-Ship Captain

The Dream-Ship Captain by James Maliszewski

A Dreamlands Character Class in Honor of Lovecraft's Birthday

Read on Substack

HPL in Astounding Stories

Because of its length, At the Mountains of Madness appeared in three consecutive issues of Astounding Stories (February–April 1936). Each installment featured illustrations (by Howard Brown), noteworthy as some of the earliest artwork connected to a Lovecraft tale. A few are especially significant, as they provide the first published depictions of the Old Ones (Elder Things) and shoggoths.

The first issue from the February 1936 issue shows the base camp of the Lake Expedition, with the city of the Old Ones in the distance.

This issue also includes two illustrations of the Old Ones themselves. 

The March 1936 issue opens with a depiction of not just the Old Ones and their city but also a shoggoth, which looks very similar to the one that appears on the cover of the February issue.

We then get more of both the Old Ones and their city. 

The March 1936 issue contains only a single illustration, again of the city of the Old Ones. At the bottom right, you can see two of the expedition members fleeing the city ahead of the shoggoth (not depicted, so far as I can tell).

In my opinion, these are all really striking illustrations – and apparently Lovecraft agreed. In a letter to August Derleth, he stated that, "The illustrator drew the nameless Entities precisely as I imagined them." Very high praise indeed! 

I'll have more to say about the illustrations from "The Shadow Out of Time," I'll save that for yet another post.

HPL in Weird Tales

While most interested parties nowadays know that H.P. Lovecraft's stories almost all appeared in the pages of pulp magazines during the 1920s and '30s – the vast majority of them in "the Unique Magazine," Weird Tales – what they may not know is that a great many of these appearances were accompanied by illustrations. I posted a couple of these at the start of the month, but I thought readers might enjoy seeing a few more of these, particularly those associated with some of his more famous yarns.

This one, for example, depicts the bayou ceremony described by Inspector Legrasse in "The Call of Cthulhu."

 Here's an imaginative illustration of Wilbur Whateley's twin brother in "The Dunwich Horror."

This piece shows the end of "The Whisperer in Darkness," when Professor Wilmarth finds the face and hands of Henry Akeley left behind in the chair in which he'd been sitting for most of the story. 

Disappointingly, only one Lovecraft-written story ever appeared on the cover of Weird Tales, "Under the Pyramids," but it did so both with a changed title ("Imprisoned with the Pharaohs") and a Harry Houdini byline (no surprise, since HPL had been hired by Houdini to be his ghost writer).

Lovecraft had much better luck in this regard with Astounding Stories, which featured two of his tales on the cover, starting with At the Mountains of Madness, which features what is likely the first ever illustration of a shoggoth.

This was soon followed by "The Shadow Out of Time."

Both of the Astounding appearances also include interior artwork as well, some of which is quite interesting and probably deserving of a separate post. 

Natal Felicitations

Today being the birthday of Howard Phillips Lovecraft – his 135th, to be precise – I would normally dedicate a post to him and his memory. This year, because I've already devoted the entire month of August to that purpose, I thought instead I would simply link to my previous HPL birthday posts, especially for the benefit of those who weren't reading this blog years ago. 

• Father of Us All (August 20, 2008)
• Happy Birthday, Ech-Pi-El (August 20, 2009)
• Lovecraftian Inspirations (August 21, 2010)
• 121 (August 20, 2011)
• The Man Behind the Madness (August 20, 2012)
• "Thou art not gone ..." (August 20, 2021)
• We Love Crafts (August 20, 2022)
• H.P. Lovecraft and the Evolution of Genre (August 20, 2023)
• The War Against Lovecraft (August 20, 2024)

The Shadow over August will continue for another eleven days. I've still got quite a few more posts that I hope will be of interest to everyone reading, including more interviews with RPG writers whose work either directly or indirectly relates to Lovecraft. There's also an additional post over at my Substack for those of you who've enjoyed the Dreamer and Moon Prowler classes I posted here recently. Though Ben Laurence is the true Master of the Dreamlands, this month has inspired me to dabble a bit in the Realm Beyond the Veil of Sleep. I already have too many other projects on the go to spend much time there!

Regardless, today's the day to celebrate Lovecraft's memory as you see fit (or not). I myself will be re-watching the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society's excellent films based on "The Call of Cthulhu" (which I strangely have never reviewed here) and The Whisperer in Darkness (which I have).

Grognard's Grimoire: Moon Prowler

Hunter in shadow. Wanderer in dream. Watcher beneath the moon.

Origin: Dreamlands

Requirement: Minimum DEX 9

Prime Requisite: DEX
Hit Dice: 1d4
Maximum Level: 9
Armor: None (see below)
Weapons: Claws, small melee weapons (see below).
Languages: Alignment, Dreamspeech, Feline, Moonspeech.

A moon prowler is no ordinary feline. Sleek and clever, with eyes like twin moons and a mind sharp as a knife’s edge, she prowls the Dreamlands with an ease no human could match. She speaks in purrs and riddles, slips through shadows like silk, and leaps across rooftops as though gravity were an optional courtesy. She is feared and respected by all, for the law of the Dreamlands is clear: no man may kill a cat.

Prime requisite: A moon prowler with at least 13 DEX gains a 5% bonus to experience. If DEX is 16 or higher, the moon prowler gets a +10% bonus. 

Combat

A moon prowler cannot wear armor of any kind. However, her uncanny agility grants her a base AC 7 (modified further by DEX). She prefers to fight with her claws (1d3 damage), but may use melee weapons suited to her size (referee’s discretion).

Feline Advantages

A moon prowler can squeeze through any opening large enough for her head and balance on narrow surfaces (ledges, ropes) without requiring a check.

• 1st–4th level: Immune to normal falling damage from heights up to 20’.
• 5th–7th level: This increases to 30’.
• 8th–9th level: This increases to 40’.

Feline Curse

Anyone who kills a moon prowler is cursed.

• Immediately suffers a –4 penalty on all rolls made at night.
• Cats, whether ordinary or dream-born, are always hostile.
• Lasts until the killer dies or an appropriate penance is made (referee's discretion)

Feline Drawbacks

A moon prowler cannot carry heavy burdens. Beyond a dagger and a few small items, she refuses loads. She also loathes water, avoiding it unless magically compelled or under dire circumstances.

Keen Senses

Thanks to heightened hearing and smell, moon prowlers have a 2-in-6 chance to:

• Detect hidden or invisible creatures nearby.
• Notice unusual sounds, scents, or disturbances in their surroundings.

Moon Leap

When under moonlight, a moon prowler may leap up to 30’ horizontally or 15’ vertically. This ability may be used both in and out of combat.

Nine Lives

Once per day, a moon prowler may avoid the effects of a single attack, spell, trap, or other hazard that would otherwise kill her.

Silent Stalker

In dim light or darkness, a moon prowler surprises opponents on a 1–4 on 1d6. In full daylight, this only applies against distracted or unaware targets.

Moon Prowler Level Progression

D: Death / poison; W: Wands; P: Paralysis / petrify; B: Breath attacks; S: Spells / rods / staves.

The Articles of Dragon: "Giants in the Earth" (Issue #36)

"Giants in the Earth" was an irregular series of articles that appeared in Dragon between issues #26 (June 1979) and #61 (May 1982). Co-written by Lawrence Schick and Tom Moldvay, its purpose was to present notable characters from literature in (A)D&D terms. During its run, more than 40 characters made an appearance, running the gamut from John Carter of Mars to Maal Dweb to Reepicheep and more. While certain authors, like Jack Vance and Fritz Leiber, and their creations receive lots of attention, others show up more infrequently.

Despite his foundational importance to the literature that inspired the hobby, a character from the works of H.P. Lovecraft appears only once in "Giants in the Earth" and the choice is an odd one, at least in my opinion. The column from issue #36 (April 1980) features Richard Upton Pickman, here styled the "King of the Ghouls." Here are the game stats that accompany his description, along with a portrait that looks to me as if it was drawn by Jeff Dee (there is no credit accompanying either the article or the illustration):

There are certainly a number of things one could discuss about this write-up – feel free to do so in the comments – but, for me, what's more interesting is the accompanying description of Pickman. For example, the text states that he "wears +3 plate armor (no shield) and carries a +1 sword which is +4 versus ghoul enemies (most living creatures)." What a bizarre detail! I say that, because Pickman is presented in the article just as he is in "Pickman's Model." He's a Boston artist whose work is shunned by respectable galleries for its disturbing subject matter. Though he is now himself a ghoul, he's nevertheless a man of the 20th century, not some medieval fantasy characters. It's very odd.

Beyond that, the text presents six examples of Pickman's paintings. Each one is given a title and a magical effect if viewed. 

The first three paintings listed – "The Lesson," "Ghoul Feeding," and "Subway Accident" – are all lifted straight from "Pickman's Model," while the last three are references, either direct or indirect, to famous Lovecraft stories. I find the inclusion of "The Silver Key" notable, since protagonist of the story with which it shares a name, Randolph Carter, eventually meets Pickman in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. The article also notes that each of these paintings has a saving throw versus fire of 10, suggesting that it's quite likely someone might seek to burn them in order to stop their deleterious effects.

More than halfway through The Shadow over August, it's been a bit of a struggle to find Dragon magazine articles that connect directly – or even indirectly – to H.P. Lovecraft and his legacy. I would have thought there'd be more examples of this kind of thing, especially from the period prior to 1980. As it turns out, that's not the case and I find myself wondering why ...

Grognard's Grimoire: Dreamer

With apologies to Peter von Sholly

Stranger in waking life. Adventurer of the Other World. King in dreams.

Origin: Waking World

Requirements: None

Prime Requisite: WIS
Hit Dice: 1d6
Maximum Level: 10
Armor: None
Weapons: Any
Languages: Alignment, Common, Dreamspeech

A dreamer is a mystic who slips beyond the borders of waking reality into strange and hidden realms. His body may be plain and earthbound, but his mind wanders distant dimensions where wonder and dread intertwine. He may return with uncanny powers – or lose himself forever. In the waking world, a dreamer often serves as a seer, prophet, or enigmatic wanderer, forever shaped by what he has seen. 

Combat

A dreamer can use any weapon, but he is unable to use to shields or wear any kind of armor.

Between Two Worlds

If a Dreamer is reduced to 0 hp in the Dreamlands, his body in the Waking World convulses and falls into a deathlike coma. He vanishes from the Dreamlands immediately, reappearing in his mortal body after 1d6 days of real-world time. During this period, he cannot enter the Dreamlands by any means.

However, each time a Dreamer is “slain” in the Dreamlands, there is a 1-in-6 chance that his soul becomes untethered. If this occurs, his waking body dies instantly and his spirit is trapped in the Dreamlands forever, unless restored by magic or divine intervention capable of true resurrection. Thereafter, any subsequent death is permanent.

Starting at 7th level, this risk is reduced to 1-in-12, reflecting mastery over his dream-self.

Dream Lore

At 1st level, a dreamer must choose one of the following:

• Moon Scholar: Has studied the secret languages of the moonlit realms. Gains the ability to speak and read one additional ancient or alien tongue (e.g. Feline, Moonspeech, etc.)
• Oneiric Talisman: Possesses a relic from dreams that anchors thought. Once per day, may re-roll a failed saving throw versus attempts to alter thoughts, emotions, or will.
• Prophetic Memory: Once per day, may declare an event as something foreseen in a dream. Gains +4 bonus on one related action.
• Silver Veil: The mind slips through lies and glamour. Gains a +2 bonus to saving throws against effects that disguise reality, such as illusions and other deceptions of sight, sound, or thought.

Dream Powers

A dreamer does not cast spells but instead manifest unpredictable powers from the Dreamlands. To do so, roll 1d8 twice on the Dream Powers table below and select one of the results. The chosen power may be used immediately or held until the end of the dreamer’s next action, after which it fades if unused and still counts toward the daily limit. Only one power can be held at a time. At levels 3, 6, and 9, a dreamer may choose one, two, and three of his daily powers respectively instead of rolling for them. Six hours of sleep restore all daily uses and remove any held power.

1. Forgotten Memory: Target forgets last 1d6 turns (save versus spells negates). Can erase knowledge of events, questions, or spells.
2. Gaze Beyond the Veil: Ask the referee one question about the situation, the future, or a hidden truth. The answer may be symbolic or vague unless manifested while sleeping.
3. Healing Light: Touch restores 1d8 + level HP. Undead take damage instead.
4. Moonblade: Summons a +1 glowing sword (1d8 dmg, lasts 1 turn, magical, parry 1d4 dmg once/round).
5. Oneiric Firebolt: 120' range, 2d6 dmg (save versus spells for half). Magical fire. On failed save, target also hallucinates for 1 round.
6. Phantom Passage: Teleport self + 1 willing target up to 60'. Must know the destination. Cannot pass through stone or magical wards.
7. Sleep of the Silver Gate: Affects up to 3 HD of creatures (no save if HD ≤ 1). Sleep lasts 1d6 turns.
8. Summon Dream-Beast: Conjures a 2 HD creature (AC 7 [12], 1d8 bite, morale 10, lasts 1 turn or until slain).

Dream Surge

When a dream powers rolls yield the same result on both dice, roll 1d20 to determine an additional consequence.

After Reaching 9th Level

At 9th level, a dreamer attracts 1d6 followers: dream-touched mystics, alien poets, or seers. Instead of a fortress, a Dreamer may establish a hidden dream-sanctum, accessible only through ritual sleep.

Dreamer Level Progression

*Modifiers from CON no longer apply.

D: Death / poison; W: Wands; P: Paralysis / petrify; B: Breath attacks; S: Spells / rods / staves.

Pulp Fantasy Library: Through the Gates of the Silver Key

1929 saw the publication of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Silver Key," a wistful, semi-autobiographical tale of Randolph Carter, his recurring dreamer-protagonist. In that story, Carter, now middle-aged, finds himself disillusioned with the mundane world, bereft of the golden moments of his youth when he roamed the Dreamlands freely. After discovering an old silver key in his ancestral home, Carter then departs for the wooded hills of his boyhood and disappears.

For Lovecraft, that was enough, but not so for his friend, E. Hoffmann Price. He wondered, what really had happened to Carter? During HPL's visit to New Orleans in June 1932, Price suggested to him the idea of a sequel, which he then proceeded to draft. The sequel, which Price titled "The Lord of Illusion," drew on his interests in Theosophy, Eastern philosophy, and occult cosmology. With some reluctance, Lovecraft agreed to revise it and, as often happened in such collaborations, “revision” really meant extensive rewriting. By the end, Price estimated that fewer than fifty words of his original draft remained, though traces of Price’s mystical elements are nevertheless apparent. The story was published in Weird Tales (July 1934) under the title by which it is known today.

Where "The Silver Key" is tinged with melancholy and personal longing, "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" is expansive, ornate, and metaphysically dense. The story begins at a gathering to settle Carter’s estate, long held in trust since his disappearance. The mysterious Swami Chandraputra, swathed in robes, with strange mittens on his hands, tells the assembled company of Carter’s fate. After performing its ritual, the Silver Key transported Carter beyond space and time, through the First Gate and into the Outer Extension, where he encountered the Ancient Ones led by ’Umr at-Tawil, a being feared in the Necronomicon. 

Accepting an invitation to plunge further into the cosmos, Carter passed the Ultimate Gate and found himself in the infinite void before an entity implied to be Yog-Sothoth, though only a fraction of its true nature, the Supreme Archetype, the All-in-One and One-in-All. Shown the unity of all consciousness as facets of this Archetype, Carter was granted a wish: to experience life as one of the wizardly inhabitants of Yaddith, a world besieged by the monstrous Dholes. The Supreme Archetype transferred his mind into the body of Zkauba the wizard, but Carter soon discovered his arrogance had trapped him in an alien form, sharing a mind with a being that found him as repugnant as he did it.

After centuries on Yaddith, Carter subdued Zkauba’s mind with drugs and returned to Earth using the Silver Key and alien machinery, seeking a manuscript of symbols he believed would restore his human body. The Swami claims Carter found it, contacted him, and sent him to Arkham to announce his imminent return. However, Carter’s cousin, lawyer Ernest Aspinwall, accuses the Swami of fraud, tearing at his face, thereby revealing the inhuman visage beneath. Aspinwall dies of apoplexy and Zkauba’s mind resurfaces, fleeing in a strange coffin-like clock. A postscript speculates the Swami was merely a criminal hypnotist, though some details of the tale seem disturbingly precise.

The shift in tone and content between "The Silver Key" and its sequel is striking. In the first tale, Carter longs to escape a disenchanted world, hoping to reclaim the dreamlike wonder of his youth. In the second, that escape comes at a terrible cost: the obliteration of the self. The human-scale yearning of "The Silver Key" gives way to a vision that is cold, alien, and inexorable, where the price of ultimate knowledge is nothing less than one's personal identity. 

Here, Price’s influence is unmistakable. Themes such as the unity of all beings, reincarnation, and the dissolution of the ego into a higher self are hallmarks of Theosophical thought, ideas largely absent from Lovecraft’s solo work. For Price, such transcendence could be uplifting, a step toward enlightenment; for Lovecraft, it becomes a transformation so complete that the human perspective is erased. Carter’s so-called apotheosis is not joyous but inhuman, stripping away every anchor to his mortal life.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" is that Lovecraft seems to attempt to use Price's conceptions as a way to bridge the Dreamlands stories and the Cthulhu Mythos. By introducing Yog-Sothoth, Umr at-Tawil, and Yaddith into Carter’s dream-journey, Lovecraft draws a direct line between the fanciful dream adventures of The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and the cosmicism of, say, “The Dunwich Horror” or “The Whisperer in Darkness.” The implications of this are profound: the Dreamlands are not a separate realm of whimsy, but part of the same vast, uncaring universe, which is precisely the tack Chaosium took in its own RPG adaptation of the former.

Whether Lovecraft fully succeeds in this synthesis is open to debate. The story’s ornate, metaphysical passages can be both dazzling and impenetrable and the fusion of Price’s mysticism with Lovecraft’s cosmic horror is uneasy at times. Yet Carter’s arc, from wistful seeker of lost dreams to fragment of an incomprehensible, alien consciousness is an ambitious character transformation. The conclusion of this tale is deeply unsettling. The dreamer passes beyond the gate, not to reclaim his past, but to become something no longer human.

If "The Silver Key" is about losing the magic of youth, "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" is about losing oneself entirely. In Lovecraft’s cosmos, this may be the only form of escape and the ultimate price of seeking truths not meant for human minds. 

Interview: James Edward Raggi IV (Part III)

Parts I and II of this interview can be found here and here, respectively.

7. In a media landscape increasingly shaped by risk-aversion and corporate IP management, where do small, transgressive publishers like Lamentations of the Flame Princess fit in? Is there still a place for the truly weird? 

I said something a little earlier that's not as true as it used to be. While it is mostly true that people look at the censorship of the past and think it was ridiculous, there's a creeping attitude rising up that looks at some stuff from the 1970s on, wondering how they got away with doing what they did. Like somehow it is wrong these things exist. The '70s were wild for movies. I was too young to see anything in those days (well, I remember Star Wars) but going back ... Blazing Saddles and Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Salò and Pink Flamingos and I Spit on Your Grave and Wizard of Gore and Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS and Clockwork Orange and Taxi Driver and Apocalypse Now and Exorcist and Death Wish and Last Tango in Paris and and and and and and ... you could just make the most outrageous stuff and somehow there was a way to get it done and get it to audiences. And not just on the lowest independent level, either, there are some major films in just that list there. 

There's a reason I called the second game box, the one after I realized I could do this full time, the “Grindhouse Edition.” This is the feel we're after. Anything can happen, and whether any particular work falls within someone's parameters of good taste is not our concern. 

Whether there is room for that today is entirely up to the public and their willingness to dig a little bit to find it. It might not be on the most convenient platforms. You might even have to order direct from the publisher. That's what allows this stuff to still exist now and into the future in a cultural climate that seems to demand you conform to Group A or Group B's standards in order to have an audience. 

8. Do you think roleplaying games have a unique potential to explore uncomfortable or disturbing subject matter, more so than, say, literature or film? If so, why? 

I think they have less potential. RPGs are all location and situation and setup, and then it's through play that things actually happen. The “emergent story” format of RPGs means that whatever comes out at the end is something of an accident, or the result of a succession of coincidences. 

Literature and film and any medium where someone has complete control over the flow of the entire story means they can take uncomfortable subjects and do different things with them deliberately and drive the point home through narrative and thematic context. 

If the typical RPG group comes across the goings-on in, say, Salò, there's going to be an exploration of a very different kind of violence than the film invites us to explore, I dare say. 

9. Finally, if Lovecraft were alive today, do you think he’d approve of Lamentations of the Flame Princess? Or would he recoil in horror? 

The more interesting question is if Lovecraft were alive today, what would all these people who have appropriated his work and in some cases owe some substantial portion of their incomes to their use of his work, think of him?

Can you imagine Lovecraft stepping through a time portal from the mid-1930s, with all the attitudes from then intact, seeing what's become of his work, and deciding to try to get writing jobs from the publishers selling books based on his work? That would be much more amusing.

As for what Lovecraft would think of LotFP? Oh he'd hate it. He's from a wealthy family that fell on hard times, and apparently carried himself with a sort of upper class manner, thought of himself as a gentleman, and for the first forty years of his life he was deeply conservative, and I'm this racial mongrel (Italians and Poles were two immigrant groups he didn't much care for) kid from the projects who is a fan of and influenced by and I guess producing the lowest of the arts.

And one of those influences is the old pulp author H.P. Lovecraft. I love you, man.

Interview: James Edward Raggi IV (Part II)

Part I of this interview can be found here.

4. Do you feel that the mechanics of traditional RPGs (e.g. levels, hit points, spells) can fully accommodate Lovecraftian horror? Is there a built-in tension between the player agency they provide and cosmic indifference?

Traditional RPGs are the perfect vehicle for Lovecraftian horror. What better way to portray an uncaring universe than a game where the person running the game is (supposed to be) a neutral arbiter and dice decide everything? It's when you start getting into narrative mechanics (hero points, karma, whatever) that this starts to break down.

Thing about an indifferent universe is not just that it doesn't care if you fail and die ... it also doesn't care if you live and thrive.

5. You’ve been an outspoken defender of freedom of expression in RPGs, even when that means publishing work that some find offensive. How do you see that ethos connecting with Lovecraft’s own disregard for popular tastes?

I think this is a bad comparison. Lovecraft had his idiosyncrasies but I don't think much of what he was doing was pushing the boundaries of good taste. The violence, or its aftermath, in his stories weren't really detailed or dwelled upon, and he didn't go anywhere near sexuality or use profanity.

6. LotFP often revels in going beyond the boundaries of "good taste." Is that purely a stylistic choice or is there a deeper creative or philosophical motivation behind it?

Both. I grew up with horror movies and those 70s/early 80s Savage Sword of Conan comics, not to mention Howard Stern. I also grew up with the Satanic Panic and a little later on the PMRC and all the nonsense from the FCC and MPAA throughout my life.

I recently got the 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers on Blu-ray, and I watched it, then listened to the commentary ... and they went on about they had censorship problems because, gasp, the two lead characters were both divorced.

We look at what couldn't be done in mass media in the past and we scoff at it. “How silly they were!” And the people that fought to overcome those restrictions, we see them as important people in the history of their art. Heroes, I'd call them.

But then people act like what is restricted today is serious business and totally justified, and anyone who fights against these modern restrictions are bad people who want bad things.

No. It's the same thing. It is absolutely the same thing.

One of my favorite movies is Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter. And when the female lead is introduced, she's been put in the stocks. Her crime? Dancing on a Sunday. And after getting the fancy boxed set version and rewatching it this year, that's become my favorite way to describe what everyone gets upset about.

Oh, you used a bad unacceptable word!

Dancing on a Sunday.

That picture is unnecessarily graphic!

Dancing on a Sunday.

You've expressed irresponsible social views!

Dancing on a Sunday.

You made a joke about a sensitive topic!

Dancing on a Sunday.

You're displaying a political point of view I find unacceptable!

Dancing on a Sunday.

Remember the whole Janet Jackson Superbowl controversy? Literally dancing on a Sunday!

I don't even like ratings. Ratings change how people create, both in concept and altering a “finished” product after the fact to attain certain ratings, because ratings shape the potential audience. That's not serving an informational function, that's censorship. Fuck em all.

I know I'm on the far end radical about this sort of thing. Everyone's got that one thing they're fanatical about and this is my thing. People should just be able to do shit creatively without being able to worry that they're going to be actually restricted because of it.

A couple of my favorite stories about censorship:

Back in the day, the movie Nekromantik (a movie about necrophilia) was banned in Finland, so a festival organizer arranged a ferry trip to Estonia so people could see the movie. How ridiculous is that? I learned about this story in 2015 when attending a festival in Helsinki to see the movie. Who benefitted from making Finnish people go to Estonia to watch a movie?

For many years the first three Cannibal Corpse albums were banned in Germany, and no songs were from those albums were allowed to be performed live. There were police monitors at their shows. They'd play the songs anyway, just under different names. That ban was lifted in 2006, but just a couple years ago Germany banned the Cannibal Corpse coloring book. A coloring book!

I've got no sympathy for anyone who argues for restricting the availability of creative work. The fact that all of this is still an ongoing concern makes me more confrontational about it. The books, movies, and music that I like pretty much guarantees that some of this stuff was always going to be a part of LotFP, but the fact that there are people who want to penalize people for making up stuff they don't like makes me do it more.

And we do get penalized for it. The first Free RPG Day book we put out was trashed by a number of the participating stores. We were later kicked out of Free RPG Day entirely because some other publisher threatened to pull out if we were allowed to continue to participate. One of our titles got trashed by a British distributor, and we only caught wind of that because one of the distributor's employees publicly complained that the bosses didn't let her look at it first, they thought it was so bad. Our stuff regularly gets denied from DriveThru, sometimes for reasons I can't fathom.

And of course there's the reputational factor, “Oh, they do that sort of thing.” Well yes, but not only that sort of thing. You work outside of someone's comfort zone once and they're going to try to punish everything you do because of it.

I just don't understand the impulse to look at something and decide that the public shouldn't get to decide for themselves whether they accept it or not. And it's the worst when it comes from someone who makes things themselves; it's the basest form of cowardice, trying to argue for caps on imagination and be in favor of more restricted thinking in creative work.

Aarrrghhh I get so angry, even when it happens to something I don't care about, even when it happens to something/someone I don't like. I don't understand why anyone does that, and I don't understand why anyone goes along with it.

And yes, that includes pretty much whatever example anyone reading this is thinking of. Blatant plagiarism is about all I can get on board with restricting.

To me, the first step in doing anything creative is to take down the creative walls so there's nothing but clear horizons on all sides, and then you decide what you want to create. If there's someone keeping creative walls up, how do people not feel like they're being physically crushed? How are they not expending at least some of their creative energy attacking those walls?

Hmm. I got very worked up answering this one. But it is the hill to die on.