Pulp Fantasy Library: The White Ship

Last week, I mentioned that there's no clear consensus on which of H.P. Lovecraft's stories belong to his Dream Cycle – or indeed whether there even is such a thing at all. For his part, HPL typically referred to these works as his "Dunsanian fantasies" or something similar, reflecting the powerful influence of Anglo-Irish writer Lord Dunsany on his imagination when he wrote most of them. Lovecraft likewise never used the term "Dreamlands" in any of his published writing or private letters, though I don't personally think he would have objected to the coinage, given his admiration for Poe, whose famous poem "Dream-Land" (sometimes styled "Dreamland") surely echoes in the background.

As I revisit these tales, I’ve tried to approach them with fresh eyes, setting aside, so far as possible, the layers of commentary, interpretation, and fan speculation that have built up over the decades. Those perspectives have their value, but I believe it’s essential to start with what Lovecraft actually wrote, not simply with what others have written about it. That’s not always easy, of course, but I note it here both to frame what I hope to do in this and future posts and to remind myself to follow through on that commitment.

Of all H.P. Lovecraft’s early, Dunsanian works, "The White Ship" is among the most overtly dreamlike. First published in the November 1919 issue of The United Amateur and later reprinted in the March 1927 issue of Weird Tales, it's narrated by a lighthouse keeper named Basil Elton. The story recounts Elton's voyage aboard a mysterious vessel crewed by a silent bearded man clad in white. Almost from the start, the tale announces its allegorical, fable-like nature, as Elton steps away from the familiar world of his lighthouse and embarks on a journey through seas that lead to fantastical realms, each embodying some abstract or moral quality. For example, he visits the Land of Zar (of beautiful but fleeting wonders), Thalarion (city of endless delights, haunted by madness), and others, before attempting to reach “the Land of Hope,” Cathuria, which lies beyond the Basalt Pillars of the West. The ship founders during its attempt to reach this forbidden land and Elton awakens back at his post, the beacon light having failed and a wrecked vessel lying on the rocks below.

Read on its own, "The White Ship" presents itself as a straightforward moral parable in the manner of Lord Dunsany. Its sequence of exotic realms, each more allegorical than the last, recalls the mythic procession of The Gods of Pegāna or the ornate wonders of A Dreamer’s Tales. Lovecraft’s imagination here leans heavily on lush description and dream-logic, crafting a narrative that feels more like an allegory than an adventure. Yet the story is not simply a dream. The framing device, with Basil Elton awakening at his lighthouse to discover a shipwreck on the rocks below, suggests that the voyage may have had real consequences – or at least that its reality cannot be easily dismissed. That ambiguity is central to the story’s effect and it helps explain why later readers and commentators so readily considered it part of the Dream Cycle.

More importantly, "The White Ship" contains clear anticipations of the themes and techniques that would define Lovecraft’s those later tales. The notion of voyaging into unseen realms, of lands lying just beyond the horizon of imagination, and of the ceaseless longing for a beauty that can never be fully attained all point forward to The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. Basil Elton, like Randolph Carter after him, is not merely a dreamer but a figure alienated from ordinary life, dissatisfied with its limits, and compelled toward something more. In this way, the story functions as a prototype that's less developed than Lovecraft’s mature dream literature, but unmistakably the seedbed from which it grew.

Within the larger body of Lovecraft’s work, "The White Ship" occupies a liminal position. It predates the full flowering of his Dunsanian/Dreamlands stories, but its imagery and themes resonate strongly with those later tales. The forbidden allure of Thalarion, for instance, parallels the dangerous temptations Carter faces in his quest, while the longing for Cathuria foreshadows Carter’s pursuit of Kadath. Even the story’s framing device – of waking to find the dream has ended in loss – mirrors the bittersweet conclusion of The Dream-Quest. For these reasons, while it is not often remembered, I feel as if "The White Ship" is essential for understanding the eventual evolution of  Lovecraft's fantasies.

In the end, "The White Ship" reveals a young Lovecraft still testing the boundaries of his imagination, experimenting with form, theme, and tone under the spell of Dunsany. It may not possess the philosophical depth of his later meditations on dream and memory nor the grandeur of his most ambitious fantasies, but it nevertheless contains the seeds of both. What it offers instead is an early glimpse of the author reaching beyond the mundane world toward something larger, stranger, and more beautiful than ordinary life can provide. For that reason, it rewards rereading, not only for its ornate imagery, but also for the insight it provides into Lovecraft’s growth as a dreamer and as a writer.

"Call Me Ernie"

Perhaps it's a side effect of my immersion in Lovecraft's Dreamlands, but the other night I had a very vivid dream whose contents I remembered when I awoke. That's quite unusual for me. Though I do dream regularly, I rarely remember the details for long (and I don't keep a dream journal to write them down before they fade from my memory). 

In this dream, I was with a group of my friends – real friends who looked like they do in real life – and we were, for some reason going to Michael Moorcock's home. When we got there, we let ourselves in and proceeded to a large room that appeared to be a dining room or maybe a meeting room. There was a large, long table with a lot of chairs around it.

My friends and I sat down at the table, each claiming a spot. I claimed one near the head of the table, putting down my books and other belongings in front of me in order to secure my place. I did this so that I could be close to Moorcock's seat when he finally arrived. Though my friends filled many of the other seats, there were also a lot of empty seats remaining at the table.

When Moorcock didn't show up immediately, I grew impatient and told my friends I'd go look for him. I then got up and began to explore the halls of his home. I came across a number of rooms, all of them filled with books and works of art that I spent time examining. Then, I heard the sound of a door opening and I rushed back out to a hallway, where I saw Michael Moorcock heading toward the dining/meeting room. He saw me, smiled, and told me to follow him, which I did.

When I got back to the dining/meeting room, I discovered that my seat had been taken by someone else, someone I didn't know. In fact, all the seats at the table were now full, the only empty seats remaining were located at the edges of the room. I was annoyed that my friends had not saved my spot and even more annoyed that my books and other belongings were nowhere to be seen. I scanned the room, hoping I could find them but did not. 

I reluctantly sat down at the edge of the room in one of the empty chairs as Moorcock took his place at the head of the table. He looked at me, seemingly knowing that I was distressed. I said, "Mr Moorcock, can you help me? I have a problem." He smiled and said, "Please, call me Ernie." He then pulled out a drawstring bag. Opening it, he pulled out an old cellphone with lots of accessories and then asked those arrayed around him, "Who'd like to buy this? I'm asking $70 for it but I'm willing to negotiate." I became even more annoyed.

That's when I woke up.

For Their Own Sake

Earlier this week, I came across an article where the author professed her enjoyment of romance novels. What struck me was not her taste in books but that she felt compelled to justify it, as if liking romance fiction required an apology or a dissertation. So, she argued that romance novels aren’t as vapid or devoid of substance as people might assume and that, in fact, many contained hidden depths, social commentary, and so on. I don’t doubt that’s true in some cases, but the whole exercise struck me as unnecessary. Why does any form of entertainment need to be dressed up in the language of higher meaning before it’s considered legitimate? Why can’t we just say, "I like this because it entertains me?"

This is something I think about often when it comes to the pulp fantasy literature I've championed on this blog since its beginnings. For decades, critics and fans alike have strained to rationalize their enjoyment of the pulps. They talk about how Robert E. Howard tapped into archetypal myth or how Fritz Leiber’s stories critique modernity or how Edgar Rice Burroughs anticipated later trends in speculative fiction. In a great many cases, this is, in fact, true, but I can't help but feel like it misses the point.

The pulps – and the stories published in their pages – existed to entertain. That's it. They were meant to fill idle hours with adventure, color, and excitement. They’re not sacred texts or secret manifestos and that’s fine. In fact, that’s more than fine. It’s wonderful.

I first started reading the stories I term "pulp fantasy" sometime after I first discovered Dungeons & Dragons. I would have been just on the cusp of my teen years – 10 or 11 years-old. I didn’t come to those stories because I wanted mythological resonance or literary depth. I came to them because the covers promised daring escapes, sinister sorcery, and faraway places unlike anything in my everyday life. For the most part, those stories delivered on their promises. Conan’s Hyborian Age, Leiber’s Lankhmar, and Burroughs’s Barsoom all burned themselves into my imagination not because they taught me something profound about the human condition, but because they were fun, fast, and unapologetically larger than life.

There seems to be a peculiar pressure to make sure our amusements are "worthy" of our time. Movies, books, and even roleplaying games are expected to carry some moral, political, or psychological weight. If they don’t, we’re told they’re “just entertainment,” as though that were an insult. Despite that, I find great joy in admitting that sometimes, I just want to read about sword-swinging barbarians, evil wizards, and lost cities with no greater purpose than escape.

Escapism itself isn’t a flaw. It’s one of literature’s oldest and most valuable functions. People have always turned to stories to be transported elsewhere, to forget the mundane for a while, and to inhabit another world. There’s no shame in that. If anything, I’d argue it’s essential, especially in times when the “real world” feels oppressive, difficult, or even just dull.

Of course, pulp fantasy stories can contain deeper meanings if you want to find them. Almost anything can, if you look hard enough. However, the fact that you don’t need to, that you can simply enjoy the ride without demanding justification, is, I'd wager, part of what gives them enduring power. When I pick up a yellowed paperback of Conan or Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, I don’t feel guilty that I’m not wrestling with Dostoyevsky or Proust. I’m not reading them for enlightenment. I’m reading them because they’re fun.

Fun should be reason enough for anyone.

Dream-Quest: Shadow

I've released a draft of another character class for my Old School Essentials-based Lovecraftian fantasy roleplaying game, Dream-Quest – the Shadow, which is a thief analog unique to the Dreamlands. 

In addition to the Shadow, I've also released drafts of the following classes:

• Dream-ship Captain
• Dreamer
• Knight of Dreams
• Moon Prowler

Still to come are the Mystic (a magic-user analog), Oracle (a cleric analog), and Poet-Seer (a bard analog). Those might take a little while to finish, since I'm still toying around with concepts for the magic system(s) in Dream-Quest, though I remain hopeful I'll have all the base classes done before the end of October. I plan to run some initial playtests in the last couple of months of the year for my patrons.

 

Gah

As you might have noticed, I've lately been working my way through Alan Burt Akers's stories of Dray Prescot, a sword-and-planet series that began in 1972 with Transit to Scorpio and then continued through 52 volumes for the next quarter-century. The books aren't deep, but they're fun, engaging yarns of the sort that used to be commonplace in fantasy and science fiction. When I talk about "pulp fantasy," these are precisely the kinds of tales I mean. They're the stuff on which the hobby was founded.

Early on in Transit to Scorpio, the protagonist, Dray Prescot, a Napoleonic era English sailor, is in the "swinging city" of Aphrasöe, home of the technologically advanced Savanti who are responsible for bringing him to the planet Kregen. While there, the Savanti instruct him about Kregen and its various continents and the peoples who dwell on them. One of those continents is called Gah.

"You were telling me about Gah," said Maspero, walking up with a wine goblet for me. He drank from his own.

Again Golda laughed; but this time a different note crept into her deep voice. "Gah is really an offense in men's nostrils, Maspero, my dear. They delight so in their primitiveness."

Gah was one of the seven continents of Kregen, one where slavery was an established institution, where, so the men claimed, a woman's highest ambition was to be chained up and grovel at a man's feet, to be stripped, to be loaded with symbols of servitude. They even had iron bars at the foot of their beds where a woman might be shackled, naked, to shiver all night. The men claimed this made the girls love them.

"That sort of behavior appeals to some men," said Maspero. He was looking at me as he spoke.

"It's really sick," said Golda.

"They claim it is a deep significant truth, this need of a woman to be subjugated by a man, and dates right back to our primitive past when we were cavemen."

I said: "But we no longer tear flesh from our kill and east it smoking and raw. We longer believe that the wind brings babies. Thunder and lightning and storm and flood are no longer mysterious gods with malevolent designs on us. Individuals are individuals. The human spirit festers and grow cankerous and corrupt if one individual enslaves another, whatever the sex, whatever specious arguments about sexuality may be instanced."

Golda nodded. Maspero said: "You are right, Dray, where a civilized people are concerned. But, in Gah, the women subscribe also to this barbaric code."

"More fools them," said Golda. And, then, quickly: "No – that is not what I really mean. A man and a woman are alike yet different. So very many men are frightened clean through at the thought of a woman. They overreact. They have no conception in Gah of how a woman is – what she is as a person."

Maspero chuckled. "I've always said that women were people as well."

In case it isn't obvious, this section is intended as a rebuke of John Norman's Gor series, the first volume of which was published a few years before Transit to Scorpio. For some reason, I didn't remember this section of the novel. Reading now, though, it's quite striking, especially when one considers that the Gor books were contemporary with the Prescot novels, so Akers's critique was very much of the moment. So far as I know, Prescot never visits Gah in any of the novels. Whether this is the only reference to the continent and its barbaric customs I can't say.  

Unfinished

Unfinished by James Maliszewski

Pondering Abandoned Projects

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Retrospective: Mutiny on the Eleanor Moraes

When TSR released Star Frontiers in 1982, I imagine the company intended it to be the “science fiction Dungeons & Dragons” in the sense of being very broad in its scope and inspirations. To that end, the original boxed set presented a fairly straightforward system that emphasized accessibility and pulpy space opera-style adventures. Traveller it was not, nor, do I think, it was intended to be. TSR supported the game with the excellent Knight Hawks boxed set, as well as a handful of adventures, the best remembered of which are probably the Volturnus trilogy, a series of modules that functioned much like the The Keep on the Borderlands for D&D – an extended introduction to both the game and its setting.

By 1984, however, TSR seemed unsure of what to do with Star Frontiers. The game had never been as profitable for them as had D&D and the company was already turning its attention to licensed properties like Marvel Super Heroes and The Adventures of Indiana Jones, both released that same year. Star Frontiers would limp along for a few more years – even getting a pair of licensed modules of its own – but its line of support soon started to shrink. Into this environment appeared Mutiny on the Eleanor Moraes, the first part of the "Beyond the Frontier" trilogy.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, considering that it was written by Ken Rolston, Mutiny on the Eleanor Moraes is an excellent adventure. The player characters are part of the crew of the titular Eleanor Moraes, a small scout ship operating on the fringes of the Frontier. Their mission is to chart an uninhabited world designated Mahg Mar for potential colonization by the United Planetary Federation. While the characters are away from the ship conducting a planetary survey, the first officer seizes control in an unexplained mutiny, leaving the vessel in his control. Now out of contact with the Eleanor Moraes and thrown on their own resources, the characters must make their way back to the ship to discover what has happened.

From that point onward, the module shifts into a hybrid of a survival scenario and an open-ended exploration one. The characters must find food and shelter, contend with hostile alien fauna, scavenge and repair damaged technology, and even contend with robots reprogrammed by the mutineer to attack them, before eventually devising a way to retake the Eleanor Moraes. Because the mutiny occurs "offscreen," so to speak, the characters have no chance to prevent it, but once it has happened, they enjoy a great deal of freedom of action. The referee is given tools for handling wilderness travel, encounters with alien creatures, and the steady progress of the mutineer's own plans, creating a situation where time and resource management matter just as much as combat prowess.

What distinguishes Mutiny on the Eleanor Moraes from previous Star Frontiers modules is its tone. Where the Volturnus trilogy presented the pulpy and highly implausible world of Volturnus, this module feels closer to a science fiction survival tale, like Robert Heinlein's Tunnel in the Sky. It asks players not simply to blast their way out of trouble but to endure, improvise, and outthink their obstacles with only limited means at their disposal. It's a great set-up for an adventure in my opinion, which is why I've long held it in pretty high regard.

This approach was something of a throwback to an earlier era. D&D modules of that time were increasingly plot-driven, often built around a central antagonist. While Mutiny on the Eleanor Moraes does have one unavoidable story element (the mutiny) it thereafter opens into something much more freeform and sandbox-like. Its survival elements invite genuine creativity, since the characters’ success depends on how they use the limited tools and knowledge available to them. Couple that with a ticking clock – the characters must reach and regain control of the ship before the mutineer attempts to leave the planet without them – and you've got a remarkably engaging scenario.

As I noted at the start of this Retrospective, this module is the first in a new trilogy of adventures, suggesting that, despite whatever confusion TSR had about the game's place within its stable, it was still willing to commit some resources to it. Indeed, the next two modules in the series point toward Big Events in the setting about whose ultimate outcome I was genuinely curious. Unfortunately, nothing lasting came of it, as TSR overhauled the entire game and then completely abandoned it.

This context gives Mutiny on the Eleanor Moraes a bittersweet quality in hindsight. It demonstrates that Star Frontiers could have become a much more serious contender in its competition with other well-established SF RPGs had TSR pursued a more diverse range of scenarios instead. Its mixture of betrayal, survival, and wilderness exploration is genuinely engaging in my opinion and, from what I have gathered online, many referees have repurposed it for other systems precisely because the situation it describes is so adaptable.

Looking back four decades later, Mutiny on the Eleanor Moraes stands out for offering players a wide-open field for ingenuity and problem-solving. In doing so, it bridges two eras of TSR design – the freewheeling sandbox of the early days and the more scripted scenarios of the Silver Age. For anyone interested in science fiction roleplaying of the early 1980s or simply in how TSR approached a genre outside of fantasy, Mutiny on the Eleanor Moraes is a fascinating artifact. It's also a glimpse of the potential Star Frontiers possessed had it received stronger and more consistent support from the company.

Alone in the Dreamlands

The latest post about Dream-Quest is a public one, because I want to solicit comments and suggestions from as wide a pool as possible. Feel free to post your thoughts here or, if possible, over at the Patreon.

The Articles of Dragon: "The Marvel-Phile"

The very first installment of Jeff Grubb’s "The Marvel-Phile" appeared in issue #88 of Dragon (August 1984). The column’s purpose was straightforward: to provide game statistics for Marvel Comics characters – famous, obscure, and in-between – for use with TSR’s newly released Marvel Super Heroes roleplaying game. Ultimately, the column would appear in 78 issues of the magazine, its last one appearing in issue #198 (October 1993), long after I'd stopped reading Dragon regularly. 

The debut entry of the column focused on Thor, Loki, and Ulik the Troll. It was an interesting choice to kick things off. Thor was, by 1984, one of Marvel’s most recognizable superheroes, a long-time member of the Avengers, and one of the publisher’s flagship solo characters. Loki, of course, was his long-standing nemesis and his inclusion made perfect sense. Ulik, however, was another matter. Though he’d been appearing in Thor comics since the 1960s, he was by no means a household name. His presence here, I think, highlighted the column’s larger mission, namely, showing that the Marvel Super Heroes RPG wasn’t just about Spider-Man, Captain America, or the Hulk. It was also about the sprawling, interconnected Marvel Universe, filled with strange and colorful characters who might otherwise never make it to the tabletop.

That was part of what made "The Marvel-Phile" special. Each column offered not just game stats but also background, history, and context, which were enough to orient players who might not be die-hard readers of Marvel comics. That certainly described me. I was never a huge fan of superheroes as a kid. I dabbled, to be sure, and I knew some of the heavy hitters thanks to Saturday morning cartoons and endless merchandising. But beyond that shallow familiarity, I often drew a blank when confronted with Marvel’s deeper roster. For me, Grubb’s column was a kind of primer. I might never have read the issues of Thor where the Thunder God encountered Ulik, but I knew who he was because Dragon explained it.

Looking back, it’s easy to see "The Marvel-Phile" as part of TSR’s broader strategy in the mid-1980s. With Marvel Super Heroes, the company had acquired the license to one of the biggest names in comics. Of course, translating that license into a lasting RPG line wasn’t simple. The game’s beloved FASERIP rules were quite innovative at the time, but its longevity depended on holding players' attention over the longer haul. The column in Dragon did just that, ensuring a steady stream of new material while simultaneously advertising the game to magazine’s already sizable readership.

Jeff Grubb was the perfect choice to write it. He was not only the designer of Marvel Super Heroes but also someone with an evident affection for its source material. His enthusiasm came through in every installment, making the column accessible to casual readers while still satisfying those with more extensive comic book knowledge. In many ways, "The Marvel-Phile" functioned like a bridge. It connected the gaming world and the comics world, inviting players to explore the latter while providing them with the mechanical tools to do so in the former.

As I noted at the beginning of this post, the column proved popular enough to become a semi-regular feature in the Ares Section of Dragon for almost a decade. For some readers, it was their first exposure to characters who would only much later become mainstream through movies and television. Decades before the Marvel Cinematic Universe made Loki and Thor household names, Grubb’s column was doing the work of introducing them and countless others to gamers around the world. That, I think, is the enduring significance of "The Marvel-Phile." Like many of the best features of Dragon, it simultaneously served practical gaming needs and provided a window onto a larger hobby culture. For me and, I suspect, for many others, it was as much an education in Marvel Comics as it was an aid to running a superhero RPG.

Toward Lighter Dreams

As I alluded to in today's earlier post, I recently discovered a surprising connection to the stories of H.P. Lovecraft's so-called "Dream Cycle." I say "so-called," because exactly which stories are to be included in this grouping is a matter of some debate, though certain tales, like "The Doom That Came to Sarnath" and The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath are pretty much universally accepted as being among them, while the inclusion of others, such as "The Dreams in the Witch House," for example, are more contentious. Such considerations are interesting and probably worthy of further discussion, but that's not what concerns me in this post. Instead, I want to talk a little more about just why I think I've returned to the stories of the Dreamlands with new eyes.

H.P. Lovecraft has long been one of my favorite authors and his stories have exercised a remarkable influence over my imagination. Until recently, though, it was his tales of cosmic horror that commanded most of my attention as, I suspect, they have for most fans of his work over the decades. Cosmic horror is a literary mode that emphasizes human insignificance and powerlessness, often culminating in despair, if not outright madness. I first encountered it at just the right time – the dawn of my teenage years – so it stuck with me almost as a default lens for thinking about not only horror in general but Lovecraft in particular.

However, as I suggested last month, Lovecraft’s work was not monolithic and neither is my interest in his writings. When I re-read his tales with fresh eyes, I found myself drawn less to his works of cosmic dread and more to those set in the Dreamlands. These stories, however one defines the cycle, strike very different notes than, say, “The Call of Cthulhu” or “The Dunwich Horror.” They are suffused with longing and melancholy, yes, but also with a deep sense of wonder. They are stories in which the imagination does not lead inevitably to terror but instead creates places worth visiting, people worth meeting, and experiences worth treasuring.

I didn’t expect Lovecraft’s Dreamlands stories to awaken such feelings in me, but they did. I still value the bleak and the horrifying, of course, but I’ve come to realize that, with the realm of roleplaying games, I also crave experiences that leave space for something lighter, something more hopeful. By “hopeful,” I don’t mean saccharine or consequence-free. The Dreamlands are no less perilous than the Waking World and many who travel there come to sad ends. Yet, they also offer fellowship, beauty, and the possibility of triumph. Further, they have provided me with a vision of a roleplaying game in which imagination is not merely a weapon turned against us, but a lamp to guide us through the darkness.

These are the qualities that inspired me to begin work on Dream-Quest. My intention with this particular project is not another generic fantasy roleplaying game, but one where exploration, discovery, and wonder take center stage. I want a game where danger is real, but so too is the joy of a shared meal, the peace of a moonlit harbor, and the beauty of a long-lost temple rediscovered beneath the stars. Dream-Quest is meant to capture the balance between peril and possibility, melancholy and hope, that I find so compelling in Lovecraft’s Dreamlands yarns.

Perhaps this reflects where I now find myself, both as a gamer and as a person. The older I get, the more I value moments of rest, fellowship, and joy, even in the midst of turmoil and struggle. That, I think, is what Randolph Carter sought in his wanderings across the Dreamlands: a reminder that, however fleeting, there are still places of wonder to be found. If Dream-Quest can capture even a fraction of that feeling, then the effort will have been worthwhile.

Pulp Fantasy Library: Polaris

I hesitated, at first, about writing yet another Pulp Fantasy Library post about a story by H.P. Lovecraft so soon after the conclusion of The Shadow over August. However, I soon realized that, since I'm already in the midst of reading and re-reading the stories of HPL's Dreamlands for my work on Dream-Quest, it only makes sense that I should also use them as fodder for more posts on Grognardia. On the off-chance anyone wants to complain about that, feel free to vent your spleen in the comments. That's what they're there for. 

The earliest of Lovecraft's tales associated with the Dreamlands is “Polaris," written sometime in 1918, but not published until 1920 in the first (and only) issue of Alfred Galpin's amateur journal, The Philosopher. "Polaris" was reprinted twice during Lovecraft's life – in the May 1926 issue of National Amateur and in the February 1934 issue of Charles D. Horning's The Fantasy Fan. It was also reprinted posthumously in the December 1937 issue of Weird Tales. As the first Dreamlands story, one can already see Lovecraft experimenting with the ideas, imagery, and themes that would later become more important in later entries in this literary cycle.

The story is brief but suggestive, more of a prose-poem than a typical weird tale. Its unnamed narrator dreams of the ancient city of Olathoë in the land of Lomar, beneath the ceaseless gleam of the Pole Star. In his dream, he inhabits the body of a Lomarian during a time of siege, when the Inutos press upon the city’s walls. Chosen to mount the watchtower and guard against treachery, he succumbs to the lulling shimmer of Polaris and falls asleep. When he later awakens, the city has fallen, its fate sealed by his own negligence. Back in the waking world, the narrator is tormented by the possibility that Olathoë was reality and his modern existence only a dream, with Polaris itself shining above as an eternal reminder of his failure.

What makes “Polaris” interesting is not its plot, which is little more than a vignette based on one of HPL's own dreams, but the way it introduces the idea of dreaming as a gateway to another existence, one continuous across nights and perhaps more “real” than waking life. This conceit, to which Lovecraft will return in later stories, is the first step toward the creation of the Dreamlands as he would eventually develop them. In addition, we see the first hints of what might be called the “rules” of that setting, such as:

• Dreams as portals: The dreamer does not merely imagine but in some sense enters another world, complete with a history and geography of its own.
• Identity across dreams: The narrator is not simply himself, but inhabits another body, another life, as if reincarnated or transported.
• Dream vs. reality: The story leaves unresolved which world is real, a tension Lovecraft would return to repeatedly.

As a work of literature, “Polaris” is a bit rough, lacking the ornate landscapes of The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath or the romantic melancholy of “Celephaïs” (which I'll discuss in the weeks to come). Instead, its importance lies in presenting Lovecraft’s enduring fascination with the idea of dream as revelation, that what we glimpse in sleep might not be fantasy at all, but rather memory, prophecy, or indeed truth. The notion that the dream may be more real than the waking world would become one of the cornerstones of the Dreamlands stories.

“Polaris” may also reflect Lovecraft’s personal preoccupations at the time of its writing. He possessed a lifelong fascination with astronomy and once hoped to study the subject at Brown University. That ambition, however, was derailed by a nervous breakdown in 1908, which left him unable even to complete high school, much less pursue higher education at an institution as prestigious as Brown. By the time he wrote “Polaris,” Lovecraft was 28 years old and had no steady employment or reliable income, surviving instead on the remnants of a dwindling inheritance. In this light, the narrator’s dereliction of duty beneath the watchful star can be read as a symbolic dramatization of Lovecraft’s own sense of failure and unfulfilled promise. Yet, as is often the case with his work, what begins in the register of personal despair is ultimately transformed into a broader, more cosmic vision.

For readers who first encountered the Dreamlands chiefly through Lovecraft’s later and better-known stories, “Polaris” offers a glimpse of the cycle in embryo. By the light of the Pole Star, Lovecraft first sketched out a realm where dream and waking life blur and where the heavens themselves seem both oppressive and eternal. At the same time, the story hints at the liberating possibilities of that realm as a place where the constraints of his own earthly disappointments could be reimagined and transcended. In the Dreamlands, at least, he discovered a vehicle of escape, one that would grow into a central imaginative outlet for the rest of his career.

Epistle (Continued)

Epistle (Continued) by James Maliszewski

More Excerpts from the Secrets of sha-Arthan 'Zine

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Initiation

Over the past few months, I’ve been thinking a lot about my own introduction to the hobby in late 1979. My experiences weren’t unique, but they were mine and it’s important not to treat them as universal. Even among those who started around the same time, no two stories are exactly alike. The same goes for anyone who might read what follows and think, “That’s not how I remember it.” Your memories are no less real, but neither are they more representative than my own. There’s no single, definitive way to have entered the hobby and we’d all do well to remember that. I raise this point only to make clear that what follows comes from my own recollections of being ten years old, discovering Dungeons & Dragons, and, through it, the larger world of nerd-dom.

Like a lot of the kids I grew up with, my first awareness of D&D didn’t come from spotting a box on a toy store shelf or from advertising. It came as a result of the media hoopla surrounding the disappearance of James Dallas Egbert in August 1979. I've talked about this many times before, so I won't waste too much time with it here. What's important to bear in mind is that this event and the sensationalist news coverage that it elicited it played a key role in my earliest sense of what the hobby was like. Even though I never saw anything "dangerous" about D&D or roleplaying games, many people seemingly did and that knowledge colored my early experiences. 

Once I had a copy of D&D to examine, I couldn't make heads or tails of the rules. Even though my copy was supposedly a "basic set," I found the rulebook nearly impossible to understand. I might as well have been written in Latin or Greek, because at least then I could explain why I had such difficulty making sense of it. When I sometimes compare opening that rulebook to peering into a grimoire, this is what I mean. The knowledge was there, but it was opaque and intimidating. Consequently, my real education came not from the printed word but from my elders in the hobby, older kids who had already passed through the veil and were willing to usher me along, like my friend's older brother.

What's interesting from the vantage point of the present is that he didn't sit us down and explain rules systematically. Instead, he showed us how to roll up characters, how to read the dice, and so forth. In a number of cases, what he told wasn't something I could find anywhere in the rulebook, but none of us minded, because we had faith that what he was teaching us was correct, even though, as we later learned, that much of it wasn't. In any case, this is vital to understanding how I came into the hobby. My friends and I were taken under the wing of someone we perceived to be already knowledgeable about D&D, who showed us the ropes, even if he did so imperfectly. 

It's equally important to understand that, despite the media coverage, roleplaying was still very much a fringe activity in my earliest days. The first truly "mainstream" edition of Dungeons & Dragons – the Moldvay and Cook/Marsh boxed sets – weren't released until 1981, more than a year after I started playing, so you had to venture into some pretty peculiar places to find RPGs (though, to be fair, my Holmes set was ordered through a Sears Catalog). The hobby shops of my youth were nothing like the bright, well-stocked game cafes of today. They were dim, cluttered, often a little musty. Aisles were packed with model kits, miniatures, and stacks of books. The proprietors were frequently brusque, eccentric men who seemed to size you up as you walked in, as though to determine whether you were really there for the games or had simply wandered in by mistake. To buy your first set of dice or a module was to pass through a kind of test and, if you succeeded, you carried your treasure out like a relic looted from the catacombs.

From the outside, of course, it all looked baffling. I don't think my parents ever really understood what roleplaying games were, for example, and their confusion was not unusual. Outside my circle of friends and the other players I'd meet in various locales, it was very uncommon to encounter anyone who knew what we were playing – which is perfectly understandable, given how hard even we found it to learn to play. Inside our circle, though, the hobby felt like we had been given access to something powerful and hidden. Once we'd been shown how to play, once we'd rolled those dice, and said what our characters wanted to do next, we belonged. We were now part of a fellowship that outsiders could not easily understand and that was part of the fun.

No one ever handed me a torch or a robe. There was no altar, no oaths sworn in secret chambers. Even so, I can't help but think of my introduction into the hobby as an initiation. That introduction was not at all straightforward. It wasn't simply a matter of “learning a new game” that it might have seemed to outsiders. Instead, it was baffling and mysterious and thrilling, not to mention occasionally off-putting. It felt like a rite of passage for me as a kid on the verge of his teen years. Decades later, I remain grateful for it all. It was a terrific way to enter this hobby.

Dream-Quest: Knight of Dreams

Elsewhere, I'm still developing Dream-Quest, my Lovecraftian/Dunsanian fantasy game based on Old School Essentials. This is a side project to the others I'm already sharing over at Grognardia Games Direct, but it's starting to pick up steam, with the goal of playtesting an early version of it in the winter. In the meantime, I'm filling out the roster of character classes for play, with the Knight of Dreams being the latest one. The class takes loose inspiration from the knights who serve King Kuranes in Lovecraft's "Celephaïs."

Short-Term

As you know, I'm currently refereeing three different roleplaying game campaigns: House of Worms (Empire of the Petal Throne), Barrett's Raiders (Twilight: 2000), and Dolmenwood (which doesn't have a separate name, despite my long-held practice of bestowing them). Dolmenwood is the newest of the three, having been started a little less than a year ago (November 2024), while the other two of much older vintage – House of Worms has been going for over a decade of continuous play, while Barrett's Raiders will celebrate its fourth anniversary this December. 

Though I never specifically set out to run a multi-year campaign when I began any of these, I nevertheless hoped that they would last for several years. Indeed, it remains my firm belief that roleplaying games are best enjoyed not as some casual entertainment but as something demanding more sustained commitment from both players and the referee. This is, in my opinion, the ideal form of roleplaying, for reasons I've elucidated elsewhere. Consequently, I always feel a little bit defeated when a new campaign doesn't quite take and sputters out after only a few weeks or months.

Of course, if I look back at the more than four decades I've been involved in this hobby, I can see far more "failed" campaigns, which is to say, campaigns lasting a year or less, than those lasting two or more years, never mind a decade. House of Worms is truly unique. Were I to live to be one hundred, I doubt I will ever strike gold the way I have with House of Worms. Even after all this time, its longevity is inexplicable to me – a one-of-a-kind coincidence of elements that I couldn't have planned no matter how hard I tried (and I didn't). As that campaign prepares for its conclusion, I cannot help but be profoundly grateful for the experience of such a long and enjoyable campaign.

I bring all this up as something of a prolog to a conversation I recently had with my adult daughter, who's a bit more plugged into the contemporary RPG scene than I am. We were out somewhere and I saw a new roleplaying game with which I wasn't familiar. I thought the idea behind it was interesting but very focused. I told her that I couldn't imagine anyone being able to play this game for very long, to which she replied, "Not everyone wants to play the same game continuously for years." 

Now, obviously, I knew this to be true. Even so, hearing her say that made me ponder the question a bit more. How many of the games I own are broad enough in concept that I can imagine playing them for years? The truth is fewer than I would have thought. Certainly, Dungeons & Dragons and its various descendants have proved that they can support long-term play. I don't hesitate in saying that about Traveller as well, but what about, say, Call of Cthulhu? Is it possible to play a continuous CoC campaign for years with the same group of characters (more or less)? I know of long-running Call of Cthulhu campaigns but how common are they and are the odds stacked against them, given the frame of the game? 

Mind you, I'd argue that the odds are stacked against most RPGs, not necessarily because of their rules or even their focus but because most players and referees grow bored of them after a while. Gamer ADD is a real thing and always has been, though I think it's gotten worse in the last couple of decades. If I had to venture a guess as to why, I think its roots are twofold. First, I think most people nowadays are much more easily distracted. There are so many shiny things competing for their attention that it's harder and harder to keep them on task. Second, there are so many more RPGs to choose from. Gamers have always been prone to neophilia in my experience, so when there are literally dozens of new games released every year, it's little wonder that they find it difficult to commit to any one of them for more than a few weeks or months. They wouldn't want to "miss out," would they?

My daughter is more charitable than I. She compares many gamers' approaches to a charcuterie board. They want a little of this and a little of that but aren't willing to make an entire meal out of salami. Instead, they want to sample everything. That's fair, I suppose, and I can't really be too critical of this perspective, because, at various times, I've adopted something close to it myself. Still, it's another reminder that my tastes and preferences are increasingly out of touch with what the hobby seems to be about. I guess that's just the nature of getting old.

The Origins of Grognardia

The Origins of Grognardia by James Maliszewski

Toward an Introduction to the Blog

Read on Substack

Retrospective: Rifts

As I edge into my elder years, I’m struck by how persistent one theme has been across the more than half-century of my life: The End of It All. Popular culture has long carried the conviction that, for all our technological advances and sophistication, civilization was always teetering on the brink of catastrophe. Ice ages, global warming, acid rain, killer bees, the Jupiter Effect (remember that?), alien invasions, nuclear war –again and again we were told humanity is on a one-way trip to ruin. This apocalyptic sensibility seeped into everything: books, movies, television, even roleplaying games.

Deeper considerations aside, it's easy to understand why: apocalypses offer unique opportunities for adventure. The breakdown of the old order creates lots of space for heroes and villains who make their own rules, just as ruined cities are the perfect places for such people to loot and explore. The post-apocalyptic world might not be a great place to live, but it often sounds like a great place to play an RPG, filled as it is with danger, mystery, and the promise of carving out something new amidst the wreckage of the old.

Over the years, there have been many post-apocalyptic RPGs, some of which I’ve greatly enjoyed. As readers know, I’m currently refereeing Barrett’s Raiders, my ongoing Twilight: 2000 campaign, so it’s a genre that has long appealed to me. That’s why, when Palladium Books released its own entry into the field, Rifts, in 1990, I took notice. Written by Kevin Siembieda, like most of Palladium’s output, the game now feels like the perfect encapsulation of its era’s RPG culture: exuberant, excessive, self-confident, and utterly unconcerned with its own contradictions. Even more than three decades later, Rifts remains both instantly recognizable and difficult to pin down. To call it merely a “post-apocalyptic” RPG misses the mark, because Rifts was (intentionally) never just one thing. It was a collision of genres and ideas – science fiction, fantasy, horror, superheroes – whose very incoherence was what made it so compelling.

At the time of its initial release, I was already familiar with Palladium through a few of the company's earlier releases, thanks in large part to my college roommate, who was a fan. Consequently, I wasn't surprised when I saw a big rulebook filled with evocative, comic-style artwork and Siembieda’s signature blend of dense rules and poor organization. What I wasn’t prepared for was the scope of its setting. Here was Earth, centuries after a magical cataclysm tore open rifts in space and time, unleashing every kind of horror, wonder, and menace imaginable. Dragons and demons rubbed shoulders with cyborg mercenaries, mutant animals, and alien warlords. The North American continent was a patchwork of techno-dystopias, barbarian kingdoms, and wildernesses haunted by supernatural predators. Almost anything was possible in Rift by design, since one of its purposes was to provide a setting where elements from other Palladium games could be dropped in easily.

The original rulebook – the only one I ever saw – had a clear appeal. Its black-and-white illustrations (by artists like Kevin Long and Siembieda himself) were part of its appeal. Likewise, its cover painting by Keith Parkinson immediately communicated the tone of Rifts: over-the-top, bombastic, and larger than life. Rifts didn’t just allow for power fantasies; it practically demanded them. Whereas Dungeons & Dragons offered a gradual "zero to hero" style of advancement, Rifts lets you begin the game as a cyber-knight, a near-invulnerable walking tank, or a ley line–powered sorcerer who can bend reality. 

That excess was both the game’s great strength and its great weakness. The rules were built on the already creaky Palladium system, with its notorious combination of percentile skills, mega-damage mechanics, and endless lists of powers, spells, and combat options, not to mention character classes. "Balance" of any kind is effectively nonexistent. A city rat with a pistol could be in the same party as a dragon hatchling with spellcasting and mega-damage claws, but the game's overall approach was, more or less, that Game Master can make it all work somehow. Honestly, that's not necessarily terrible advice, though I'm sure it wouldn't satisfy many gamers, especially nowadays. 

Looking back, Rifts is a fascinating snapshot of where the hobby was at the time. By 1990, D&D had already begun its transformation into an ever more baroque monstrosity with a plethora of options and settings, while White Wolf was just about to launch its World of Darkness storytelling games, forever changing the face of the hobby. Rifts, by contrast, reveled in excess, giving players the keys to the toy store and daring them to see what happened. The result was chaotic, but, based on what longtime fans tell me, immensely fun. In the years that followed, the flood of supplements, world books, and sourcebooks only expanded the game’s already immense scope, making it simultaneously baffling to outsiders but also exactly what its fans wanted.

Rifts will never win any awards for being elegant or balanced, but, speaking largely as a disinterested party, I think it largely succeeds on its own terms. It offers a vision of roleplaying that is anarchic, imaginative, and gloriously insane. For many in 1990, Rifts was a passport to a multiverse where every idea anyone ever had from comics, cartoons, or science fiction could live side by side. That’s no small achievement, even if it's not for everyone, myself included.

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "Before the Dark Years"

[Historical Note: The original version of this, from April 23, 2011, was not part of The Articles of Dragon series but a stand-alone post. However, since the article it discusses did appear in Dragon, it seemed appropriate to fold this report into my revival of the series.]

While the way that TSR looted the corpse of SPI was shameful (and likely had a deleterious effect on the wider hobby), it had one positive effect from the perspective of my youth: the advent of the "Ares Section" of Dragon. I've always been more of a sci-fi fan than a fantasy one, so knowing that every issue of Dragon would devote two or three articles to the genre each month was a good thing in my view. (This also probably explains why the issues of Dragon I was most fond of ran from 80s to the early 100s – corresponding very closely to the lifespan of the Ares Section).

Gamma World was well represented in the Ares Section, frequently presenting articles penned by creator James Ward, which I appreciated, given my obsession with official-dom. One of my favorite articles from Ward was published in issue 88 (August 1984), called "Before the Dark Years." It presents a historical timeline of the Gamma World setting, beginning (as all post-apocalyptic timelines do) in 1945 with the first use of nuclear weapons and ending in 2450, which was the approximate start of the 2nd edition of the game (1st edition began later, in 2471 – why the change, I wonder?).

It's true that the article appealed to me back then because it scratched a completist urge to know it all, an urge I have long since – and happily – abandoned. But back then it was simply awesome to know, for example, that the starship Warden was launched in 2290. Re-reading the article, I still love it, but for rather different reasons. I like it for entries like this one:

2322 – Processed-iced asteroid (guidance circuits damaged by terrorists) strikes Mars; eight-year duststorm and climatic disruption result. All colonies on planet isolated; Federation charter suspended for the duration.

Or this one:

2331 – Trans-Plutonian Shipyards assume control of their own programs and generate robotic "life."

The reason I love entries like these is that they hit home that Gamma World's apocalypse doesn't happen in the here and now but in a science fictional future. That ought to be obvious, given the presence Mark VII blasters and black ray guns and so forth, but, somehow, it's easy to forget, perhaps because, in the 70s and 80s, worrying about the End of All Things focused on the present, not the future. Indeed, lots of people didn't think there would be a future, thanks to the Damoclean threat of Armageddon.

Gamma World didn't take that approach. Instead, it's set in the future and the weapons that usher in the Dark Years include not just nuclear missiles but also "dimension-warp" devices and other weaponry undreamed of in our age. I think that set Gamma World apart from other post-apocalyptic games, imbuing it with a more "wondrous" quality and also, if I may wax sociological for a moment, making it a little less frightening to kids like me. The Morrow Project, to cite one example, postulates that the End would come in 1989 as a consequence of Cold War foolishness and, however absurd its specifics, that was a scenario many people genuinely believed might occur in their lifetimes. But a 24th century terrorist group called the Apocalypse? Using dimension-warp weapons and striking at not just Earth but space colonies as far away as the Oort Cloud? That's clearly fantasy and a lot less terrifying.

As I noted recently, my preferred way to play Gamma World is to treat the post-apocalyptic world as largely a blank slate, one utterly unfamiliar to the characters, who not only grew up generations removed form the Fall, but are played by people for whom even the pre-Fall world is alien. That pre-Fall world included settlements on the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere, is supported by robots, cyborgs, and A.I.s, and is launching extra-solar colonization efforts. That creates a lot of scope for terrific adventures and campaigns; I might even go so far as to say that, as developed in this and other articles, Gamma World provides a canvas every bit as large as that offered by Dungeons & Dragons. Sadly, the game has largely been treated as a joke by its custodians over the years, its full potential never quite realized and that's too bad.

Lessons Learned

With The Shadow over August now complete, I’ve been reflecting on the experience of writing it. This was the first time I’d ever devoted an entire month to a single “theme,” unless you count those old blog challenges that used to make the rounds back in the early days of Grognardia. I took part in at least one of those during what I like to call the First Age of the blog. However, The Shadow over August was different in both purpose and content, which is why it’s left me with so many thoughts.

In fairness, it wasn’t completely unlike a blog challenge in one key respect: it gave me a convenient frame for my writing. One of the hardest parts of maintaining a blog – especially when aiming for daily posts – is figuring out what to write. I’m never short of ideas, but not all of them are ready to be developed and my attention tends to bounce between a dozen threads at once. That usually results in an eclectic mix of posts, which I know some readers enjoy, but it also makes it harder for me to build momentum toward something more substantial.

Having a clear focus last month, namely, Lovecraft and his legacy, helped channel my creative energy in a way I haven’t experienced in years. August turned out to be my most productive month of 2025, surpassing even July. More importantly, I feel the quality of my posts was higher overall, with at least one standing among the best I’ve written since returning to blogging five years ago. In that respect, The Shadow over August was a real gift to me, providing a framework that sharpened both my productivity and my creativity.

That said, that same framework also acted as a kind of restraint. Even though not every post last month was about Lovecraft, most of them were and, when other ideas occurred to me, I often hesitated to post them. On some level, it felt wrong to break the flow of Lovecraftian content with posts on unrelated gaming topics or news about Grognardia Games Direct. The focus was liberating but also limiting in ways I hadn’t expected. The flipside of this is that, now that The Shadow over August is over, I almost feel sheepish about making any more Lovecraft posts, despite the fact that I still have a lot more to say about him, his works, and his influence of roleplaying games.

That's, of course, one of the other unexpected outcomes of last month: I gained a new appreciation of HPL's Dreamlands stories, so much so, in fact, that I'm now devoting myself to the development of an Old School Essentials-derived Dreamlands RPG, Dream-Quest. I certainly didn't intend to be so inspired that my head was suddenly overflowing with ideas for such a game and yet here I am. The Muse is mysterious. Rather than try to puzzle out her motives, I have simply decided to let her guide me where she will. Whether this results in anything substantial or just another half-finished project, who can say?

I think, on balance, the experiment was a successful one, so much so that I've already begun contemplating doing another one in the future, perhaps in January, which is the birth month of both Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith (and J.R.R. Tolkien and Abraham Merritt and Edgar Allan Poe and ...). However, a lot will depend on how my various projects evolve over the course of the coming weeks and months. I feel as if I've been on something of a creative roll lately and I'm honestly struggling a bit to decide which projects deserve my attention. 

While there's no danger that I will abandon this blog, is writing a post every day something I can sustain over the long term, especially when there's so much more I want to do (and that, I must be honest, literally repay the time and effort I put into them)? I really don't know, hence my experimentation with different platforms, formats, and content over the last few months. I can't help but feel that I'm in the midst of a long-delayed metamorphosis. Ultimately, I think that'll be a good thing, but the intervening stages might be a little ugly and messy and, for that, I apologize in advance.

The End(?) of Pulp Fantasy Library

In Grognardia's early days, one of its signature features was Pulp Fantasy Library. If you glance at the “Popular Topics and Series” box down the right-hand column, you’ll see more than 300 entries under that heading. The idea was simple: highlight the works of pulp fantasy literature that shaped not only my own imagination but, more importantly, those that shaped founders of the hobby of roleplaying. Like so much of Grognardia, Pulp Fantasy Library grew out of my conviction that you can’t really grasp the origins of RPGs without engaging the books, authors, and ideas that inspired it.

Of course, the series didn’t stay neatly confined. Over time, I pushed at its boundaries, sometimes gleefully so. I wrote not only about sword-and-sorcery or weird tales but also about science fiction, horror, comics, movies, and the occasional oddball work that defied easy categorization. I often made light of this stretching of definitions, but, in truth, I was doing something larger, namely, charting the imaginative landscape that predated and nourished the hobby. RPGs didn’t spring from nowhere, after all, and Pulp Fantasy Library was my way of mapping the soil they grew in.

The Shadow Over August reminded me of just how much I enjoyed this work. Revisiting four of Lovecraft’s stories made two things clear. First, there’s still a vast reservoir of older literature, much of it influential on RPGs, some of it simply worth reading, about which I've never written. Second, doing these posts properly is no small task. Reading (or rereading), researching context, and writing thoughtfully about them takes a great deal of time and energy, more than I can always justify with so many other projects competing for my attention these days.

Much as it might seem otherwise, Grognardia remains a hobby project and hobbies come with limits. That’s part of why I find myself asking whether Pulp Fantasy Library has already run its course and there's really no need to revive it – or perhaps is it ready for a metamorphosis of some kind? Many of the works I’d still like to tackle don’t sit comfortably within the strict “pulp fantasy” label. Maybe the time has come to evolve the series into something broader, which reflects the full range of the cultural and literary roots from which roleplaying sprang.

I haven’t made up my mind about whether or not I should return to the series and, if so, in what form or frequency. What I do know is this: I remain as fascinated by these seminal works as ever and I believe they still matter deeply to anyone who cares about where our hobby came from. The real question is whether readers share that conviction strongly enough to make it worthwhile for me to continue.

Do you want to see Pulp Fantasy Library return in some form? Is this the kind of writing you value from Grognardia? Let me know. Your responses and, frankly, your encouragement will help me decide not only the fate of Pulp Fantasy Library but also the future direction of the blog itself.

One of Us

As we draw The Shadow over August to a close, I'd like to end this series with a moment of reflection. Celebrating H.P. Lovecraft is, for many, a complicated endeavor. It has become fashionable in recent years to criticize him, to magnify his personal flaws while downplaying the extraordinary influence he has had on the worlds of fiction, pop culture (including roleplaying games), and imagination itself. Yet, for all his faults, both human and literary, I have come to see Lovecraft as something more than a historical figure or a subject of controversy. I see him as a kindred spirit.

Lovecraft was, in so many ways, like many of us who have found solace in books, in quiet contemplation, and in worlds of our own making. He was shy, intensely bookish, and at odds with the modern world and its demands, yet he also cultivated wide friendships and a network of mutual support that enriched both his life and the lives of those around him. He endured profound loss and personal difficulty throughout his life, from the death of his father while a child to the even greater loss of his beloved grandfather to a mother whose protectiveness sometimes smothered him Despite that, he carved out a life of meaning through his imagination, his letters, and his multitude of friends.

No one is without flaws and Lovecraft’s were many. But the measure of a man is not in perfection. It is in persistence, in the courage to create, to connect, and to leave something lasting by the time we depart this sublunary existence. In this, Lovecraft succeeded in ways few could. For me, he is a fellow nerd, a fellow writer, and a fellow introvert who managed to create not only stories but, just as importantly, friendships, a community, and a legacy that continues to shape the way we imagine and tell tales decades after his death.

I hope that in following The Shadow over August, readers might come to understand not just Lovecraft’s works, but the man behind them – flawed, human, brilliant, and strangely relatable. Perhaps, in some small way, I hope readers might also recognize in his life the quiet courage it takes to pursue one’s own path, to cultivate one's own circle, and to leave one's mark on the world.

Lovecraft, with all his contradictions, reminds me that being a nerd, being a dreamer, and being devoted to one’s craft are virtues worth celebrating. That, after all, is the real reason why I have spent this month writing in his honor. I hope you have enjoyed it.

Interview: Jeff Talanian

1. How did you first discover the works of H.P. Lovecraft and what was it about his writing that captivated you?

Greetings, James, and thank you for the opportunity to chat about one of my favorite authors, H.P. Lovecraft. So, when I was a young teenager in the early- to mid-1980s, I was playing in a local AD&D group that was run by a childhood friend by the name of Andrew. One week, my friend Bob, whom I am still friends with to this day, wanted to run something different for the group as a one-shot. It was Call of Cthulhu, by Chaosium. I played a scientist armed with a pistol, and my guy either died or went mad – I don't recall the specifics. But I loved the content, and it led me to looking up the story "The Call of Cthulhu," by Mr. Lovecraft, and it's since been a lifelong fascination. So, I discovered HPL through gaming. I think it was about 1983 or 1984.

2. Lovecraft’s influence on Hyperborea is unmistakable. What elements of his cosmic horror do you think best lend themselves to tabletop roleplaying?

The crushing sense of futility in which mankind must come to terms that he is an insignificant ant in comparison with the Great Old Ones; that no matter how much he achieves, whatever lofty heights he attains, there is something larger out there that views man with indifference, if even at all. It is a different mindset than some previous presentations in which player characters can actually achieve a god-like status or even become immortals with all the benefits derived therefrom. In a true cosmic horror campaign, for no matter how much power and glory you achieve, you are still no more than the aforementioned ant in the grand scheme of things.

3. Lovecraft is often associated with "modern" horror, but Hyperborea is firmly sword-and-sorcery. How do you blend the alien terrors of the Mythos with the more grounded violence and heroism of pulp fantasy?

I drew a lot of inspiration from HPL's brothers-in-arms, as it were – Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, and no small amount of inspiration from other authors such as Abraham Merritt and Fritz Leiber. As Howard and Lovecraft became closer friends, as evidenced by the letters they exchanged, we started to see the influences of cosmic horror played out in Howard's fiction, which was a subtle shift away from some of his earlier themes of more heroic, action-oriented yarns. This also applies to Smith's work, which borrows from Lovecraft's work, but in a lot of cases, HPL was borrowing from CAS (see Tsathoggua). So, even though HPL was writing a lot of his works from a modern (for his time) perspective, and other authors have since done the same, I think it should be recognized that authors such as REH and CAS were taking these same concepts and themes and applying them to other worlds and other times of a more fantastic bent.

4. What’s your favorite Lovecraft story, and why? Has it ever directly influenced an adventure or mechanic in Hyperborea?

"The Shadow Out of Time" is not only a personal favorite, but also one that I have derived a great amount of inspiration from for the entire Hyperborea adventure game itself. In 2008, in the aftermath of Gary Gygax's passing, whom I'd been working for three years as a writer, I found myself back to square one. I decided to make my own game that I would enjoy playing with my beer-drinking buddies, and if other gamers liked it – great! If they didn't, then to hell with them! I wanted my game to be built out from and inspired by earlier systems by Gygax and Arneson, and I wanted its setting to have a Bran Mak Morn, Conan, and Kull feel to it, but with a heavy dose of the weird fiction produced by Howard's friends, H.P.L. and C.A.S. At the time, I was rereading all of Lovecraft's works, and when I read "The Shadow Out of Time," I had an epiphany. It was inspired by the following passages:

I learned—even before my waking self had studied the parallel cases or the old myths from which the dreams doubtless sprang—that the entities around me were of the world’s greatest race, which had conquered time and had sent exploring minds into every age. I knew, too, that I had been snatched from my age while another used my body in that age, and that a few of the other strange forms housed similarly captured minds. I seemed to talk, in some odd language of claw-clickings, with exiled intellects from every corner of the solar system.

There was a mind from the planet we know as Venus, which would live incalculable epochs to come, and one from an outer moon of Jupiter six million years in the past. Of earthly minds there were some from the winged, star-headed, half-vegetable race of palaeogean Antarctica; one from the reptile people of fabled Valusia; three from the furry pre-human Hyperborean worshippers of Tsathoggua; one from the wholly abominable Tcho-Tchos; two from the arachnid denizens of earth’s last age; five from the hardy coleopterous species immediately following mankind, to which the Great Race was some day to transfer its keenest minds en masse in the face of horrible peril; and several from different branches of humanity.

Here was a story showing me exactly what I needed to do with my setting and how I could pull it all together – whether you are talking about Kull's Valusia, the Elder Things of Antarctica, or Tsathoggua worshipers of Hyperborea – it was all there! I then began to conceive of an idea of an adventure game setting in which all these elements could be pulled together, and more!

5. You’ve cited not just Lovecraft but also Howard, Smith, and Merritt as inspirations. What do you think the shared thread is among these authors and how does Hyperborea pay homage to that tradition?

I think that each and all they were incredibly imaginative writers who dared to write for a genre that was largely shunned, and they were excelling at it. I believe they wrote "up" to their readers, and never catered to a lowest common denominator to increase sale. Their themes were complex, thoughtful, and induced a range of emotions from curiosity to dread to fear. Sure, I have tried to pay homage to this in my works and the works I'm overseeing, and I hope that my stuff has honored the great pulp tradition (at least in gaming form).

6. What does pulp fantasy offer that contemporary fantasy often neglects or downplays?

Contemporary fantasy has largely been stuck in Tolkien's back yard for many years. It's not a bad backyard to be trapped in, because the good professor was one of the greatest practitioners of literature to ever do it, and there have been some wonderful homages to his works. Pulp fantasy is different. It often features a single viewpoint protagonist, it's usually not about saving the world, and it has a more immediate, realistic feel to it, even if the things experienced are beyond the mundane. They often feature an unexpected twist at the end that results in the death of the protagonist or worse, so you are almost always at the edge of your seat when reading these fantastic tales.

7. You've continued to refine and expand Hyperborea across its editions. Has your approach to incorporating Lovecraftian elements evolved over time?

I think conceptualizing a world setting in which Lovecraftian elements are real and present is something that I am always trying to see improved or evolved, as you put it. For example, a ranger in Hyperborea is not a specialist versus humanoids and giants; rather, he is a specialist against otherworldly creatures whose objectives do not accord with the welfare of mankind. So, rangers in Hyperborea hunt Mi-Go, the Great Race, Night Gaunts, and so forth. The content we produce touches on this, in a world that has seen mankind nearly wiped out by a star-borne contagion and now clings to a meager existence in which these many horrors abound.

8. Do you think there's such a thing as too much Mythos in an RPG? Can it become over-familiar or even cliché?

I think if it is done well, with purpose and a vision that is worked hard for, it can never be too much. Imagine, if you will, how many people in the last two millennia have studied the classics, reading and rereading The Odyssey and The Iliad. So, I don't think the Mythos will ever get old, but as readers become more savvy, they will discern between quality pastiche and silly pastiche.

9. As a game designer and worldbuilder, what lessons have you learned from Lovecraft’s approach to mythmaking and the unknown?

I learned that we, as designers and world builders, should not feel bound to the religions and myths of the ancients when conceptualizing and exploring antemundane concepts. Anyone can create a world or a setting that draws inspiration from known works but also has the audaciousness to explore and develop strange new worlds and realities. You just have to have the stubbornness to do it, dismissing naysayers and detractors. Do what thou wilt, my friends.

Thank you for having me, James. Cheers!