The Die Is Cast

Last week, I mentioned that, with the Barrett's Raiders Twilight: 2000 campaign now ended, the group and I would need to make a decision about what to play next. I offered the players four (and a half) options: Gamma World/Metamorphosis Alpha, Secrets of sha-Arthan, Thousand Suns, and Urheim. As you can probably tell from the accompanying illustration, they chose Metamorphosis Alpha, which, I must admit, surprised me a little bit – not unhappily so, since I look forward to playing it, but I didn't think it would be as popular a choice as it turned out to be.

So, starting next week, we'll be playing one of the oldest RPGs and the first science fiction one ever published. It's also a game I've never refereed before, though I did play in a MA campaign some years ago, so this will be a learning experience for me too. That said, I've thought a lot about the game over the years and have a number of ideas to draw upon. Whether they'll survive contact with the players only time will tell, but I'm keen to see how this unfolds.

Like OD&D and Empire of the Petal Throne, Metamorphosis Alpha is mechanically somewhat sparse, with lots of lacunae and inconsistencies, as we discovered yesterday while trying to generate characters. That's fine. Part of my enjoyment of playing older games is figuring out how to make its unclear and often incomplete rules work in a way that make sense for our campaign. I rather expect that, after a few sessions, our version of MA will develop its own set of house rules and rules interpretations, as all good campaigns do. That's as it should be in my opinion.

Right now, my only worry, if that's the word, about this choice of game is whether Metamorphosis Alpha is capable of sustaining a long campaign. One of the players asked me how long I intended to run MA and I answered, "As long as I can – like all my campaigns." Barrett's Raiders lasted just shy of four years. The Riphaeus Sector Traveller campaign before it lasted slightly less long. And, of course, House of Worms lasted more than a decade. In each case, I didn't expect the campaign would last as long as it did, but I hoped they'd continue indefinitely. That's my preference when it comes to roleplaying, because I feel that, in general, these games are best enjoyed as long form entertainment. 

I mentioned this to my players yesterday and they were unconcerned. If Metamorphosis Alpha doesn't last more than a few months, that's OK. It'll be a nice palate cleanser after Barrett's Raiders and we can always take up a different game later. They have no expectations that we'll still be playing this a year from now, let alone five or ten years from now. They're just happy to be roleplaying with friends each week, which I think is a wise perspective. Still, after the phenomenal longevity of House of Worms, I must confess there's a part of me that wonders whether any campaign I do afterwards will ever measure up. That, as my players reminded me, isn't the way to view this, but I do nonetheless. 

In any case, I'm now about to embark on yet another new campaign and I can't help but wonder if it will take root and flourish or not. Regardless, I'll write about it periodically here, starting next week with a discussion of its first session. Until then!

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "The Making of a Milieu"

When I think of under-appreciated writers from the hobby, one of the names that comes immediately to mind is Arthur Collins. Collins wrote a number of articles in Dragon that I adored, because they seemed to provide the kind of detail and immersion that the Silver Age craved while still being firmly rooted in Golden Age obsessions. They offered a kind of via media between the two eras of D&D and, as such, greatly appealed to me during my teen years, when I wasn't ready to abandon the kinds of games I played as a younger person, but still hoped for something "deeper" than "mere" dungeon crawls. Plus, Collins was a good writer: clear and easy to understand but not simplistic, either in style or content. He wasn't a hugely prolific author – perhaps two dozen articles or fewer – but his stuff was almost always of great interest to me.

Of all the articles Collins wrote, the one that most affected me was "The Making of a Milieu," which appeared in issue #93 (January 1985). Its subtitle was "How to start a world and keep it turning." The article is basically a lengthy discussion of how to build not just a campaign setting but a campaign itself, which is to say, how to kick things off in such a way as to ensure that play continues for months or years afterward. Nowadays, a lot of what Collins wrote might be considered old hat, but, back in 1985, it was nothing short of revelatory, at least to me.

Up until that point, I'd largely run my campaigns either in my beloved World of Greyhawk setting or else in some nebulous, vaguely defined setting. In neither case did I give much thought to "the Big Picture." And by "the Big Picture," I don't mean a plan or a script for the players to follow in their adventures. Rather, I mean only some notion of how all the various pieces of the setting interrelate and how they might be used to serve my purposes as a referee. Prior to reading this article, my campaigns were just random collections of "stuff that happened" somewhere and that was usually good enough.

By 1985, though, I started to think it wasn't good enough. I'd become so thoroughly immersed in fantasy literature, especially of the Interminable Series of Ponderous Tomes variety and I wanted my campaigns and settings to mirror that. Perhaps unsurprisingly, 1985 also marked the beginning of the period during which I actually played less and less. I went to a different high school than all my neighborhood friends and I became distracted by other things. But I was still as interested in D&D as ever and devoting my time to world building seemed an adequate substitute for actually playing the game.

Collins gave me lots of food for thought about how to build a setting, stuff that kept me thinking and creating for years to come. For example, he suggested creating several maps of the campaign area, each one depicting the area at a different point in history. In this way, names and settlements can be altered to reflect the rise and fall of empires, the migrations of people, and other such events. So I spent a lot of time at the library making photocopies of a blank map of my new, original campaign setting – the first I'd ever come up with – and then adding details to it, so that I eventually amassed a lot of information in pictorial form about how the setting evolved over the centuries. It was a fairly simple thing but quite effective and it gave me a lot of pleasure as a teenager.

These days, I'd never go to even the meager lengths Collins suggested in planning out a campaign or its setting. I'm much more of a seat-of-the-pants kind of guy; indeed, I embrace it as the best way to play the game. At the same time, I retain a great deal of fondness for this article, in large part because it broke me of certain other bad habits, namely my dependence on published material for ideas. As Collins so aptly put it at the conclusion of his article:

When I began playing the AD&D game six years ago, there were very few playing aids on the market of the type that are now so abundant. There was no WORLD OF GREYHAWK Fantasy Setting, no Hârn, and very few canned modules in print. Very nearly all of our adventuring had to come out of our own heads. And I still think that's fantasy gaming at its best. I now meet players, especially young ones, who think that, in order to play the AD&D game or some other such activity, they must invest megabucks in someone else's ideas. It shocks many of them when I suggest that it's more fun to make it up yourself.

Alas for them! No canned module, no playing aid, no set of rules, no list of NPCs can quite become your very own. As enjoyable and thought-provoking as all the published material may be, it is a poor substitute for creating your own campaign milieu, designing your own castles, and exercising your own brain. Creativity is what the game is about. It would be a shame if the success of fantasy gaming contributed to the stifling of creativity in its own enthusiastic adherents.

I was one of those young players about whom Collins speaks, at least to some degree, which is why I owe the man a debt of thanks. I may no longer build a campaign the way he suggests in this article. However, that I build my own at all is in large part a result of what he says in it.

The Ensorcellment of January

Though the initial response to my post about whether to devote the month of January to either Robert E. Howard or Clark Ashton Smith was muddled, in the days since, CAS has pulled decisively ahead – so much so that I now feel I can declare him the winner. That means that January 2026 will be The Ensorcellment of January, just as this past August was The Shadow over August. 

Like The Shadow over August, this series will consist of daily discussions of the life, legacy, and influence of the Bard of Auburn over subsequent fantasy, science fiction, and horror, with special attention paid to what roleplaying games owe to him and his works. Naturally, there'll be Pulp Fantasy Library posts featuring Smith stories I've not yet covered on Grognardia, but I also plan posts on many other topics, with at least some of them consisting of original CAS-inspired game content. 

Also like The Shadow over August, my plans for The Ensorcellment of January are not intended to be exhaustive, much less scholarly. They will follow my own interests and whims, shaped now and then by reader feedback. My aim is simple: to help the least well known of the Big Three of Weird Tales claim a larger share of the attention he justly deserves. I hope you’ll join me in January as we journey beneath Zothique’s dying sun, wander the haunted ruins of Averoigne, and trek across sorcerer-haunted realm of Hyperborea – all in celebration of Clark Ashton Smith and the strange, decadent brilliance of his imagination.

Pulp Fantasy Library: The Quest of Iranon

Though written in 1921, H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Quest of Iranon” did not see publication until nearly fifteen years later, when it appeared in the July/August 1935 issue of The Galleon, an amateur journal edited by Lloyd Arthur Eschbach. The Galleon was a general literary magazine rather than one devoted to fantasy or horror, but Eschbach admired Lovecraft’s work and solicited contributions from him. Two pieces ultimately appeared in its pages: “The Quest of Iranon” and Sonnet XXX from Fungi from Yuggoth. “Iranon” would later reach a wider audience through its posthumous reprinting in the March 1939 issue of Weird Tales.

The tale is often grouped with Lovecraft’s Dreamlands stories, though whether it actually belongs in that cycle is, as always, open to interpretation. The text contains nods to the Land of Lomar from “Polaris” and to Sarnath from “The Doom That Came to Sarnath,” both of which seem to evoke Earth’s distant prehistory. Yet the tone, themes, and geography of Iranon’s wanderings feel more like the ethereal borderlands that characterize the Dream Cycle – unless, of course, they don’t. The story offers just enough overlap, contradiction, and outright mystery that one can never be entirely certain whether Iranon exists in the world of dreams, the world before history, or some shifting place in between. In any case, as I said, it's long been included in collection of Dreamlands tales and I don't intend to argue against that inclusion om this post.

The story concerns a golden-haired youth, the titular Iranon, who wanders into the city of Teloth, claiming to be a prince of the wondrous city of Aira and delights in singing songs of its beauty. The dour people of Teloth have no patience for such things and, when Iranon is ordered to abandon his art and apprentice to a cobbler, he departs instead. A poor boy named Romnod, stirred by Iranon’s tales, joins him, hoping that the famed city of Oonai might in fact be Aira under a new name. The pair travel for years, Romnod aging into adulthood while Iranon remains unchanging, only to discover that Oonai is not Aira after all. Though the people of Oonai at first adore Iranon’s songs, their enthusiasm fades as the years pass and even Romnod declines into drunkenness and eventually dies.

Alone again, Iranon resumes his search and eventually meets an old shepherd who remembers a ragged boy from his youth, a boy who fancied himself a prince of an imaginary city called Aira. With this revelation, Iranon’s eternal youth evaporates. Aged and broken by the truth, he wanders into the quicksands and sinks beneath them, his dream of Aira dying with him.

Like many of Lovecraft’s early stories shaped by his admiration for Lord Dunsany, “The Quest of Iranon” is steeped in wistful sentiment and a yearning for idealized realms that may never have existed. Its tone is far removed from the cosmic horror of his later period. Instead, it dwells on melancholy, nostalgia, and the precariousness of a life built upon inner visions. From the outset, the story establishes a tension between dream and reality. Iranon’s exquisite inner world is richer and more beautiful than the austere cities he wanders through, yet it is also fragile, sustained only by his unwavering belief in its truth. As his companion Romnod ages while Iranon remains unchanged, the narrative dramatizes the slow erosion of idealism through time, setting the stage for the final revelation that Iranon’s princely past is not a forgotten truth but a self-created dream.

The geography of the tale reinforces this psychological dimension. Cities that honor beauty and song flourish; those indifferent or hostile to imagination appear bleak or decayed. In this way, the story aligns closely with Dunsany’s dream-fantasies, where landscapes mirror the inner states of their wanderers. Yet its final turn, where the imaginative life collapses under the weight of empirical reality, is unmistakably Lovecraftian. What begins as a Dunsanian reverie ends as a meditation on the limits of dream and the painful boundary between creative imagination and self-deception.

It's no surprise, then, that "The Quest of Iranon" includes sentiments Lovecraft expressed in his letters, where he frequently contrasted the world of dreams with the world of reality. While any reductive biographical interpretation should be avoided, Iranon’s proud retreat into an imagined past parallels Lovecraft’s own youthful romanticism and his reliance on dream life as a refuge from his mundane existence, which was at that time beginning the slow downward trajectory it would retain for the remainder of his life. The story is likewise notable for its use of time. The decades-long chronology of Iranon's journeys is atypical for the Dreamlands tales and suggests an early experiment in using duration as an emotional device, one representing the slow wearing-down of fantasy by the passage of years.

Structurally simple and lacking the metaphysical vastness of The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, “The Quest of Iranon” nevertheless remains one of Lovecraft’s clearest statements on the cost of clinging to esthetic illusion. Its conclusion, depicting an imagined identity collapsing in the face of reality, functions as a grim inversion of the usual Dreamlands arc. Instead of a mortal ascending into dream, dream descends (or degenerates) into mortal truth.

“The Quest of Iranon” is thus another important transitional work. It captures the final phase of Lovecraft’s imitation of Dunsany, anticipates his later fascination with identity dissolution, and offers insight into how he grappled with themes of artistic aspiration and personal mythmaking. The story’s quiet tragedy is not merely Iranon’s but reflects Lovecraft’s own evolving understanding of the limits and possibilities of the imaginative life and how he (and his reader) might come to terms with it.

Gratitude

As longtime readers know, I owe my introduction to Dungeons & Dragons – and, through it, to the larger hobby of roleplaying – to the disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III in August 1979. My father was utterly fascinated by the news coverage and the “strange new game” that supposedly played a part in Egbert’s vanishing. He talked about it constantly. My mother, ever practical, bought him a copy of the Holmes Basic Set from the Sears catalog store so he could see for himself whether the game bore any resemblance to the breathless, confused media reports.

Dad’s reaction on receiving it was characteristic. “What am I going to do with this?” he asked and he meant it. The box went straight into the upstairs linen closet, where it sat – unopened and undisturbed – until Christmas of that same year, when I asked if I could have it to learn how to play D&D. The rest, as the saying goes, is history.

In a very real sense, I owe my entry into the hobby just as much to my parents, especially my mother, as to Egbert’s disappearance. Had my father not been captivated by those stories, had my mother not ordered that Basic Set on a whim, it’s entirely possible I never would have found my way to roleplaying games or, if I had, it might have happened later and under very different – and perhaps less welcoming – circumstances. That’s one of the reasons I remain deeply grateful to them both. My young life and, truthfully, my present one could have been very different indeed.

But that’s only part of it. They didn’t just toss the game in my path and walk away. They encouraged me – sometimes directly, sometimes in small, nearly invisible ways – to keep going. They drove me to remote hobby shops tucked into strip malls or down side streets when I was hunting some obscure game or module. They clipped announcements from the local paper about “games day” events at the library. They let my friends and I take over the basement for hours on end. I doubt they ever really understood what D&D was or why it captivated me, but that never mattered. What mattered to them was that I was enjoying myself and that these games had opened doors to other interests – history, languages, mythology, religion – that broadened my world and, to some degree, shaped who I was becoming in obviously positive ways.

They also never once questioned the value of D&D or roleplaying games. They didn’t treat my hours spent reading rulebooks or drawing maps as a waste of time, nor did they worry that the hobby was odd, dangerous, or somehow leading me astray – quite the contrary! I often hear stories from people my age whose parents did fear Dungeons & Dragons and whose anxieties left lasting scars. I have no such stories of my own to tell. All that panic completely passed me by, which, I suppose, is no surprise given my own origin story as a roleplayer. If my parents weren’t put off by the James Dallas Egbert case, none of the other sensationalist nonsense that later swirled around the game stood a chance. That quiet vote of confidence, unstated but unmistakable, mattered more than I realized at the time.

Looking back, I can see that what they offered me wasn’t just permission but the freedom to explore something that excited me without judgment or fear. Childhood passions often flare and fade quickly, but they took this one seriously enough to let it grow. I don’t want to paint an overly rosy picture; ours wasn’t a sitcom household where every quirk was lovingly indulged. They had their flaws, as all parents do, and I certainly had mine. But when it came to this strange new hobby of mine, they showed patience, generosity, and an uncomplicated willingness to let me be who I was becoming through contact with it.

For that, I'll remain grateful to my parents. Their small, steady acts of support nudged my life in a direction neither they nor I could have predicted. If I’m honest, most of what followed – the friendships, the writing, the years spent exploring imaginary worlds – all trace back to that unopened box in the upstairs linen closet and to the two people who, without fully understanding it, gave me permission to open it.

Thanks, Mom and Dad.

Mail Call

As you may recall, I'm currently refereeing a Dolmenwood campaign, which began a little over a year ago. Though I haven't posted about it in a few weeks, the adventures of Sir Clement, Fallon, Waldra, Alvie, and Marid continue on a more or less weekly basis. Currently, our merry band is investigating the ruined Abbey of St Clewyd under the instructions of Nedwynne Hargle, head of the Seminary of One Hundred Martyrs and Fallon's patron within the Pluritine Church. It's a fun campaign that I continue to enjoy, in large part because of just how delightful and imaginative the setting of Dolmenwood is.

Up until now, I've been using advance PDF copies of the Dolmenwood books and adventures in anticipation of the release of their print copies. Yesterday, I was very happy to receive a package containing those print copies, which, quite frankly, exceeded my expectations. They're absolutely beautiful books, as you can see here:

In case it's not clear, the larger books at the bottom consist of (from left to right) the Player's Book, the Campaign Book, the Monster Book, and the Maps Book. Above them (also from left to right) are four adventures: Winter's Daughter, The Fungus That Came to Blackeswell, The Ruined Abbey of St Clewyd, and Emelda's Song. I've made good use of all these adventures over the course of the campaign, so I can attest to their utility. 

Here are the four main books shown from the perspective of their spines, to give you a sense of their comparative thickness:

The Campaign Book, which is more or less the referee's guide, is by far the thickest of the four. In addition to all the usual stuff you'd expect to find in a referee's book, it also describes all the major factions of Dolmenwood, along with every single hex of the setting map. This has proven incredibly useful to me, as the characters wander across the Wood. The hex descriptions are all limited to a single page, featuring noteworthy features, NPCs, and locales, along with other ideas that might spark adventures. It's all very well done and, as I said, useful in play.

Speaking of the Wood, I also got a large cloth map of the whole setting, which looks especially impressive when laid out on a table:

The map looks like it'll very useful at the table, too, enabling players to plan their travels and referees to keep track of their movements. Both are important, since Dolmenwood is, in large part, a game of hex crawling through the civilized and wild nooks and crannies of the Wood. The Maps Book has many more useful maps for use by the referee, like maps of mortal and fairy domains, ley lines, elevation, treasure hoards, and more. Like everything else, it's great and useful stuff.

Dolmenwood officially releases next Friday, November 28. I'll definitely have some more to say about it in a week's time, but I was sufficiently pleased by having received my copies yesterday that I couldn't wait to show them off today. 

And So It Begins

As I posted yesterday, my Barrett's Raiders Twilight: 2000 campaign, which started in December 2021, has ended. Though sad (and even a little disappointing), its conclusion opens up a slot in my weekly schedule for a new campaign and that's always exciting. Just what that new campaign will be is still very uncertain and depends, to a great extent, on the interests of the remaining players. We'll discuss the matter at some length at our next meeting, but, in order to get the ball rolling, I sent them a selection of four(ish) RPG I'd enjoy refereeing for them, which I thought I'd share with you as well.

Gamma World/Metamorphosis Alpha

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned, likely many times, that I've long been a huge fan of Gamma World. In my youth, it was one of my favorite games, just losing out of a spot in my Holy Trinity of RPGs to Call of Cthulhu. It's one of those games I find very easy to run, both from an ideas perspective and from a mechanical one. I have little trouble coming up with fun scenarios for Gamma World and its rules are straightforward and easy to use – two great boons when it comes to refereeing a roleplaying game. 

Notice that I've included Metamorphosis Alpha as a possibility too. That's because, while I have played MA, I have never actually run it myself and doing so has long been a dream of mine. In some ways, I actually prefer the campaign frame of Metamorphosis Alpha to that of Gamma World, perhaps because it appeals to my fascination with "secret sci-fi" settings. So, given my druthers, I would press for MA over Gamma World, but I'd be equally happy with either.

Secrets of sha-Arthan

This is a no-brainer. I've working sporadically on this project since June of 2021, during which time it's undergone a number of different changes and evolutions. Those of you who've subscribed to Grognardia Games Direct know about its current state, since that's where I post regularly about it. However, I've not yet had the chance to do anything more with it than run short scenarios. What it really needs is a proper campaign to take its development to the next level and this might be the perfect time to do that.

I considered starting a SosA campaign after the conclusion of House of Worms last month, but opted not to due to its very broad similarities to Tékumel. It's a baroque, exotic fantasy setting with a secret sci-fi substratum – I'm sensing a theme here – albeit one based on very different historical/cultural influences than those of Tékumel. However, my Monday night group includes a different set of players, so the comparisons to Tékumel wouldn't be a problem.

Thousand Suns

In a similar fashion, Thousand Suns is another good option. Like Secrets of sha-Arthan, I'm currently in the midst of revising and reorganizing it in preparation for the released of a second edition. Also like SosA, I'm chronicling my work on this project over at Grognardia Games Direct. This is a game that's very near and dear to my heart and one I haven't run for some years now, so it'd be great to have the opportunity to do so again.

Furthermore, one of the goals of the second edition is to make the rules of Thousand Suns clearer and easier to use. They're already pretty good in this regard, I think, but I hope to make them even better. I also want to do a better job of highlighting those aspects of the game that distinguish it from its competitors and inspirations. Refereeing a campaign would give me lots of opportunities to do just that.

Urheim

Urheim was my second attempt (after Dwimmermount) to produce a megadungeon suitable as the foundation for an entire old school D&D campaign. I got fairly far into constructing it before moving on to other projects, but it's still something I think about from time to time. 

Consequently, I thought now might be a good time to return to it as a replacement for Barrett's Raiders. A megadungeon campaign is very straightforward and easy to maintain. It's also got the potential to spin off in a variety of different fun directions, so it's a good fit for my personal refereeing style. If I did return to Urheim, I'd almost certainly use Old School Essentials, probably of the advanced variety, for the rules, though part of me wants to dive back into OD&D + Supplements.  

And that's where things stand at the moment. Which of these options will be chosen is (mostly) up to my players. I'm very curious as to what they'll chose.

Taps

By now, many of you will have noticed that I haven’t posted any updates about the Barrett’s Raiders Twilight: 2000 campaign I’ve been refereeing since December 2021 – almost four years ago. The reason is simple: the campaign has, alas, come to an end. By “end,” I don’t mean “conclusion.” This is nothing like the tidy finale of the House of Worms Empire of the Petal Throne campaign last month. In this case, the end wasn’t planned, though, if I’m honest, it wasn’t entirely unexpected either.

Before getting into a proper postmortem of Barrett’s Raiders, let me explain what brought things to a close. There’s nothing dramatic here, nor did anyone grow dissatisfied with the game. Two players had real life commitments that would keep them away for an extended period, long enough that I decided to put the campaign on “pause” and let another player run a short game of his own – Fringeworthy – while we waited for their return. We’d taken short breaks like this before, so I didn’t anticipate any problems.

This time, though, the pause became an opportunity for another player to decide it was time to bow out. I don’t blame him at all. He’d been with the group almost continuously since the days of my Riphaeus Sector Traveller campaign, which began around 2017. That’s a long commitment. As I told my House of Worms players before we began The Dark Between the Stars Fading Suns campaign (as I've taken to calling it), no one is ever obligated to keep playing, especially after giving years of their time. Interests shift; life happens.

Soon after, I learned that one of the two players already on hiatus would, in fact, be unavailable even longer – effectively out of commission well into 2026. I took that as the universe’s gentle nudge that it was time to put Barrett’s Raiders to bed. We were now down two players and, truth be told, I had already been contemplating wrapping things up within the next few months anyway.

My own reasons were different. I was still very happy with the direction of the campaign. The characters’ return to the shattered USA intrigued me more than their time in Poland. I was eager to see them navigate the murky waters of the low-intensity, slow-motion civil war between USMEA, the civilian government, and New America. I’d been waiting to run this part of the campaign since I was a teenager and had no shortage of plans for where it might go.

What held me back, frankly, were the rules. While I’ve used the Year Zero Engine to good effect in other games – Forbidden Lands in particular – the Twilight: 2000 iteration had to wrestle with elements like modern automatic weapons and vehicles that simply don’t arise in Forbidden Lands. Their inclusion felt clunky to me or at least out of step with my own preferences and I regularly found myself fumbling with them more than I liked. As a result, I often avoided combat, which isn’t ideal in a military RPG.

So, while I’m disappointed that Barrett’s Raiders won’t reach the proper conclusion I had hoped for, I’m not too disappointed. The campaign lasted just shy of four years – no small feat – and we had a great deal of fun along the way. I doubt Barrett’s Raiders will be remembered in the same breath as House of Worms, but that’s a very high bar, one I may never clear again. Such is life.

Instead of dwelling on what might have been, I’m already thinking about the future: what game might this group tackle next, and where might it take us? More on that when I finally have an answer to those questions.

Retrospective: Kafer Sourcebook

For reasons I'll explain in an upcoming series of posts, I've been thinking a lot about GDW's other science fiction roleplaying game, 2300AD (né Traveller: 2300). As I've no doubt explained on several occasions, I was, for a time, a huge fan of the game and – especially – its setting. Truth be told, I still am a fan, even though I've not played the game in almost forty years. One of the things I've always admired about the game was its commitment to a plausible and "realistic" approach to the building blocks of its setting, whether scientific, technological, or political. Unfortunately, that same commitment has also probably contributed to my inability to ever sustain a 2300AD campaign.

Emblematic of the problems I've always had with the game is, ironically, one of its best supplements, the Kafer Sourcebook. Published in 1988 and written primarily by William H. Keith, Jr, it's a deep dive into the society, culture, history, and, above all, biology of the alien Kafers, humanity's only serious interstellar rival. It is a 96-page softcover, though it feels longer, due to the sheer amount of terrific science fictional speculation packed into its chapters. Even within a product line celebrated for its world-building rigor, this book stands out for its imagination and ambition.

Remember that, when 2300AD debuted in 1986, it was pitched as the “hard science” alternative to the looser, Golden Age-inspired SF of Traveller. 2300AD's other supplements focused on Earthly politics, interstellar cartography, and the starships, among other more "grounded" topics. For all its detail, however, the line lacked a unifying extraterrestrial element, something distinctive that would shape humanity’s place in the larger galaxy. The Kafer Sourcebook was the first supplement to supply that missing anchor. It thus introduced not merely an opponent but an entire framework for understanding alien intelligence within the setting.

At a glance, the superficially insectoid Kafers fill the recognizable role of an expansionist, technologically capable adversary, the kind of civilization that might form the backbone of a future interstellar war. But the Sourcebook's treatment of the species elevates them above cliché. Their defining trait is an evolutionary system in which intelligence surges only under stress, which feels both biologically plausible and conceptually daring. In their calm state, Kafers possess little more than animal cunning. Faced with fear, danger, or uncertainty, their mental capacities accelerate rapidly, granting them the clarity and ingenuity needed to confront threats. The result is a species whose history, culture, and institutions have arisen to support continual conflict, since it's only under such stress that the Kafers' intelligence continues to increase.

This evolutionary need for conflict becomes the core organizing principle for the book. Keith uses it to explain Kafer rituals of testing and challenge, their competitive clan structure, their tendency toward authoritarian politics, and the peculiar way they approach science and technology. The chapters on physiology and psychology are particularly strong, dense with speculative xenobiology that is nevertheless readable, even compelling. The cultural chapters, meanwhile, succeed in painting the Kafers not as a hive of faceless antagonists but as a coherent civilization with internal debates, eccentricities, and historical traumas. One comes away with the sense of a genuinely alien species whose motives can be understood but never comfortably predicted.

For all its strengths, however, the Kafer Sourcebook also highlights the central challenge of the species it so creatively presents. The Kafers are genuinely difficult to use in a typical 2300AD campaign. Their hostility isn’t ideological, political, or territorial in any human sense; it is biological. Once threatened, they are almost compelled to escalate conflict, their intelligence and aggression rising in tandem. This leaves little room for negotiation, espionage, manipulation, or the many shades of diplomacy that fuel most science fiction RPG adventures. A referee who wishes to portray the Kafers accurately must accept that they are not suited to casual interaction. They are best deployed as a looming existential threat or as the fulcrum of a military campaign, rather than as participants in the varied social and exploratory scenarios that populate the rest of the setting.

That is what makes the Kafer Sourcebook and, by extension, 2300AD’s use of the Kafers so frustrating. The supplement is filled with wonderfully imaginative speculation that makes these aliens excellent antagonists, yet it offers little sense of how they might function in any capacity other than that of an implacable foe. Keith’s efforts to avoid making the Kafers one-dimensional “bad guys” by rooting their behavior in evolutionary psychology paradoxically reinforces that very one-dimensionality. A species that becomes intelligent only when threatened cannot be negotiated with, reasoned with, or engaged meaningfully outside the context of conflict. In a game line otherwise rich in politics, exploration, and cultural interplay, the Kafers remain locked into a very narrow role. The result is an alien species that is brilliantly conceived on the page but difficult to integrate into the broader possibilities the 2300AD setting seems to contain.

Mind you, this is my eternal complaint about 2300AD. It’s an extraordinarily imaginative and beautifully presented setting, one that feels right in all the ways hard science fiction should, yet it somehow ends up feeling strangely dull. Unlike Traveller, I could never quite get a handle on what GDW expected players to do with the game. Its “realism,” whether technological, cultural, or political, always seemed to work against the very things that make adventure possible. Instead of opening doors, its grounded assumptions often closed them, leaving referees to do the heavy lifting of carving out reasons for danger, mystery, or wonder.

I think hat’s the tragedy of 2300AD: a setting bursting with potential, yet one that never quite shows you how to tap into it. It’s a toolbox full of fascinating parts, but without a clear sense of what you’re meant to build.

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "Clerics Live by Other Rules"

Over the years, I've given the thief a lot of flak, but it's actually the cleric who fits in least well with the literary origins of D&D. The cleric looks not to pulp fantasies for its inspiration but to medieval Catholicism by way of Hammer horror films and, while I have a great fondness for the class, there's no question that it isn't a perfect fit for the world D&D implicitly describes. I'm not alone in thinking this, which is why the cleric is probably the class that gets reinvented the most (though the thief might be a close second).

Every edition of D&D has put its own stamp on the cleric, in the process rendering the class more incoherent than it was to start. Gary Gygax contributed further to this mess in his article "Clerics Live by Other Rules," which appeared in issue #92 (December 1984) of Dragon. To be fair, Gary's article is actually pretty good, but it laid the seeds for much mischief later. His intention was to suggest that individual referees, for the purposes of fleshing out their campaign settings, could change the rules under which clerics (and, by extension, druids) operate, either restricting their opportunities or expanding them (or, preferably, both).

In the article, Gygax gives an example of a sect worshiping the woodland deity Ehlonna, from his Greyhawk campaign setting. Owing to tragic events in the past, this sect operates differently than others of its kind, having a unique selection of spells, armor, and weapons, in addition to having certain ritual taboos placed upon them. Thus, for example, they're not allowed to use fire-based spells of any kind, but clerics, after proving themselves – gaining levels – can wield broadswords and druids can wear elfin chain.

Normally, I loathe this kind of stuff, in large part because I think it contributes further to the dilution of what the cleric class is – and it's already pretty diluted as it is. What makes Gygax's approach work, though, is that a) it's solidly grounded in the setting and b) he's limiting these changes to a particular sect, not establishing it as a baseline. That's how I think things like this ought to be done. Unfortunately, players (and later designers) didn't care for these nuances, instead using them as a template for "fixing" the cleric class. This led, in my opinion, to a variety of changes over the years that have rendered the cleric one of the least coherent classes, both mechanically and as an archetype. But I'm pretty sure I'm in the minority in feeling this way.

Interestingly, Gygax himself warns against taking what he wrote in this article as an official, universal change. In his concluding paragraph, he says some very sensible things:

Now when you hear someone, DM or player, mentioning something about "unknown" cleric spells or similar difficulties, don't panic. It could well be a cleverly planned campaign where difference and the unexpected are desirable -- and who can fault that?! Perhaps you might wish to try it in your own campaign, too. A cautionary word is necessary, however, for there is a problem with such variations. Unless the full and complete details of the differences are known to other DMs, they might well not wish to have clerics or druids of such nature participating in their games. This is their right, and skepticism on their part is justified. Players of these clerics and druids must be forewarned that such characters might be "one-campaign-only" adventurers who are not welcome elsewhere

It's good advice, but it's also, I think, advice rooted in an older style of play that was already on its way to dying out by the time this article was published. Campaign hopping of the sort Gary envisions was already rare in the early '80s when I was most deeply immersed in the hobby and I have a hard time imagining that it was any more widespread on the cusp of 1985. Ironically, the advent of the Net and online play make well lead to a resurgence of the Old Ways in this regard, in which case Gary's advice might well prove useful again.

REH vs CAS

At the end of last week, I asked readers whether they’d prefer that I devote this coming January to Robert E. Howard or Clark Ashton Smith, in the same way that I dedicated this past August to H.P. Lovecraft.

So far, the “contest” is remarkably close. At the moment, the Bard of Auburn holds a very narrow lead over Two-Gun Bob, but not by enough to declare the matter settled. Honestly, I’m not surprised. Both Howard and Smith are more than worthy of a full month’s attention on this blog and each brings something distinct and compelling to the table. I’d be delighted to spend January exploring either one of them and, judging from the comments and emails I’ve received so far, many of you feel the same way.

Because the vote remains so tight, I may need to turn to another method of choosing. One option I’m considering is putting the final decision to my patrons. Their support of Grognardia is direct and it seems only fair to let them weigh in when a topic inspires this much enthusiasm. If nothing else, it would be a fitting way to break the tie and ensure that the choice reflects the people who help make these month-long deep dives possible.

In the meantime, I encourage everyone who hasn’t yet commented or sent me an email to do so. Whichever way this goes, January is shaping up to be another enjoyable excursion into the history of early fantasy literature.

The Problem with Starships

The Problem with Starships by James Maliszewski

In which I once again think out loud by a vexing part of Second Edition

Read on Substack

Pulp Fantasy Library: Nyarlathotep

Like many of the early H.P. Lovecraft pieces I’ve been examining since September, “Nyarlathotep” occupies a remarkably strange position within his larger canon. First circulated in late 1920 in the November issue of The United Amateur, this brief work resists simple classification. It is neither straightforward narrative nor pure prose-poem, neither a true Dreamlands excursion nor an unambiguous exercise in cosmic horror. Instead, it unfolds like a lucid nightmare rendered with almost journalistic precision, a stark vision of societal unraveling and uncanny intrusion that foreshadows many of the motifs Lovecraft would later explore more fully.

Lovecraft himself explained that “Nyarlathotep” arose from a dream. In a letter to Rheinhart Kleiner, he claimed he wrote the opening paragraph “before I fully waked,” suggesting the piece emerged almost directly from the dream-state. If we take him at his word, then the text was composed under a kind of incantatory compulsion, shaped only lightly by later revision, if at all. This immediacy distinguishes it from much of his mature fiction, which he often reworked extensively, and helps explain the breathless, uncanny atmosphere that permeates the piece.

As in many of his early works, Lovecraft was writing under the sway of powerful intellectual influences. After 1919, he immersed himself in the writings of Lord Dunsany and the Dunsanian imprint is unmistakable – the rhythmic prose, the dream-logic, the anxiety over cultural decay. At the same time, the story reflects his long-standing interests in astronomy, Egyptian antiquity, and fin-de-siècle pessimism. “Nyarlathotep” thus emerges from a convergence of impulses, from the mystical to the scientific, from the decadent to the apocalyptic, producing a work that is difficult to categorize but impossible to forget.

The piece itself presents Nyarlathotep as a wandering figure from Egypt who arrives with strange devices and demonstrations that unsettle the modern world. Crowds gather; the narrator, already alienated and uneasy, joins them. Soon the lights fail, machinery breaks down, and people drift into the streets in trances, marching into the darkness as a cosmic doom descends. This is less a story than a sensory and psychological descent. The narrative slips quietly from urban disquiet into full eschatological collapse, mirroring the disintegration of both society and the narrator’s consciousness.

Two elements in particular deserve emphasis. First, this version of Nyarlathotep is far more grounded than his later incarnation as the messenger of the Outer Gods. Here he appears almost human, a darkly charismatic prophet with a pharaonic air, demonstrating marvels that blur the line between science and sorcery. The implication is that modernity’s own tools – technology, rationality, scientific wonder – can serve as gateways to madness. Second, the masses drifting silently through the darkened city prefigure the collective irrationalities found in Lovecraft’s later fiction. More importantly, the collapse is not local but cosmic. Dreams, astronomy, machinery – all fail simultaneously. The universe itself seems to sicken.

Although “Nyarlathotep” predates Lovecraft’s fully developed Dreamlands tales, it marks a crucial step in their evolution. The action takes place in the modern world rather than in dream geography, yet nearly every aspect of it connects to his emerging dream-lore. The narrative is not a record of waking experience but a nightmare revelation, a dream so potent it bursts into daylight and overwhelms the ordinary world. This reversal is central: whereas the later Dream Cycle sends dreamers into symbolic, mythic realms, in “Nyarlathotep” it is the dream that invades the waking world, overriding reason, technology, and even cosmic order.

Stylistically, the story stands at a crossroads. Lovecraft was still under Dunsany’s spell and the imagery unmistakably reflects it. Yet, the creeping cosmic menace anticipates the hybrid mode he would perfect in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, where Dunsanian fantasy interlocks with cosmic horror. Nyarlathotep himself is the clearest bridge between the modes. In Dream-Quest, he returns as a mercurial, godlike being who toys with dreamers and bends fates. The 1920 piece presents his prototype as a wandering prophet of cosmic truth whose presence signals doom. What makes the character unique in Lovecraft’s tales is precisely this dual existence. He moves freely between the Dreamlands and waking reality, linking the two in a way no other entity quite manages. “Nyarlathotep” is the moment that connection first takes shape.

The piece continues to resonate because it feels like a transmission from the edge of consciousness. It's brief, opaque, and deeply unsettling. As a document of Lovecraft’s artistic evolution, it is both important and often underappreciated. It captures the last intensity of his Dunsanian phase even as it gestures toward the cosmic immensities of the later Mythos. That tension between dream and nightmare, fantasy and cosmic dread, gives “Nyarlathotep” its lasting power. It remains one of Lovecraft’s most haunting works, not despite its ambiguity, but because of it.

January Approacheth

Back in August, I devoted the entire month on this blog to discussing H.P. Lovecraft and his legacy, under the banner of The Shadow over August. What began as an experiment turned out to be one of the most enjoyable projects I’ve undertaken on Grognardia in some time. Not only was it fun to revisit Lovecraft’s writings and influences in a focused way, but the response from readers was far more enthusiastic than I had expected. It reminded me of the value of spending a sustained period delving into a single creator whose work has shaped the hobby in so many ways.

With that in mind, I’ve been thinking about doing something similar in January. Two of the other great figures associated with Weird Tales, Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith, were both born in that month. Each is, in his own way, a towering influence on fantasy, horror, and roleplaying games. Consequently, I would very much like to give one of them the same kind of month-long attention I gave to Lovecraft in August.

Notice I said one. For practical reasons, I can only manage one such project right at a time, however much I'd like to do both. That leaves me with a choice and, rather than make it myself, I thought it would be more fitting (and fun) to put it to you, the readers.

I’ve come up with titles that mirror the spirit of The Shadow over August and capture something of each author’s tone:

• For Robert E. Howard: The Savage Sword of January
• For Clark Ashton Smith: The Ensorcellment of January

Both possibilities appeal to me for different reasons and I would enjoy devoting a month to either writer. So, I’m asking for your help in deciding which one I should pursue. If you have a preference – Howard or Smith – please let me know in the comments. I’ll tally the responses and announce the outcome before the end of the year, as I can begin preparing for whichever choice wins out. It's a difficult choice, to be sure, and I don't think there's a wrong option. Plus, I can always devote January 2027 to whichever of the two isn't chosen for 2026.

As always, thank you for reading and for your continued enthusiasm. August’s experiment succeeded in large part because of your engagement and I’m looking forward to seeing where January takes us.

Sir Yamashiro Li Halan

I often comically lament that I spent my personal character points on the wrong abilities and skills, choosing writing over much more sought after – and profitable – skills like mapmaking or art. Dyson Logos can do both of the latter, which is why I told him that, if he weren't my friend, I'd hate him. Yesterday, while playing in the fourth session of our new Fading Suns campaign, he drew his character, Sir Yamashiro Li Halan. It's a lovely piece of art and one that does a great job of visually bringing to life this drug-addicted rake of a nobleman. 

I suggested to Dyson he give the same treatment to the other characters in the campaign, but I was only half-serious, since I know it'd be a lot of work. Still, it's amazing how helpful it can be to have portraits of characters in a campaign. The make them real in a way that mere words frequently cannot. That's why I commissioned Zhu Bajiee to produce a commemorative portrait of all the important player and non-player characters of the recently completed House of Worms campaign. It'll not only be a great memento of the campaign itself – the longest I have ever refereed – but it will also help me to recall the characters, who are really what helped keep the game going for as long as it did. 

Inquiry

Another public post over at my Patreon, one that's specifically directed at those who are already members but that might be of general interest to other regular readers (at least I hope so). 

Retrospective: The Complete Priest's Handbook

When the second edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons appeared in 1989, one of its implicit goals was to make the game’s classes more flexible and setting-driven. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the treatment of clerics. First Edition AD&D more or less followed the template laid down by OD&D, where the cleric was an odd hybrid of Templar, exorcist, and battlefield medic. This was a pragmatic invention designed to plug holes in early play (someone had to turn undead and heal wounds). The cleric class was thus foundational to the game, but rarely inspiring. If my experience is anything to go by, few players aspired to be a cleric and would only acquiesce to doing so because the party needed healing.

The Complete Priest’s Handbook, published in 1990, represents TSR’s most serious attempt to rethink the cleric, building on what had already been established in the 2e Player's Handbook. Written by Aaron Allston, it stands as one of the most conceptually ambitious entries in the “Complete” series, as well as one I really liked at the time of its release. The supplement's title is significant. Second Edition, you may recall, replaced the term "cleric" with "priest" as the name of the broad class category. “Cleric” became only one example within that category – a type of priest, much as the druid was another. This terminological shift heralded a new approach to divine spellcasters. Where 1e’s cleric was monolithic, 2e’s priest was varied. There could be hundreds of priestly archetypes, each distinct to its faith and overall ethos. Allston’s book took that conceptual flexibility and attempted to make it practical.

At the heart of The Complete Priest’s Handbook lies 2e’s concept of specialty priests as a flexible framework for portraying the servants of specific gods or cosmic powers. Rather than treating every priest as a lightly re-skinned version of the same armored miracle-worker, Allston provided Dungeon Masters with clear guidelines for customizing spell access, weapons, armor, granted powers, and restrictions to reflect each deity’s nature. A priest of a war god might wield swords and command battle magic, while one devoted to a god of secrets could be forbidden to fight openly but gifted with divinations and hidden knowledge. The idea had its roots in Dragonlance Adventures (1987) and the 2e Player’s Handbook, of course, but Allston expanded and refined it in meaningful ways. He demonstrated that the faiths of a campaign world should shape the rules of divine magic, not the other way around.

Much of the supplement reads less like a player’s guide than a campaign design manual. Allston encouraged DMs to think about pantheons, from who the gods are, what their worshippers are like, and how their clergy interact with worldly institutions. He presented religions as social, political, and metaphysical forces, not merely sources of spells. From here, he moves on to designing priesthoods, walking the reader through the process of defining a faith’s beliefs, organization, duties, and other details, with each choice shaping both flavor and play. Allston even made space for philosophical or non-theistic priests, who draw power from devotion to an ideal or cosmic principle. That idea was barely hinted at previously, but, in this supplement, it's offered as an unambiguous possibility (one that I embraced wholeheartedly in my Emaindor campaign from high school).

In many ways, The Complete Priest’s Handbook was TSR’s first real attempt to treat religion as a serious worldbuilding concern rather than an afterthought. The gods and their faiths were no longer just color for the background; they became engines of conflict, patronage, and adventure. The priest was not simply a healer or support character but a representative of a larger belief structure and institution. One can argue that this was always true in AD&D and perhaps it was, but, for many of us, it took books like this to make us think seriously about what that actually meant in play.

Like all entries in the “Complete” line, The Complete Priest’s Handbook included a selection of kits, optional templates meant to add flavor and specialization. Ironically, I never found most of them especially interesting. Too many represented vague social roles, like the Nobleman Priest, the Peasant Priest, and so on, rather than more distinctive archetypes like the Crusader or the Missionary. Arguably, 2e priests didn’t need kits at all. Between their spheres of magic and granted powers, the class already had plenty of built-in flexibility. However, compared to what other classes received in their "Complete" books, this section felt oddly underbaked.

What truly stands out, though, is how The Complete Priest’s Handbook reflects a broader shift in TSR’s design philosophy. Second Edition was increasingly interested in building distinct, coherent settings for AD&D. One could reasonably argue this was motivated by a desire to sell more products, but, even so, it had an intriguing creative side effect: it pushed the rules toward flexibility and world-specific interpretation. Instead of assuming a single “cleric” archetype for every world, 2e encouraged Dungeon Masters to make each campaign’s religions – and thus its priests – unique.

Of course, the book is not without its flaws. Balancing specialty priests was left largely to the DM’s discretion and the examples varied widely in quality. Allston’s approach assumed a polytheistic setting where divine diversity was the norm, leaving monotheistic or dualistic campaigns to do some extra work. Yet, these are minor quibbles compared to the book’s larger accomplishment. The Complete Priest’s Handbook encouraged DMs to shape faith to fit their worlds and, just as importantly, to let their worlds shape faith in return. For a game as rule-bound as AD&D sometimes was, that felt genuinely liberating.

For all my reservations about the "Complete" series as a whole, I still regard The Complete Priest’s Handbook as one of its true high points, a book that took a neglected class and made it central not just to the mechanics of the game but to the presentation of the setting in which it was played.

The Articles of Dragon: "The Nine Hells Revisited"

As a kid, I was endlessly fascinated by AD&D's Gygaxian cosmology of the planes of existence, especially the so-called Lower Planes, populated as they were by the baroque categories and hierarchies of devils, daemons, and demons (not to mention demodands and hordlings). For that reason, I adored Ed Greenwood's two-part series on the Nine Hells, which appeared in issues #75 and #76 of Dragon. They were, in my opinion, one of the best explorations of the Outer Planes in First Edition, not merely for the new information they presented, but also for the way Greenwood succeeded in making the Hells locales where characters might have adventures. Then and now, that's very important to me. Much as I enjoy imaginative "lore dumps," background information is always improved when it supports play. That's why, more four decades later, I still look back with affection on "The Nine Hells," Part I and II.

Apparently, I wasn't the only reader of Dragon who enjoyed those articles, because, a year later, in issue #91 (November 1984), we got "The Nine Hells Revisited." Ay 16 pages long, this article wasn't as long as Part II of the original series, but it was slightly longer than Part I, meaning it was a substantial addition of new material about the Nine Hells. I was overjoyed to see its appearance in the issue and even happier when I'd finally read it. Greenwood had once again written the kind of article I wanted more of and, while it's not quite as groundbreaking as his previous work, it was still quite memorable.

Whereas "The Nine Hells" had been a systematic presentation of the plane of ultimate Lawful Evil, focusing on each layer, its notable features, and denizens, "The Nine Hells Revisited" was more of a grab bag. For example, the article begins with a brief discussion of how mortal can "safely" deal with devils through magic, followed by the proper pronunciation of certain devils' names (important if you want to ensure your summoning rituals work properly). Then, Greenwood gives us six pages of "outcast" devils – greater devils whose offenses against one of Hell's archdevils resulted in their being removed from the plane's hierarchy and left to wander. These devils are quite interesting, because their independent status makes them great antagonists for AD&D characters of mid to high-level without necessarily involving all the legions of Hell in their schemes.

Next up is a discussion of the treasures of Hell and the unique metals to be found there. Though not especially interesting in their own right, these topics are eminently practical for adventures that take place in Hell or involve their inhabitants. Much more fascinating to me was Greenwood's discussion of mortal devil worshipers and agents and "The Lord Who Watches," Gargoth. Gargoth is another unique devil, but, unlike the ones described earlier, he is of immense power, being an exiled archdevil, who was once second only to Asmodeus in power. Exiled to the Prime Material Plane, he now pursues his own goals. Gargoth makes for a great high-level enemy and longtime readers of Dragon will appreciate Greenwood's subtle incorporation of elements of Alex Von Thorn's "The Politics of Hell," which appeared in issue #28 of the magazine (August 1979), reprinted in The Best of Dragon, Volume II.

(As an aside, Alex Von Thorn was the co-owner of a game store here in Toronto that Ed Greenwood would occasionally visit. I got to know Alex, too, and even gamed with him a few times.)

The article wraps up with discussions of the nature of devils, which is to say, how their society operates, traveling the River Styx, and a "note to the DM." The latter is interesting, because Greenwood makes it very clear that devils are very powerful beings and the Dungeon Master should take pains not to overuse them or otherwise diminish them in the minds of players. Even the weakest named devils are dangerous foes and should offer a challenge. The DM needs to keep this in mind when employing them in adventures. This is a fair point, I think, but I wonder what occasioned its inclusion in the article.

 

"The Nine Hells Revisited" was, as I said, nowhere near as revelatory to me as its two predecessor articles. Nevertheless, I found it both enjoyable and information, not to mention practical. This wasn't just background information without any utility in play. Instead, it provided the Dungeon Master with a collection of details and foes he could use to inject a little bit of the infernal into his ongoing campaign. Being a devotee of the Outer Planes in my AD&D campaign at the time, I liked this one a lot. Even now, I think it's one of the more memorable Dragon articles of its era.

The 3 Waves of the RPG Moral Panic

I've mentioned many times on this blog that, to a great extent, I owe my introduction into the hobby of roleplaying to the furor surrounding the disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III in August 1979. Consequently, I've always had a deep interest in the history of the moral panics surrounding D&D and RPGs more generally. That's why I was intrigued when I saw that Seth Skorkowsky had released a lengthy video essay about this very topic. It's a well-presented and informative video and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in this subject. Thanks to Loren Rosson for recommending it to me.

Pulp Fantasy Library: Ex Oblivione

H.P. Lovecraft’s brief prose-poem “Ex Oblivione” tends to get overlooked when readers discuss his so-called Dream Cycle and I can understand why. At scarcely two pages long, it lacks the elaborate worldbuilding of The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath or the mythic resonance of "The White Ship." Yet, I think this slight, melancholy piece deserves more attention than it usually receives, if only because it reveals something essential about Lovecraft’s evolving view of dreams, escape, and, as its Latinate title suggests, oblivion.

Before turning to the piece itself, a few background details are worth noting. First and most intriguingly, “Ex Oblivione” is one of the few works Lovecraft ever published under a pseudonym, in this case Ward Phillips, a name that August Derleth would later use for his HPL stand-in in the touching story “The Lamp of Alhazred.” Second, the prose-poem first appeared in the March 1921 issue of The United Amateur, the journal of the United Amateur Press Association, an organization to which Lovecraft devoted much of his energy during the early years of his writing career. It did not receive “professional” publication until after his death, when Arkham House included it in Beyond the Wall of Sleep (1943).

Like several of Lovecraft’s early dream tales, “Ex Oblivione” is told by an unnamed dreamer who, weary of life, seeks a gate that will lead him beyond the bounds of waking reality. There’s a familiar texture here, with a manuscript inscribed on yellowed papyrus, a gate of bronze, and a secret known only to the dead. The language is the same high, antique diction that marks the other efforts of his Dunsanian period. On its surface, this could easily be another story of mystical adventure in the Dreamlands – except that's not what "Ex Oblivione" is at all.

Unlike his other dream narratives, this one isn’t really about wonder or discovery. Rather, it’s about release – release from life, memory, and even consciousness itself. When the dreamer finally passes through the gate, what he finds is not some transcendent realm of beauty but the ultimate nothingness that lies beyond all things. "Once it was entered, there would be no return." The peace he sought is not the peace of heaven or dream, but of extinction, the "native infinity of crystal oblivion from which the daemon Life had called me for one brief and desolate hour."

That conclusion gives “Ex Oblivione” a very different flavor from the rest of Lovecraft’s dream writings. Randolph Carter, for example, is nostalgic for the lost worlds of his youthful imagination. He travels through the Dreamlands not to die, but to rediscover wonder. The narrator of “Ex Oblivione,” by contrast, has no such illusions. He doesn’t seek new vistas; he seeks an end to vistas altogether. In that sense, this story marks a quiet but profound shift from romantic escapism toward the cosmic fatalism that would eventually come to define Lovecraft’s mature work.

It’s also worth remembering when Lovecraft wrote it. In 1921, he was only a few years removed from a long period of isolation and depression. In that sense, “Ex Oblivione” feels like a remnant of his earlier darker mood, a poetic expression of the same yearning for nonexistence that haunted his teenage and young adult years. The piece reads less like a story than a confession. It's a moment of weariness rendered in dream imagery. It’s the voice of someone who has dreamed too long and too deeply and has finally grown tired of even his own fantasies.

In stylistic terms, “Ex Oblivione” is still firmly rooted in Lovecraft’s early Dunsanian phase. The imagery and language would not have been out of place in The Book of Wonder. But whereas Dunsany’s dreamers usually awaken from their journeys sadder but wiser, Lovecraft’s narrator never wakes up at all. The story ends in stillness, not revelation. That’s the difference between Dunsany’s wistful mysticism and Lovecraft’s emerging materialism.

For that reason, I think it’s misleading to treat “Ex Oblivione” as simply another Dream Cycle story. It belongs to that group in imagery, perhaps, but not in spirit. Rather than celebrating the imagination, it questions whether imagination – or indeed existence itself – has any meaning at all. It’s a dream story that rejects dreaming, a meditation on escape that ends by denying even the possibility of return.

In that sense, “Ex Oblivione” stands as a bridge between Lovecraft’s early dream fantasies and his later cosmic horror. What the dreamer finds beyond the gate prefigures some of what Lovecraft’s later protagonists would confront in their own investigations, namely, a vast, impersonal universe where what peace that can be found lies only in surrender. "Ex Oblivione" is a minor work in scale, but not in theme. As an early glimpse of the fatal serenity that would come to haunt so much of Lovecraft's writing, I feel it's worth greater consideration than it typically receives.