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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