Pulp Fantasy Library: The Other Gods

Written in August 1921 but not published until November 1933 in the pages of The Fantasy Fan, H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Other Gods” provides an earliest and revealing glimpse into the ideas that would later coalesce into his distinctive cosmic mythology. Brief though it is, the story articulates with remarkable clarity a vision of the universe that would come to define Lovecraft’s work. In it, the cosmos is neither ordered for human benefit nor governed by sympathetic or intelligible divinities, but instead dominated by vast, indifferent, and alien powers. In this vision, human ambition is not merely misplaced but positively perilous, for to seek forbidden knowledge is not to advance toward enlightenment, but rather to step, unwittingly, toward obliteration.

The story concerns Barzai the Wise, a venerable sage from the city of Ulthar, who has devoted his long life to the study of the gods. Unlike the fearful or superstitious masses, Barzai is driven by intellectual pride and a desire for direct knowledge. When he learns that the gods of Earth are said to descend upon the summit of the distant mountain Hatheg-Kla in the land of Mnar, he determines to climb the mountain and behold them with his own eyes. Accompanied by his young disciple Atal, Barzai ascends the cold, alien slopes and reaches the peak, where ancient stone seats and mysterious carvings suggest a long-forgotten cult.

At the summit, Barzai performs an invocation to compel the gods to show themselves. What answers this summons, however, are not the gentle, familiar deities of Earth, but the Other Gods, who are vast, formless, and terrifying cosmic entities that exist beyond human thought and earthly divinity. As Atal watches in horror, these beings blot out the moon and sweep down upon the mountaintop. Barzai is carried away into the void, leaving only terror and silence behind. Atal alone survives to stagger back to the world below, forever changed by what he has witnessed.

The strength of “The Other Gods” lies less in its action, of which there is not much, than in what it implies. Here, Lovecraft makes a distinction between the parochial gods of Earth and the greater, indifferent forces that actually rule the cosmos. The story marks a turning point from earlier, more folkloric/Dunsanian fantasy toward the fully developed cosmic horror for which Lovecraft would later become famous. Like many of the stories that would later be deemed part of his dream cycle, "The Other Gods" is a transitional piece, standing at the boundary between wonder and horror. 

Lovecraft's admiration for Lord Dunsany is still evident, particularly in the tale's elevated, archaic prose and fantastical setting. At the same time, it's also clearly a rejection of Dunsany’s romantic treatment of divinity. Where Dunsany’s gods are beautiful, tragic, and ultimately part of a comprehensible cosmic order, Lovecraft’s Other Gods represent something colder and more disturbing. They represent a universe in which even the gods of myth are small and provincial compared to the true nature of reality.

The story is notable too for the way it explicitly references characters, places, and concepts that appear (or later would reappear) in previous stories. The city of Ulthar, the character of Atal, and the distinction between “earthly” and “Other” gods are all examples of this. Likewise, the story is an early meditation on one of Lovecraft’s most enduring themes, namely, that the pursuit of forbidden knowledge is not a heroic quest but a transgression of sorts and that the universe does not reward human curiosity with enlightenment, but only with annihilation.

How Weird is My Mutant?

I have a lot of experience with Gamma World. primarily its first edition, though I refereed a lot of second edition too. Consequently, my default perspective when it comes to generating mutant characters is very much colored by its rules. So, when the players of my new Metamorphosis Alpha campaign started doing so, I simply assumed that MA's rules were similar to those of GW. As it turns out, they are – but similarity does not mean the same, as I soon discovered. Mutant characters, both human and animal (or "monster," as the text calls them), have enough differences in the way they're created that my players and I were often mistaken in our initial understanding of how the rules work (a situation made all the worse by the poor organization of Metamorphosis Alpha).

In both games, players can choose to be either a humanoid mutant or an animal mutant. Also in both games, mutants of both types begin play with 1d4 physical and mental mutations. So far, so good. However, in Metamorphosis Alpha, the player chooses these mutations from the frustratingly non-alphabetized list. Then, the referee (or "judge," as he's inconsistently called in the text) "roll[s] randomly for physical or mental defect (or one of each if the player has 5 or more total mutations)." There are a lot fewer defects to choose from, meaning that, if the group of player characters is large enough, there may be some that recur.

Gamma World, meanwhile, presents two systems for generating mutations, something I've discussed before. The standard system determines the mutations randomly through the use of percentile dice and the (thankfully now-alphabetized) list of physical and mental mutations includes defects among them. In this way, not only is there likely to be a greater variety of mutations among the characters but defects, when they are present, will also be more variable. Of course, Gamma World also includes a system very similar to that of Metamorphosis Alpha as an option, but I don't think I've ever encountered anyone who made use of it. Indeed, the random generation of mutations is, in my experience, considered a signature feature of the game and a big part – mistaken in my opinion – why the game is often considered "silly,"

The game's lack of organization has some bearing on character generation as well. For example, animal mutants must select Heightened Intelligence as a mental mutations or else they are deemed to have mere bestial intellect and are unable to communicate or react logically. This fact is only mentioned in the description of Heightened Intelligence, which makes it easy to overlook. Of course, the sample mutant animal character doesn't have Heightened Intelligence and yet still seems, from context, to be able to communicate via Telepathy. There's also a note that the character's animal species – bear – "can't normally talk," implying that animals might need the New Body Parts physical mutation to be able to do so (though, again, this isn't outright stated). It's all a bit of a mess.

What I noticed was that, since players can choose their character's mutations, certain ones became very popular, like Carapace and Life Leech. Furthermore, many mutations are quite potent when possessed by a single mutant. One of the characters, a mutant human named Mee D'Ochre – yes, it's that kind of group – had Heightened Strength, Heightened Balance, and Military Genius, which together allow him to deal 7d6 damage when striking with a sword! That combination would have an identical effect in Gamma World but the likelihood of rolling all three is much lessened, compared to selecting them.

 I'm fine with this, since, as I said yesterday, this campaign is intended as much as an exploration of Metamorphosis Alpha as it is a campaign in its own right. I suspect, as I did when I played OD&D and Empire of the Petal Throne for the first time, I'll house rule and adapt MA as we discover what works and doesn't work for our particular group and play style. That's part of the fun of these old RPGs: they're, in many ways, outlines for creating your own roleplaying game rather than complete and usable "out of the box." That's not a criticism, just an observation, and one with which I'm quite comfortable.

I'll have more to say on the rules of Metamorphosis Alpha in future posts. It's a rich topic for discussion.

Shackles

Shackles by James Maliszewski

Slavery in the Empire in Inba Iro

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Forward into the Past

I've written many times about the origins of this blog, including just a few months ago. A major component of Grognardia's genesis was my rediscovery of the original 1974 edition of Dungeons & Dragons. OD&D was a game I never played back in my youth, though I did acquire a copy of it in the late '80s, toward the end of my high school years. Back then, I saw it mostly as a not very interesting historical artifact – something superseded by later versions of the game, most especially AD&D, which, at the time, I would have considered the epitome of D&D. 

I no longer feel that way, thanks in large part to a number of people whom I met through the ODD74 message boards over the course of several feverish months between December 2007 and March 2008. I learned a lot from the fine fellows there, including the ability to put aside my AD&D-inflected preconceptions of what Dungeons & Dragons is and indeed ought to be. I really felt like a veil had been lifted from my eyes and that I finally saw not just D&D but roleplaying games more generally in a new and much more compelling light. This change in perspective is what really planted the seeds that would flower into this blog. I was reminded of all of this earlier this week, when I refereed the first session of my new Metamorphosis Alpha campaign. 

Metamorphosis Alpha is an old game. First published in 1976, it was TSR's fourth RPG after OD&D, Boot Hill, and Empire of the Petal Throne. It's also the first science fiction roleplaying game, having been released ahead of both Starfaring and Traveller. Like all of these games – maybe not Traveller, whose design really is both clear and complete – Metamorphosis Alpha is downright primitive in its rules presentation. People (understandably) like to criticize OD&D for its lacunae and infelicities of expression, but, having now had the chance to make use of MA as a referee, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that its rules are much less clear and complete than those of original Dungeons & Dragons.

That's not a criticism, merely an observation. Some of this is probably a function of the fact that MA is presented in a single 32-page booklet. Conceding the fact that it's a full-sized book with very small typeface, I'd still wager that's much shorter than the three volumes of OD&D. Given that, it's no wonder that it would fail to include or explicate all sorts of rules that would probably make playing it easier. Like OD&D, I imagine that some rules were omitted on the assumption that referees and players would simply fill in the blanks themselves. Consider the game's foreword by Gary Gygax and Brian Blume, which explains:

METAMORPHOSIS ALPHA is a free-form system, giving rules and guidelines for the basics of play and setting up the starship, but allowing the players and referee unlimited use of their imagination to create new problems and methods of solving them. Using the guidelines of the rules, the referee "creates" the starship (beginning a little at a time), sets up social structures for his people, plans the various mutations, places clues about the starship for the players to find, and any other of a multitude of possible happenings. They players takes it from there as they explore the starship ("seeing" only what they actually would, as the referee keeps his plans and notes secret), trying to gain the knowledge and technological devices they need to survive. From then on, the referee can add new facets to the game as they become desirable. The game is a continuous adventure which need never end.

Similarly, the book ends by saying:

Remember, however, that these rules (and specific portions thereof) are only intended as guidelines – and that many details are best described by the individual game judge. Science fiction can be completely open-ended, and so too this game of science fiction adventure!

This is all very much of a piece with the conclusion of Volume 3 of OD&D, which famously asked "why have us do any more of your imagining for you?" It's a reminder, too, of the fact that the earliest roleplaying games grew out of a hobbyist culture in which players and referees were not merely encouraged but indeed expected to add, subtract, change, or expand upon what was presented in the rulebook. Viewed from this perspective, Metamorphosis Alpha can't really be called "incomplete," even if it was often occasionally frustrating to figure out how many of its rules were intended to work in play.

Still, we had a lot of fun during our first session and I think a big part of the reason why was the sense that, just like so many of us had done with OD&D, we were now exploring a forgotten and underappreciated part of the early hobby. While confusing and incomplete, Metamorphosis Alpha is a game that needs to be taken on its own terms and understood within the context in which it was not only created but also first appeared. That's what I intend to do over the coming weeks and months as I develop my version of the starship Warden and slowly reveal it to the players. 

Why Grognardia?

Why Grognardia? by James Maliszewski

What's in a Name?

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REPOST: Retrospective: Metamorphosis Alpha

(Because I've started refereeing a Metamorphosis Alpha campaign this week, I have a number of posts planned in which I share my thoughts about the game and its oddities. Before doing that, though, I thought it might be worthwhile to revisit my original Retrospective post about it from July 7, 2010. I stand by everything I wrote in that original post, but I have more to say now that I'm in the midst of planning a campaign using MA, as you'll see in the coming days. –JDM)

Although Gamma World was (I think) the first RPG I played after Dungeons & Dragons, it was with its predecessor game, Metamorphosis Alpha, that I was obsessed for much of the early 1980s. Written by James Ward and first published in 1976, making it, depending on one's definitions, the first science fiction roleplaying game ever published, Metamorphosis Alpha is set aboard a vast generation ship (called the Warden in a typical example of early hobby self-referential hubris/humor). En route to another solar system far from Earth, the Warden passes through a radiation cloud that damages its systems, kills its crew, and mutates most of its surviving passengers, as well as the Terran flora and fauna traveling with them, into monstrous forms.

Over several generations, the descendants of the original passengers forget they're aboard a starship (which still functions, more or less, under the control of automated systems) and new societies arise on its various decks, which are kilometers-long in size and include many areas designed to mimic terrestrial environments for the benefit of the passengers who were supposed to live and work aboard the Warden while traveling for decades to another world. Player characters assume the role of un-mutated humans, humanoid mutants, and mutant animals, as they explore the Warden, ignorant that it's actually a starship. It's a very compelling premise, one that it shares with Robert Heinlein's Orphans of the Sky and Brian Aldiss's Non-Stop (sometimes titled Starship in certain editions). In many ways, it's a much more interesting, if somewhat more limited, premise than that of Gamma World.

My own obsession with the game stemmed from the fact, sometime after I acquired Gamma World, I also acquired the first The Best of Dragon compilation, which included articles about Metamorphosis Alpha in it. These articles were strangely inspirational to me, all the moreso because they were for a game that I'd never heard of, let alone seen, but that clearly bore a lot of resemblance in basic premise and rules to my beloved Gamma World. Thus began my quest to find a copy of the game, a quest that ended in vain. I asked the guys down at my favorite game store about Metamorphosis Alpha, but they told me it was long out of print and my best bet was to go to a convention and win it at an auction. The old grognards who hung out there added that MA "wasn't very good anyway" and that I was better off just using Gamma World and making up the rest.

And so I did. I pulled out my huge graph paper sheets and set to work to mapping out my version of the starship Warden. It was a long and tedious undertaking, filled with lots of missteps and heartache, because I never felt I could get it "right." This vessel was supposed to be 80 kilometers long or so, which meant that even a big map would have to use a very large scale. Moreover, what would a vast generation ship even look like? The only starships I'd ever seen were from movies and TV shows and none of them were generation ships designed to house a huge number of colonists, animals, plants, and machinery for decades of travel across many light years. Eventually, all these worries and concerns got the better of me and I abandoned my maps, something I regret now, even as I fully understand why my younger self admitted defeat.

Over the years, I retained a high degree of interest in Metamorphosis Alpha and kept hoping that, one day, a new edition would be released that'd give me everything I'd hoped for back in the days before I could even take a look at this mythical game. As it turns out, new editions have been published over the years, but each one has been a terrible disappointment to me, utterly lacking in the aura of mystery and possibility that surrounded the original. To be fair, some of that isn't the fault of the new editions -- though some of it is, as nearly all the new editions have been conceptually flawed in significant ways -- as much of the mystique about this game for me is that I could never find a copy.

I've since been able to read it and I'd say that, while it's definitely a very early game in terms of its mechanics and production values, it's nevertheless excellently inspirational. At 32 pages, it contains just enough information to get the referee going but not so much as to prevent him from putting his own stamp on it. I still don't own a copy myself; I keep an eye out for them but they're generally ludicrously expensive and I can't justify spending that kind of money nowadays. In truth, I should probably pick up where my younger self left off and just create my own starship maps and use Mutant Future for the rules. Heck, I have this crazy idea of a supplement for MF called Generation Ship, which would basically be Metamorphosis Alpha with the serial numbers filed off and better production values. Maybe that's something worth considering ...

The Articles of Dragon: "Ay pronunseeAYshun gyd"

I am nothing if not a horrible nerd about too many of the things that matter to me. And one of the things that matters a great deal to me is language. 

When I was in school, I enjoyed diagramming sentences and making proper use of the subjunctive mood. Spelling was one of my favorite subjects and I used to proudly tell anyone who would listen that I only ever spelled one word wrong on a spelling test during my entire elementary school career (Tuesday, if you can believe it). I was (am?) that annoying kid who corrected other people's grammar – and pronunciation.

Consequently, I absolutely adored Frank Mentzer's article, "Ay pronunseeAYshun gyd," which appeared in issue #93 of Dragon (January 1985). Over the course of five pages, Mentzer sets out to present the correct pronunciations for some of the weirder and more obscure words and names found in Dungeons & Dragons and AD&D materials. Of course, Mentzer is quick to note that he personally doesn't believe there is such a thing as a "right" or a "wrong" pronunciation (or spelling). Thus, the pronunciations he offers in the article are simply the "preferred" or even "most common" rather than the correct ones. Such descriptivist nonsense didn't hold any water with me when I was fifteen and it holds even less now, but I feel it's important to mention Mentzer's comment nonetheless, since I'm sure someone will bring it up in the comments in order to defend the rectitude of his idiosyncratic pronunciation of lich or drow or whatever.

As I said, I really enjoyed this article, since it gave me a weapon with which to bludgeon my less verbally adept friends. Thus equipped, I was ready to defend “proper” pronunciation with the zeal of a paladin guarding a sacred relic. My friends humored me (mostly). After all, I'd been doing this sort of thing for years before this article ever appeared. Fortunately, I’ve mellowed somewhat over the years – at least, that’s what I tell myself – but the truth is that I still sometimes look at Mentzer's article just to be sure that I wasn't mistaken in how to say certain words and names. 

Apropos of nothing, I assure you.

Just Right: The Importance of Setting

As I continue to work on the new edition of Thousand Suns, I find myself grappling with questions I didn't anticipate. At the moment, for example, I'm struggling with the extent to which a roleplaying game needs a setting to succeed – and indeed what, in fact, constitutes a setting at all.

Just Right: The Importance of Setting by James Maliszewski

How Much is "Too Much" and How Little is "Too Little?"

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Pulp Fantasy Library: The Nameless City

“The Nameless City” occupies a peculiar and revealing place in H.P. Lovecraft’s oeuvre. Written in January 1921 and first published later that same year in the amateur journal The Wolverine (before appearing Donald Wolheim's Fanciful Tales), it fits comfortably in neither his Dunsanian dream fantasies nor his later cosmic horror tales. Instead, it stands astride both, blending several strands of Lovecraft’s evolving imagination into a single narrative. The result is a story that feels simultaneously archaic and forward-looking, poised between decadent fantasy, pulp archeological adventure, and the nascent Cthulhu Mythos that would soon define his mature fiction. 

The plot is straightforward. An unnamed explorer ventures into an ancient ruin somewhere in the Arabian desert, a city so old that even legend has forgotten it. What he finds is not the expected relics of a vanished human people but the physical remnants of an inhuman race. They are reptilian beings who built their low, elongated architecture to suit their own forms and who left behind murals and funerary chambers chronicling a far older history than that of mankind. As the narrator moves from sun-blasted ruins into the pitch-black passageways beneath them, the story shifts from a travelog into something uncannier. A visionary experience soon overtakes him. Part dream, part revelation, the vision lets him to see the reptilian race alive, chanting during nocturnal rites. The tale ends with a familiar crescendo of terror: a sudden rush of wind from the darkness and the narrator’s panicked flight, shaken by the conviction that the ancient beings may not be entirely gone.

Objectively speaking, “The Nameless City” is not a particularly strong story, even by the standards of Lovecraft’s early fiction. Its prose is overwrought and its plot unnecessarily dramatic. Even so, HPL regarded it with considerable fondness, perhaps because it marks one of his first serious attempts to portray a genuinely non-human civilization, complete with its own art, culture, and long arc of rise and decline. This is a theme he would revisit throughout his career. Its desert setting and dreamlike atmosphere still bear the imprint of Dunsany, but the tale also seems shaped by the era’s growing fascination with archeology and the mysteries of the ancient world. It is hard not to read it in light of the cultural moment, coming as it did barely a year before the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb captured the world’s imagination.

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that “The Nameless City” anticipates several of Lovecraft’s major later works. The long, claustrophobic descent into the ruins points toward the archeological exploration of At the Mountains of Madness, while the conception of a non-human race with its own history looks ahead to both "The Shadow out of Time" and "The Mound." Even the narrator’s sudden, overwhelming revelation of the ancient past prefigures the shocks of The Shadow Over Innsmouth and other mature tales. The inhuman builders themselves, with their distinct physiology and culture, have a faint resonance with the pre-human or parallel races that populate Lovecraft’s later tales, though he would eventually reframe such beings in more explicitly cosmic or quasi-scientific terms.

Yet what makes the story especially revealing is the way it straddles two different phases of Lovecraft’s imaginative geography. “The Nameless City” is clearly set in the waking world, but it makes casual reference to Sarnath, Ib, and Mnar, places that would later come to be associated with the Dreamlands in “The Doom that Came to Sarnath.” However, in 1921, Lovecraft seems to have imagined these locales as belonging to a remote prehistoric era rather than a parallel dream realm. The borders had not yet hardened. Names, ideas, and mythic motifs drifted freely between dream fantasy, cosmic antiquity, and pseudo-historical prehuman epochs. “The Nameless City,” then, offers a rare glimpse into this fluid early stage of his mythmaking, before his different modes of fiction crystallized into distinct conceptual territories.

For all its rough edges, I think the tale remains significant because it marks a turning point in Lovecraft’s development both as a writer and as a creator. Here, for perhaps the first time, he fully embraces the idea that human civilization rests upon the remnants of a far older and indeed alien past. It's a notion that would become central to his mature worldview. It is also among his earliest attempts to blend antiquarian curiosity with cosmic dread, the signature synthesis that would soon define his best work.

This is why I see “The Nameless City” as a kind of literary bridge. It spans fantasy and horror, waking world and dream, the Dunsanian phase of Lovecraft’s youth and the more confident, original voice that would produce “The Call of Cthulhu,” "The Colour Out of Space," and the great masterpieces of his later career. Its imagery of ancient stones, subterranean chambers, and forgotten races may lack the polish of his mature style, but the essential vision – that distinctly Lovecraftian sense of deep time, buried history, and alien life – is unmistakably present. In that sense, “The Nameless City” may well be the first fully Lovecraftian tale and it deserves appreciation on those grounds alone. 

Around the Campfire

On some nights, around the campfire, the village shaman – the Enginer – tells the following tale:

Long ago, the People dwelt in the First Garden. Shaped by the hands of the Builder, it was green beyond imagining, filled with waters that murmured like song and fruits that never failed. In those days, the Builder walked unseen among His children, guiding them through the soft meadows and gifting them with wonders that eased every burden. These Gifts – rare relics now – could mend wounds, command the elements, or summon angels of strange metal. The People lived without toil and they called themselves blessed.

Yet, as seasons passed uncounted, the People grew proud. They praised not the Builder but their own cleverness. They claimed the Gifts as their own works and whispered that the Garden’s perfection proved they needed no master. Their pride soured the soil and the Builder, though slow to anger, grew sorrowful.

He sent His fiercest angel, Bright-Ruin, whose secret name is Rad-Ashun, meaning "burning breath," to humble the People.

Bright-Ruin descended as a storm of unseen fire. Its passing cracked the earth, stilled the rivers, and dimmed the very light of the Garden. The wondrous Gifts turned wild or deadly. The First Garden fell in a single long night of flame and thunder.

But the Builder, though angered, did not cast the People into oblivion. Instead, He gathered the survivors and carried them to a new place – a hard place, a place of punishment and contrition where pride was impossible and ease a luxury.

He named this land Warden.

Warden, in the Old Tongue, means " a place of keeping," a realm of confinement where the People would dwell until they remembered the humility they had cast aside. Warden was not a prison of bars and walls, but of spiritual confinement, a vast wilderness meant to teach obedience, endurance, and wisdom.

Here, among the Barren Hills, the People were set to labor. Here, they would feel hunger, cold, and the bite of honest earth beneath their feet. Here they would live under the watchful eye of the Builder until the day they proved worthy of his love once more.

Our ancestors wandered long in this place of penance until they found the strong river we call the Ranger that wound like a silver chain through Warden’s harsh heart. Following its course, they reached the calm waters of Lake Refuge and made their first home: Habitat. There, they learned again the value of work, community, and gratitude for even the smallest blessing.

Fragments of the Builder’s Gifts lie scattered across Warden. They glimmer like temptations, powerful yet perilous. Those who forget the lesson of pride may draw Bright-Ruin’s gaze once more.

However, one day, when the People have endured enough seasons of hardship and have walked in humility for many generations, the Builder may lift the sentence placed upon them. Then He will break open the gates of Warden and lead His children to the New Garden, fairer still than the first.

Until that day, the People live under the watchful grace and stern discipline of the land that bears their fate in its very name.