Ever Want to Be a Vampire?

As a kid, something I really enjoyed about reading Dragon magazine was looking over its advertisements. Most issues had a couple of dozen (or more), often from companies I'd never heard of offering products I'd never seen. In too many cases, the ads were vague to the point of being cryptic. Consider this one that I saw in issue #80 (December 1983):

What exactly is this advertisement for? Is Wizards World a roleplaying game or something else entirely? At the time, I had no way of knowing, since I wasn't willing to risk $10 (over $30 in today's inflated currency) on a whim. I wouldn't find out the truth until nearly three decades later, when Goblinoid Games acquired the rights to Wizards' World, making it available in both print and electronic forms. 

Wizards' World is nothing special. It's similar to many other independent RPGs produced at the time in being amateurish and derivative but nevertheless made with great enthusiasm. Still, I'm glad to have solved this particular mystery. Do any readers recall any other similarly enigmatic advertisements? If so, I'd be interested in knowing what they were.

For Your Consideration

I'm sure, by this point, a lot of you are tired of hearing about more crowdfunding campaigns, but, after the success I enjoyed in my own, I feel I have an obligation to do so, especially when I think they're particularly worthy projects. Today, I present you with three, all three of which involve people I consider friends and all-around good guys.

The first is for the second edition of Goblinoid Games's Starships & Spacemen, an old school take on science fiction roleplaying on the Final Frontier (*wink, wink*). The second edition is not only revised and expanded but compatible with Labyrinth Lord, which increases its utility greatly, particularly for referees who like to throw phasers into their dragon's hoards.

The second is for Brave Halfling's Appendix N Adventure Toolkit series of modules in support of Goodman Games's Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. This looks to be a fun collection of adventures for DCC RPG. Plus, John is one of the nicest guys in the hobby and it's always a pleasure to see what he has in store.

The final one is for an unusual project called The Shadow Out of Providence: A Lovecraftian Metatext, which is a fancy way of saying it's a book comprised of two short stories and a play that it focuses on "Lovecraft the writer, the thinker, and the cultural phenomenon, rather than the sliver of his work on which most writers fixate." Old schoolers may find it of interest both because one of the contributors is Tim Hutchings of PlaGMaDA. In addition, the legendary Erol Otus is contributing artwork, two of which I reproduce below.

Wizards' World

If there's a guy in the old school community these days who's doing more than Dan Proctor to preserve old RPGs, I'd love to know who it is. Over the past couple of years, Dan has acquired the rights to Starships & Spacemen, TimeMaster, and Sandman, in addition to publishing my favorite retro-clone, Labyrinth Lord. His latest acquisition is Wizards' World, a fantasy roleplaying game published in 1983 by a tiny outfit called Fantasy Worlds Unlimited (not to be confused with Fantasy Games Unlimited).

While in some ways nothing more than someone's AD&D-inspired house rules, there's nevertheless a charming enthusiasm to Wizards' World that serves as a reminder that there's no more primal way to show one's love for this weird hobby than by publishing your own RPG, no matter how derivative some might see it as being. I've been enjoying reading my copy of it, with its funky races (metamorphic dwarves, demon halflings, vampires) and strange sub-classes (attacker, defender, destroyer), among many other delights. It's a window on another time and I'm very grateful to Dan for not only making games like this available once again in their original, unadulterated forms but also in making them more widely available nowadays than they probably ever were at the time of their original releases.

Dan Proctor's Blog Has Moved

Dan Proctor, proprietor of Goblinoid Games, has asked me to pass along the word that his personal blog has moved to a new location. His former blog has been removed and all of its content transferred to the new one. Please take the time to update your links and bookmarks accordingly.

How Many?

Receiving my POD copy of Metamorphosis Alpha this week got me to wonder: how many old school RPGs are currently available in unadulterated print form? By that I mean original editions that haven't had been altered from when they first appeared. Most of the Fantasy Games Unlimited catalog (the primary exception being Chivalry & Sorcery) is available, as are Starships & Spacemen and Timemaster (both from Goblinoid Games).

Are there any others?

REVIEW: Nuclear Sunset: The Southwest

If there's a recent old school game that I feel hasn't gotten the attention it deserves, it's Mutant Future from Goblinoid Games. I personally think that's a shame, because, while it is a very good retro-clone for playing Gamma World, it's actually much more expansive than that. The combination of its compatibility with Labyrinth Lord and its lack of a specific setting makes Mutant Future a good foundation on which to build a variety of gonzo science fantasy campaigns. Ironically, those two qualities may also partly explain why the game hasn't received the love I think it ought to have received, which is why I've thought for a while now that what Mutant Future needed was a solid campaign supplement to show off its possibilities.

Apparently, Charles Rice had similar thoughts and decided to do something about it by producing Nuclear Sunset: The Southwest, the first installment in a gonzo post-apocalyptic setting that takes its esthetic cues from Westerns, but whose content shows a mix of influences, including UFOlogy. I'll admit that I was quite prepared to dislike Nuclear Sunset: The Southwest. Being a big fan of Westerns, I tend to be more than a little snobby about the way the genre is so often misused and caricatured, especially in crossovers with other genres. And while a post-apocalyptic setting is a very good fit for Western themes and esthetics, I was nevertheless apprehensive. I've seen too many poorly executed Western-influenced creations not to assume the worst.

For the most part, my apprehension was baseless. Nuclear Sunset: The Southwest is a well done little setting, described in a 24-page PDF and selling for $1.99. One of its best qualities is that it takes itself seriously without being self-serious. That is, this isn't a silly setting, with mutant horses acting as lawmen or anything like that, but it's also not a setting that's so straitlaced that a funky mutant animal or plant character is an impossibility. Silliness is a big danger in post-apocalyptic settings, especially those that adopt a 50s B-movie approach to mutation as Mutant Future (and Gamma World) does. On the other hand, a big part of the fun of games like Mutant Future are the wildly improbable mutants. There's thus a fine line between inadvertently straying into parody and bleeding all the fun out a post-apocalyptic RPG setting -- a line that I think Nuclear Sunset: The Southwest walks pretty well.

This supplement details an area of indeterminate size situated in the southwest of the former United States. I say "indeterminate" because its single map doesn't include a scale, though any familiar with the region should quickly recognize its major locales: Rhino (Reno), Salt Lick (Salt Lake City), Tusk (Tucson), Vega (Las Vegas), etc. The lack of a scale isn't a deal-breaker by any means, especially when one can easily consult a real world map to determine how far Reno is from Salt Lake City, but it is an annoyance. Fortunately, there's a lot of clever and inspiring ideas in Nuclear Sunset: The Southwest to make up for this oversight, chief among them being the implication that extraterrestrials from Groom Lake/Area 51 are present in the post-apocalyptic world, now freed from the oversight of the defunct US government and engaged in mysterious activities throughout the Southwest.

Of course, the aliens present only one possible source of conflict in the setting. In addition to the struggles between various settlements, there's the rising power of New Aztekia, led by the Lord of the Sun, not to mention several power groups independent of any settlement. There's Hell's Heart, a coalition of criminal gangs; the Nightgliders, who seek the power of man-made flight; the 88th, a collection of human and android soldiers seeking to rebuild America; the Marshals, itinerant self-appointed keepers of law and order; and Uforia, which seeks contact with the aforementioned aliens. Throughout Rice peppers the supplement with adventure hooks and off-handed references to people, places, and events intended to serve as inspiration to the referee in making the Southwest his own setting.

Nuclear Sunset: The Southwest is written in clear, occasionally evocative language, though not without typos and editorial errors. It includes both black and white and color art throughout. I could have done without the colored backgrounds on each page, since they sometimes made the text harder to read. Much like Blackmarsh, Nuclear Sunset: The Southwest is more of a sketch of a setting than something more complete. Whether one views that as is a virtue or a flaw depends on what one expects out of a setting supplement. I myself was largely happy with its level of detail, though I will admit that I was disappointed that some aspects of the implied setting -- New Aztekia, for example -- get very little detail. Likewise, this product is almost entirely stat-less, which no doubt broadens its utility to players of other post-apocalyptic games, but it does somewhat call into question its being touted as a Mutant Future supplement.

In the end, I like Nuclear Sunset: The Southwest; there's the germ of a fun setting in here. I just wanted more, even if, at $1.99, it's actually quite a bargain. Perhaps Charles Rice will return to the Nuclear Sunset setting and produce additional products that offer some of the details I wished had been included in this one.

Presentation: 6 out of 10
Creativity: 7 out of 10
Utility: 6 out of 10

Buy This If: You're looking for a sketch of a setting to use as the basis for your own post-apocalyptic roleplaying game campaign.
Don't Buy This If: You have no interest either in post-apocalyptic settings or using someone else's setting for your own campaign.

The Varieties of Old School

Just in time for Halloween, Goblinoid Games released the electronic version of its new zombie RPG, Rotworld (the print version comes out next month). I have a copy of the game and have been reading it on and off since last night. There's a lot to like about Rotworld, including its delightfully old school brevity -- a complete game in only 64 pages! -- but what I think most grabbed my attention about the game was its use of the Action Table rules found in Pacesetter's old RPGs, like Chill and Timemaster, the latter of which Goblinoid Games now not coincidentally publishes.

I can't say I was ever a huge fan of the Action Table rules or of any of the myriad of other similar rulesets that were everywhere during the mid-1980s. But, even so, I'm glad to see it revived for much the same reason that I'm glad to see Basic Roleplaying and other non-D&D-derived systems revived. As Dan Proctor rightly says in his foreword to Rotworld:

"old-school" occupies a lot of breadth, and other genres and systems should also be embraced. One of the great things about the 1980's was the proliferation of so many game systems and genres attached to them. Some of the games were more generic in genre, some were idiosyncratic and quirky. But all of them offered us a menu of options we could turn to when we were looking for something a little different. That's part of my mission as a publisher. I want to provide a menu of options.

I think that's both true and extremely well-said. Unlike some commentators, I think it's not only natural but healthy to see lots of new old school RPGs appear, each one a reflection of the unique vision -- and quirks -- of its creator. Mind you, I'm also not a big fan of either "universal" systems or the unmodified re-use of the same game system again and again, so clearly I'm weird. Regardless, take a look at Rotworld or some other RPG that has its own unique system and revel in its uniqueness. For a lot of us, that's a big part of what "old school" is all about.

REVIEW: Realms of Crawling Chaos

I'm a Lovecraft snob. I hate plush Cthulhus. I think Pokéthulhu is an abomination. And I'm not looking forward to release of whatever the heck that comedy film about Cthulhu is called. You'll be hard pressed to find someone more annoyed by the way that the Great Old Ones have become, well, domesticated and turned into meaningless geek totems rather than being used as symbols of Lovecraft's cosmic horror.

Consequently, I tend to be very critical of most gaming treatments of HPL's work. Even Call of Cthulhu, which I consider one of the finest RPGs ever written and indeed a model for others to emulate, is not immune to my withering gaze of disdain from time to time. So, when I first learned that Dan Proctor was turning his attention to Yog-Sothothery for a supplement to Labyrinth Lord, I wasn't sure what to think. I'm naturally inclined to trust Dan Proctor, given his authorship not just of Labyrinth Lord but, more importantly, of Original Edition Characters and the Advanced Edition Companion, both of which have aided me immeasurably in the running of my Dwimmermount campaign. Even so, Lovecraft's creations are difficult to translate into game form, particularly when the game in question is Dungeons & Dragons. Despite the legendary status that the lost "Cthulhu Mythos" chapter of Deities & Demigods has among old schoolers, I'm of the (possibly minority) opinion that it's only Erol Otus's near-perfect artwork that gives it any worth.

It's worth noting that Realm of Crawling Chaos (hereafter RoCC) has a subtitle -- "Lovecraftian Dark Fantasy" -- that Proctor uses as the subject of a 4-page introduction that lays out his approach to the book's subject matter. In short, RoCC is an attempt to merge D&D's swords-and-sorcery with Lovecraft's horror to create "dark fantasy." The introduction then goes on to explicate the features of Lovecraft's horror, such as "the insignificance of man," "the vastness of the universe," "science as a double edged sword," and so on. Each feature of Lovecraft's worldview is treated briefly but clearly, undiluted by that of his pasticheurs (although a handful of works by Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith have been added to the mix). The result is, I think, a very "pure" vision of cosmic horror that sets it apart from that of many other RPGs treatments of the same subject matter.

RoCC first presents a number of new Lovecraftian races for use with Labyrinth Lord, in both race-as-class and "advanced" formats. These races are sea bloods (human-deep one hybrids), subhumans (human-voormis hybrids), white apes, and white ape hybrids. A number of new spells and formulae -- complex spells dependent on rare material components -- are described afterward, all of them drawn from Lovecraftian tales. The bulk of the book (20 of its 64 pages) are taken up by descriptions of the monsters, races, and beings of the Mythos, including such heavy hitters as Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep. Eldritch artifacts, which is to say, Lovecraftian magic items are treated too, along with an extensive system for randomly creating new ones. Rounding out the book is an excellent psionics system and a clever way to handle tome -- unfortunately misspelled as "tombs" in several places in the text -- in Labyrinth Lord.

Taken together, RoCC provides all the building blocks a referee needs to introduce as little or as much Lovecraftian material into his campaign as he wishes. I think, ultimately, that's the real genius of this book and the reason why I find it so appealing, despite my little quibbles and criticisms of Proctor's interpretations of Lovecraft in places. This is a toolbox, a word that tends to get overused in my experience, but in this case is very apt. Beyond the introduction, Proctor offers no philosophizing, no advice, no campaign setting -- only stuff to use with your Labyrinth Lord campaign. How that stuff is used is up to each referee to decide and he's free to pick and choose what he wants without being expected to take anything else. Want to add the deep ones to your campaign? Here's the stats for them and there's no expectation you'll also include Father Dagon, Mother Hydra, or Cthulhu, though he can, since there's stats for them too -- along with almost everything else you can find in Lovecraft's writings.

Realms of Crawling Chaos is a great book for do-it-yourself referees, who like to have a bunch of resources available to them from which they can borrow liberally. It's not "ready to play," though, since, beyond its introduction, it offers no guidance on how to use its material, trusting each referee to use it in whatever way he deems best for the type of campaign he runs. Personally, I wish more supplements adopted this approach and hope that the release of this product encourages others to release others in its vein.

Realms of Crawling Chaos is available as a PDF for $4.95 or as a softcover print book for $17.95. The book uses a simple, two-column format and is, except for the aforementioned confusion of "tome" with "tomb" in several places, reads well. The interior artwork is by Sean Aaberg and Mark Allen and includes several quite striking pieces, particularly by Allen, who is rapidly becoming one of my favorite artists of the old school renaissance.

Presentation: 7 out of 10
Creativity: 8 out of 10
Utility: 8 out of 10

Buy This If: You're looking for a smorgasbord of Lovecraftian races, monsters, spells, and artifacts for use in your old school fantasy campaign.
Don't Buy This If: You don't have any interest in introducing Lovecraftian elements into your fantasy campaign.

Mutant Future News

Over on his blog, Dan Proctor of Goblinoid Games has announced the imminent arrival of the revised edition of Mutant Future, which will include an all-new cover by Mark Allen, as well as lots of new interior art. Here's the cover:

Better still, Mutant Future will be available through traditional distribution, meaning you should be able to buy a copy through your local game store -- excellent news for an awesome game.

REVIEW: B/X Companion

These days, I'm more than a little swamped with things to keep me busy. Between posting to the blog, working on Thousand Suns, keeping up correspondence, and the responsibilities of parenthood, a lot of stuff gets pushed aside on to the "do it later" pile, including, I am embarrassed to confess, a lot of the books and PDFs people kindly send me for review. I was steadily working my way through them, hoping to have a couple more (at least) done this week, when a friend of mine stopped by this weekend and asked if I'd bought a copy of Jonathan Becker's B/X Companion. I admitted that I hadn't yet, for various reasons, but that I hoped to get a copy sometime soon, perhaps later in the month as a birthday present to myself. My friend told me I could read his copy and so I did -- in a single sitting, into the early hours of the morning.

It's rare that a gaming product, even a very good one, holds my attention long enough that I read it cover to cover in a single session but the B/X Companion did just that. For those of you who don't know, this book is an attempt to produce one of the "lost" products of the hobby, the fabled D&D Companion mentioned in the Cook/Marsh Expert Rules. As described there, the D&D Companion would have dealt with characters of levels 15-36, providing new spells, magic items, monsters, and other material intended to extend a campaign into higher-level play. The D&D Companion, alas, was never written, although a boxed set calling itself Companion Rules did appear as part of Frank Mentzer's re-write of the game line in the mid-80s. But, good as that boxed set was in some respects, it wasn't the D&D Companion we'd been promised in 1981, a feeling Jonathan Becker obviously shared, leading to his writing of the book under review.

The B/X Companion is thus written as if it were an add-on to the 1981 edition of Dungeons & Dragons (Moldvay/Cook/Marsh or "B/X"). It is thus not a complete game in its own right but rather presumes the reader also owns the original B/X volumes or, as a substitute, Labyrinth Lord from Goblinoid Games. Its compatibility with Labyrinth Lord is close but not perfect. The B/X Companion cleaves very closely to the original rules, so certain tables in LL, such as combat or saving throw matrices, to cite but two, don't match up with those in this book. It's not a huge issue, but it is worth noting. Likewise, the B/X Companion doesn't appear to have been written under the OGL, which is odd, given how much material it uses from D&D. I honestly don't know on what basis it was released at all, since every retro-clone I've seen to date, including some that stray quite far from the source material, make use of the OGL as a legal bulwark, if nothing else.

Purely as an artifact, the B/X Companion is an amazing piece of work. Though its beautiful cover art is by Brian DeClercq rather than Erol Otus, it nevertheless manages to capture the look and feel of the B/X ruleset. The same is true of the interior artwork by Michael Cote, Kelvin Green, David Larkins, and Amos Orion Sterns, all of whom have produced some excellent pieces here. I was particularly taken with Green's work, whose homage to a piece from the LBBs is very nicely done (and it reminds me that I really must procure his services in the future). The layout and presentation of the book is a very good match for its illustrious predecessors, as is the voice in which it is written. The B/X Companion can therefore be called a nearly pitch-perfect evocation of that 1981 D&D rules.

Of course, what really matters most of all are the rules and it's here that the book shines. Though I could enumerate literally dozens of areas where I disagreed with Becker's choices or would have done something differently, the fact remains that the overall approach of the B/X Companion is one with which I heartily agree. The whole book is only 64 pages in length and adopts the same lean elegance as Moldvay/Cook/Marsh. Spell and monster descriptions, for example, are rarely more than a couple of paragraphs in length, with each paragraph being only a sentence or two. Magic items are even more spare in their presentation. Despite that, Becker packs a lot of punch into his descriptions and the new material he presents should serve as excellent spurs to the imagination of referees and players alike.

What's particularly interesting to me, though, is that the B/X Companion contains a lot of genuinely new material. Yes, there are the requisite nods to OD&D's Supplements and to AD&D staples, but what I immediately noticed was how many new spells, monsters, and magic items were included in this product, thereby increasing its utility even to players of other versions of D&D. Likewise, the simple but effective mass combat and domain management rules ought to be easily portable into other rulesets. Truth be told, there's a lot here that could be transported elsewhere with only a minimum of work and, believe me, I am sorely considering doing so.

Taken as a whole, the B/X Companion is nothing less than an alternate take on what high-level play means in Dungeons & Dragons, a take that eschews the absurdities of both Mentzer's quest for immortality and WotC's vision "epic level" campaigns. In its place is a lower key but nonetheless heroic style that has a much more "human" scale, if that makes any sense, one that is a plausible outgrowth of the world implicit in the B/X rules. About the only place where I think Becker strays from this vision is his cop-out regarding demihuman characters, who, while they can no longer gain levels, can still accrue experience and thus improve their combat and saving throw chances. It was an approach I didn't much care for in Mentzer and find even less agreeable in the context of Moldvay/Cook/Marsh, but it's easily ignored.

All in all, the B/X Companion is a triumph, both as a physical product and as a work of the imagination. It's probably one of the best things to come out of the old school renaissance this year and I can't wait to snag my own copy to sit proudly on my shelf alongside my dog-eared copies of the B and X rulebooks.

Presentation: 8 out of 10
Creativity: 10 out of 10
Utility: 7 out of 10

Get This If: You're a fan of the B/X rulebooks or are looking for an alternate approach to play above 14th level.
Don't Get This If: You don't have any interest in the B/X rules or prefer high-level characters to be more over the top in their power and ambitions.

Cool Labyrinth Lord Poster

Over at his blog, Labyrinth Lord creator Dan Proctor is showing off an awesome poster drawn by neo-old school artist Mark Allen.

It's a thing of beauty in my opinion. Now, that's Orcus -- with nary a WWE championship belt in sight.

Retrospective: Starships & Spacemen

Growing up as a kid, it was hard to escape the gravitational pull of Star Wars. Released in 1977, at the end of my second grade year, I, like pretty much every other male from 6-60, was a huge fan of George Lucas's space fantasy. But, when it came to adventures in space, Star Wars was neither my first nor my true love. That distinction goes to Star Trek, to which I'd been introduced a year or two earlier by my favorite aunt, who shared some of my nascent geekish interests, and who was unmarried at the time and still lived with my grandparents whom I visited nearly every week. Together, we watched reruns of The Original Series on Saturday afternoons on an independent DC channel and I was forever bonded to Gene Roddenberry's creation. Over the years, my fondness for Star Trek has waxed and waned considerably and, in recent years, the latter has won out. I'm frankly tired of the franchise and would much prefer to see it go off gently into that good night, but I doubt that Paramount will ever allow that to happen. I expect Star Trek -- or something claiming to be it, at any rate -- to outlive me.

When I got into RPGs, it didn't take me long to start imagining a Star Trek roleplaying game. To my mind, Star Trek was ready-made to be converted into a terrific RPG. I remember attempting to use Traveller as the basis for a Star Trek RPG, but this met with limited success, as there were simply too many points of divergence between them. I tried a couple of other approaches as well, but none really worked as well as I'd hoped. Then, just three years after I'd entered the hobby, FASA released an official Star Trek RPG, and my prayers would be answered. I finally had my long-desired Star Trek roleplaying game and I ceased my search.

Before FASA released their game, I never managed to come across an already-existing attempt to produce a Star Trek RPG -- FGU's Starships & Spacemen. I suspect I never noticed S&S, because I never saw it back then; it would be years before I ever came across a copy and, by then, I was already too devoted to FASA's game to care about alternatives. Plus, unlike FASA's RPG, Starships & Spacemen wasn't "official." It was simply a pastiche and, as a younger person, I didn't see much value in a "knock-off" when the genuine article was available to me.

Even if I had come across S&S, I doubt I'd have been much impressed by it. First released in 1978, the game consisted of a single 86-page book of exceedingly amateurish appearance. Its text is presented in a single typewritten column. Art is sparse and strangely generic, being mostly vague "space-y" images rather than anything more specific. And significant portion of the game consists of random tables for generating star systems, random encounters, alien beings, artifacts, and so on. There are no lengthy discussions of creating "episodes," using cinematic jargon. Neither are there discussions of "themes" or other such philosophical matters.

Instead, S&S is a very simple, straightforward game that gives the reader stuff -- the germs of ideas from which to create his own science fiction campaign based very loosely on the structure of The Original Series. It's a lot like OD&D in this respect, which is either a virtue or a vice depending on one's point of view. The game presents us with a thin setting, in which the Galactic Confederacy consisting of the Terrans and the "ultralogical" Taurans (and several other races) face off against the warlike Zangids, bent on the conquest of known space. Adventures are assumed to consist of the exploration of new worlds, where any number of threats and obstacles present problems for officers of the Confederacy's Spacefleet, from hostile aliens to weird diseases to temporal paradoxes and more. What's really amazing of S&S is how compactly it presents all these options. Certainly, there's little in the way of detail in the game; everything is presented very briefly that's because it's simply assumed the referee (or Starmaster) will do most of the heavy lifting in this regard.

Compared to later SF RPGs, or even earlier ones, like Traveller, Starships & Spacemen is certainly what one might charitably called "quaint." Its rules are simple, even simplistic, in places and there are lots of ambiguities throughout. My comparison to OD&D isn't an idle one. Despite this, I find something really compelling about S&S, although I'm not certain I'm in a hurry to play the game (which is now available, in print and PDF form through Goblinoid Games). There's an enthusiasm that comes through in this little game, a sense of creative abandon that's often lacking even in my own true SF RPG love, Traveller. Reading through S&S, it's difficult not to find one's brain percolating with ideas for space opera adventures. They may not "serious." Indeed, they may be somewhat silly, but they're also likely to be fun. Nowadays, I place a higher premium on that than I did as a know-it-all kid, which is why I'm more favorably inclined toward Starships & Spacemen than others might be.

Goblinoid Games Re-Releases Starships & Spacemen

As aficionados of Star Trek roleplaying games would tell you, Leonard H. Kanterman's Starships & Spacemen, originally released by FGU, was an early attempt to produce an RPG based on Gene Roddenberry's future. Not literally, of course, as S&S used its own setting, but the influence of the 1960s TV show was obvious, from the logical Taurans -- and their evil twins the war-like Videni -- to the conquest-minded Zangids.

Today, Dan Proctor, creator of Labyrinth Lord, announced that Goblinoid Games had purchased Starships & Spacemen and would be making a PDF version of the original rules available for $4.95. This will be followed, in the near future, by a revised second edition of S&S that's compatible with Labyrinth Lord and Mutant Future, as well as supplements and adventure modules usable with either the revised or original rules system.

From my perspective, this is pretty amazing news. S&S is one of the oldest SF RPGs and one that I remember hearing about but never had the chance to see when I first entered the hobby. As a big fan of SF RPGs, Star Trek, and Goblinoid Games, this is terrific news and I can't wait to see what the future has in store.

Things of Beauty

They really are gorgeous, aren't they? I haven't ordered anything through Lulu in a very long time, because of the shipping costs, but I happily sprung for these and would do so again. Absolutely beautiful. Dan and Steve should be very proud.

REVIEW: Advanced Edition Companion

When I describe my earliest gaming days, I typically claim that I played Advanced Dungeons & Dragons almost exclusively. After all, the books and modules my friends and I were using had the AD&D logo on their covers and we loved the depth provided by the reams of races, character classes, monsters, spells, and magic items. Yet, if I were to be honest about it, we weren't playing AD&D at all, at least not according to the full rules of the game. We ignored weapon proficiencies, segment-based combat rounds, grappling/pummeling/overbearing, helmet rules, and a host of other distinctive elements of AD&D. In truth, our games were closer to Holmes or Moldvay, with lots of AD&D-derived options tacked on. In speaking with many other players of my vintage, this seems to have been a common experience.

That's where Dan Proctor's Advanced Edition Companion enters the picture. Like its predecessor, Original Edition Characters, AEC is a supplement to Goblinoid Games's Labyrinth Lord, offering up optional rules to emulate many of the distinctive elements of AD&D, but mated to the elegant LL rules. Using AEC would thus be very close to recreating the way my friends and I played "AD&D" back in the day, something Proctor himself notes in his foreword: "the goal in writing the Advanced Edition Companion (AEC) was to create an expansion of Labyrinth Lord that is a natural evolution (with compatibility) of advanced first edition but keeping the slick original game engine. I think you'll agree that I've succeeded. If you play using AEC you will be playing advanced first edition rules as most people played them"

And succeed he has. AEC covers a wide range of topics within its 160 pages, presenting straightforward adaptation of AD&D distinctives for use with Labyrinth Lord. So, you get expanded races and classes, along with spells, monsters, and magic items -- nearly everything you'd find in AD&D -- without most of the "fiddly bits" that most of us didn't use anyway. It's all here, from gnomes to assassins to creeping doom and the demon prince Orcus. There are even plenty of inspiring tables (such as random tavern patrons and random sounds), as well as discussions of planar cosmology, potion mixing, and more. Reading through AEC, it was very hard not to want to pick it all up and drop it into my Dwimmermount campaign right away. Much as I've enjoyed the "purity" of a more OD&D-inspired campaign, there will always be a part of me that longs for the baroque diversity of Gygaxian AD&D and the Advanced Edition Companion reminded me of this fact more than any other game book I've read in recent years.

What's most remarkable about this product is not its contents but that the entire thing is open game content. That means anyone can use it to create their own advanced-flavored products and I hope many people do so. Heck, I'm tempted to do so myself. Goblinoid Games has helpfully provided the complete text of the supplement (without artwork) for free here, making it easy for anyone to create compatible and/or derivative products of their own. I hate to gush about this, as it undermines what little objectivity I might have on this subject, but I find it difficult to do otherwise. AEC is a great gift to the old school community, particularly publishers. That, in its outlines, it's rather similar to my own idea for a "D&D 0.75" probably says a lot about my own love of it.

The retail version of the Advanced Edition Companion is nicely presented, looking very much like other recent Labyrinth Lord products. The text is clear and readable and I didn't notice any significant typographical errors or editorial issues. The text is highlighted by many black and white illustrations by Steve Zieser, Sean Aaberg, and Jeremy Pea. Most of the artwork is superb, beginning with Zieser's stunning cover, although Aaberg's illustrations of demons and devils are also noteworthy for having won me over after initially disliking them. What I most like about AEC's artwork is that it's all distinctive, harkening back to the illustrations of the Golden Age without explicitly imitating them. AEC, like Labyrinth Lord generally, manages to pay homage to the past without feeling the need to ape it -- a fine approach in my biased opinion.

Advanced Edition Companion is available in three retail formats: paperback ($22.95), hardcover ($32.95), and PDF ($5.95). This is one of those rare products I'll probably grab in hardcover at some point, in spite of my distaste for Lulu.com. AEC is simply that good and I'd like to have it in a format that'll hold up to all the use to which I'm likely to put it, both in play and in writing. I imagine I won't be alone in this feeling.

Presentation: 7 out of 10
Creativity: 9 out of 10
Utility: 9 out of 10

Get This If: You want to add the depth and flavor of AD&D to your games without all the additional complexity.
Don't Get This If: You have no interest in the peculiar Gygaxian flavor of AD&D.

Review: Stonehell Dungeon

For some time now, the old school community has been obsessed with the twin pillars of early gaming: sandboxes and megadungeons. So great has our obsession been that it's attracted the attention of gamers outside our little echo chamber. It's not uncommon to see discussions of both cornerstones of the Old Ways in parts of the online world philosophically and stylistically far removed from our own. That's a testament, I think, not just to our enthusiasm but also to the power of these concepts. Even 35 years after OD&D burst onto the scene, both sandboxes and megadungeons remain viable, enjoyable ways to experience fantasy roleplaying.

Last month, I wrote a post entitled "Schrödinger's Dungeon," in which I argued that a published megadungeon was an impossibility, or at least very difficult to do in a way that adequately captures this uniquely old school adventure locale. As if in response, Michael Curtis of The Society of Torch, Rope, and Pole, and one of the founders of Three-Headed Monster Games, has released Stonehell Dungeon: Down Night-Haunted Halls. Written for use with Labyrinth Lord, Stonehell is a 134-page product, available as a softcover book for $13.00 and a PDF for $6.50. A six-page preview, which presents one-quarter of one level is available here, as is a free seven-page supplement, The Brigand Caves.

Before proceeding with a more in-depth review, let me cut to the chase and say that Stonehell is very good. Michael sent me a copy of it two weeks ago and I read it with great pleasure. I had been a fan of his megadungeon back when he posted bits of it on his blog; I even incorporated portions of it into Dwimmermount. Seeing it all collected in one place, polished and expanded, made me very happy and Stonehell deserves to be well-received in the old school community. That said, it's not perfect and, much as I like it, it hasn't changed my mind about the inherent difficulty in publishing a megadungeon. Stonehell probably comes closest to meeting my challenge but it still falls short, not for lack of imagination -- Michael clearly has that in abundance -- but because the demands of presentation have in my opinion constrained its design.

Stonehell consists of five dungeon levels, which we are told is but a portion of the huge underground complex. A later product will include yet more levels. As it is, these five levels consist of more than 700 individual rooms, more than enough to keep players busy for a long time. Each level is conveniently divided into quarters, each quarter using the One-Page Dungeon format originated by David "Sham" Bowman. That convenience is a double-edged sword, because, while it does make these dungeons much easier to use in play, it also tends to make each level feel less organic. Within each quadrant, the maps are often quite cleverly done, with many different possible paths of exploration -- a key feature of old school dungeons. However, the bridges between the various quadrants are typically quite limited, often with just a single connection between them. Likewise, there are very few sub-areas that straddle more than one quadrant, which gives an unfortunately self-contained feel to each of section that undermines any sense of level cohesion.

At the same time, the One-Page Dungeon format has the advantage of keeping each room description short and sweet -- a sentence or three at most. I found myself reminded more of the spare presentation of Castle Blackmoor in The First Fantasy Campaign than the expansive one of Castle Zagyg and that's a plus in my opinion. Such a spartan presentation pretty demands that a referee has to add his own ideas to the mix, if only to provide flavor and context. Again, this is a good thing and goes a long way toward ensuring Stonehell doesn't feel too "canned," which is to say, a pre-programmed adventure lacking room for the creative sparks that differentiate a megadungeon from a mere one-off dungeon lair. Indeed, Michael Curtis helpfully points out in his introduction many areas where the referee can inject his own ideas into Stonehell, another way in which this product differs from nearly every previous attempt at putting a megadungeon into print.

It's difficult to do full justice to Stonehell, because of just how much is included within its covers. In addition to the levels themselves, there are dozens of new monsters, spells, and magic items. There are also tables for rumors and wandering monsters, dungeon background information, advice on customizing the whole thing, and adventure seeds. In combination, it's a pretty impressive piece of work, made all the more impressive by how compact it is. There's quite simply a lot of ideas here and I'd wager that, even if one doesn't use Stonehell whole, there's a profusion of material that's easily adaptable to other circumstances. As I noted earlier, I have already swiped stuff from Stonehell for my Dwimmermount megadungeon and I suspect I will do so again now that I have more material from which to choose.

In the end, Stonehell Dungeon: Down Night-Haunted Halls is probably the best megadungeon published to date in any form, certainly the best to come out of the old school renaissance (although Stefan Poag's The Mines of Khunmar certainly bears serious consideration, if only for its maps). It's chock full of good ideas and, if nothing else, should provide a good model and inspiration for those looking to create their own megadungeon. I certainly hope that's the case anyway, because, while Stonehell is remarkably open-ended and flexible, it is nevertheless a very particular kind of megadungeon rather than an example of what all megadungeon are or ought to be.

Michael Curtis makes no such claims, of course, but part of the reason why I believe the megadungeon resists easy publication is its idiosyncratic nature. Megadungeons, much like the term "old school" itself, defy easy definition and attempts to jam them into a single mold (or group of molds) do them a grave disservice. There's no one-size-fits-all formula for producing or presenting a megadungeon and Stonehell is but one example of how a referee might do it. It's a rather good one, admittedly, but it still has its weaknesses, chiefly the rather artificial structure of its maps, which are much too rational and compartmentalized for my taste. I prefer megadungeons to be a lot more wild and woolly, with lots of sub-levels, side levels, chutes, and elevators rather than a neat stack of levels descending infinitely into the depths.

If I could sum up this product's weaknesses in one word, it'd be "caged" -- as if there's a wild, raging animal of creativity shackled by too strict an adherence a schematized format. What I'd like to see in follow-ups to Stonehell is a breaking of those shackles, if not wholly casting aside the artificiality of the One-Page Dungeon, at least a loosening up of its structure so that not all levels are made of the same number of pieces and stack neatly one top of one another. Michael Curtis demonstrates repeatedly in this product that he has a superb imagination; I'd love to see what he's capable of when he's freed from any constraints. Whether he can do that will, I think, say a lot about whether a megadungeon truly does defy easy publication.

Presentation: 7 out of 10
Creativity: 8 out of 10
Utility: 7 out of 10

Buy This If: You're looking for a ready-to-run megadungeon or ideas to swipe for your own megadungeon.
Don't Buy This If: You'd rather design your own megadungeon.

Dan Proctor Interview

There's an interview with Dan Proctor, creator of Labyrinth Lord, over at RPG Blog II. There aren't any surprises in it, but there is some explanations and insights that might be useful for anyone who's curious about LL and its future. I was glad to see it.

New Goblinoid Games Site

Goblinoid Games has a spiffy new website. I'm glad to see this, since lots of people have been asking me about Labyrinth Lord lately -- must be something in the air -- and it's good to be able to point to an honest-to-goodness website for more information.

From the looks of it, some terrific things are in the offing from Goblinoid. In addition to all their excellent products, there's now a "Labyrinth Lord Society" in the works, as well as a OGC library of LL-related content. I also noticed, with some pleasure, that Goblinoid is now taking submissions and paying for them -- a very good sign.

All in all, looks good things are happening for the publisher of Labyrinth Lord and Mutant Future.

Some LL Revised Comments

Lest I am accused of simply being a PR machine for old school publishers, I wanted to say a couple of things about the announcement of a revised edition of Labyrinth Lord. Firstly, and most importantly, I think it's terrific that a retro-clone will be available in distribution again. LL had been available in stores in the past, but fell victim to the financial collapse of its distributor. A revised edition is a good time to jump back into the fray, I think, and I'm very happy to see that Dan Proctor has done just that.

I'm also happy that it'll be the inexpensive paperback version that'll make its way to store shelves rather than the hardback version. I say that because, much as I love hardcover books -- I'll almost certainly be snagging a hardcover version of the revised edition when it's convenient -- I think the old school renaissance best shows off its virtues in the form of inexpensive paperbacks. The hobby is already filled with enough expensive hardcovers as it is. More to the point, the types of old school games that are currently the focus of the revival don't need hardcovers, given their length and scope. To me, softcovers telegraph the idea of books that are meant to be used in play and play is another important focus of the revival. These games aren't reference works or art objects; they're rules for play.

Now, allow me to be gloomy and say that I do not believe that having Labyrinth Lord (or any other retro-clone) in distribution is going to set the world on fire and give birth to a new Golden Age. As Jeff Rients powerfully pointed out years ago, that ship left the port long ago. Old school gaming will, at best, enjoy another (much smaller) faddishness for a time and then most everyone will go back to doing what they were doing before. I happen to think that's OK, actually, because I'm not here for the money and fame (as if there were any). All this said, I think there are enough gamers out there who'd be interested in retro-clones like Labyrinth Lord that their being able to pick up a copy in the local game store is a boon for all concerned. Remember, too, that Lulu's shipping costs are prohibitive for people in many parts of the world, so a distribution deal will help some of them.

Second, LL Revised will be perhaps the first "professional" retro-clone released to date. Not only will it be available through "regular" channels, but all its art was contracted and paid for by Goblinoid Games. For some, that's probably not a big deal and, for some others, it may have even be a negative, given the emphasis the old school renaissance has placed on community sharing and collaboration. For me, I think, once a product starts making money, it's important that all involved are fairly compensated for their contributions. Most old school products these days don't make enough money for that to be an issue, I suspect, so I take this as a sign that Labyrinth Lord is entering "the big leagues," said big leagues being entirely relative and probably a figment of my over-active imagination.

All in all, I see this latest news to be a huge positive for the old school renaissance and I hope that other retro-clones will follow in its footsteps.

Labyrinth Lord: Revised Edition

Coming in September 2009!

Labyrinth Lord: Revised Edition is a new printing of the classic Labyrinth Lord rules, which fixes known errata. In addition, a new cover and all new interior art has been added courtesy of the very talented Steve Zieser! This edition of Labyrinth Lord will be appearing in game stores in November, but will be available for online sales in September via Lulu and from Goblinoid Games direct to retailers. The paperback version ($21.95) will be in distribution, and a hard cover ($31.95) will be available exclusively online.

Like the previous edition, a free complementary electronic book will be made available in addition to a rich text file. The free electronic book will be without art, but a heavily discounted full art version will be available for $4.95 at Your Games Now and RPGnow. We’re taking this approach because Goblinoid Games is the first publisher of a neo-retro game to buy all of the interior and cover art, and to continue hiring freelancers we have to charge for the updated and improved edition.

The free complementary edition will have the same pagination as the art version and print version, making it a useful free tool so all players can get the rules, with the same pagination to ease reference, free for online and at-the-table play.

The electronic version will go on sale concurrently with the POD version at Lulu.