Imagine Magazine: Issue #22

 Issue #22 of Imagine (January 1985) fittingly features a cover by Rodney Matthews entitled "Earl Aubec." I say fittingly, as this issue's "theme" is Michael Moorcock and his works.  That alone made me sit up and take notice, since I have long had a love/hate relationship with Moorcock as a writer and creator. I'm always interested in hearing what he has to say, even if I frequently disagree with it. Seeing the blazon on the cover announcing several Moorcock-related features immediately increased my enthusiasm to read the magazine's contents. 

"The Vampire Revamped" by Derrick Norton is the issue's first article. It's an extensive examination of the undead monster, with an eye toward expanding its powers and abilities for use with AD&D. I have no objection to this and in fact think it's a good idea. The vampires of Dungeons & Dragons have always been a bit bland in my opinion (hence my own variant of them) and Norton does a good job of presenting multiple alternatives, even if some of them are bit more potent than I'd prefer myself.

"Gibbet Street" is the latest installment in the series describing the City League of Pellinore. As its name suggests, Gibbet Street gets its name from the gallows that stands there – a reminder to the inhabitants of this shady part of the city that criminal behavior can have dire consequences. Also nearby is Beggars Alley. As usual, there are plenty of quirky NPCs detailed, along with examples of the city's guilds. Also presented is information on capturing and selling monsters for use as opponents in the arena (described in last issue). As I have said several times before, I find Pellinore quite charming in its content and terrific in its presentation. It's a good model, I think, for building up a fantasy setting from the ground up and has undoubtedly influenced my posts on Urheim.

Michael Moorcock's "The Last Enchantment" is a Elric short story originally published in 1978. It concerns the Melnibonéan's journey into a realm of Chaos and his efforts to escape it. The story, which I had read before, is not an action packed one. Rather, it's somewhat philosophical and gives Moorcock the chance to muse about the nature of Chaos. Not one of Moorcock's great tales but it's worth a read nonetheless. Much more interesting, I think, is his interview in which he touches upon a very wide range of topics, from Deities & Demigods to Mervyn Peake to why the Eternal Champion always has a companion at his side. If you've read interviews with Moorcock before, none of it is particularly revelatory (or new), but I enjoyed reading it nonetheless. Another article, "The Theatre of Michael Moorcock" by David Hill, is an overview of the three main Eternal Champions series (Elric, Hawkmoon, and Corum), presented as if it were notes from an imaginary stage production.

"Earl Aubec and the Iron Galleon" is an adventure for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons written by Michael Brunton based on an outline by Moorcock. It's an unusual adventure in that it's intended for a single player, who takes the role of Aubec, Earl of Malador. Aubec is a great hero of the Young Kingdoms from before the time of Elric, as well as a previous incarnation of the Eternal Champion. A second character, Jhary-a-Conel, is provided in the event that a second player is included. It's an intriguing scenario, involving a sea voyage that results in a fogbound collision with the titular Iron Galleon. The adventure also includes rules for luck points that remind me of those in Conan Unchained!

Graeme Davis and Colin Greenland take a long look at gamebooks in "Solo Voyages." They cover a lot of ground in this piece, from Fighting Fantasy to Lone Wolf to Tunnels & Trolls and The Fantasy Trip. I find the concept of solo fantasy gaming fascinating, even though I have fairly limited experience with it myself, so this article held my attention. There are plenty of reviews this month, such as Lords of Creation, Middle Earth Roleplaying, and Star Trek the Roleplaying Game, in addition to supplements for Marvel Super Heroes, Indiana Jones, and Traveller. I enjoy reading old reviews, both for the perspective on how things were viewed in the past and for how things are viewed in different contexts. Overall, I'd say Imagine tends to be a bit harsher in its reviews than was Dragon, though, in the case of this issue, that wasn't quite so clear.

Brian Creese's "Chainmail" continues to discuss postal gaming, something with which I have no experience and still find it hard to imagine was once sufficiently popular to command a monthly column devoted to it. Colin Greenland's "Fantasy Media" reviews The Last Starfighter, which he praises for its computer effects, and The Dune Encyclopedia, one of my favorite bits of para-fiction ever published. I should write a post about it someday, because it's a remarkable piece of work that too few people have ever seen, let alone read. Rounding out the issue is Roger Musson's "Stirge Corner," which tackles languages – a topic dear to my heart – and new installments of "Rubic of Moggedon" and "Phalanx."

This is another strong issue, aided no doubt by the presence of all the Michael Moorcock-related material. I've lamented many times before the decoupling of roleplaying games and the literature that inspired them. Seeing the work of a genuine literary superstar like Moorcock in a magazine devoted to RPGs is thus a big thrill for me, as well as a reminder of the lost world I grew up in, when being a D&D player meant that of course you had read Elric (and Conan and John Carter and Middle-earth and …), a situation that seems far less true today than it was in my youth. Ah well.

Horses of Different Colors

I've been re-reading A Princess of Mars lately and it's occasioned quite a few thoughts, starting with the fact that Barsoom is a wholly alien world. With the possible exception of Martians of all colors but green, there are no native life forms identical with those of John Carter's Earth (or Jasoom, as the Martians would say). Instead, Burroughs created an entire menagerie of unique Martian animals, some of which played significant roles in his stories. 

A good example are the thoats, which are used as steeds, beasts of burden, and even food. Possessing eight legs and a large mouth, thoats have been domesticated by both Red and Green Martians.

I can't be certain that this is the first example of a substitute for horses in fiction, but, if not, it's certainly a very early one indeed and one that likely had an influence on later writers. Jack Vance, for example, included leap-horses in the Tschai stories and the oasts in The Dying Earth. Straying farther afield, J.R.R. Tolkien described the goblins of The Hobbit as using massive wolves as mounts, while Moorcock introduces his readers to the Kamarg Flamingos in his chronicles of Dorian Hawkmoon (which always made me think of the flying ostrich-like mounts from 1982's Joust video game). Of course, the flamingos are flying rather than land mounts and fantasy isn't exactly lacking in examples of those, with dragons regularly being employed in that fashion.

Given these precedents, it's interesting that, by and large, Dungeons & Dragons has made comparatively little use of horse substitutes. The Dark Sun setting, which owes a lot to Barsoom in its general look, has no horses, only a variety of giant insects and reptiles. There's also the memorable Dave Sutherland piece from the Holmes Basic Rules depicting a lizard man riding a giant lizard. Outside of D&D, the Five Great Tribes of Prax in RuneQuest's Glorantha use unusual (but still terrestrial) riding animals, while Skyrealms of Jorune has sightless thombos and flying talmarons. 

Of course, this isn't really about horses, or at least only about horses. Rather, it's about the downside of Gygaxian Naturalism – the reining in of the imagination. D&D, at least D&D descended from AD&D (which, I would argue, is most D&D, including the current edition of the game), puts a limit on the fantastic. Certainly, Dungeons & Dragons has magic and monsters and even other planes of existence, among many other wondrous elements, but these are additions to the real world rather than replacements for them. The World of Greyhawk or even the Forgotten Realms, two D&D settings of which I am very fond, are not so different from a past age of Earth that they're unrecognizable. Unlike, say, Barsoom (or Tékumel), there's little need to immerse oneself in the setting in order understand it.

There's nothing wrong with this approach, of course, but it's a limited – and limiting – one that doesn't take full advantage of the freedom that fantasy affords us.

Retrospective: Hawkmoon

I've never made a secret of my love for post-apocalyptic RPGs. Maybe it's a product of growing up during the Cold War or maybe it has to do with my melancholy, pessimistic attitudes generally, I don't know. Whatever it is, I find something incredibly powerful and evocative about The End of the World as We Know It.

I've also never made a secret of my love-hate relationship with Michael Moorcock, a conflict that has only become more acute as I've gotten older and read more of his non-fiction works. Consequently, though I find much to enjoy in his stories of Elric of Melniboné, there's always this nagging feeling at the back of my brain that prevents me from enjoying them unreservedly.

For whatever reason, though, I don't have this problem with Moorcock's Hawkmoon books. I'm not entirely sure why this is, but I suspect a good part of it is that they're -- at least nominally -- post-apocalyptic tales, taking place in the "Tragic Millennium" of 54th century Earth. Chaosium's 1986 game, Hawkmoon, provides rules for roleplaying in this setting. The game is written by someone called Kerie Campbell-Robson ("also by Sandy Petersen"), a writer who's otherwise unknown to me, though she (I am assuming the author is a woman) also contributed to The Shattered Isle, the one and only supplement to Hawkmoon, published in 1987.

Hawkmoon is a peculiar product. Though playable as a stand-alone RPG, it nevertheless feels more like a supplement to the excellent Stormbringer. Throughout the text, there are numerous references to using the Tragic Millennium as an alternate setting for Stormbringer, including guidelines for converting characters between the two games. Likewise, there's a fair bit of artwork recycled from Stormbringer and its supplements, which only contributes to the sense that Hawkmoon isn't really its own game but rather an adjunct to its "big brother." If I were to guess, I suspect that Hawkmoon was a labor of love by its author, submitted to Chaosium unsolicited, who were impressed enough with it that, after some minimal polishing by also-author Sandy Petersen, released the game to see how it might do. Judging from its lack of support and relative obscurity, I'm guessing that it never did very well.

And that's too bad. Make no mistake: Hawkmoon is decidedly inferior to Stormbringer in almost every way. The rules are sketchy in many places -- mutations and mass combat come immediately to mind -- and there's more space than necessary spent on recounting the events of the Hawkmoon novels. Yet, there's still something very compelling about this game and I regularly find myself opening up its box and paging through its booklets. The Tragic Millennium is a unique creation: a medieval/early modern society built amidst the ruins of a high-tech world that cleverly blurs the lines between fantasy and science fiction. Moorcock doesn't provide a lot of information on the world in his stories and the RPG doesn't add much more -- just enough to intrigue and inspire, as all good RPG settings ought to do.

Now, I've never actually played Hawkmoon. I only acquired a copy of it comparatively recently and I won't deny that, while I regularly skim its pages, I've not felt a strong urge to play it, as I do with, say, Stormbringer or RuneQuest. I wish I could put my finger on just why that is. Ironically, it might be because I like the Hawkmoon stories that I find it harder to work up interest in the RPG than I do with Stormbringer, since my feelings about the Elric tales are decidedly more mixed. Or it might be that, as I said above, Hawkmoon feels like a "half-game," neither a mere supplement to its predecessor nor a complete RPG in its own right. I really wish I understood my ambivalence toward it. I want to want to play it, if you get my meaning, but something prevents my doing so and it baffles me.

Classic Moorcock RPGs Available Again

It's only available in PDF form, admittedly, but it's better than nothing. Mongoose Publishing, the current license holder for RPGs based on Michael Moorcock's "Eternal Champion" novels, has apparently made an arrangement with Chaosium, the previous license holder, to sell electronic versions of the older rules and supplements.

From the looks of it, all the good stuff is here, including Stormbringer and Hawkmoon, two positively awesome old school games. This makes me very happy indeed, as these are games that aren't as well known or lauded as they ought to be. If I didn't already own the stuff I wanted in hardcopy form, I'd likely be plunking down some money to pick up some of these products. I recommend others do the same.

Kudos to Mongoose and Chaosium for making this stuff available again. Here's hoping more publishers follow suit.

My Latest Haul

I may not have gotten much done last week, but, fortunately, the postal service was still on the ball. Late last week, I received several packages containing several old school gaming products I'd been hoping to obtain.

Thank you to everyone who helped me to get these items. You should all be receiving the things I sent you in exchange sometime soon. Thanks for your patience while I was snowed under with real life distractions.

The Dramatic Effect

I don't think there'd be much agreement on precisely when things changed in the history of the hobby, let alone whether those changes were good ones. But I do think that few would deny that things changed. I was reminded of this recently, because I was reading through the one and only supplement ever made for Chaosium's Hawkmoon RPG, which I now own thanks to Andreas Davour. 1987's The Shattered Isle is a collection of scenarios taking place in Eire and includes some rules additions as well. In a section devoted to "Non-Player Character Tactical Combat," there's a sub-section called "The Dramatic Effect." Here's what it says:

Whom do you really want to win this fight? Yes, a gamemaster is supposed to be neutral, but you know how you want the adventure to go, so make it work out. Simply describe the other fights in glowing terms, with much hewing off of heads and sundered limbs, while running the player-character battles normally.

Thus, if the player-characters are losing when you want them to win, simply describe how their allies are defeating their foes with ease, then turning to assist the adventurers.

Similarly, if you want to drive off the adventurers and they are doing well in their own fights, describe the steady attrition of the allies until they find themselves fighting multiple foes, by which time the intelligent adventurers should try to get out of the mess they're in by voting with their feet.

Take note of the sentence I've bolded above. I highly doubt that this is the first time that this sort of sentiment appeared in a RPG product. Indeed, I suspect that some enterprising person could probably cite an example of a similar sentence in a product from the first five years of the hobby. Likewise, I think it's pretty clear that advice presented in The Shattered Isle is not intended to be a manifesto of a new way of roleplaying. It's just reassurance for the referee to trust his instincts in ensuring that things "work out" as they should.

But make no mistake: this does represent a shift in the conception of RPGs and the role of the referee in RPGs and not one for which I have much liking these days. I think it lends more credence to the notion that the mid- to late 1980s are when certain changes in the hobby became not only widespread -- they were probably popular long before this point -- but when gaming companies began not only to acknowledge but to encourage them.

Pulp Fantasy Library: The Jewel in the Skull

I have a love-hate relationship with Michael Moorcock. I'm frequently attracted to his ideas but only occasionally to his writing, which I find is often sloppy and loose. Likewise, his characters are in equal parts despicable and pathetic, making it hard for me to form the attachments necessary to make my way through his stories. The primary exception to this is Dorian Hawkmoon, who makes his appearance in the 1967 novel, The Jewel in the Skull, the first part of the four-part "History of the Runestaff" series. I not only like Hawkmoon as a character, I also find the series in which he appears a fair bit more coherent than, say, the adventures of Elric. Gary Gygax noted the influence of the Hawkmoon novels over D&D, although, intriguingly, he added "esp. the first three books." When I have more time, it might be worth trying to figure out why he said this.

The Jewel in the Skull takes place in "the Tragic Millennium," a post-apocalyptic future in which super-science and magic exist side by side and the world is threatened by the Dark Empire of Granbretan. This places it within a sub-set of swords-and-sorcery novels epitomized by works like The Dying Earth, where the future of our world is portrayed as a fantasy setting. Its protagonist is the aforementioned Dorian Hawkmoon, Duke of Köln, who, while leading a rebellion against the Dark Empire, is captured and offered a chance to escape death: aid Granbretan by acting as its agent in the Kamarg. Hawkmoon accepts this offer, along with a magical black jewel that's placed inside his head, which prevents him from betraying his evil masters. Fortunately for Hawkmoon, the Kamarg's ruler, Count Brass, finds a means to nullify the black jewel temporarily, setting into motion a plan by which he and Hawkmoon can foil Granbretan's nefarious schemes.

Like most Moorcock novels, The Jewel in the Skull is full of great ideas, breezily delivered. Most of the flaws evident in his other novels are here too, but I found myself quite able to overlook them, because I enjoyed the world and inhabitants Moorcock described. The Tragic Millennium is one of those settings that, while far from ground-breaking, neveretheless achieves a certain power because of the way it appropriates familiar places and names to play with -- and against -- our expectations of them. The result is a world that's at once recognizable and alien, which, to my mind, is exactly the right approach when dealing with swords-and-sorcery tales. Hawkmoon himself is a fairly attractive figure, neither reprehensible nor overwrought, which makes him stand out in a genre that contains too many examples of each for my liking. All in all, this is a fun book that kicks off a fun series. Even if you normally don't like Moorcock, I recommend giving it a try.