The Articles of Dragon: "The Cthulhu Mythos Revisited" and "A Rebuttal to 'The Cthulhu Mythos Revisited'"

Having already broken the original intent of this series by highlighting Dragon magazine articles I never read during their initial publication simply because of their Lovecraftian content, I'm going to do so again, this time by discussing two articles in a single post. In this case, I think it can be more than justified for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the "articles" in question are actually letters to the editor and, therefore, comparatively short. Secondly, the two letters are in dialog with one another, as well as with the "From the Sorcerer's Scroll" column I discussed last week. Discussing both of them here thus makes a great deal of sense.

The first letter by self-proclaimed "High Priest of the Great Old Ones," Gerald Guinn, appears in issue #14 (July 1978). It's mostly a nitpicky – and inaccurate – criticism of the Kuntz and Holmes presentation of the Mythos in D&D terms. I say "inaccurate," because Mr Guinn, despite being "an avid fan of Lovecraft," seems to have imbibed more than a little of the Derlethian Kool-Aid when it comes to his understanding of HPL's creation (and I say this as someone who unironically appreciates Derleth's contributions). His complaints, by and large, boil down to deviating from Derleth's interpretations of Lovecraft.

For example, Guinn repeats the un-Lovecraftian idea that the Elder Gods "defeated" the Great Old Ones, as well as making dubious genealogical ("Cthulhu, first spawn of Yog-Sothoth") and elemental connections ("Hastur ... is the KING OF AIR !!!!!!!") that have no basis in HPL's own texts. In some cases, I'm not even certain I can pin these errors on Derleth, who, for all his faults, never seemed to have suggested that Nyarlathotep was a Great Old One or an offspring of Azathoth. Neither did Derleth make Ubbo-Sathla "the center of the universe." 

This is all very "inside baseball" stuff, but I find it very interesting. If nothing else, it's a reminder of just how obsessive nerds can be about getting the "facts" of fictional settings correct – and how much effort they'll put into demonstrating their superior knowledge of those facts. It's also a reminder of the extent to which not just Derleth but other post-Lovecraftian authors proved influential in fans' understanding of the Mythos. Much like Robert E. Howard's Conan, whose popular conception was largely colored by the pastiches of L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, Lovecraft was similarly misunderstood well into the 1970s. Most of Guinn's objections stem, in my opinion, from such misunderstandings, including his taking issue with the D&D stats of Hastur, Cthugha, and so on.

Rather than dwell on how many hit points a shoggoth should have, I want to turn to the second letter, which appeared in issue #16 (July 1978). Written by J. Eric Holmes, it's intended as an answer to Gerlad Guinn's critique of the original article. Holmes starts, amusing enough, by stating that "When one gets into religious controversy the first thing one discovers is that the scriptures themselves are self-contradictory and subject to varying interpretations." It's a funny line, but also an apt one, as dissecting just what Lovecraft meant or intended is a kind of exegesis. I've often felt that, as the practice of traditional religion has declined, many people have turned to pop culture as a replacement. 

Whether my thesis is true or not, Holmes quickly gets to the heart of the issue: the "From the Sorcerer's Scroll" column he and Rob Kuntz wrote "draws most heavily from Lovecraft's own works" rather than those of HPL's friends and imitators. This is a perfectly valid rebuttal and no more need be said on the matter. Even leaving aside the errors Guinn makes in his original critiques, which Holmes addresses individually, the larger point still stands, namely, that Kuntz and Holmes wrote their descriptions with Lovecraft in mind and no one else. To continue Holmes's earlier religious analogy, he prefers a textualist reading of the Mythos over any other.

One can, of course, agree or disagree with this approach, but I think it's a defensible one. In general, my own preferences when it comes to this specific question is fairly close to that of Holmes. At the same time, I think it's equally defensible to include a wider range of source material in conceiving of the Mythos. How wide a range is an equally important question. From its first edition, Call of Cthulhu, for example, has included a fairly broad range of sources – just look at the creatures in its bestiary – and that rarely raises any comment from gamers. On the other hand, I don't begrudge anyone who draws the line at one place or another, so long as he can articulate why and to what purpose.

These kinds of debates are fascinating to me. Lovecraft himself hoped his ideas and concepts, his monsters and alien gods would be picked up and used by other writers, each of whom would add his own wrinkles to the growing tapestry of what we now call the Mythos. He did not care that this would introduce contradictions and confusion, because that's the nature of a real mythology. The only thing I suspect he'd have objected to is the claim that there was one and only one "true" version that everyone else must accept. He wasn't founding a dogmatic religion but creating a smorgasbord of elements from which his fellow authors could pick and choose as they wished. In that respect, I think he'd probably be delighted at how broadly disseminated his ideas have since become, even if he might not like some of the specific uses to which they've been put.

The Articles of Dragon: "The Lovecraftian Mythos in Dungeons & Dragons"

In honor of The Shadow over August, I thought I'd do something a little different with my weekly "The Articles of Dragon" series. Instead of continuing to highlight articles that I remember or that made a strong impression on me – good or bad – from my youth, I'm instead going to spend this month focusing on Dragon articles that touch upon H.P. Lovecraft, his Cthulhu Mythos, or related topics. Interestingly, nearly all these articles come from before I was even involved in the hobby, let alone reading Dragon regularly. While I can't say for certain why that might be, I have a theory that I'll discuss later in this post.

The "From the Sorcerer's Scroll" column is nowadays associated with Gary Gygax, but its first three appearances (starting with issue #11 in December 1977) were penned by Rob Kuntz. Furthermore, the second of these initial columns, entitled "The Lovecraftian Mythos in Dungeons & Dragons," is, in fact, largely the work of J. Eric Holmes with additions by Kuntz. In his brief introduction to the article, Kuntz explains that the material is intended to be "compatible with Dungeons & Dragons Supplement IV 'Gods, Demigods & Heroes'." It's also meant to satisfy both "Lovecraft enthusiasts" and those "not familiar with the Cthulhu cycle."

From the beginning, it's immediately clear that, despite its title, much of what follows in the article is not authentically Lovecraftian but owes more to August Derleth's idiosyncratic interpretation of HPL's work. For example:

The Great Old Ones of the Cthulhu Mythos are completely evil and often times chaotic. They were banished or sealed away by the Elder Gods.  

Now is not the time to relitigate the case of Lovecraft v. Derleth, which is a much more complex and nuanced discussion than many people, myself included, have often made it out to be. However, I bring this up simply to provide context for what follows. In February 1978, when issue #12 of Dragon appeared, Lovecraft scholarship was, much like that of Robert E. Howard, still in very much in its infancy, with the popular conceptions of both writers and their literary output still very much in the thrall of pasticheurs like Derleth, L. Sprague de Camp, Lin Carter, etc. With that in mind, we can look at the article itself.

Holmes describes "only Lovecraft's major gods," namely, Azathoth, Cthulhu, Hastur, Nyarlathotep, Shub-Niggurath, Cthugha, Ithaqua, Yig, and Yog-Sothoth. These selections clearly show the influence of Derleth, who was very keen on Hastur, Ithaqua, and Cthugha, the last two of which were his own inventions. Each god is given an armor class, move, and hit points, along with magic, fighter, and psionic ability. I find these statistics really fascinating, as they're somewhat unimpressive by the standards of later editions of D&D, but were considered exceptionally powerful by the standards of OD&D, for which they were written. Cthulhu, for example, has only AC 2 and 200hp and fights like a 15th-level fighter.

Also described in the article are Byakhee, Deep Ones, the Great Race, the Old Ones, Mi-Go, and Shaggoths [sic]. They're described in the same way as the gods, using the same game statsistics. What I found interesting here is that Holmes suggests the Byakhee are more potent opponents than the Shoggoths, something my post-Call of Cthulhu brain wouldn't have concluded. From the vantage point of the present, that's what makes this article so fascinating: it's an artifact from a time before Chaosium's RPG was published and helped to popularize not just Lovecraft's creations but a particular interpretation of them. This article is an alternate presentation of those creations and, even if I disagree with parts of it, I appreciate its uniqueness.

Obviously, this article was published before 1980's Deities & Demigods, whose early printings included a different presentation of the Cthulhu Mythos. As a kid, my copy of the book was one of the later printings that didn't include this chapter (or that of Moorcock's Melnibonéan Mythos) and indeed I didn't even notice its absence until I was in college. My roommate had a copy of one of the early printings and I was flabbergasted when I saw its extra chapters. The saga of the inclusion and removal of the Cthulhu and Melnibonéan material from the DDG is well known, I think, so I won't repeat it here. However, I wonder if it left a sufficiently bad taste in TSR's mouth that Dragon would thereafter include almost no Lovecraft-related material in its pages for years after the event.

A Tale of Two(?) Dungeons

In the comments to last week's post about The Official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Coloring Album, an anonymous poster theorizes that "the map used here is identical to the one in the Holmes basic set intro adventure" to which commenter Frank replies that it's "not identical, but very close." In the interest of discussion, here's what the Holmes Basic Set map looks like:

Meanwhile, the map from the Coloring Album looks like this:

If you look carefully at the two images, you'll see that Frank is indeed correct: the dungeons are very similar to one another but not quite identical. Even so, many of the most iconic features of the Holmes dungeon are still present in the Coloring Album version, like the sea caves at the bottom left and the rat warrens at the middle top. Zach Howard, over the excellent blog Zenopus Archives, has a useful post in which he looks at some of the similarities and differences between the two versions.

I'm fairly confident that the map appearing in the 1977 D&D Basic Set was created by Holmes himself, though I'm 100% certain of this fact. If so, that makes its reappearance in the Coloring Album, albeit in modified form, all the more fascinating to me. Why was it chosen? Was it because its compactness made it especially suitable for the pared down "D&D Lite" of the Coloring Album? Why not make an entirely new dungeon map? I suspect the answer is probably fairly mundane, but I can't help but wonder.

Fight On! Returns

Fight On! fanzine is one of the foundational products of the Old School Renaissance, first appearing in the Spring of 2008. Over the course of the next five years, indefatigable editor Ignatius Ümlaut put together fourteen issues filled with contributions from every corner of the OSR and beyond. I am now happy to announce that, after more than a decade of quiescence, issue #15 of Fight On! has finally arrived, the first of many new issues, I hope. 

Issue #15 is dedicated to the memory of J. Eric Holmes, editor of my beloved 1977 D&D Basic Set. Its contents consist of the following:

Ten Ways to Holmesify your Game (Zach Howard)

Special Ability Charts (Attronarch) 

The Orthogonal Dwarf (Olle Skogren) 

Gremlins! (Calithena) 

Maze Master’s Miscellany (Alex Schroder & Cal) 

The Catacombs under Old Samora (Philipp H.) 

Knights & Knaves: Holmes Town Heroes (Tony A. Rowe) 

Bringing It All Back Holmes (Clark/Grodog/Cal) 

Maps from the Maze of Peril (J. Eric Holmes) 

Distributary of Darkness (Alex Zisch) 

The Silken See (Motley Dice) 

Grognard’s Grimoire (Richard Rittenhouse) 

The Wizard’s Satchel (J. Blasso-Gieseke) 

Artifacts, Adjuncts, and Oddments (Rittenhouse) 

Victory or Death! (Gabor Lux) 

Megadungeon Workshop Extravaganza! (Kesher) 

Calvero! (István Boldog-Bernád) 

Creepies & Crawlies (James Maliszewski) 

Tables for Fables (Al, Greco, Wetzel, and Rients) 

The Darkness Beneath (Alex Schroder & Lior Wehrli) 

Henchmen-Я-Us: Pole Arm Caddies! (Calithena) 

Chainmail: Battle for Bronzolo (Settembrini) 

Doxy, Urgent Care Cleric (Linneman & Green) 

Education of a Magic User (Douglas Cox) 

Wham! (Tom Gordon) 

I'm incredibly happy to see Fight On! return. I contributed to the inaugural issue, along with several others that followed. I cannot exaggerate the importance the fanzine played in fostering and disseminating original old school RPG material to a wider audience. I hope its return is not a temporary one and we can look forward to many more issues in the years to come. I know I'll do my best to help support and promote it.

Print copies are available here, while PDFs can be found here.

A (Very) Partial Pictorial History of Gnolls

There's no use in fighting it. You'll be seeing more entries in what has inadvertently become a series for a few more weeks at least, perhaps longer. After last week's post on bugbears, which are a uniquely D&D monstrous humanoid, I knew I'd have to turn to gnolls this week, as they, too, are unique to the game. Perhaps I should clarify that a little. There is no precedent, mythological or literary, for the spelling "gnoll." However, the spelling "gnole" appears in "How Nuth Would Have Practised His Art Upon the Gnoles" from Lord Dunsany's 1912 short story collection, The Book of Wonder (as well as in Margaret St. Clair's "The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles"). 

There can be no doubt that Dunsany's story served as the seeds for the gnolls of D&D. In their description in Book 1 of OD&D, gnolls are described as "a cross between Gnomes and Trolls (. . . perhaps, Lord Sunsany [sic] did not really make it all that clear." The original short story contains no description of the titular creature, leaving Gygax to advance his theory of gnolls being a weird hybrid monster. Artist Greg Bell interprets them thusly:

Sometime in the three years between their first appearance in OD&D (1974) and the publication of the Monster Manual (1977), someone at TSR decided that gnolls were, in fact, "low intelligence beings like hyena-men." That's how they're described in J. Eric Holmes's Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set, which is where I first encountered them, courtesy of this delightful illustration by Tom Wham:

Meanwhile, the Monster Manual itself, published the same year, gives us this illustration by Dave Sutherland.

The Monster Manual also includes another Sutherland gnoll-related piece, this time of Yeenoghu, the demon lord of gnolls. To my eyes, Yeenoghu looks a lot more hyena-like than does the illustration above, but, even so, they're still broadly similar.

Speaking of Yeenoghu, he reappears in the pages of Deities & Demigods, this time depicted by Dave LaForce. I've always found this version of the demon lord a bit goofy. I'm not sure if it's his grin or the strangeness of the arm that holds his infamous triple flail. 

The AD&D Monster Cards sets are a good source of unusual takes on many monsters and that's especially so in the case of gnolls. Artist Harry Quinn depicts them in a way that, to my eyes, looks decidedly feline. To anyone familiar with the weird phylogenetics of hyenas, that's inappropriate, but it still feels off somehow. Perhaps it's simply the weight of all the previous depictions that makes me think so. In any case, Quinn's version of the gnoll is quite distinctive.

The 2e Monstrous Compendium features what is probably the most hyena-like of all versions of the gnoll, courtesy of James Holloway.

Tony DiTerlizzi provides an even more hyena-like version of the gnoll in the Monstrous Manual, right down the spots on its fur. 

I feel like I have probably overlooked some illustrations of gnolls from the TSR era of D&D, but, if so, they must be fairly obscure, as these are the only ones I could easily find in my collection. What's most notable about the ones I did find is how closely they hew to the post-OD&D notion that gnolls are hyena-men. I'd chalk up most of the differences to artist skill and choice rather than a fundamental disagreement about this fact. In this respect, they're quite similar to bugbears, another distinctly D&D monster whose look stayed largely the same during TSR's stewardship of Dungeons & Dragons.

A (Very) Partial Pictorial History of Kobolds

One of the things I've long appreciated about early Dungeons & Dragons is the way that it took vaguely defined folkloric, mythological, and literary monsters and made them distinctive to the game. The pig-faced orcs of the Monster Manual are a good example of what I'm talking about, though there are many others, like kobolds. In folklore, kobolds don't have a clear and universally accepted description. From what I recall, they're short and vaguely dwarfish. That's probably why Holmes, in his Basic Set, calls them "evil dwarf-like beings" (and why I opted for something similar in my Dwimmermount and Urheim setting).

Within the history of D&D, however, the image immediately below is (I think) the very first time we're shown a kobold. It's from the AD&D Monster Manual (1977) and is drawn by Dave Sutherland, based on an exceptionally vague description that speaks only of their coloration, small horns, lack of hair, and red eyes. 

The MM also includes a second Sutherland kobold illustration, this one a full-page piece.

I like this second illustration a lot, because it gives a sense of how, despite having only 1–4 hit points each, kobolds could nevertheless be dangerous foes, because of their numbers. The illustration is also useful in showing the little monsters from several different angles. I suspect, more than any other, this piece is responsible for my early conception of kobolds and their physical characteristics – short, scaly dog-men with horns. Precisely why Sutherland settled on this appearance, I have no idea, since there's nothing in either folklore or the Monster Manual's own description to suggest it.

That same year (1977), Minifigs in the UK picked up the license to produce official Dungeons & Dragons miniatures. Though the company didn't produce as many figures as did Grenadier later (more on that below), it produced enough that they're often worth examining for insight into the beginnings of D&D as a product line. Take, for example, this figure of a kobold, which looks rather similar to the creatures depicted in Sutherland's illustrations, particularly the second, full-page one, right down to the harness he's wearing.

1980's Rogues Gallery features a very memorable depiction of kobolds by Jeff Dee. As you can see, Dee's kobolds look very similar to Sutherland's – almost identical, in fact. In this rendering, they're still short, scaly dog-men.

Deities & Demigods was published the same year as the Rogues Gallery, but offers up a somewhat different depiction of kobolds. The entry for Kurtulmak, the supreme deity of the kobolds, is accompanied by an illustration drawn by Erol Otus. He's described as looking like a "giant kobold (5½' tall) with scales of steel and a tail with a poisonous stinger). This suggests that what we see below is, more or less, what a kobold looks like. Though there's a very broad similarity with the Sutherland/Dee illustrations, we can see that his face has been flattened into more humanoid proportions, thereby lessening its canine associations.

Just below the Otus illustration in the DDG is another one featuring Kurtulmak, this time by Dave LaForce. As you can see, the four kobolds depicted in it look like smaller versions of their god, albeit without horns or scales. To me, LaForce's kobolds look almost simian in apperance. 

Interestingly, 1980 is also the year that Grenadier Models first started producing official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons miniatures under license from TSR. If you look carefully at this photo, what you see are three kobold miniatures whose appearance is not too dissimilar to what we see in the art of Otus and LaForce above. Pay close attention to their flat, humanoid faces and lack of horns.

The next year (1981), Otus provides a different illustration for a kobold, this time appearing in Tom Moldvay's D&D Basic Set. This illustration accompanies an entry that describes kobolds as "small, evil dog-like men ... [that] have scaly rust-brown skin and no hair."

This version has neither horns nor a tail, but its canine head is unmistakable. I find it notable that the module Keep on the Borderlands, included with the '81 Basic Set, has a rumor table that makes mention not just of "hordes of tiny dog-men" (i.e. kobolds), but also "big dog-men" or gnolls, suggesting a connection between these two monsters that I don't believe I've ever seen developed in the entire history of D&D. 

Above, we can see Jim Roslof's illustration of a kobold from 1982's AD&D Monster Cards. This illustration looks to me to be a further development of the Otus/LaForce version of kobolds – flat faces, no horns, no visible tail. In fact, they look rather like the goblins depicted in that same product, which makes for an interesting call-back to OD&D (and Chainmail before it), which seems to treat kobolds as if they were simply a species of goblin, or at least a closely related type of monster.

The first appearance of kobolds in AD&D Second Edition is in the Monstrous Compendium (1989), with this illustration by Jim Holloway:

Holloway's kobold is a kind of two-steps-forward-one-step-back version – broadly consonant with Otus/LaForce/Roslof one but regaining the horns of Sutherland/Dee. Though there's no visible tail, the description in the Monstrous Compendium suggests that they do indeed possess "non-prehensile rat-like tails." It also notes that they "sound like small dogs yapping" and smell like "a cross between damp dogs and stagnant water." This perhaps suggests that the writer (David Cook, Steve Winter, or Jon Pickens) was attempting to restore a bit of the canine connection of early 1e while retaining the overall look established by its later artists.

Lastly, there's this illustration from the 2e Monstrous Manual (1993), provided by Tony DiTerlizzi, who's probably best known for his distinctive contributions to the Planescape setting. This version restores the elongated, muzzle-like face of early AD&D, though, to my eyes, it looks more rat-like than canine. The accompanying description is the same as in the earlier Monstrous Compendium, so it's not as if any of DiTerlizzi's alterations were required by a revised text.

Despite my recent musings about Third Edition, the post-TSR editions of Dungeons & Dragons are beyond the scope of this blog, so I won't be discussing the subsequent development of kobolds. That's probably just as well, since I'm not a fan of their metamorphosis into small lizard/dragon-men. Nevertheless, looking over the pictorial history of this low-level monster has opened my eyes to just how ill-defined the kobold actually is. My own preferred version is heavily indebted to that of the first version I ever saw and I suspect that's probably true of most other D&D players. 

Do you have a default vision of kobolds? If so, what does it look like?

What is Roleplaying? (Part II)

During the Grognardia drinking game, I suspect my readers have thrown back a few whenever the 1977 Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set edited by J. Eric Holmes is mentioned. Because it was my introduction to the hobby, I still have a special affection for it over all the other D&D products I've bought over the years. Looking back on it now, one of the more notable things about its rulebook is that it doesn't include an explicit section in which Holmes explains the nature of a roleplaying game. In fact, the word "roleplaying" (or "role playing") only appears in its text three times, one of them being on the title page. 

To some extent, this is understandable, since the Holmes rulebook hews very closely to the text of the original 1974 little brown books, where the word "roleplaying" does not (I think) appear at all. Aside from the aforementioned title page, the two other places where the word appears are the preface (by an unknown author) and the introduction (presumably by Holmes). Here's the relevant section of the preface:

That's pretty simple and straightforward. It also makes sense, given that, even in 1977, when this rulebook was first published, the concept of a roleplaying game was still a very new one, especially outside those already involved in the hobby. For a basic rulebook, one might well expect it to "introduc[e] the reader to the concepts of fantasy role playing." The introduction, meanwhile, simply calls Dungeons & Dragons as "a fantastic, exciting and imaginative game of role playing" before launching into an extended description of its play:

It's not a bad description, but it's all a bit abstract in my opinion, particularly if you have no prior knowledge of what the actual play of the game might look like. I know that my friends and I were initially quite baffled by the nature of roleplaying, taking it to be closer to a strange new type of boardgame. Remember that we came to Dungeons & Dragons through Dungeon!, so I hope we can be forgiven our misapprehension. Furthermore, the title page of the Basic rulebook contains the following subtitle, which recalls the subtitle of the Little Brown Books: "Rules for Fantastic Medieval Role Playing Adventure Game Campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures."

The section of the Holmes rulebook entitled "Dungeon Mastering as a Fine Art" does include an example of play that features a dialog between the referee and the party's caller. This goes some way toward elucidating the practical details of roleplaying, but it's still not very explicit about the subject. The AD&D Players Handbook is even less helpful in this regard, lacking even an example of play (though a very lengthy one does appear in the Dungeon Masters Guide). The 1981 version of Basic D&D, written by Tom Moldvay, contains what is probably the most famous example of play in the history of D&D, but its treatment of roleplaying as an activity is still quite vague in my opinion and, in any case, we started playing before that version of the game was published.

When my friends and I eventually came to understand what roleplaying was, it was no thanks to any rulebook we had read. Instead, our knowledge was imparted to us by a friend's older brother, who'd been playing D&D for a couple of years beforehand. Once we finally got it, it was very easy to look back at Holmes and see what he was attempting to explain, however unclearly. I suspect our experience was not unique. Unlike, say, the 1983 Frank Mentzer-penned version of the Basic Rulebook, which does an excellent job, in my opinion, of explaining the nature of a roleplaying game, I find it almost impossible to imagine anyone picking up Holmes and then being able to start playing without any confusion or need for clarification from someone who already knew how to roleplay. I say this as someone with great affection for the Holmes Basic Set.

Nowadays, I think it's much more common for RPGs to include explicit "what is roleplaying?" sections and examples of play. Even so, I can't help but wonder whether they're any more useful to people than were the sections with which my friends and I had to contend in our youth. Of course, the concept of roleplaying is now much more widely understood, with many popular computer and video games making use of the concept. This fact might make such sections almost superfluous in the 21st century. Nevertheless, I find myself wondering about it as I continue to work on Secrets of sha-Arthan. Is there still a need for a lengthy description of roleplaying in a contemporary RPG or is the need for it a thing of the past? This is something I've wondered about before, but enough time has passed since then that I'd curious to hear what readers have to think about the topic in 2024.

Memories of Death

For reasons I'll explain in another post, I've been spending a lot of time looking at the examples of play provided in earlier roleplaying games. While not all games from the early days of the hobby include such examples, a great many of them do, starting with original Dungeons & Dragons in 1974. It's easy to understand why this was the case: RPGs were a genuinely new concept and most people in the 1970s, absent being introduced to them through others, would have required some sort of guidance on how to play them. As a kid, I didn't pay close attention to examples of play, because I learned how to play D&D from a friend's older brother, who'd already been gaming for some time before we first cracked open the copy of my beloved Holmes Basic rulebook.

While OD&D includes an example of play occurs in Volume 3, The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures, I didn't see it until many years after I'd already started playing RPGs. The first one I ever encountered was found in the aforementioned Holmes rulebook and made a big impression upon me, forming my sense of how a session of playing D&D is supposed to go. Unfortunately, the example glosses over how combat is supposed to work (something it has in common with its OD&D predecessor, I'd later learn). However, Holmes does include two examples of combat earlier in the rulebook, which I also remember quite vividly, if only for the names of the characters involved in them – Bruno the Battler, Mogo the Mighty, Malchor (a magic-user), and the Priestess Clarissa. It's strange that, more than four decades later, I can still recall all four of these names, but, as I've said many times, the Holmes rulebook made a profound impression upon me. 

The first combat example Holmes offer is short and details Bruno the Battler facing off against a goblin. Bruno comes out on top, though not before losing half his hit points. In the second example, Bruno is not so lucky and dies "a horrible death" to the venomous bite of a large spider. This, too, left a profound impression upon me and my friends, because it shows quite clearly how easy it is for D&D characters to die in combat, especially at low levels of experience. 

The next example of play I probably encountered was the lengthy one found pages 97–100 of the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide. As a young person, this was probably my favorite example of play, both for its level of detail and its shocking conclusion – "You see a sickly gray arm strike the gnome as he's working on the spike, the gnome utters a muffled cry, and then a shadowy form drags him out of sight ... You hear some nasty rending noises and gobbling sounds ..." Elsewhere, it's noted that the poor gnome was surprised by ghouls, who paralyzed and then quickly devoured him. Yikes!

The example of play in the 1981 Tom Moldvay-edited D&D Basic Rules is probably the most famous of this entire "genre." Though not as extensive as the example of the DMG, it's still quite longer, taking up slightly more than an entire page. What makes this example so well-known is the death of the thief, Black Dougal (who also seems to have died on another occasion, as reported in the Dungeon Masters Adventure Log). "Black Dougal hasps 'Poison!' and falls to the floor. He looks dead." "I'm grabbing his pack to carry treasure in." Fredrik the dwarf is one cold dude.

What unites all these examples of play is, of course, death, specifically the death of player characters, which probably explains why they all had such a powerful effect on me when I first entered the hobby. My first experience of fantasy gaming was through the Dungeon! boardgame. You couldn't die in Dungeon! If your piece was defeated in combat, you lost treasure and had to retreat, but you didn't choose a new piece with which to play. But D&D was completely different in this regard. The fact that death was nothing unusual but simply a normal consequence of play was weirdly exciting to me. It implied there were actual stakes and that merely surviving a dungeon exploration was a true achievement. 

As a referee, I wouldn't say that I'm a soft touch, but, in general, I don't take it as my job to kill player characters, unlike my friend's older brother, who was often quite gleeful about doing so. At the same time, I don't shy away from killing off even longstanding PCs if the dice simply don't go their way. To me, death – even meaningless death due to a failed saving throw – always has to be an option or less why bother rolling dice at all? Why have rules? Why not simply engage in collaborative storytelling instead of playing a roleplaying game? I'm sure not everyone playing RPGs agrees with this stance, but it's deeply ingained in me, instilled long ago by reading the examples of play I found in my earliest copies of Dungeons & Dragons.

Nativity

The funny thing about my involvement with Dungeons & Dragons is that it was actually mother who first brought a copy of the game – the Holmes Basic Set – into our house. She bought it for my father sometime in August or September 1979, because he'd been talking about D&D a lot.  Dad had always been an avid reader and he'd been reading stories about the game in newspapers and magazines. Though I didn't know it at the time, his interest in the game had been sparked by the disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III in August of that year. As my mother explained it to me, she had bought a copy of the boxed set, thinking that Dad would find it interesting. She was mistaken in this, because my father never even opened it. The set, still in its shrink wrap, was then placed in the upstairs linen closet, because that's where lots of items that had no obvious place to put them in our house were frequently stored.

And that's where it remained until the Christmas holidays, when my friend Mike received a copy of a boardgame called Dungeon! Back in those days, it was tradition among my friends to spend our Christmas vacation making the rounds at each other's houses, showing off the presents we'd received and pronouncing judgment over which of all the gifts we deemed the best. That year, without question, the winner was

Dungeon! We played it many, many times and we all agreed that Mike was the victor in that year's "competition." What clinched it for us were the monster cards, which included all sorts of bizarre creatures we'd never heard of before, such as a "black pudding." We found the whole thing faintly ridiculous, honestly, but that very ridiculousness also kept us playing and, like some kind of narcotic, we wanted more.

That's when I remembered the D&D Basic Set in the linen closet, which I then took out and unwrapped. I gleefully took the rulebook over to Mike's house to show it off and we then attempted to figure out how to play the damned thing. I'm not ashamed to say that we failed utterly in our attempts – not that that stopped us from "playing" Dungeons & Dragons anyway. Our early "adventures" were weird things. We used Dungeon! to "clarify" details we didn't understand in the rulebook and, because my boxed set was one of those that didn't include polyhedral dice, we played using only six-sided dice. I even have a dim recollection of using the board game's playing surface – it wasn't really a board – to run an adventure or two.

Eventually, Mike's older brother, who was a surly teen metal head saw us with the Holmes rule book and listened to our feeble attempts to play the game. He'd never taken much interest in us before, except perhaps to terrorize us with his loud music or to punch Mike when he "got out of line." When he saw us with the D&D book, though, he took some measure of pity on us and tried to help us, in his own

condescending way, to play the game "properly." Of course, Mike's brother didn't play D&D by the book himself; he used lots of house rules and variants and so we adopted them as Gospel truths until we knew better. It was nevertheless a strange turning point for us, because never before had Mike's brother ever treated us so nicely. He still beat up Mike, of course, but a bond, however tenuous, was forged through our mutual love of D&D.

I bought the Monster Manual sometime in early 1980, using money I'd received from my grandmother at Christmas. I ordered the book through the Sears catalog and was absolutely captivated – and occasionally frightened – by its contents. I vividly recall the illustration of the Night Hag being particularly unnerving to me. Over the next six months, my friends and I acquired other AD&D books and modules, which we used in conjunction with Holmes – and then Moldvay when it came out the following year – so we probably never played a "pure" version of the game, not that anyone cared. We were having the times of our young lives, creating characters with abandon and inflicting all sorts of monstrous tricks and traps on one another. By popular acclaim, I quickly became

the Dungeon Master. With the rare exceptions of when Mike's brother or father would run us through a dungeon, no one else really took to the role as I did and it's a role I've pretty much had most of my gaming career. I'm not a terrible player, mind you, but my gifts, such as they are, naturally incline me toward refereeing and so it has remained for the better part of the last four decades or so.

Every year, as Christmas rolls around once again, I find myself recalling these events from my childhood. Even today, they're among my fondest memories, because they, quite literally, changed my life forever. There is no way I could have known, in December 1979, that the "weird new game" that my friends and I discovered almost by accident would become the foundation on which I'd build not just a lifelong hobby but also many more friendships. To this day, some of my oldest and dearest friends are those whom I know only because we share a love of roleplaying games. That's why, even though I didn't, strictly speaking, get the D&D Basic Set for Christmas that year, I nevertheless consider it among the best gifts I've ever received.

In Defense of Evil Characters

Having last week come to the defense of the murderhobo, I thought I'd go one step further this week by doing something similar for outright evil characters. That's because, for as long as I've played Dungeons & Dragons, I've never considered the possibility of playing such characters illegitimate. None of the editions of the game I encountered in the first few years after I entered the hobby – in order: Holmes Basic, AD&D, or Moldvay Basic – forbids characters from being evil (though the matter is a little complicated in the latter case, since there is no explicitly "evil" alignment). Indeed, all three versions of the game are quite clear that a player character can be of any alignment, including evil ones. 

Likewise, Holmes states that at least one class – thieves – are "not truly good," while AD&D goes further, claiming that "most thieves tend toward evil." Assassins engage in an activity that Gary Gygax memorably described as "the antithesis of weal," hence their outright restriction to evil alignment. Monks have a very limited range of alignments, but Lawful Evil is among them. Bards are almost as restricted in their alignment options, yet they too can be evil. Only druids, paladins, and rangers are forbidden from being evil by the rules, suggesting that the possibility of a player choosing to play an evil cleric or fighter is in no way beyond the pale. 

Of course, it's one thing to see the possibility of evil characters as legitimate and another to see it as desirable. In the early days, I tended to transfer Moldvay's perspective about Chaotic characters to evil ones more broadly: they don't play well with others. For the most part, my friends shared this perspective. I cannot recall anyone of my neighborhood buddies wanting to play an evil character, let alone actually doing so. Like me, they'd come to D&D as relatively innocent boys who looked to the heroes of mythology and literature for inspiration in generating our earliest characters.  Few, if any, of these characters were evil either in thought or deed and our own characters reflected this.

However, as I mentioned in my post about murderhobos, a number of the protagonists of the pulp fantasy stories that served as the inspiration of Gary Gygax in his personal conception of the game were, at best, morally ambiguous and, in a few cases, evil by the standards of D&D's alignment system. That this is the case is made unmistakable in, for example, the write-up of Elric in Deities & Demigods, which judges him Chaotic Evil in alignment. One can certainly argue the fine details of that or similar judgments, but there's no denying that there's a strong tradition of pulp fantasy characters whose exploits include a lot of morally dubious actions.

Beyond that, one need only take a look at the play of the earliest Dungeons & Dragons campaigns. Blackmoor, the birthplace of D&D, featured at least one significant evil player character – Sir Fang, a fighter-turned-vampire whose depredations proved so frightful to the other characters in that campaign that the cleric class was created to stand against him. Meanwhile, one of the most successful characters in Gygax's Greyhawk campaign was Robilar, played by Rob Kuntz. Robilar was not unique in this regard. A quick look at The Rogues Gallery reveals a number of evil-aligned player characters among TSR's writers and designers. If you look at the pregenerated characters for use with modules like Expedition to the Barrier Peaks and Dwellers of the Forbidden City, you'll find several also have evil alignments.

The weight of all this evidence was still insufficient to turn me into a defender of evil characters, except in the narrowest sense. Yes, the rules allow for evil characters, but that didn't mean I had to like it. What ultimately changed my mind was when, many years after I first played D&D, I participated in several sessions that featured an evil character. He was a Neutral Evil psionicist/thief – this was in the days of 2e – and he made himself very useful to his companions by both his skills and his knowledge. I never completely trusted him, but there was no denying that he filled a niche in the party and that his presence helped us succeed when we might otherwise have not. It helped, too, that he was well roleplayed as a charming, if not at all trustworthy, rascal. 

Ultimately, that's what convinced me that an evil character could be fun: good roleplaying. Here was a completely disreputable character, a liar and a cheat, whose actions were always self-interested – but he was played so well and so enjoyably that I almost forgot he was evil. Eventually, the character had the opportunity to betray his comrades to his benefit and he took it. The betrayal left us in a bit of a bind and, while my character was certainly angry, I was not. The character acted as he ought to have, given his alignment. If anyone is to be blamed, it's the rest of us for taking on such a character, knowing as we did that he was evil. But, as I said, he was charming, so fun, that we let our guard down and paid the price for it.

That may seem an odd defense of evil characters. From my perspective, though, it's the strongest one I can offer: sometimes it's fun. Roleplaying games are a form of escapism, something I consider very important, especially nowadays. Having a creative outlet for our baser instincts is, in my opinion, just as vital as having one where we can behave heroically. Sometimes we want to be Galahad and sometimes we want to be Cugel the Clever. I don't see either one as inherently better than the other. While my preference remains for less morally compromised characters, I can easily see the fun in evil characters. Arguably, many of the characters in my House of Worms campaign would be considered evil in D&D terms, so it's not as if the playstyle is completely outside my taste. I've also long harbored a desire to a referee a D&D campaign in which all the characters are members of a Thieves' Guild. In such a campaign, I suspect the vast majority of the characters would be evil, or at least non-good.

I'd love to know of your experiences playing or playing with evil characters. Is it enjoyable? Is it something you'd recommend? What are the advantages and drawbacks of this kind of game? It's a topic that I think deserves greater examination.

The Giant Kingdom

One of the more underappreciated aspects of the 1977 Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set is the degree to which its rulebook, prepared by J. Eric Holmes, is a very faithful editing and restatement of the original 1974 OD&D rules. Consider, for example, that both the Holmes rulebook and Volume 1 of OD&D begin with the same foreword, penned by Gary Gygax just a little over half a century ago (November 1, 1973). Here's the version found in OD&D:

Here's the version found in Holmes:

Aside from differences in typography, the two paragraphs are the same, right down to the idiosyncratic use of quotation marks and capitalization of titles. At least, that's what I had long thought, until Stephen Wendell, longtime player in my ongoing House of Worms Empire of the Petal Throne campaign, pointed something out on his own blog. 

In the Holmes version of the foreword, the second time the phrase "Great Kingdom" should appear, it's been replaced with the phrase "Giant Kingdom." This is clearly a transcription error, resulting no doubt from the process of re-typing the original foreword for use in the new rulebook, rather than a deliberate change. I've read that foreword in its Holmes version countless times over the decades, but it wasn't until Stephen mentioned it to me before our last EPT session that I ever took notice of it. I suppose my brain simply saw what was intended – "Great Kingdom" – rather than what's actually present in the text. The workings of the human mind can be very strange!

Though small in import, this revelation nevertheless got me wondering about how often we think we've read the words of a text when, in fact, we've unconsciously substituted our own. I suspect this happens a great deal in reading roleplaying game rules, especially when we come to the rules confident that they already know them. I'd further theorize that this is most common when it comes to Dungeons & Dragons, a game whose rules everyone thinks they "know" based on years of playing it and yet whose actual rules are often neither read nor understood correctly. 

Goodness knows I've been guilty of that many times and probably continue to do so. I'd be interested to know if readers can recall any notable examples of this in their own reading of RPGs. What sections of the rules have you misread for years, only realizing the truth later? 

A Surfeit of Centipedes

Almost fourteen years ago, I was complaining about the unusually large number of spiders I'd been encountering in and around my home. This year, it's centipedes, specifically house centipedes, which is immediately recognizable by their very long legs. As a species, house centipedes usually emerge from their various hiding places in the springtime, when temperatures start to rise. In my neck of the woods, the spring has been unusually cool and wet. This may explain why I've been running into these little beasts inside the house rather than just outside it.

After watching a centipede scurry into the darkness, its many legs rapidly undulating, I was reminded that giant centipedes are a longstanding monster in Dungeons & Dragons. They're mentioned by name in Volume 2 of OD&D under the header "insects or small animals," but they're not given a distinct entry. The Holmes Basic Set rectifies this. Its entry notes that "these nasty creatures are found nearly everywhere" and that "they are aggressive and rush forth to bite their prey, injecting poison into the wound." The centipedes I've been encountering are anything but aggressive; they flee at the slightest provocation, especially illumination. Like their larger D&D equivalents, house centipedes do possess a poisonous sting, roughly equivalent to a bee's sting in toxicity, hence Holmes's note that "this poison is weak and not fatal (add +4 to saving throw die roll)."

The AD&D Monster Manual describes giant centipedes in nearly identical terms to Holmes, presumably because they were in production alongside one another. Moldvay, meanwhile, ups the ante on the creature's poison: "Their bite does no damage, but the victim must save vs. Poison or become violently ill for 10 days. Characters who do not save move at ½ speed and will not be able to perform any other physical action." Ignoring its entomological error – centipedes don't bite; they sting – Moldvay's description makes giant centipedes a bit more of a genuine threat, akin to the other verminous monsters of D&D. 

I find it fascinating that AD&D 2e continues to boost the danger of giant centipedes, which it calls "loathsome, crawling arthropods that arouse almost universal disgust from all intelligent creatures (even other monsters)." 2e repeats the claim that giant centipedes bite rather than sting, but introduces the notion that, in doing so, it "inject[s] a paralytic poison." This poison "can paralyze a victim for 2–12 (2d6) hours, but is so weak that victims of a centipede bite are permitted a +4 bonus to their saving throw." 2e also introduces two more varieties of giant centipede – huge centipedes and megalocentipedes – to bedevil lower-level characters.

Unlike spiders, which do make me uncomfortable, centipedes, for all their legs, don't frighten me. Mind you, I might feel a bit differently if they were a foot or more long, like those in Dungeons & Dragons, and I saw this horrific visage bearing down on me.

Blue Flame, Tiny Stars

Stephen Wendell of the Donjonlands blog (as well as the player of Aíthfo hiZnáyu in my House of Worms Empire of the Petal Throne campaign for nearly eight years now) has written a memoir of his early experiences in the hobby, entitled Blue Flame, Tiny Stars. 

As you might guess from its cover, those early experiences were formed, as they were for a lot of us, by playing the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set whose rulebook was edited by the late J. Eric Holmes. This fact alone likely explains my enjoyment of Stephen's memoir. Of course, it doesn't hurt that his recollections are both engaging and often insightful, as any good memoir should be.

Blue Flame, Tiny Stars is now available in multiple formats through DriveThruRPG.

It Beats Swallowing Goldfish

I've mentioned many times before that, when I first got into roleplaying games, I sought out newspaper and magazine articles that talked about the then-novel hobby. Thanks to the Internet, I've been able to locate evidence of some of the articles I remember from my youth, such as this one from the January 27, 1980 issue of Parade. For those who don't know, Parade is a supplement inserted into the Sunday edition of certain American newspapers. When I was a kid growing up in Maryland, Parade appeared first in The News American paper and, later, in The Baltimore Sun.

Quite the cover, isn't it? Take a look at the first page of the article on the inside of Parade.

Why these cosplayers/LARPers appear at all is a good question, since the accompanying article makes no reference to them. I can only assume that this was done to attract the eyes of readers. Based on my recollections, many articles like this included incongruous photographs since, at the time, I suppose very few people understood what "roleplaying" actually entailed. The mistaken notion that wearing a costume was part of the hobby is an old one, going back to at least as far as early reports of the disappearance of James Dallas Egbert in 1979, if not further. 

In this case, it's especially frustrating, because the article itself is pretty good and includes some quotes from J. Eric Holmes about roleplaying and D&D that are both positive and illuminating for outsiders.

From the vantage point of 2022, it's often difficult to remember that roleplaying wasn't just seen as a weird hobby for weird people, it was well nigh incomprehensible to many people, hence the appearance of so many articles like this one. That that's no longer the case is thanks in no small part to the success of Dungeons & Dragons, a game whose appearance and popularity really did change the world forever.

My Top 10 D&D Illustrations of the Golden Age (Part I)

Ever since I started doing these Top 10 lists earlier this month, I've received a lot of positive feedback, including email suggestions of other lists I could present. One of the most requested of these other lists concerns the art of Dungeons & Dragons, namely my favorite pieces. There's no question that this is a good topic for a list and will generate a lot of discussion, but I must admit to some hesitation nonetheless. Judging art is often subjective, especially gaming art, appreciation of whose qualities can depend on numerous factors beyond the specific piece of art under discussion. It's also been my experience that there's something of a difference in tastes between age cohorts of D&D players, with those encountering the game in the mid to late 1980s having a different notion of what makes good D&D art than those, like myself, coming from just a slightly earlier era.

Nevertheless, I do think there's something to be gained by proposing a list of my Top 10 D&D illustrations. As before, I am limiting myself to the Golden Age of the game, since it's the era when I first encountered it. The imagery of that era made a strong impression on me and, as a result, most of what I think of as the best illustrations for the game were created during its first decade of publication. Also as before, I make no claims to objectivity or universal appeal. The ten illustrations that will appear here and in its follow-up post later in the week are those that I like, for reasons I will explain. Naturally, some will disagree, perhaps vehemently with my choices and that's fine. My only hope is that, in offering my list, I might encourage conversation rather than mere argument.

10. Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set (1977)

This painting, by David C. Sutherland, is perhaps the very first piece of D&D art I ever saw and is, therefore, forever linked with the game in my imagination. There was simply no way I could justify excluding it, despite its clear technical deficiencies. Of course, if I were to exclude illustrations on such a basis, I'd have to rule out almost all of those on this list. Even so, there's a lot to like in this particular piece, starting with the fact that it clearly shows a knight in historical armor standing beside a traditional-looking wizard as they face off against a dragon resting atop a vast treasure hoard. For a game called Dungeons & Dragons, this is nearly ideal in conveying what the game is about. I can't tell you how many hours I probably spent staring at this image in late 1979 and early 1980. The illustration reached out and seized me in a way I still cannot adequately explain. In my mind's eye, this is what D&D looks like. 

9. Dungeons & Dragons Expert Set (1981)

This is a slight cheat, in that the cover for the Expert Set by Erol Otus also incorporates a portion of his Basic Set cover as well. That said, I actually like the Expert Set illustration a bit more, since it highlights one of Otus's funky wizards, whom I found equally fascinating and unsettling as a youth. More to the point, since I already owned the Holmes-edited Basic Set (see above), I didn't see any immediate need to buy the 1981 Moldvay set, opting for the Expert Set alone (a situation I would later rectify). In fact, I often stuffed the Expert rulebook inside my Holmes box when I took it with me to friends' homes to play. Together, they formed the basis of my foundational D&D experiences and I find it hard to separate the two. However, I rate this illustration slightly higher solely on the basis of the greater skills of Erol Otus. His illustrations were always weird and evocative and did a lot to broaden my conception of what fantasy was and could be.

8. "Skeleton Trap" (1979)

This illustration, by David S. LaForce, appears in the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide. In terms of its composition, it's nothing special, but it's a piece that's fascinated me for decades nonetheless. What I think elevates it above so many other "better" illustrations is the sense of inexorable doom it conveys – a key feature of many early D&D sessions. The room is filling with water; the only means of obvious escape is barred. And there's also an animated skeleton in the room, emerging from beneath the water. Does the hapless fighter on the left know he's about to be attacked from behind? Is he simply more concerned about the rising water level in the room? I pondered these questions a lot when I was younger. Consequently, t's an illustration that's stuck with me over the years.

7. "Dragon Attack" (1981)

Unlike many of my peers, I've never been a huge fan of Bill Willingham's artwork. That's not a knock against Willingham's work, which is quite good but a little too "comic book-y" for my tastes. Nevertheless, I consider the frontispiece of the 1981 D&D Basic Set pictured above to be one of my favorite illustrations of the Golden Age. Much like the Sutherland cover to the Holmes Basic Set, it scores a lot of points simply for the fact that it depicts a confrontation with a dragon. Where it is superior to Sutherland's piece – and why it is higher on my list – is that it comes closer to depicting a proper party of adventurers, in this case a dwarf, an elf, a fighter, and a magic-user. The composition is a little odd, in that the adventurers are practically right on top of the dragon, but I can overlook that, because of how dynamic and exciting the scene is. 

6. "Treasure Hunters" (1977)

This Dave Trampier illustration, from the AD&D Monster Manual is favorite of mine for a number of reasons. For one, I think it's among Tramp's best pieces of work. The use of light and shadow is quite effective. For another, I love the faces of the three adventurers. They palpably evince greed, with the one on the far right unable to prevent his hand from reaching into the chest and grabbing what's within. Also, these aren't Hollywood handsome protagonists posing heroically for the cameras. They're rough and tumble rogues of the sort Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, or Fritz Leiber might have created. They're perfect exemplars of the pulp fantasy literary inspirations of D&D that was largely discarded by later editions of the game. We need to see more dubious characters like this in D&D artwork, if you ask me.