Polyhedron: Issue #6

Following in the footsteps of its predecessors, issue #6 of Polyhedron (June 1982) features a striking piece of original art for its cover. This time, it depicts a scene from (presumably) Boot Hill, as imagined by artist David D. Larson, whose name is otherwise unknown to me. Regardless, it's a terrific illustration and yet another reminder of how much unique artwork graced the pages of Polyhedron.

Apropos to my recent post on this topic, the issue opens with a letter from a reader in Georgia, USA: A local religious group is trying to ban DUNGEONS & DRAGONS® from our school and library. Can you help?" The reply – it's unclear whether it's from editor-in-chief Frank Mentzer or editor Mary Kirchoff – is as follows:

Though I can't be certain, I assume the "Duke" mentioned above is Bruce "Duke" Seifried, a friend of Gary Gygax who would join TSR sometime in late '82 or early '83 as the head of its new miniatures division. If so, I'm not certain why concerns about attempts to ban D&D should be directed to his attention, but there is much about the inner workings of TSR that elude me.

Frank Mentzer's "Where I'm Coming From" talks about a couple of related matters, starting with "why the various game manufacturers don't get along." Mentzer states that, since publishers are all competing for business, it only makes sense that they wouldn't always see eye to eye. That's why the RPGA doesn't support non-TSR games: the company isn't interested in directing sales to other companies. It's a very honest answer. Mentzer also mentions that TSR continues to expand its library of games, noting that the company has just acquired SPI, making Dragonquest a TSR game and thus eligible for inclusion in the RPGA. Of course, we all know how that turned out ...

The third and final part of the interview with Gary "Jake" Jaquet appears in this issue. I keep saying I ought to write a series of posts about what he has to say in this interview, but I've been distracted lately by other matters and haven't had the time. That said, there are a couple of tidbits worth mentioning here. First, Jaquet explains that he's kept "DRAGON™ magazine's style more conservative" because he views it in the same way a doctor might view a medical journal: "getting information, facts, people's opinions." It's "not a supermarket magazine that has four inch headlines." Second, he states that he prefers Dungeons & Dragons to its AD&D sibling. Here's why:

I suppose, because Jaquet's perspective is similar to mine, I'm naturally inclined to agree with it. Even if you don't share his point of view, I think it's fascinating to see an employee of TSR speaking so frankly about his own assessment of the company's two biggest games. Jaquet comes across in the interview as a plain speaker who isn't all that interested in spouting a party line on any topic and that's very appealing.

"Notes for the Dungeon Master" is uncredited, though it seems likely to have been written by Frank Mentzer. This issue, the column focuses on the much-vexed question of "realism" in RPGs. After the ritual invocations of "play the game however you like," the unnamed author suggests that a truly realistic game would be unplayable. In his view, internally consistent and fun rules are more important than fully simulating reality. I find this hard to disagree with this, but it's an old fault line within the hobby, one about which nearly everyone has a strong opinion.

"The Weapons of the Ancients" by James M. Ward presents a collection of new technological weapons for use with Gamma World. Reading these, what's most intriguing is to me is that, with a single exception, none of these weapons has ever appeared anywhere else. As I've said many times before, it's deeply frustrating to me how little support TSR gave Gamma World in terms of supplements and adventures. To see Ward coming up with all these new material for Polyhedron, a niche periodical of the RPGA, rather than for more widely circulated venues, breaks my GW-loving heart.

"Spelling Bee" focuses on illusion and phantasm spells. That the unnamed author, probably Frank Mentzer, spends two pages defining terms, proposing principles, and offering examples demonstrates just how difficult the use of such spells have long been in Dungeons & Dragons (and indeed almost any fantasy RPG). That's not a criticism of the article, which does a fair job of trying to make sense of it all. However, it's true that, in all my decades of playing D&D, few things have continued to cause consternation to myself and players more than illusion spells.

"Dispel Confusion" tackles a few more AD&D rules questions, one of which touches on the aforementioned topic of realism: weak spots in a dragon's hide. It's suggested that the game would be slowed "considerably" by the inclusion of hit location rules, hence their lack of inclusion. "An Ace Against the Odds" by Mike Carr is a solitaire scenario for use with Dawn Patrol. The amount of Dawn Patrol content in Polyhedron really surprises me. Though I was a fan of the game in my youth, I never got the impression it was particularly popular. Perhaps I was mistaken in this assessment. "First Tournament Tips" by Errol Farstad takes a look at the ins and outs of starting up a RPGA-sanctioned tournament at your local game convention. Though brief, it's an interesting article, especially if, like me, you've never dreamed of doing anything like this. Finally, there's another installment of Roger Raupp's "Nor" comic – still no more details about the downed starship from the first installment, alas.

Polyhedron: Issue #5

Issue #5 of Polyhedron (April 1982) features a cover illustration by Bob Walters, an artist who is otherwise unknown to me. It's a very nice piece, depicting what appears to be a trio of Viking-esque warriors facing off against a dragon. Given how good it is, I can't help but wonder why we never saw more artwork from Walters in Polyhedron or elsewhere in the RPG hobby.

The issue marks the appointment of Mary Kirchoff as editor of Polyhedron, while Frank Mentzer assumes the position of editor-in-chief. This suggests to me that both the RPGA and, by extension, Polyhedron were experiencing considerable growth during this time, or at least enough growth to warrant the expansion of its staff. Certainly, the hobby itself was still growing in 1982, thanks in no small part to the success of TSR in attracting younger players. Of course, not everyone was pleased by this growth, as evidence by a letter in this issue bemoaning the "munchkins with delusions of grandeur" who now "make up the overwhelming majority of new recruits to FRPing."

The second part of a three-part interview with Gary "Jake" Jaquet appears in this issue. As with the first part in the previous issue, it's filled with fascinating bits of information about TSR and the hobby at the time. Most interesting to me is Jaquet's defense of the "lukewarm" reviews that the Fiend Folio received in the pages of Dragon. "We call 'em like we see 'em," he explains, adding "It's not the best product it could have been." Jaquet then goes on to suggest that he feels Dragon, as a magazine for the entire hobby – compared to, say, more narrowly conceived periodicals like The Sorcerer's Apprentice – it needs to be fundamentally honest and not "self-serving," hence the critical reviews even of TSR products. He has a lot more to say on this topic and his philosophy of editing Dragon. If I can find the time, I will try to highlight some of his other comments in separate posts, because I think they're worth revisiting.

"Notes from the Dungeon Master" includes more tricks and traps for the DM. Most of those in this issue seem to involve mimics for some reason, but, to be fair, that is the purpose of a monster like that. Philip Meyers offers his impressions of a RPGA tournament in "The Round Table." Never having participated in one of them myself, I find his thoughts intriguing, because it sheds a little light on a part of the hobby that's long been somewhat opaque to me. Meyers offers both praise and criticism and Mentzer, in a separate article ("Counterpoint: As Fast as We Can ...") responds to both. Again, I get the impression from reading articles like these that the RPGA was growing quite quickly at the time, well beyond the capacity of its staff to keep up, hence the criticisms Meyers presents. 

"Dispel Confusion" provides answers to some questions about the AD&D rules. One question revealed something that I apparently never understood. In AD&D, dragon breath damage is equal to the dragon's original hit point total, not his current total. I had always assumed the latter, perhaps influenced by the text in the Moldvay Basic Rules, but this is apparently wrong with regards to AD&D. Who says you can't learn anything new from a 40 year-old magazine? "Bag of Tricks" is an uncredited assortment of ideas for use with D&D and AD&D, like the suggestion that characters should take doors off their hinges to ease their escape later or making use of mules to carry extra treasure – all fairly banal stuff, though I suppose they might not be obvious to everyone.

"Spelling Bee" simply reprints the spells crystalbrittle and energy drain from Against the Giants, while Mike Brunton's "Figure Painting" offers lots of tips on miniatures painting. Sadly, there are still no photos or illustrations to accompany the latter article, which is a pity. For someone like myself, the photos of beautifully painted minis are the main attraction of articles such as this one. "Codebook" presents three encoded messages for readers to decipher, along with advice on how to crack simple codes. I find that fascinating, because I remember well the seeming ubiquity of codes and ciphers in the D&D games of my youth. I can't say I've seen them much in recent years and wonder why that might be.

The issue closes with more news about upcoming conventions, Roger Raupp's "Nor" comic, and some very cursory news on Top Secret, Boot Hill, and Gamma World. Disappointingly, "Nor" moves slowly and the mystery of the spacecraft that crash-landed on the fantasy world of the comic last issue receives little coverage in this one. With luck, that will change in coming issues, because I think it opens up lots of possibilities for fun adventures. Of course, as I noted before, I don't believe "Nor" lasts very long in the pages of Polyhedron, so the whole matter may be rendered moot anyway. Oh well.

Polyhedron: Issue #4

Issue #4 of Polyhedron (March 1982) is the first issue to officially bear that title, though it's nowhere to be seen on its cover, which features original artwork by Larry Elmore. The first use of the new title appears is inside, where it's also given the definite article – The Polyhedron. Frank Mentzer explains that the title was suggested by RPGA member Bill Huber of Petaluma, California, beating out many other suggestions (e.g. Role Players Guide to Adventure, Multiverse, Roles & Rules, etc.), none of which struck me as very good. 

Highlighted on the Letters page is a missive from Gary Gygax, in which he talks about his first meeting with James M. Ward. Mentzer follows this with the following comment: "See, folks, he really reads this stuff!" While I'm sure it was meant innocently enough, the comment strikes me as an example of the Cult of Gygax that TSR promoted sometimes promoted and to which fanboys like myself were often prone. With the benefit of hindsight, it also reminds me uncomfortably of the parasocial relationships with celebrities that contemporary social media tries to foster.

Mentzer's "Where I'm Coming From" is brief and focuses on new and upcoming features in Polyhedron, such as Jon Pickens's column for Basic D&D and Roger Raupp's "Nor" comic strip, both of which premier in this issue. There's a similarly brief piece announcing the winner of Grenadier's 1980–81 "Wizard's Gold" giveaway. The winner was a 14 year-old boy from Florida, which oddly pleased me. I remember the ads for "Wizard's Gold" in the pages of Dragon at the time but I can't say I ever gave much thought to who might have won. More than four decades later, now I do.

"RPGA Interview with 'Jake' Jaquet" is, as its title suggests, an interview – and a lengthy one at that – Gary "Jake" Jaquet, one of the forgotten employees of TSR Hobbies during the late '70s and early '80s. His name is well known to me because of his involvement in the creation of the first edition of Gamma World. He was also an important figure in the early days of Dragon, where he served in a variety of capacities, including Publisher. As with previous interviews in Polyhedron, this one is full of wonderful anecdotes and trivia about TSR and its products. I could – and probably should – devote an entire post to sharing some of these tidbits. For now, though, I'll share one of them, which feels strangely relevant in our present age.

"White Rabbits" is where Frank Mentzer corrects errors and oversights from previous issues. This time, he takes the time to credit people whose names were inadvertently omitted. One of these names is Jeff Dee, whose illustration of the bone (not ice) devil was the subject of some speculation in an earlier post on this blog. Don Turnbull's "Turnbull Talking" serves as a reminiscence of his early experiences with D&D and the expansion of its roster of available character classes. Turnbull notes that some players and referees dislike the addition of new classes to the game, but he does not share this view. 

"Spell Bee" returns, with a look at the AD&D versions of the spells magic missile, fireball, and lightning bolt – complete with diagrams! Believe it or not, this is actually a very interesting and useful article. Though the article isn't credited, internal evidence ("My wizard Felonius") suggests that Frank Mentzer wrote it. He does a good job, in my opinion, of laying out how these three common offensive spells actually work according to the rules of AD&D, something that's often forgotten by many players. Certainly, some might find it a bit tedious in its specificity, but we must remember that Mentzer cut his teeth in the world of official AD&D tournaments, so his knowledge of the game's rules is highly exact. I don't think the article can be criticized for being similarly precise.

"Dispel Confusion" answers some not very interesting AD&D questions, while "Basically Speaking" by Jon Pickens is a disappointingly dull overview of what to do with your shiny new copy of the D&D Basic Set, right down to how to use that crayon that came in the box. "News from HQ" is just a collection of ephemeral notes about then-current concerns of the RPGA. Roger Raupp's "Nor" is a full-page comic whose first installment shows a spaceship crash land on a planet that appears to be a fantasy setting of some sort. This is a common enough trope, but I'm curious to see where Raupp takes it. On the other hand, I started reading Polyhedron with issue #8 and don't recall seeing "Nor." That suggests the comic, like Tom Wham's "Rocksnaz" from issues #1 and #2 won't last long ...

I continue to find Polyhedron interesting reading, though mostly from a historical perspective. More so than, say, Dragon, the RPGA newsletter includes lots of "inside baseball" information about TSR and its employees that I find very compelling. That's probably while I'll make a serious attempt to examine its interview articles much more closely in the coming weeks. There are lots of nuggets to mine in them and I suspect that readers of this blog will find them as fascinating as I do.

The Setting of Gamma World (Conclusion)

Having now spent far too much time delving into my collection of Gamma World rulebooks and supplements – and not even having even read them all – I think I'm now in a better position to offer some conclusions regarding its setting. In the interests of clarity and concision, I'll present these as number points.

1. It's often overlooked that Gamma World is a sequel of sorts to James M. Ward's first stab at a post-apocalyptic RPG, 1976's Metamorphosis Alpha. Like its descendant, MA is about mutants in a world gone mad after a civilization-ending disaster. The key difference is that the "world" of Metamorphosis Alpha is an interstellar generation ship launched from Earth in the late 23rd century – a setting that is unmistakably in our future.
2. I mention this because I think it's important to understanding the background to Ward's own conception of the setting of Gamma World, namely that of Metamorphosis Alpha writ large, so as to encompass the entire Earth.
3. However, it's clear that, from a fairly early stage in its development, Gamma World was never the sole product of James M. Ward. At the very least, Gary Jaquet had an influence over its development, as likely did Tom Wham, Timothy Jones, and even Gary Gygax. Each injected their own ideas into the game, diluting Ward's original vision of a high-tech apocalypse occurring several centuries into our future.
4. Consequently, the setting of the 1978 Gamma World rulebook is something of a mishmash, consisting of a strongly high-tech science fictional foundation atop of which were added numerous elements that don't quite comport with it.
5. While the non-Ward elements of Gamma World don't wholly undermine the implication that the setting is a futuristic one, they do muddy the waters quite a bit, thereby lending credence to the common belief that the End comes in the relatively near future rather than the 24th century.
6. There was never a strong editorial hand on the Gamma World game line, especially in its early years. Therefore, each release for the game is sui generis, reflecting the tastes and ideas of the authors who created them. The fact that Ward himself never wrote a single stand-alone scenario for the game line during its first and second editions did little to clarify the situation.

Ultimately, there is no single Gamma World setting, however much James M. Ward might have intended otherwise. That said, I personally believe that the game makes the most sense – to the extent that that's even possible – as being set in the aftermath of a future apocalypse. That's certainly the frame I'll use, when I finally get around to starting up a Gamma World campaign. Your mileage may vary.

Second Comes Right After First

I sometimes call Gary "Jake" Jaquet one of the "forgotten" figures of the hobby's early days. Whereas everyone remembers that Tim Kask was the first editor of TSR's Dragon magazine, how many people can name the second? Likewise, everyone remembers that James M. Ward worked on Gamma World, but how many recall that he didn't work on it alone? Under Jaquet's editorship, Dragon not only lost its definite article but also saw its circulation increase from 10,000 in 1980 to more than 70,000 by 1982. Likewise, Gamma World has remained perhaps the second most successful RPG produced by TSR, with a new edition of the game having been produced as recently as 2010. While neither of these accomplishments can be solely attributed to Jaquet's involvement, neither is it coincidental. 

I mention Jaquet because he is the subject of an extensive, three-part interview in the early issues of Polyhedron. Like the interview with Gary Gygax, it's a wide-ranging one that covers an enormous number of topics. Jaquet's answers are thoughtful and occasionally striking, such as what he says on the subject of the Dungeons & Dragons versus Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in issue #6 (June 1982).

The matter of how much AD&D differs from D&D was a matter of much contention in the period leading up to the 1981 resolution of the lawsuits brought by Dave Arneson. TSR and its various spokesmen, most prominently Gary Gygax, emphasized this difference, in part, I suspect, to bolster its legal defense against Arneson. 

Based on this interview, Jaquet would seem to have agreed that D&D and AD&D were distinct, but his reasons for doing so were quite different. He seems to have adopted a more positive, less critical version of Gygax's famous "D&D has turned into a non-game" stance. In Jaquet's version, D&D, which is to say OD&D, is less "constrained by an author's point or rule or chart." He imagines a circumstance, while playing AD&D, where a player can "just pull out the DMG and say, "Right here on page 157 it says you can't do that." He then notes that "in D&D games you CAN do that, because that rule doesn't exist ... it's up to the DM to make that determination."

Now, in my experience, most people played AD&D much like the way Jaquet describes playing OD&D. For example, I knew very few people, back in the day, who understood, let alone used, AD&D's initiative system, instead substituting a simpler one derived from OD&D (or even Holmes). There are many other AD&D rules that were rarely, if ever, used, like weapon versus armor class modifiers  or speed factors. According to strict principles, such as those employed in the RPGA, these people weren't playing AD&D at all. If so, I doubt I've ever met anyone who's played Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

Jaquet says something else I find interesting. He acknowledges that an OD&D referee who has been running a campaign for a long time will undoubtedly have established his own house rules, interpretations, and additions to the game that might, "in terms of bulk," be every bit as immense as the entirety of AD&D's rules. The difference, of course, is that they will be his rules and will have developed as a consequence of play. I find this approach most congenial and am heartened to see that Gary Jaquet felt similarly.