The Articles of Dragon: "Giants in the Earth"

 As I pen more posts for this series, you'll notice that many of its entries are themselves about series of articles from the pages of Dragon. I could offer a lot of explanations for this, but the simplest, I suppose, is that, with series, you know what you're getting. In theory, if you like one entry in the series, you will probably enjoy those that follow. Series provide a foundation on which to build and a format to follow that makes them attractive to both writers and readers – that's the reason this blog has so many series of its own.

Issue #59 (March 1982) introduced me to a new series of Dragon articles. Entitled "Giants in the Earth," this was an irregular feature devoted to presenting famous characters from fantasy (and occasionally science fiction) literature in terms of Dungeons & Dragons game mechanics. This particular issue included write-ups for five different characters – Poul Anderson's Sir Roger de Tourneville (by Roger E. Moore), L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt's Harold Shea (by David Cook), Alexei Panshin's Anthony Villiers (by Andrew Dewar), Clifford Simak's Mark Cornwall and Sniveley (both by Roger E. Moore). 

At the time I first saw this article, I think I was only familiar with Sir Roger de Tourneville, having already read The High Crusade. The others were completely unknown to me and, in the case of the Simak characters, I'm embarrassed to admit, still are. Nevertheless, I found the piece fascinating for several reasons. First, almost from the moment I started playing D&D, I began to think about how best to stat up characters from myth, legend, and books. Seeing how "professional" writers did so held my interest. Second, many of the entries – even the science fiction ones! – included suggestions on introducing these characters into an ongoing D&D campaign, an idea I'd never considered before. Finally, the entries served to introduce me to authors and books I might otherwise never have encountered, just as Appendix N and Moldvay's "Inspirational Source Material" section had done.

That last one is of particular importance to me, especially nowadays, as the inspirations for fantasy roleplaying shift away from books of all kinds and more toward movies and video games. With the benefit of hindsight, one of the things that's very obvious is how much more literary fantasy was in my youth. Arguably, that's because, until comparatively recently, fantasy hadn't much penetrated the mainstream and thus there were few other ready sources for the genre. If you were interested in wizards and dragons and magic swords, books were all you had, whereas today we have a greater number of options available to us. Perhaps – and maybe I'm just being an old man again – I detect a difference in kind between the literary fantasies I grew up reading (and that inspired the founders of the hobby) and the pop culture stuff we see today.

The irony of my being introduced to "Giants in the Earth" through this issue is that it's one of the last ones published in Dragon. Though I'd eventually see some of the earlier installments, the vast majority of them were long out of my reach, their having been published long before I started playing RPGs, let alone reading the magazine. Even so, the few that I did read served the useful purpose of broadening my knowledge of fantasy and science fiction, as well as acquainting me with characters and writers who would, in time, become lifelong companions. 

Criticism and Commentary

I think it's fair to say that Gary Gygax had a very thin skin when it came to criticisms of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game line, even when the criticisms weren't aimed at a book or module in which he had a hand. A good example of what I'm talking about can found in the "From the Sorceror's [sic] Scroll" column he penned for issue #66 of Dragon (October 1982). There, Gygax responds to criticism of Deities & Demigods.

Before getting into the substance of what Gygax says here, a little background. The "critical piece" referenced in the paragraph above appeared in issue #19 of Different Worlds (March 1982). It's a review written by Patrick Amory that ends by stating "Deities & Demigods [is] fit only for the trashcan." Gygax claims that he only heard about Amory's piece after "reading a letter of agreement" written by a "disgruntled ex-TSR game designer." This second letter appeared in issue #22 of Different Worlds (July 1982) and its author is Lawrence Schick, who served as the editor of Deities & Demigods. 

If you follow the link to Schick's "letter of agreement," you'll see that it's both lengthy and thoughtful in its criticisms. Though he clearly disagreed with the direction James M. Ward took the book, he does not seem to bear any ill will toward the man he calls "a real nice guy." Likewise, that he "really liked the AD&D system and wanted the AD&D products to be the best possible." Schick's criticisms, for the most part, boil down wanting DDG to have closer to Cults of Prax in its approach. That's an absolutely fair criticism in my book, but I'd of course say that, since it's pretty close to my own opinion on the matter. Regardless, I don't think anything Schick wrote is worthy of the intemperate and petty response Gygax offers.

Sadly, Gygax doesn't stop there. He continues his verbal assault against "this capable and knowledgeable individual" in a very bizarre fashion.

Given Gygax's frequent and vociferous disavowals of the influence of Tolkien over his vision of AD&D, I think it's pretty rich of him to turn around and try to use the (admittedly true) lack of religion in Middle-earth as evidence that the kind of book Schick would have preferred is somehow inappropriate for the game line. His references to the works of Howard, Leiber, and De Camp and Pratt seems less disingenuous (and more in keeping with his pulp fantasy preferences), but I'm not sure it serves his original point. If anything, in his flailing attempt to deflect Schick's fair criticisms of Deities & Demigods, he comes close to suggesting a book about gods and religion is unnecessary for AD&D.

This line of attack is all the odder, because Gygax's own articles about the deities and demigods of his World of Greyhawk setting were all quite good and included many of the details that Schick wished to see. He even acknowledges this later in his response, adding that this is appropriate "because they are part of an actual campaign," while DDG was never intended as anything more than "raw material upon which to build a campaign." He then suggests that expecting Deities & Demigods to be more than that is tantamount to "want[ing] someone else to do all your creative thinking for you." What an odd – and condescending – thing to say!

In the end, I think Gygax would have been better off not saying anything at all. I can only assume the fact that Schick, a former TSR employee, publicly offered his own firsthand thoughts about the shortcomings of an AD&D volume stung. I can certainly understand his feelings and might well have felt similarly were I in his shoes. Nonetheless, his response seems disproportionate and, worse, small-minded. Compared to Dragon, Different Worlds had a very small circulation and I doubt that many people were unduly influenced by its negative review, assuming they even saw it. If anything, an immoderate tirade like this one might well have had a greater negative effect on potential buyers.

Retrospective: Manual of the Planes

One of my favorite parts of the AD&D Players Handbook has always been Appendix IV: The Known Planes of Existence. Though it provides very little information – it's mostly just a listing of the twenty-five inner and outer planes – I spent untold hours reading and re-reading it as a young person, not to mention staring with awe at Figure 1, which offered a visual representation of the interrelations of all these weird places. To say I was "enraptured" might be a bit strong, but there's no question that Gary Gygax's glorious-mad vision, which married AD&D's alignment system to a cosmology straight out of de Camp and Pratt. Heady stuff to an eleven year-old!

As the years wore on, AD&D's planes acquired a little more solidity, starting with 1980's Queen of the Demonweb Pits, which gave us a glimpse into what a layer of the Abyss might be like (answer: a lot weirder than I expected it would be). Then came Roger E. Moore's magisterial article on the Astral Plane in Dragon #67 (November 1982), followed by an equally impressive one about Gladsheim in issue #90 (October 1984) a couple of years later. In between these, Gygax got in on the act, penning an article in issue #73 (May 1983) that tackled the Inner Planes, including the previously-unknown quasi-elemental planes (and came with a nifty multi-colored cut-out cube intended to represent the relationships between them). And who can forget Ed Greenwood's two-part treatement of the Nine Hells in issues #75 (July 1983) and #76 (August 1983)?

I gobbled up each of these expansions of Gygax's original scheme from the PHB – and more! – and frankly longed for a definitive treatment of these mysterious otherworldly realms. My wish was finally granted in 1987, when Jeff Grubb's Manual of the Planes first appeared. Unsurprisingly, I bought it as soon as I was able and devoured its contents immediately. This book was exactly what I had wanted, collecting together all the details scattered across multiple books, modules, and articles and adding to them, in order to create a more complete picture of the cosmos of AD&D. 

What I particularly liked was the way that Grubb does his best to make each plane unique, particularly with regard to way that magic works. This is something that Queen of the Demonweb Pits did first and that Moore picked up and developed further in his articles. Yes, it was a little frustrating at times to have to consult a list every time someone cast a spell to see if its effects were in any way changed, but the sense that "we're not in Kansas anymore" gained through its use more than made up for the extra effort, or so I thought. The planes were, from the beginning, intended as stomping grounds only for experienced characters – and players – so it only made sense that the very rules of the game might be changed there.

That said, most of the planar descriptions are short, singling out only a few key locales and only briefly touching on their inhabitants. I know people who were disappointed by this, hoping that the book would provide exhaustive information on each of the planes. Even I, who liked the book a great deal, half-expected that there'd be, if not a map, something akin to one that gave a better sense of how all the various planar landmarks related to one another. Despite that, I was fine with the relatively light level of detail, because it left plenty to the individual referee's imagination. If I had a serious criticism of the book, it's how few new monsters were included in the book, something I would have expected, especially after the wondrous details the Monster Manual II provided us about the inhabitants of the lower planes. I suspect the limits of the 128-page limit are responsible for this, but I was disappointed nonetheless.

Ultimately, I judge the Manual of the Planes a success, one of the better books of post-Gygaxian AD&D and one with a fairly long reach. Many of its planar conceptions were taken up by later authors and expanded upon, especially once the Planescape setting appeared in 1994. Unlike Planescape, which opted for its own rather idiosyncratic tone and style, Manual of the Planes is still broadly within the framework established by Gygax in the 1970s, which might explain my continued fondness for it. No book is perfect, of course, but I still think a pretty good one.

Your Mother Was a Martian

These rules are strictly fantasy Those wargamers who lack imagination, those who don't care for Burroughs' Martian adventures where John Carter is groping through black pits, who feel no thrill upon reading Howard's Conan saga, who do not enjoy the de Camp & Pratt fantasies or Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser putting their swords against evil sorceries will not be likely to find DUNGEONS & DRAGONS to their taste.

The seminal influence of Robert E. Howard and Fritz Leiber on the creation of Dungeons & Dragons is well established, I think. The role of L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt is probably less known, given how few people have even heard of, let alone read, the Harold Shea series. Even less known, I think, is the influence of the Barsoom stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs. And yet he's the very first author whom Gary Gygax mentions in the "forward" [sic] to Volume 1 of original D&D. 

Consider, too, Gygax's words in the (again misspelled) "forward" to Warriors of Mars, written less than a year later.

Worlds of heroic fantasy are many, but perhaps the best known of them all is the Barsoom of Edgar Rice Burroughs, where John Carter, Tars Tarkas, Dejah Thoris, etal [sic] adventure endlessly in eternal youth.

I don't think there can be any question that Gygax highly esteemed the Barsoom stories, which are included even in Appendix N (though, it should be noted, Burroughs is not listed among "the most immediate influences" upon AD&D). 

OD&D contains multiple references to Mars, such as the tables for wilderness wandering monsters in Volume 3. The column for "Desert" has a parenthetical note "(Mars)," with entries for Red, Black, Yellow, and White Martians, as well as for Tharks. There's also an "Optional Arid Plains" column with entries for Apts, Banths, Thoats, Calots, White Apes, Orluks, Siths, Darseen, and Banths. Now, none of these beings or creatures are given any game stats and indeed it wouldn't be until the 1981 Moldvay Basic Rules that this would change, when one of these – the white ape, albeit with only two arms – finally appeared in print. Additionally, Mars is cited as an example of another world where one might set D&D adventures.

As it turns out, Gygax did just that. One of his son Ernie's characters was called Erac's Cousin and had an adventure on what is quite clearly the Mars of John Carter. One retelling of his exploits can be found here, from which I quote the following:

One of Erac's Cousin's more memorable adventures occurred after he spotted a strange red star in the night sky. He drifted off to sleep thinking of the strange star and when he awoke he discovered he had been transported to Mars. To his surprise he arrived stark naked. Soon after his arrival, the mage was attacked by the Cannibals of Ugor. Much to his dismay, he discovered that magic didn’t work there, and he was forced to fight toe-to-toe with the bloodthirsty cannibals using nothing more than a tree branch. In time the unnamed adventurer adapted and ultimately excelled in is new environment. Due to the planet's low gravity the marooned wizard's strength was heroic. He could leap 20 to 40 feet into the air, and much further than that forward. During the many months that he spent there, being unable to use magic, Erac's Cousin began training as a fighter. Instead of using magic to defeat his enemies, he would now cut them down with a sword. Before returning to Oerth he had slaughtered hoards of Green Martians, and organized an escape from the mines of the Yellow Martians. Finally he discovered a method of returning to Greyhawk. He found Oerth in the night sky before going to sleep and when he awoke he was back home. Unfortunately his arrival home was similar to his arrival on Mars; naked. He had left a fortune behind on the red planet.

Erac's Cousin's awakening on Mars naked recapitulates Carter's own experiences and, if the reference to multiple colors of Martians were not enough of a giveaway, there are the Cannibals of U-Gor, which appeared in the 1930 story, A Fighting Man of Mars. Issue #3 of the first volume of The Strategic Review (Autumn 1975) features an article on randomly generating ruined Martian cities by James M. Ward. It's not specifically associated with OD&D, but it's another example of Barsoomian content in a TSR product. 

I think it is unquestionable that the fantasy genre as we understand it today – and hence the roleplaying games that derive from it – owes its existence largely to Edgar Rice Burroughs's stories of Barsoom, which even a youthful H.P. Lovecraft regarded highly (he would distance himself from them later in life) and which inspired generations of imitators and pasticheurs, including such luminaries as Robert E. Howard and Michael Moorcock. That Gygax, give his age and fondness for pulp literature, would have likewise admired and drawn upon these same stories should surprise no one. Nevertheless, I think the influence of Barsoom on D&D's development is underappreciated and ought to be known more widely.

From the "I am an Idiot" Files

I was reading the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide this evening and I suddenly noticed something I hadn't before or, rather, something finally clicked in my head and I find it hard to believe it took so long for it to do so. In the miscellaneous magic section, you'll find the following:

Cubic Gate: Another small cubic device, this item is fashioned from carnelian. The 6 sides of the cube are each keyed to a plane, 1 of which will always be the Prime Material, of course. The other 5 can be chosen by any means desired. If the side of the cubic gate is pressed but once, it opens a nexus to the appropriate plane, and there is a 10% chance per turn that something will come through it looking for food, fun, and/or trouble. If the side is pressed twice, the creature so doing, along with all creatures in a 5' radius will be drawn through the nexus to the other plane. It is impossible to open more than 1 nexial point at once.

How is it that I only just realized that this is a direct borrowing from De Camp and Pratt's The Carnelian Cube? It's not like Gygax was even hiding the fact, since he outright states the material from which it's made in the very first sentence of the item's description! Shows how closely I must have read that description in years gone by.

(It's worth noting, by the way, that both D&D III and Pathfinder have retained the De Camp/Pratt connection in their descriptions of this item. Does anyone know if the latest incarnation of D&D does the same?)

Strangers in Strange Lands

So, it appears that the latest session report of my Dwimmermount campaign has caused something of a stir, judging from my comments and emails. A number of readers expressed some degree of concern/alarm that I had transgressed an unspoken "rule" of fantasy roleplaying games by making a connection between the world of Dwimmermount and our Earth. I must confess that I did anticipate this sort of reaction. A good many gamers like to "keep their chocolate out of their peanut butter," to speak and having a scientist from 20th century America appear as an NPC does just that. And while I did anticipate this reaction, I obviously don't share it.

But I do understand it. When I first entered the hobby, I tried to get into the various authors and stories the older guys said were "important" for me to read, like Burroughs, DeCamp, Pratt, and so forth. Try as I did, though, I can't deny that, back then, I found a lot of this stuff boring, especially when compared to the "modern" fantasy books that were all the rage back then, like Terry Brooks and David Eddings. And those books did not include modern day characters traveling to other worlds (or, to the future, in the case of Brooks) and interacting with all their fantasy creatures and situations. They were serious fantasy, after all.

Of course, had I bothered to look at Appendix N, I might have noticed the large number included in it who wrote stories that involved a 20th century man traveling into a fantasy world:

• Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions
• Edgar Rice Burroughs's Barsoom, Amtor, and Pellucidar books
• DeCamp and Pratt's Harold Shea books
• P.J. Farmer's World of Tiers series
• Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser do the opposite, being fantasy characters who travel to our Earth, albeit in the past
• H.P. Lovecraft's Dreamlands stories
• Abraham Merritt's Dwellers in the Mirage
• Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné frequently travels to other worlds, including our own.

I could probably go on and cite many more examples, but my point is simply that Gary Gygax, when he had the opportunity to cite the books and authors who were most influential on him, included quite a few examples that involved cross-overs between 20th century Earth and a fantasy world. For that reason, I increasingly find it difficult to see anything "wrong" with doing the same in my D&D campaign.

Looking back, I think what has happened is that, as the fantasy genre has changed over the years, it's opted strongly for "self-contained" worlds that are separated from our own. Although there are exceptions -- Donaldson's Thomas Covenant books, for example -- they're mostly outliers. Instead, when people think of what a fantasy novel should be, they tend to think of The Lord of the Rings as a model (even though Tolkien intended Middle-earth to be the mythic past of this world) rather than something like A Princess of Mars or "The Roaring Trumpet." Somehow, what had been a mainstay of fantasy for the better part of this century has been reduced to a curiosity, particularly among gamers who aren't familiar with the pulp fantasy literature from which the early hobby took inspiration.

All of this is simply a long-winded way of saying that, far from seeing any problems with the introduction of a 20th century man into my OD&D campaign, I see his presence as every bit as natural as the presence of a spaceship in the World of Greyhawk. Of course, lots of gamers still have problems with that too, but at least I'm in good company.

Pulp Fantasy Library: Land of Unreason

The writing duo of Fletcher Pratt and L. Sprague de Camp were, according to Gary Gygax, great influences on Dungeons & Dragons, particularly in the form of the Harold Shea "Enchanter" series. In my opinion, the collaborations of these two authors were generally better than their solo works. I suspect it's because each author reined in the worst aspects of the other when working in concert. A good case in point is 1942's Land of Unreason, a terrific story about a contemporary American who finds himself transported to the land of Faerie.

The book's protagonist is Fred Barber, a diplomat living in Yorkshire, England during World War II. On the night of Midsummer's Eve, when Barber's hosts leave out a bowl of milk as an offering to the fairies, he decides to make light of the custom by swapping the milk for scotch whiskey. As a consequence of his jest, the fairies who come for the milk become intoxicated -- and more than a little perturbed at his actions. They kidnap Barber, spiriting him off to Faerie, where he's taken to the court of King Oberon to answer for his deed.

Oberon offers Barber a chance to return to his own world if he will first atone for his crime by undertaking a mission on behalf of the fairies. He's to go off into the Kobold Hills -- the source of many magic weapons -- and determine if an ancient enemy of the fairies has returned. Barber reluctantly agrees and sets off through the bizarre landscape of Faerie on his mission. While doing so, he meets all manner of equally bizarre characters and his interactions with them, not to mention the quest itself, set the stage for revelations about the nature of Barber's own existence.

Land of Unreason is a fun book. Its depiction of Faerie is one I particularly enjoy, for this otherworldly land functions according to its own weird logic, one that is largely alien -- and often inimical -- to visitors from our reality, like Barber. Its inhabitants are, by turns, helpful, seductive, and terrifying. One gets the very real sense that mortal men were not meant to dwell in Faerie, something I much prefer to the dewy-eyed romanticism one often sees associated with fairies. I'll also admit that I'm a sucker for tales of modern men transported to fantasy realms, a trope that was once a staple of the genre but now seems to be less common (though it hasn't disappeared entirely). It's well worth a look if you've never had the chance to do so.

Pulp Fantasy Library: The Well of the Unicorn

Fletcher Pratt, the only author named twice in Appendix N of the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide, was also a military historian and a wargamer, writing a set of naval miniatures rules in 1943. His 1948 novel, The Well of the Unicorn, clearly shows his love of both history and military matters. Its setting is reminiscent of the early Middle Ages, with the action taking place in an analog of northern Europe, where raiders known as "Vulkings" have invaded the kingdom of Dalarna and imposed taxes so oppressive that many people, including the novel's protagonist, Airar Alvarson, find themselves reduced to serfdom. Of course, Airar isn't content to remain a mere peasant under the rule of foreign invaders and so he sets off to find some means to overcome them and restore his land to its former state.

If all this sounds uninspired and hackneyed, that's because it is. Now. In 1948, though, fantasies of this sort weren't an industry. Remember that The Lord of the Rings was still six years in the future, never mind its legions of imitators. And while The Well of the Unicorn is neither as well-written nor as timeless as Tolkien's novel, it's still a cut above most of its contemporaries. The titular well is a magical spring possessing magical properties, chiefly its ability to bring peace to opponents who agree to drink of its waters. Unsurprisingly, Airar seeks out this well, in the process grappling with the question of free will and human action and the conflict between freedom and societal stability.

The Well of the Unicorn is an enjoyable novel, far more serious than one might expect if all one had read were Pratt's collaborations with L. Sprague De Camp. It's clear that De Camp was the wit and Pratt the philosophical one. There's certainly an earnestness to this book that might not appeal to everyone, but, as I said, when one compares it to the vapidity of a lot of the fantasies produced at the time, it's a welcome diversion and one worth reading if one has the opportunity to do so.

Pulp Fantasy Library: The Carnelian Cube

As further evidence for my thesis that L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt are important keys to understanding Gary Gygax's vision for Dungeons & Dragons, there's their 1948 collaboration, The Carnelian Cube. Like many of the titles listed in Appendix N, this novel is a story of alternate realities and of a modern man transported between them. This is a such a common theme in Gygax's list of "inspirational and educational reading" that I can't help but wonder why no published D&D product, either during his time at TSR or subsequently, dealt with it, except very obliquely. The notion of a person from contemporary society flung into another world has a long pedigree and contains rich veins of adventure to mine. One wonders why it never seems to have had been an appreciable impact on the development of D&D, despite Gary's repeated references to books dealing with precisely this theme.

The Carnelian Cube itself tells the tale of an archeologist named Arthur Finch who confiscates a weird stone -- the eponymous carnelian cube -- from one of the workers at his dig in Turkey. The stone, it turns out, belonged to the Pythagorean philosopher Apollonius of Tyana, to whom later generations attributed various occult powers. When Finch places the stone under his pillow and goes to sleep dreaming of a more perfect, "rational" world, he awakens to find himself in a parallel Earth, where everything is done on a solely rational basis, resulting in the elevation of self-interest above all else. Finch wishes to escape but, unfortunately, the carnelian cube does not make its way with him and he must seek out the parallel version of the worker from whom he confiscated the stone so he can return home. Regain the cube he does, but with unintended effects, for each time he steals it and dreams, he finds himself transported into yet another parallel world that isn't quite what he wanted.

The Carnelian Cube may not have had any specific influence over D&D, but I can see its influence over the World of Greyawk, as Oerth is one of a series of parallel worlds, each one containing versions of the same people and places but subtly different, owing to the unique nature of each parallel. Likewise, if you look at Gary Gygax's work as a whole, you can see plenty of examples where he treated the topic of alternate worlds and realities and the possibilities for adventure therein. One might be able to argue that D&D's portrayal of the multiverse owes something to Gary's enjoyment of alternate world tales. Like most things in the game, the application of its inspirations is often quirky and not immediately obvious. That probably is the case here too, but I am nevertheless left wondering what Dungeons & Dragons -- and the wider hobby -- might be like today if stories like The Carnelian Cube had exercised a more clear influence.

Pulp Fantasy Gallery: The Blue Star

The Blue Star is an alternate universe novel written by Fletcher Pratt in 1952. The cover to the left is of the Ballantine paperback edition, published in 1969, back during the heyday of pulp fantasy reprints aimed at a new generation of readers. It's no surprise to me that Dungeons & Dragons arose at the time that it did, as many were exposed to writers and stories for the first time that they were too young to have read previously. Regardless of what one thinks of Lin Carter's original contributions to the fields of fantasy and horror, there's no question that we all owe him a debt of gratitude for his role in promoting otherwise forgotten authors and tales in the late 60s and early 70s.

The Blue Star takes place in a world where magic works and gunpowder doesn't, resulting in a setting vaguely reminiscent of 18th century central Europe. Its protagonist is Rodvard Bergelin, an inconsequential government clerk who becomes embroiled in a vast plot to overthrow the current regime and create a new society in its place. It's another interesting piece of work by Pratt, both because of his eye for details and because Gary Gygax mentions it by name as an inspiration for D&D.

I grow ever more convinced that most gamers -- and designers -- are ignorant of the powerful influence of alternate universe and Lost World literature on the game and that their ignorance has been one of the engines for pushing the game in directions very different than those that at least Gygax intended for his creation. This is a topic I'm thinking a lot about and will be returning to in a future post, but I need some more time to consider the implications of the thesis I'm developing.

Pulp Fantasy Gallery: Harold Shea

Consistently cited by Gary Gygax as an inspiration for Dungeons & Dragons, L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt's "Harold Shea" series is largely unknown to most gamers today. It's a pity, because these tales are a great antidote to that kind of fastidiousness that says the modern day (or science fiction) and fantasy should never mix. I'm not sure the stories are still in print, but they were a few years ago, so it's worth seeking them out, if only to read some of the stories that influenced Gygax in his creation of the game.