Polyhedron: Issue #19

Issue #19 of Polyhedron (September 1984), like the previous issue, features a cover illustration promoting one of TSR's licensed RPGs, in this case The Adventures of Indiana Jones. The reputation of the Indiana Jones game has long – and somewhat understandably – suffered as a result of the game's narrow focus and presentation, squandering its real potential as a vehicle for pulp adventure. The scenario included in this issue, "The Temple of the Chachopoyan Warriors "(written by Doug Niles), does little to correct this. The adventure reframes the opening scenes of Raiders of the Lost Ark as a means of introducing the game and its rules to newcomers. While adequate to that specific task, it also reinforces the sense that the RPG would never really rise above its limited source material and that's a pity.

This issue's "Two Cents" is a rebuttal to last issue's rebuttal to another article, appearing in issue #14 – yikes! If nothing else, it's a reminder that roleplayers have always liked to argue with another about almost anything. It's also a reminder that my patience is very limited when it comes to such things, then or now. That said, this issue's installment, by Christopher Gandy, at least makes a few solid points, most importantly that, for many players, roleplaying is an escape and an opportunity to do and experience things they'd never be able – or want – to do in real life. There's nothing wrong with this and it can, in fact, serve a useful purpose.

"Lost Ships, Madmen, and Pirate Gold" by Antonio "Crazy Tony" O'Malley is a fun article intended for use with Gangbusters, Call of Cthulhu, Daredevils, or any other roleplaying game set in the 1930s (interestingly, Indiana Jones is not mentioned). The general thrust of the three-page piece concerns the care and feeding of pulp adventure campaigns. O'Malley covers a wide range of topics – legendary treasures, historical mysteries, gangsters, and ghosts, among others – with an eye toward offering advice on how best to make best use of them in play. The article is both creative and practical and I remember enjoying it when I first read it long ago, an opinion that didn't much alter upon re-reading it.

"... And the Gods Will Have Their Way" by Bob Blake concludes the "Prophecy of Brie" series of adventures begun back in issue #16. The adventure takes up the interior twelve pages of this issue and is designed to be removeable by bending back the staples that hold it together. Though I never mad direct use of it, I appreciated its attempt to provide a consistent cultural backdrop for the scenario, in this case, pseudo-Celtic, rather than the usual vague mishmash found in most Dungeons & Dragons modules at the time. On the other hand, the fact that this "mini-module" took up half of the issue's page count was a bit of an annoyance. As always, I suspect that the editors of Polyhedron were struggling with figuring just what the 'zine was supposed to be and how it differentiated itself from TSR's other gaming periodical, Dragon.

Frank Mentzer presents the results of the RPGA Network Item Design Contest, consisting of six winners selected from a pool of "almost a hundred." The items were judged in the categories of "usefulness," "originality," and "rules compliance." The grand prize winner, whose creator received a lifetime membership to the RPGA, is the talisman of the beast. Written for AD&D, the talisman enables its wearer to shapechange into the animal associated with it, as well as to speak with animals of the same type. Usable seven times a week, any attempt at an eighth use traps the wearer in anima form until the curse is dispelled by the Great Druid. With the exception of the taser rifle, intended for use with Star Frontiers, all the other winners are for AD&D – a reminder, I suppose, of just how much more popular it was than any of TSR's other offerings.

Tim Kilpin's "If Adventure Has a Game ... er, Name, It Must Be Indiana Jones!" is a two-page overview of The Adventures of Indiana Jones Role-Playing Game. It's essentially an advertisement masquerading as an article, though I do appreciate that there are some quotes from David Cook, in which he explains his intentions while designing the game. Alas, his intentions included not just a desire for "fast action" but also hewing as closely as possible to the characters and events of the two movies released at the time. Not to sound like a broken record, but it's a real shame that TSR either didn't (or couldn't – I've seen claims that it was Lucasfilm that dictated this) open up the world of Indiana Jones a little more, so as to include original characters and situations. Ah, well!

James M. Ward's "Cryptic Alliance of the Bi-Month" looks at The Created, a group of sentient androids and robots that believe themselves superior to the human beings who created them. The Created make for a great antagonistic cryptic alliance in Gamma World campaigns, which is why I like them. Compared to earlier articles in this series, this one doesn't add much to our knowledge beyond making The Created even more explicitly villainous than we already suspected (their leader is android/robot hybrid called V.A.D.E.R. X and, no, there's no explanation for that acronym). 

"The Laser Pod" by Jon Pickens is a nice – and very useful – addition to the Star Frontiers starship combat system found in Knight Hawks. One of the oddities of baseline Knight Hawks is that fighter craft are too small to carry any type of laser weapons. Instead, they're armed exclusively with rockets. While this makes sense within the context of the starship construction rules, it nevertheless felt a little disappointing to those of who'd grown up imagining fighters dogfighting with lasers. Pickens presents a clever little option that simultaneously stays true to the original rules while also giving us laser fanatics what we've wanted all along. Bravo.

Finally, there's "Dispel Confusion" with more questions and answers about TSR's various RPGs. While reading this issue's sampling, a few thoughts occurred to me. First, the AD&D questions are overwhelmingly technical in nature, which is to say, they're about how to interpret the text of the rules as written, whereas the questions for most of the other games are much more in the realm of advice on how to handle situations the rules don't explicitly cover. This might simply be a consequence of AD&D having more rules than other TSR games, but I suspect it may speak to the culture surrounding AD&D as well. Second, there are no questions in this issue about Boot Hill. I can't help but wonder if this is reflective of its relatively small fanbase at the time.

As always, Polyhedron continues to be something of a moving target. Every issue offers a different mix of content, coverage, and quality, which, I suppose, is fairly typical of a zine that is increasingly relying on outside submissions for its content. Still, I find the inconsistency a little bit frustrating, making my enjoyment of this series similarly inconsistent.

Imagine Magazine: Issue #28

Issue #28 of Imagine (July 1985) is another "special" issue, in this case "pulps." I try not to be too judgmental on this particular topic, since I understand what is meant by "pulps," namely broad, over-the-top action, as exemplified by many of the stories that appeared in the pages of pulp magazines during the 1920s, '30, and '40s. Yet, as I regularly point out, "pulp" is no more a genre than is anime (another term frequently misused by those unfamiliar with it); the pulps were filled with stories of many different genres, from fantasy to crime stories to historical fiction, with many more besides, most of which shared only the paper on which they were printed and nothing more. 

Paul Mason's "The Masked Avengers" presents itself as "an introduction to pulp rolegames," which in this case means Daredevils, Justice Inc., Gangbusters, Chill, and Call of Cthulhu. According to Mason, pulp stories were "stirring tales of two-fisted action" featuring "rugged individuals fighting for truth, justice, and the American way against the forces of evil in a variety of exotic locations." He's correct that that's the way "pulps" are popularly understood, though the pedant in me recoils at the narrow understanding of the contents of these magazines. Oh well.

".... And Action!" by Mark Davies and Derrick Norton is, in a bit of serendipity, an article that demonstrates well just how much of a mess AD&D's combat rules were. The article takes five pages to elucidate the game's initiative system, something that Moldvay Basic handles succinctly in a few short paragraphs. Chris Felton's "Lycanthropy," on the other hand, is a four-page discussion of lycanthropes in D&D and AD&D, fleshing them out for use as opponents, NPCs, and even player characters. As is often the case, it's not a topic that matters much to me personally, but the article is nicely done and engaging – exactly what I want out of gaming articles. Felton returns, along with Paul Cockburn, in "The Gods of the Domains," this issue's Pelinore article. The piece fleshes out a few of the gods, providing them with mythology and relationships to one another. Accompanying the article is "Carraway Keep and the White Order" by Graeme Drysdale, which describes an organization for magic-users and elves.

David Hill's "A Look at the Cthulhu Mythos" is an overview of its (literary) history, detailing all the authors who have contributed to it and the ways in which their contributions changed it. Short but interesting, I was glad to see an article like this in a gaming magazine. Marcus Rowland's "A Nice Night for Screaming" is a murder mystery scenario intended for use with a variety of "pulp" RPGs, including the Adventures of Indiana Jones. It's a tight, well written adventure, as one would expect of Rowland. Chris Felton has yet another article in this issue, "The English Daredevil," which examines this pulp archetype from the perspective of England in the 1930s, with suggestions for modifying the rules of various games to make them a little less USA-centric. It's a good article; my only complaint is that it's too short and narrow. I'd love to have seen a longer treatment of the subject.

Hilary Robinson's "Time for the Little People" is a science fiction short story dealing with interactions between Terrans and an alien race. Sadly, this month's review focus entirely on TSR products, for AD&D and Marvel Super Heroes. Roger Musson's "Stirge Corner" discusses the potential pitfalls of a campaign less focused on dungeon delving and defeating monsters and more on politics and other social interactions. In particular, he ponders how to award experience points in D&D campaigns of this sort. As always, there's lots of food for thought. 

This month's "Fantasy Media" is written by Neil Gaiman, which is interesting from a historical perspective, if nothing else. Gaiman reviews a movie I've never heard of, Titan Find, which he dubs an "Alien rip-off," as well as Runaway (starring Tom Selleck, which he likes well enough), Repo Man (which he also liked), and Cloak and Dagger (another positive review). What struck me reading this column was how many movies whose existence I had forgotten; it was quite a trip down memory lane being reminded of these. And, as always, there are comics I didn't bother to read.

Imagine continues to intrigue me, partly because I'd never seen it back in the day and partly because its content is noticeably different from what I'd read in Dragon or even White Dwarf (to which I had more regular but nevertheless intermittent access). Articles are fairly hit or miss, it's true, but they also tend to be longer and off the beaten path in terms of content. There's quite a lot of good material here, along with some forgettable stuff too. The good material, though, is of very high quality and it's a shame that the magazine didn't last longer. As the conclusion of this series draws closer, I find myself slightly saddened.

REVIEW: Weird Adventures

I've had a copy of Weird Adventures for a while now and have started writing a review of it several times, but something has always stopped me. That something is my own inability to describe it concisely without resorting either to banalities or oh-so-clever bunkum: "Putting the pulp back into 'pulp fantasy'!" or "The setting Eberron dreamed it could be!" And yet, those two descriptions, overstated though they might be, do accurately reflect some of the brilliance of Weird Adventures. I say "some," because there's so much in this 165-page book that I still have a hard time getting a handle on all of it. Consequently, this review will be by turns rambling and effusive ("How's that different than most of your reviews?" I hear some of you saying), often both.

Written by Trey Causey of the blog From the Sorcerer's Skull, Weird Adventures is "an exciting RPG setting" that's system-neutral but clearly intended to be used with old school D&D and its clones and simulacra. The book is mostly free of any game mechanics or statistics, but, when it does present them, it adopts Swords & Wizardry-style agnosticism toward those things, like Armor Class, that divide the Church of Old School. This means that, to get the most out of Weird Adventures, a referee is going to need to do some preparation beforehand; this is not a "ready to use" product, though the amount of preparation needed is probably pretty small.

As you've probably already guessed, Weird Adventures draws its primary inspiration from tales of pulp adventure. This is something many games and gaming products have done before, but what sets Weird Adventures apart from them is that it does so to provide a fantasy setting. That is, the world of Weird Adventures is not Earth during the 1930s but rather one that is both similar to and different from it. Its similarities are some broad details -- geography and history -- while its differences are more specific, from names ("Meropic Ocean" instead of "Atlantic Ocean," "Ealdered" instead of "Europe," "Freedonia" instead of "Texas," etc.) to the existence of magic and non-human races. The result is a world that is at once familiar but alien and, in my opinion, a vastly better canvas for fantastical adventure than the typical alternate histories and parallel Earths that plague many prior attempts to produce settings inspired by the pulps.

The book consists of five chapters and an introduction. It's written in a breezy, conversational style and utilizes a two-column layout that's easy to read. Throughout there is art. both vintage and original, that nicely sets the mood, along with "props" -- advertisements, newspaper clippings, maps -- that also contribute to a real sense of place. At the same time, I can't deny that it's a lot to assimilate, in large part because there are enough divergences from our world that, unless one has a good memory, it's easy to assume something remains as it does in our world when in fact it does not. That's not necessarily a problem; Weird Adventures isn't the kind of game product that encourages, let alone demands, a strict adherence to its "canon." But Causey has done such a thoroughly delightful job in presenting his pulp fantastical vision of the 1930s that I'd feel bad about forgetting even small details.

Weird Adventures focuses on the nations of Zephyria (the Western Hemisphere), with a particular emphasis on The Union (the USA), though the lands of Borea (Canada), Zingaro (Mexico), and Asciana (South America) are also treated, if much more briefly. The bulk of Weird Adventures consists of an extended gazetteer of The Union's many regions, from New Lludd in the northeast to southern New Ylourgne on the Zingaran Gulf to Yronburg in the Midwest and San Tiburon in the West. Scattered throughout this gazetteer are the descriptions of unique locations, NPCs, random tables, adventure seeds, and similar inspirational ideas to give players and referees alike a sense of just what you can do with the setting. It's a good approach, I think, though, as I noted earlier, there are few (if any) game stats, so you're left to your own devices in figuring out the effects of bootleg alchemicals beyond the "purpureal ether" given as an example.

An even larger gazetteer (close to 80 pages) is devoted to the City of Empire, more commonly known as simply "the City," this world's version of New York. In addition to maps of the city's five constituent "baronies" -- Empire Island, Rookend, Marquesa, Shancks, and Lichmond -- there are descriptions of 42 unique locales. Many of these descriptions cover not just the basics of the locale but also their history, inhabitants, and ideas for adventures set there. I found this gazetteer even more charming than the previous one, because Causey was able to show us in greater detail how all the various elements of this setting fit together into a whole. Like any good old school game writer, though, he provides lots of examples to spur individual creativity. I wasn't even considering the possibility of using Weird Adventures in any way, but, reading through just its descriptions of its ethnic enclaves, I couldn't help but be inspired. I mean, who wouldn't want to set a hardboiled detective adventure in Little Carcosa?

Concluding the 165-page book is a selection of "Weird Menaces," monsters unique to the setting of Weird Adventures. These are presented in a mechanically minimalist way, but with lots of inspirational flavor. So, in addition to crabmen and gatormen, there are hit fiends, hill-billy giants, lounge lizards, pink elephants, and reds (evil promoters of the diabolical philosophy of "communaltarianism"). Like everything else in this book, it's a fun selection of opponents that draws equally on pop culture, urban myth, and real world history for inspiration. It's good stuff and offers a near-perfect example of how to present monsters that tap into the imaginations of players so that they are more than just lists of meaningless statistics.

If the foregoing makes it sound as if I thought Weird Adventures flawless, you're pretty close to correct. My only substantive criticism is that, by opting for a largely system-agnostic approach, referees are left to their own devices in adapting this material. That's not a big deal for most old schoolers, but it could be a turn-off to some who prefer their game products more "plug and play." On the other hand, Weird Adventures is so cleverly conceived and attractively presented that I doubt many will care about such niggling details as game rules. What Trey Causey has done is give us a sumptuous melange of D&D fantasy, alt-history, Lovecraftian horror, and Smithian weirdness, served up with heaping helpings of myth and legend from every possible source and offered on a plate ripped from the pages of the pulps. I can't praise Weird Adventures enough; it's a superb gaming product and one of the most enjoyable things I've read in many a month. Do yourself a favor and check it out.

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

Buy This If: You're a fan of the pulp magazines of the early 20th century and are looking for a setting that takes inspiration from all their ideas.
Don't Buy This If: You have no interest in pulp fantasy or gaming in the early 20th century.

Retrospective: Daredevils

Released in 1982, FGU's Daredevils (written by Bob Charrette and Paul Hume, the duo who had previously created the well-regarded Bushido and would later go on to create Shadowrun) was the first "pulp" game I ever remember seeing, let alone playing. In RPG-speak, "pulp" is treated as if it were a genre, usually exemplified by anything from genuine pulp fiction featuring characters like The Shadow and Doc Savage to those inspired by them (or their imitators) in other media, such as Indiana Jones. The pedant in me recoils at this, as pulp magazines covered a wide range of genres and what gamers nowadays call "pulp" is actually only one type of "hero pulp," focusing on what the subtitle of Daredevils calls "action and adventure in the two-fisted Thirties," that is, over-the-top adventure tales between the two World Wars. Alas for nitpickers everywhere, the terminology ship sailed long ago and, accurate or not, "pulp" now means something very specific in a RPG context and, though Daredevils was written before this semantic neologism took had taken hold, it was nevertheless written to give players the chance to explore the Amazon for lost cities, take down flamboyant gangsters in a mob war, and, of course, fight Nazis as they seek out occult artifacts in the world's hidden places.

Daredevils came in a boxed set, consisting of two volumes -- a 64-page rulebook and a 32-page adventure booklet with four sample adventures, along with some charts and dice. FGU games have a reputation for being very long and complex, but the reality is that most of them were both shorter in length and no more complicated than the three volumes of AD&D. Daredevils in particular puts this myth to rest, as its rules, while certainly more complex than, say, OD&D or Traveller, are nevertheless quite concise and straightforward. Characters have six attributes -- Wit, Will, Strength, Deftness, Speed, and Health -- and players may allocate 75 points amongst them on a one-for-one basis over a possible range of 1-40. Higher attribute scores than 40 are possible with training and experience.

Ranges of attribute scores are grouped, with each group having an "effect die," which was used mechanically in cases where that attribute mattered. Thus, a character with a Strength of 30, which is in the "25-34" attribute group, had an effect die of 2D6 for determining hand-to-hand damage and so forth. Daredevils also had "saving throws," which were really just a type of ability check -- two types, actually, as there were "attribute saving throws" and "critical saving throws." The difference was whether one divided the relevant attribute by 2 or by 3, with the latter being used in cases of extreme difficulty. Players must roll equal to or under the saving throw number on 1D20 to succeed, with 1 being a critical success and 20 being a critical failure.

Daredevils had no character classes, but instead had skills. Skills were ranked on 1-100 scale, but skill rolls were made on 1D20, after dividing a skills rank by 5. Sometimes, the difference between the number needed and the result of the dice roll was used to generate an "effect number." It's a game mechanic I'm very fond of myself and I wonder if it was from Daredevils that I got the idea. The number of skills one could purchase (and their ranks) was based on "development points" that were themselves a function of a character's age. Age was determined randomly by a 4D10+12 roll, with the age also being the number of development points a character received. Each development point could be exchanged for a particular game mechanical benefit, such as acquiring a new skill, 2D6 points in an existing skill, or 1D3 points in an attribute. Character generation obviously favored older characters, but characters older than 44 suffered penalties to their physical attributes that limited their effectiveness in some aspects of game play.

Daredevils showed that, even in 1982, the hobby's wargames roots were still very close to the surface. Its movement and combat rules were very persnickety, with an emphasis on using miniatures (or markers of some sort) to adjudicate many of their rules. There are many modifiers and optional rules, dealing with critical hits, hit locations, and the like. However, most of them could easily be dispensed with or used only in specific circumstances when the referee felt that the added detail was warranted. Much like D&D, the precise rules could be easily dispensed without too much trouble. On the pother hand, the extra detail is useful. I know my friends and I found the automatic fire rules quite helpful when running a mass battle against hordes of enemy soldiers in a desert scenario.

Daredevils includes optional rules for "special powers" -- low-level super powers -- and luck, the latter of which is a limited type of "hero point" system. Also included are details on the 1930s world, lists of animals, weaponry, generic NPCs, and some solid advice on building adventures. Advanced rules of various sorts are present as well, for players and referees who want them. What's interesting to me is that the rules include a wide variety options for character improvement, many of them time-consuming. As befits an older RPG, Daredevils is clearly designed with long-term campaign play rather than one-shots in mind, although I think Daredevils could be used quite creditably for short campaigns as well.

Daredevils is a very fun game, not without its flaws, but I think it holds up rather well after nearly 30 years. The rules are a nice mix of randomness and player choice and support a range of options. It's also a game from a time before "genre emulation" meant heavy-handed rules designed to enforce a particular mode of play. It's a wide-open game that can be used to handle a wide variety of action and adventure campaigns, a fact FGU built upon with its several follow-up products that each presented scenarios focused on a particular sub-type of hero pulp. If you're interested, the game and its supplements are still available from FGU at very reasonable prices. I recommend them highly.

Mo(o)re Northwest Smith

I've been greatly enjoying Northwest of Earth from Paizo's Planet Stories line of reprints. I'd never read these pulp science fiction tales before, so it's a real treat. Despite the years, they hold up remarkably well. Yes, the science is completely fanciful and would almost certainly have been fanciful even at the time they were written, but that doesn't adversely affect the fiction at all. In some ways, I think it works to the advantage of the stories. When you read them, you won't get caught up in technobabble and speculation and can just focus on the characters and situations, both of which are extremely well done and engaging.

Last night, before before bed, I was reading the story "Dust of the Gods," in which Northwest Smith finds himself, once again, out of work, out of money, and almost out of booze. So he and his faithful friend, the Venusian Yarol, consider hiring themselves out a wild-eyed little Earthman whose employment has already scared off several toughs. After listening to the madman's tale, the two companions confer with one another.

"Did you believe that yarn?"

"Don't know -- I've come across some pretty funny things here and there. He does act half-cracked, of course, but -- well, those fellows back there certainly found something out of the ordinary, and they didn't go all the way at that."

"Well, if he'll buy us a drink I say let's take the job," said Yarol. "I'd as soon be scared to death later as die of thirst now. What do you say?"

"Good enough," shrugged Smith. "I'm thirsty too."

With dialog like that, it's hard not to enjoy these stories. They take place in a setting that reminds me a bit of Space: 1889 except with "modern" rather than Victorian trappings. All the worlds of the solar system boast intelligent species and Earthmen have entered a dark universe whose true history they do not understand. Lurking in the background there are secrets and mysteries and things Man was not meant to know. Into this strides Northwest Smith, a latter day gunslinger, with his scarred face and no-color eyes. These stories are a terrific blend of science fiction, horror, Westerns, and the weird tale. They're great fun and it's hard not to be inspired by them.

Before there was Han Solo ...

... there was Northwest Smith. Paizo Publishing has collected all of C. L. Moore's Northwest Smith stories under a single cover as part of their excellent Planet Stories line. If you're a fan of pulp science fiction that, according to Fritz Leiber, is part Abraham Merritt, part Robert E. Howard, and part H. P. Lovecraft, you're in for a treat. This is a superb collection and Paizo, particularly Erik Mona, deserve a huge round of applause for making the literary roots of our hobby once again available to a new generation.