Interview: Rudy Kraft (Part II)

4. Were you ever formally an employee of Chaosium or were you simply a freelance writer and designer for the company?

I was never an employee of Chaosium. All the work I did for them was as a freelance writer and designer. I was, for four months, an employee of Judges Guild. I was never an employee of any other game company although I was flown to Las Vegas to interview with Coleco for a job as a game designer in Connecticut. I was recommended for this job by Jennell Jaquays, with whom I had worked on several projects. I ended up turning the job down because at that time, Coleco only had a handheld gaming device with which I was not impressed. To be fair, I have never used a handheld gaming device or controller other than for the original Pong. All my electronic gaming has been on computers, so my judgment in this area might have been flawed.

Also, the pay being offered by Coleco was not significantly above what I was making as a combination freelance game designer, book seller, and legal secretary for my mother. And after spending four winters in Ithaca, New York and one winter in Decatur, Illinois, I preferred to live in the Bay Area to avoid snow. Other than my four months with Judges Guild, I was never a formal employee of a game company. Even my work as editor of Gryphon was done as a freelancer where I got paid a certain amount of money for gathering the articles and editing them for each issue of the magazine.  

5. You also wrote a number of products published by Judges Guild. How did that come about and what do you recall about it?

My involvement with Judges Guild came about when Greg decided to exclude the Broken Tree content from Snake Pipe Hollow.  As best I can tell, he did so for reasons of space not quality. Greg told me that they had signed an agreement with Judges Guild to produce licensed RuneQuest products. He suggested that I expand the material and submit it to them. I did so. I do not have any detailed memories of my work on that project, but it did lead to a job offer. Unlike the job offer from Coleco, which occurred several years later, I accepted this job offer and moved to Decatur, Illinois in January 1980. I remained there for 4 months during which time I designed and worked on several projects for the Judges Guild.  

I attended the Origins game conventions in Philadelphia in June of 1979 and again in 1980. I wanted to make contacts and look for work in the gaming industry. The job with Judges Guild partially arose out of the 1979 trip. My work on Frontiers of Alusia with SPI arose out of the 1980 trip.

I remember many things about my involvement with Judges Guild quite clearly and some not at all.  While I was Judges Guild, I injured my back moving heavy boxes. Prior to that time, I had no problems with my back. Since that time, I have had intermittent chronic back pain which requires precautions to avoid ongoing pain. I think it’s likely I would have eventually had back problems anyway, but I didn’t need it to trigger at age 22.  

I left Judges Guild because the owner, Bob Bledsaw, became concerned because there was a burglary in a building somewhat near the Judges Guild offices. He decided to address the burglary by buying a gun and leaving it in the office so whoever was there could protect themselves. This probably seemed like a perfectly sensible plan from the perspective of someone living in downstate Illinois, but it seemed crazy to me as a 22-year-old from Palo Alto, California. As a result, I left the Judges Guild and went home.

However, this was not a hostile breakup. I continued to produce projects for Judges Guild for several years thereafter. I began to represent Judges Guild at San Francisco Bay area game conventions by running a booth in the dealer hall. I don’t remember the specific financial arrangements, but it was financially profitable, albeit not greatly so, for both Judges Guild and myself.  

The RPGGeek website shows that I had been involved in 26 projects as a designer. Some of them are duplicate entries or things where I only contributed a short element. However, 10 of them were separate Judges Guild products. 

My contributions to the Book of Treasure Maps II, Book of Treasure Maps III, Legendary Duck Tower, Duck Pond, and Portals of Torsh were done as a Judges Guild employee. Treasure Maps II involved me completing work that someone else had already started. I started Treasure Maps III but Edward Mortimer completed it after I left. Legendary Duck Tower had been started by Jaquays while she was a Judges Guild employee. I finished it while I was working there. Its title was a pun on her Dark Tower D&D adventure. Obviously, Duck Pond took the punning title sequence one step further.

The other five products were items that I designed freelance after I left Judges Guild. Wondrous Relics was inspired by my RuneQuest product, Plunder. I thought it would be fun to make a bunch of new magic items for Dungeons & Dragons. I should pull out a copy and see if there is anything worth using in my current campaign.

The three portal products were designed to create an interconnected series of worlds where each product would provide a background for a world which Dungeon Masters could add to their campaign, if they wanted to have multi-planet campaign.  

I don’t remember much about design process of each of these items except that in September of 1980, I bought an Apple 2+ computer. From that point on I was typing my work, and my mother’s legal work, on that computer. At the time, there wasn’t any standardized word processing program, so I still submitted everything on paper, and it had to be retyped by the game publisher. I don’t remember the specific word processing program I used, but it was nowhere near as user friendly as the current ones.  So, for example, if I accidentally deleted something, there was no control Z to bring it right back. I had to retype it. Thus, there were number of occasions where work was lost because of accidental deletions or a failure to save combined with a computer crash, which also occurred much more often than it does now. In addition, there was no internal hard drive, so everything had to be saved onto a separate floppy disk.

I stopped representing Judges Guild at Bay area conventions in 1983 or 1984 after I got a part-time job at a local bookstore which became a full-time job that lasted until 1985 when I left to go to law school. 

Interview: Rudy Kraft (Part I)

A long-standing and popular feature of this blog has been its interviews with designers, artists, and other luminaries of the hobby. From the beginning, I’ve believed it’s important to preserve and share their memories, insights, and experiences. They deserve to be heard not only by those of us who remember those now-ancient days firsthand, but also by later generations of roleplayers who might otherwise never encounter the stories behind the games they love.

That’s why I’m always especially pleased to speak with someone whose contributions were largely unknown to me in my own youth. Such conversations are reminders of just how many hands shaped this hobby in its formative years.

Rudy Kraft, who was involved in the early days of Chaosium – or The Chaosium, as it was then styled – very kindly agreed to answer a series of questions I put to him. As you’ll soon discover, he did so with remarkable generosity and detail. What follows is the first part of our conversation; the second will appear tomorrow.

1. How did you first become involved in the hobby of role playing?

I first got involved in gaming as a hobby because of my father. I was the oldest of five children—although we started gaming before the fifth child was born. We had family games of Clue and Monopoly—mostly Clue. At some point, my father bought me a Christmas present of the old Avalon Hill game Afrika Korps. He and I played that a lot often leaving it set up on the desk in my parents' bedroom. Because I liked this game, he bought additional Avalon Hill Games at least once a year until I went away to college in 1974.

Starting in elementary school, I became an enthusiastic reader of both science fiction and fantasy.  During this time, I read and reread The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and Asimov’s Foundation series on multiple occasions.  

During high school, some friends and I created a space exploration war game where one person acted as the moderator and the other people explored a star map from different locations until they ran into each other and presumably fought a war.  

When I was at Cornell University, I read a lot of science fiction and touched the periphery of SF fandom. In one fanzine I read about this new game, Dungeons & Dragons. This almost certainly occurred in August 1975. The game sounded interesting to me, so I ordered a copy of it which I received in September. Once I looked at it, it became obvious to me that I did not know how to get started in the game and I set it aside.

In October, I overheard two people talking about playing Dungeons & Dragons. It turned out that there was a small group of people playing the game regularly in the same dormitory where I ate my meals.  They played every Saturday, so I first started playing Dungeons & Dragons on the second Saturday in October 1975. In fact, I had a 50th anniversary celebratory session in October this year where, for the first time in years, I played rather than DMed a game of Dungeon & Dragons.

Following that first session, I became very addicted to playing Dungeon & Dragons to the point where it significantly adversely affected my grades. During those years, I bought Empire of the Petal Throne and Metamorphosis Alpha, but I never persuaded anyone to play them instead of D&D. 

REVIEW: Sun County

When RuneQuest burst upon the roleplaying game scene in 1978, it quickly became known for both its percentile-based skill system (which would later become the basis for Chaosium's house system, Basic Role-Playing) and its rich Bronze Age fantasy setting, Glorantha. Glorantha is steeped in mythology, both real and fictional, which not only distinguishes it from other fantasy RPG settings but has also made it one of my favorite imaginary settings of all time. 

Between 1979 and 1983, Chaosium released numerous superb supplements, many of them boxed sets, fleshing out Glorantha to the delectation of its growing legion of fans. Then, in 1984, Chaosium entered into a deal with wargames publisher, Avalon Hill, who'd publish a new edition of RuneQuest but stripped of Glorantha. Though the company reversed this decision later, its support for Glorantha was desultory at best, much to the disappointment of long-time devotees. 

I wasn't one of these devotees. I knew of RuneQuest, of course, but I was a diehard player of Dungeons & Dragons and indeed somewhat skeptical of RQ at the time. Consequently, I largely missed out on the game until the early 1990s, when Avalon Hill hired Ken Rolston to revitalize its version of the game. This he did through a renewed focus on Glorantha. His tenure kicked off a RuneQuest renaissance that gave birth to multiple excellent expansions of Glorantha, many of which are still regarded as classics. This was the period when I first fell in love with the setting, a love that has only grown in the three decades since. 

Currently, RuneQuest and Glorantha are undergoing what might well be called a second renaissance. Since the publication of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha in 2018, Chaosium has released a steady stream of excellent new material for the game and its setting. Just as importantly, the company has made a lot of its older material available again in electronic and print-on-demand form, both through its own store and through DriveThruRPG. Its most recent classic re-release is Sun County, written by Michael O'Brien, with contributions from Rolston, Glorantha creator Greg Stafford, and others. 

Before discussing the contents of the book itself, I'd like to briefly comment on the 2024 remastering. The book's interior layout is clear and straightforward. It makes use of two columns and splashes of column – titles, headers and footers, tables, etc. It's been years since I saw the 1992 original, so I can't say if the use of color is new, but it's attractive nonetheless. There's a new foreword by Shannon Appelcline, which contextualizes Sun County within the larger history of RuneQuest (some of which I've mentioned above). As someone who enjoys learning about the history of the hobby, I love this sort of stuff and am glad it was included. 

Originally published in 1992, the 2024 re-release of Sun County is a 124-page sourcebook, packed with detailed setting material, rules expansions, and adventure scenarios. The first half of the book is dedicated to fleshing out the region of Sun County itself – its geography, culture, and history – while the second half presents a series of interconnected adventure that showcase different aspects of the rigid society of the Sun Dome Templars, a militant theocracy devoted to Yelmalio, Son of the Sun. As a setting, Sun County is one of isolationism and decline. The Sun Domers are a proud but stiflingly conservative people, desperately clinging to a past that has long since left them behind. Their deity, Yelmalio, is cold and indifferent sun and their stiff hierarchy, strict moral codes, and inflexible traditions make them an excellent counterpoint to the vibrant and increasingly chaotic world around them. Sun County leans into these themes, both in its descriptive text and in the several included scenarios.

From a presentation standpoint, Sun County stands out for its strong authorial voice. This is not an encyclopedic setting book filled with dispassionate information but rather a living, breathing culture, conveyed through in-character documents, legends, and anecdotes (as well as game mechanics). This has long been a hallmark of the better Gloranthan materials, but Sun County does it with a degree of clarity and usability that makes it, in my opinion, much more accessible than other books of this kind. The reader still needs to be already familiar with Glorantha, of course, but Sun County does a good job of explaining itself without too many references to other products.

The reader is treated to details about the cult of Yelmalio and related subcults, as well as the Sun Dome Temple itself, the seat of both religion and government within the County. Equally well detailed are its elite soldiers and citizen levies, which play significant roles here. A collection of random encounters and events serve both as sparks for adventures and to highlight unique aspects of Sun County, like the Yelmalian beadles who deal with unlicensed beggars or succubi who prey upon the sexually inhibited Sun Domers. These sorts of details flesh out the setting in straightforward, practical ways that I appreciate.

As I mentioned earlier, slightly more than half the book consists of adventures set in and around Sun County. Two of these pertain to a Harvest Festival in the town of Garhound, just beyond its borders. Garhound makes a great starting point for non-Yelmalian characters to visit the land of the Sun Domers. Another scenario affords characters the opportunity to become landowners in the County, while two further adventures concern the locating of lost artifacts associated with Yelmalio. There's also a collection of ideas for the Gamemaster to flesh out on his own. Taken together, these scenarios cover a lot of ground, though I do wish there'd been a few that dealt more directly with navigating the ins and outs of Sun County's often-strict society. 

The book features strong black-and-white illustrations by Merle Insinga and Roger Raupp (the latter of whom also did the cover) that reinforce the setting’s stark, sun-bleached aesthetic. The imagery depicts the militaristic and hierarchical nature of Sun County, though there are also plenty of pieces that highlight other sides of the setting, like the contests of the Harvest Festival and the hidden threats to the region. The maps, though functional, are generally not as evocative as those found in earlier, Chaosium era products like Pavis or Big Rubble, but they serve their purpose well enough.

Sun County is a great setting book. It captures something rarely seen in RPGs: a genuinely believable culture, shaped by its environment and history, filled with tensions that make it ripe for adventure. This is precisely the kind of supplement I like, where cultural and philosophical conflicts drive the action as much as physical threats. More than thirty years after its original release, Sun County holds up very well. Its portrayal of the Sun Domers is compelling but nuanced, like the best Gloranthan supplements, then or now. It makes a great addition to any campaign set in or near New Pavis and the River of Cradles. Sun County's main downsides are that it was written for RuneQuest's third (Avalon Hill) edition and, as such, its game statistics and the political situation depicted within it will need to be updated if used in conjunction with the current version of the game. That's a small criticism of what is otherwise an excellent and well-presented supplement. I hope its publication is a portent of more to come in this vein from Chaosium.

Retrospective: Prince Valiant: The Story Telling Game

When I was kid, I always looked forward to the Sunday edition of the local newspaper, because it had this enormous color comics section. Truly, there were dozens upon dozens of these strips – everything from Peanuts to Garfield to Hagar the Horrible and more. Also present were a number of "old" comics, like Mark Trail, Apartment 3-G, and Mary Worth, whose continued presence baffled me. Who read these comics? Certainly not I, nor any of my childhood friends. 

However, there was one "old" comic that I often did read: Prince Valiant. I did so partly because of the comic's subject matter, Prince Valiant was set, as its subtitle proclaimed, "in the days of King Arthur" and I had long been a devoted fan of Arthurian legendry. Furthermore, Prince Valiant was beautifully drawn and had a very – to me – strange presentation. There were no speech balloons or visual onomatopoeia, just lots of text arranged like storybook. 

I was never a consistent reader of Prince Valiant, but, when I did take the time to do so, I almost always enjoyed it. There was a sincerity to the comic that I appreciated as a youngster, as well as an infectious love of heroism and romance (in all senses of the term). I wouldn't say that Prince Valiant played a huge role in my subsequent fondness for tales of fantastic adventure, but there's no doubt that it played some role, hence why I took an interest in Greg Stafford's 1989 roleplaying game adaptation when it was released.

Stafford is probably best known as the man behind Glorantha, the setting of RuneQuest. For me, though, Pendragon will always be his magnum opus – and one of the few RPGs I consider "perfect." Consequently, when I eventually learned of the existence of this game, I was intensely interested. How would it differ from Pendragon? What specifically did it bring to the table that justified its existence as a separate game rather than, say, a supplement to Pendragon? These are questions whose answers I wouldn't learn for quite some time. 1989 was something of a tumultuous year for me; I was busy with other things, and it'd only be sometime in the mid-1990s that I would finally lay eyes upon Prince Valiant.

The most obvious way that Prince Valiant differs from Pendragon is revealed in its subtitle: "The Story-Telling Game." Now, some might immediately think that, in this instance, "storytelling" is simply a synonym for "roleplaying" and you'd be (mostly) right – sorta. The important thing to bear in mind is that Prince Valiant is intended as an introductory game for newcomers to this hobby of ours. Consequently, Stafford tries to use common sense words and concepts that aren't rooted in pre-1974 miniatures wargaming culture. Hence, he talks about "storytelling" rather than "roleplaying" and "episodes" rather than "adventures" or "scenarios" and so forth. The result is a game that's written in a simpler, less jargon-laden way than was typical of RPGs at the time (or even today).

At the same time, Stafford's use of the term "storytelling" isn't simply a matter of avoiding cant. Prince Valiant is, compared to most other similar games, intentionally very simple in its rules structure, so that players can focus on the cooperative building of a compelling narrative set in Hal Foster's Arthurian world. Additionally, the game provides the option of allowing even players to take over the story-telling role within an episode, setting a new scene or introducing a new character or challenge. The chief storyteller, which is to say, the referee in traditional RPGs, is encouraged not to ignore these player-inserted story elements but instead to run with them, using them as a way to introduce unexpected twists and turns within the larger unfolding narrative. 

The other clear way that Prince Valiant differs from Pendragon is its rules, which can fit on a single page. This makes them easy to learn and remember, as well as to use. Unlike more traditional RPGs with their assortment of funny-shaped dice, Stafford opted in Prince Valiant to use only coins. For any action where the result is not foregone, a number of coins are flipped, with heads representing successes. The more heads flipped, the better the success. In cases where a character competes against another character, such as combat, successes are compared, with the character achieving the most successes emerging victorious – simplicity itself! 

Last but certainly not least, Prince Valiant differs from Pendragon because of the pages upon pages of beautiful artwork derived from the comic. Not only does this give the game its own distinctive look, it also highlights its adventuresome, Saturday matinee serial tone in contrast to the heavier, occasionally darker tone of Pendragon and the myth cycles on which it drew. That's not to say Prince Valiant is unserious or "for kids," only that it's a fair bit "lighter" than its "big brother" and thus probably more suitable for younger and/or less experienced players. In that respect, it makes an excellent first RPG.

It's worth noting, too, that the bulk of Prince Valiant's 128-page rulebook is made up not of game mechanics but of advice and tools for players and storytellers alike. Stafford quite obviously distilled the lessons he learned from his many years of playing and refereeing roleplaying games, presenting them in a conversational, easy-to-understand way. Indeed, I've met many people over the years who've claimed that Prince Valiant's true value is not so much as a game in its own right, despite their affection for it, but as an introduction to roleplaying. True though this is, it's also undeniably an excellent game that I'd love to play some day.

That's right: I have never played Prince Valiant and am not sure I ever will. The copy I read years ago was owned by someone else and I've never found a used copy at a reasonable price. I recall that there was an updated or revised version published a few years ago. It doesn't appear to be available through the Chaosium website, alas. Mind you, I certainly don't lack for good RPGs to play; it'd just be great to give this classic one a whirl one day.

How Common Were Long Campaigns?

A topic that I think is worthy of further discussion is the extent to which the contemporary "old school" RPG scene is characterized by varying degrees of hyper-correction to the real and imagined excesses of the subsequent (post-1990 or thereabouts) hobby. For the moment, I want to focus on one area where this hyper-correction might exist: long campaigns. I say "might," because I honestly don't know the extent to which lengthy, multi-year campaigns were all that commonplace in the past, even among the founders of the hobby. Certainly, if you read things like the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide, such campaigns were clearly the ideal, at least in some quarters, but what about the reality? Just how common were long campaigns of the sort that I've been extolling for the last few years on this blog?

By most accounts, the earliest version of what would come to be called the Blackmoor campaign appeared sometime in late 1970 or early 1971. Over the course of the next four to five years, Dave Arneson continued to referee adventures set in Blackmoor, with a rotating roster of players (and characters), though there seems to have been a significant amount of continuity during that time period. Gary Gygax's Greyhawk campaign began sometime in 1972 and continued to be played, off and on, throughout the remainder of the decade, again with a rotating roster of players. Then there's Greg Stafford's Dragon Pass campaign and Steve Perrin's one in Prax, not to mention whatever Marc Miller and the GDW crew were doing in the Spinward Marches.

How many of the foregoing were "long" campaigns in the way we've been talking about them lately? Much depends, I suppose, on how you define both terms. For myself, a "campaign" is a continuous series of adventures/sessions in a fictional setting with a regular, if not necessarily static, set of players. I'm sure people could quibble with almost every aspect of my definition, especially since many of the foundational campaigns of the hobby might not qualify under its terms. Likewise, my definition, for all its specificity, is silent on questions as basic as whether a campaign with multiple referees – like the Greyhawk campaign that was eventually co-refereed by Rob Kuntz – is one campaign or two. Then, there's the Ship of Theseus question of how many of the elements of a campaign's beginning must persist over time for it to qualify as the "same" campaign, to say nothing of what constitutes "long." Is length determined by the calendar, the number of sessions, or the time spent playing?

I think these are all important questions, even if we can't easily agree on the answers. Simply asking them is, in my opinion, a good way to fumble toward a better understanding of this hobby, its parameters, and its history. For example, M.A.R. Barker's Thursday night Tékumel campaign would seem to be a paradigmatic example of a long campaign, lasting as it did, with many of the same players, from the late '70s into the 21st century. Though there are no doubt other examples of similarly long-running campaigns, the "Thursday Night Group" is quite likely the highest profile one of which I know. Its longevity and degree of continuity surpasses that of anything Arneson, Gygax, Stafford, or any of the other founders have the hobby ever achieved. That's no small accomplishment, but is it in any way representative of what a long campaign is or should be?

There's also the question of what RPG players in the wider world beyond were doing. How many of them were involved in long campaigns? Depending on how you want to look at it, I was part of either the second or third wave of roleplayers, entering the hobby at the very end of 1979 and beginning serious play of RPGs in early 1980. My friends and I were young – I would have been 10 years old at the time – and, while we knew older, more experienced gamers and were influenced by them, we mostly forged our own paths. For the most part, that path did not include long campaigns. Instead, we flitted from game to game, playing D&D intensely for a month or two, then doing the same with Gamma World or Traveller or Call of Cthulhu, before returning to D&D or whatever other game caught or fancy at the time.

I doubt we were alone in this sort of behavior and I suspect that, as the RPG industry grew, producing ever more games, our behavior was much more widespread than sticking with one game devotedly for years on end. That's not to say we never played a single game for long stretches of time and to the exclusion of others – we did – but these were exceptions rather than the rule, at least until I attended college. Indeed, it was only with adulthood that I succeeded in refereeing a multi-year campaign with the same players and their characters. All the long campaigns I can recall have occurred after I was in my 20s and I sometimes wonder if the level of attentiveness necessary to maintain campaigns of this sort is only possible after a certain age.

So, how common were long campaigns in the past? I wish I knew, if only because I think it's important to understand the history of the hobby as it was rather than as we wish it were. 

Retrospective: Ghostbusters

Roleplaying games based on officially licensed properties started appearing quite early in the history of the hobby. FGU's Flash Gordon & the Warriors of Mongo is the first that I can recall, unless you wish to count TSR's Warriors of Mars, which is, in my opinion, something of an edge case – and it wasn't officially licensed at any rate). Others soon followed, like Heritage's Star Trek (and FASA's too!), SPI's Dallas, Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu and Stormbringer, ICE's Middle-earth Role Playing, and many, many more. 

I mention all of this because I think it's sometimes easy to forget, especially on the old school side of the hobby, that gamers have long been quite keen on playing around in fictional worlds originally created for mass media. Much as I valorize the inventive and often idiosyncratic settings unique to RPGs, I'm also a big fan of a couple of games that make use of licensed settings and think the hobby would be diminished without them. If nothing else, licensed roleplaying games can serve as a useful entrée to newcomers.

Though I suspect that Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game, released by West End Games in 1987, is the most well-known (and successful?) licensed RPG ever, at least some of its success depends on another West End RPG, released the year before: Ghostbusters. Subtitled, "A Frightfully Cheerful Roleplaying Game," Ghostbusters is an unexpectedly good game, boasting not just a good sense of humor, as you'd expect, but also a solid and easy to use set of rules. Looking at its designers – Sandy Petersen, Greg Stafford, and Lynn Willis – this should come as little surprise. What still surprises me, though, even after all these years, is that it was Ghostbusters that gave the world not just the core of the system later used to excellent effect in the aforementioned Star Wars RPG, but also gave it the now-ubiquitous dice pool method of resolving in-game actions.

Characters in Ghostbusters have four ability scores, called traits – Brains, Muscle, Moves, and Cool – that are each given a numerical rating representing the number of six-sided dice rolled when making use of that trait. Players can associate a talent with each trait. Talents are more or less skills, like brawl, convince, or parapsychology. When a character makes use of a talent, he gets an additional three dice to add to those already provided by his trait. Other things, like equipment, can add to the pool of dice a player rolls as well. The sum of any roll is then compared to a target number assigned by the referee (called the Ghostmaster), based on its difficulty, success equated with meeting or exceeding the assigned target number.

If you understood the foregoing description of Ghostbusters' game mechanics without any trouble, that's because they're now well-established and commonplace, but that wasn't the case in 1986, when the idea of dice pool was somewhat exotic, at least in the circles in which I moved. As I already mentioned, Star Wars borrowed and further developed this system, which is no surprise, given that the two games were both West End products. What's more remarkable, I think, is that games like Ars Magica, Vampire: The Masquerade (and its sequels), and Shadowrun all evince the direct or indirect influence of Ghostbusters, making its mechanics, along with those of Dungeons & Dragons and Basic Role-Playing, among the most enduring in the history of the hobby.

Ghostbusters included or popularized several other mechanical innovations, such as the use of "brownie points" with which a player could influence the result of dice rolls, potentially blunting some of their negative consequences. "Hero points" of this sort were nothing new by this point. However, Ghostbusters enabled a player to gain more brownie points for his character through good roleplaying and achieving his character's stated goals. I can't say for certain that nothing like this had ever been done before – I'm pretty sure it had been – but, at the time, I found it revelatory. At the opposite end of the scale, the game included the "ghost die," a special six-sider where the 6 was replaced with the Ghostbusters logo. The ghost die is used in every roll and any roll showing the logo indicates a negative consequence of some sort, even if the roll is otherwise successful. Again, it's old hat now; in 1986, though, this was genuinely innovative.

Another aspect of Ghostbusters that I think deserves special praise is its basic premise. Unlike some licensed RPGs, which assume the players will take on the roles of existing characters within the media property, Ghostbusters assumes the players will create their own Ghostbusters, who are franchisees of the original, New York-based Ghostbusters of the 1984 movie. The idea is that the player characters are the local Ghostbusters of their hometown and their adventures should reflect that fact. I think it's a great set-up and, even at the time, I felt that it was a good basis for making more Ghostbusters movies, with each one taking place in a new city with a new cast of characters. 

I really enjoyed playing Ghostbusters when it was first released and still look back fondly on it. Sadly, I no longer have my copy and trying to replace it is prohibitively expensive. It's a very underrated RPG for one that is so well designed, influential, and fun. I wish it were more widely known and appreciated today.

The Stafford House Campaign

Four years ago today, Greg Stafford, creator of Glorantha and one of the founders of Chaosium, passed into the eternity of the Gods World. In celebration of his memory, Chaosium has released the first volume of a new series called the Chaosium Archival Collection. This volume, The Stafford House Campaign, is a collection of essays Stafford wrote about his then-ongoing RuneQuest campaign during the period between 1978 and 1981, some of which originally saw print in Amateur Press Associations, like The Wild Hunt. 

I don't yet own a copy myself, so I can't speak of its complete contents. However, there's a lengthy excerpt available for free download on the Chaosium website. If that catches your fancy, you can buy the full 84-page version, in either a PDF or POD form. Based solely on the download, it looks like the whole collection will be worth it for anyone interested either in the development of Glorantha or in the early history of the hobby of roleplaying.

My Top 10 Favorite Imaginary Settings (Part II)

As I prepared the second part of this list, what struck me is that three of the top five entries are roleplaying game settings. Thinking on it, I suppose that only makes sense. I spend a lot more time exploring imaginative settings through roleplaying than I do through simply reading stories set in them. In any case, this was a useful exercise for me, since it helped me to understand better the things I find most attractive in imaginary settings. Readers will notice certain commonalities between my favorites, though I think there's also a fair degree of diversity too.

Part I can be found here.

5. Zothique

Of all the settings created by Clark Ashton Smith, Zothique is by far my favorite. I was first introduced to Zothique through his short story, "The Empire of the Necromancers" and it very rapidly became one of my favorite imaginary settings. Evoking melancholy and ennui, as well as making ample use of mordant humor, one might call it the Clark Ashton Smith-iest of all his imaginary settings. I've derived a great deal of pleasure from reading stories that take place on the Last Continent; several of them are regular reads that I return to year after year.

In some respects, Zothique is quite similar to Vance's Dying Earth, in that it's really our Earth in the impossibly far future, when sorcery and congress with extra-terrene entities are now facets of everyday existence. However, it lacks the technology-as-magic (or is that magic-as-technology?) conceit of the Dying Earth, focusing instead on the return of black magic and alien gods as a consequence of mankind's enervating boredom as it awaits the end of all things. Zothique drips with a decadence that is equal parts repulsive and enchanting – heady stuff, especially for someone whose life is as staid as mine.

4. Lankhmar

You can be forgiven for thinking I meant Nehwon, but I can assure you that I mean Lankhmar, the City of the Black Toga and home base of Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. The truth is that, for the most part, I don't find the world of Nehwon all that interesting. Indeed, I'm not even certain that Leiber found it all that interesting himself. Lankhmar, on the other hand, is endlessly fascinating and is practically a world in itself, with its dark, winding streets, remarkable locales, and even more remarkable inhabitants. It's not for nothing that Leiber's best stories all take place within the city's walls.

Lankhmar is the setting that first taught me the potential a single well-described place could hold. Leiber ably demonstrated that there's absolutely no need to create an exhaustive fantasy world to tell amazing stories. Bring a single city to life and you have everything you need to present many tales of adventure. Lankhmar is also probably why I've long had a fascination with cities and city-states in fantasy, as well as why I hope one day to referee a campaign set entirely within a city. I haven't done it yet, but, if I do, you can be sure there will be more than a little Lankhmar in the proceedings.

3. Glorantha

Even a few years ago, I doubt Greg Stafford's Glorantha would have made it onto my top 10 favorite imaginary settings, never mind my top 5. For a long time, my early experiences with the setting made it difficult for me to recognize its brilliance. Recently, though, Glorantha has risen considerably in my estimation, thanks in no small part to my having had the chance to play in a couple of RuneQuest campaigns that allowed me to experience the setting on its own terms. The result was a re-evaluation of both the setting itself and what Stafford was attempting to do with it.

If D&D's default idiom is pulp fantasy, then RuneQuest's is mythology. Glorantha has a mythic feel, like the world of Greco-Roman myth but with numerous unique and, dare I say, modern twists on them that make it feel genuinely unique. Stafford was a keen student of myth, religion, and spirituality of all kinds and that shows in the cultures, societies, and beliefs of Glorantha. It's a thoroughly engaging place, all the more so, I think, because that seems to have been the intention. Through their characters, players are supposed to grapple with the meaning of myth and legend, even to the point of potentially rewriting them through their characters' actions. And to think I once dismissed it as too "Californian."

2. Tékumel

Some of you will no doubt have expected that Tékumel would take the top spot on this list and I can't blame you for thinking so (though those who know me well will not be surprised by my actual top choice). I was a relative latecomer to Tékumel, only really discovering it in the early '90s, through a Usenet newsgroup dedicated to the setting of Empire of the Petal Throne. Once I discovered, I was hooked and became a lifelong devotee. Recent revelations have not dimmed my love for the setting nor weakened the enthusiasm of myself or the players of my ongoing House of Worms campaign, which barrels on toward its eighth year of continuous play.

My fondness for Tékumel is based on several factors, the chief being that it's not a vanilla setting. Instead, it's a complex, detailed world whose main inspirations are a variety of non-European historical cultures. Despite this, it's not nearly as difficult to understand as some have claimed and can, in fact, be enjoyed by roleplayers of all stripes. I also love Tékumel for its blending of science fiction and fantasy, something that you'll see in many of the settings on this list. And despite the claim that the setting is so detailed that there is no room for individual creativity, I have found just the opposite. Rather than being an impediment to my own creativity, the detail has served to inspire me, often in unexpected ways. I've had more fun refereeing my Tékumel campaigns than I have almost any other – high praise from a gamer who's been playing for more than four decades.

1. Third Imperium

If you correctly guessed that the Third Imperium would be at the top of this list, congratulations, you know me and my tastes well. I regularly tell people that, when it comes to RPGs, "D&D is my first love, but Traveller is my true love." A big part of the reason why I feel that way is because of the game's "official" setting. Players older than I remember a time when Traveller, like Dungeons & Dragons, was simply a rules set without a setting of its own. For them, Traveller remained a game of "science fiction adventure in the far future," while, for me, it's always been "science fiction adventure in the Third Imperium."

My fondness for the setting is born of several factors. The first is the deft way that Miller and his colleagues at GDW borrowed and riffed off elements of the great sci-fi writers of the '40s through '70s to create a setting that was simultaneously familiar and original. The second is that I've spent more time playing and refereeing in the Third Imperium than I have in any other imaginary setting. In many ways, the Third Imperium is home and I know it like the back of my hand. Finally, my first professional writing credits were for Traveller in the 1990s, which, in turn, introduced me to a number of others who subsequently became some of my oldest and dearest friends. I can think of no better marker of excellence than that.

King Arthur's Knights

Looks like it's time to add another Arthurian game to the list of those I never owned. In this case, I never even heard of it. In fact, I can't even recall seeing any evidence of its existence in the Chaosium catalogs that came in the company's boxed sets during the early 1980s (or I somehow missed it). 

In any case, it seems that Greg Stafford designed a competitive boardgame based around the legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, which was published in 1978. Does anyone reading this reading post own or, alternately, has anyone ever played it? I'm curious to know a bit more about it, particularly the extent to which it has any design similarities to Pendragon. 

Once There Was a Spot

About two weeks ago, I asked readers to comment on roleplaying games they'd never played but wished they had. The responses were quite interesting and I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to comment on the post. Reading through them, one of the RPGs that was among the most commonly mentioned was Chaosium's Pendragon. Seeing the name of Greg Stafford's masterpiece mentioned so often warmed my heart. I'm incredibly fond of the game and am currently a player in a Pendragon campaign that's been running for more than a year now. However, I must admit that I often wonder how well known the game is outside of the circles in which I move. I'm generally of the opinion that Pendragon deserves to be better known, since it's one of a handful of roleplaying games I'd judge to be "perfect."

I'm not being hyperbolic when I call Pendragon perfect. I have a couple of good reasons to think this, reasons that have the benefit of having been repeatedly put to the test in multiple campaigns I've refereed or played in over the decades since the games original release in 1985. The first is straightforward: its rules are simple yet evocative. More than that, they actively encourage players to get into the mindset of Arthurian legendary characters – and do so without the necessity of having to engage in amateur thespianism. The personality traits and passions system really does make it easier for players to get into their characters' heads in a way that leads to play reminiscent of what you read in Malory. 

The second – and more substantial – reason I call Pendragon perfect is its built-in campaign structure. I've been harping on the joys of long campaigns since I returned to this blog almost two years ago. In discussing this matter with others, a common objection is that it's "too hard" to keep a campaign going for years on end, for both creative and logistical reasons. While I don't believe this is true (obviously), I do understand why someone who hadn't successfully been involved in a long campaign might think it was. That's the beauty of Pendragon: the game already does a lot of the heavy lifting for you. The rulebook provides a complete outline of decades of in-game events, from the end of Uther's reign to the fall of the death of Arthur. This is more than enough scaffolding for even a novice referee to build a sprawling, multi-generational campaign that would take, literally, years to complete, especially if you include the additional detail of supplements like The Boy King. 

Pendragon assumes that player knights will undertake only a single significant adventure during the course of a year. The game's use of "adventure" is similar to that used by Malory in Le Morte d'Arthur, meaning a major event or confrontation. When combined with the timeline of Arthur's reign the game outlines, the referee is easily able to set events in motion, with the characters providing additional momentum through their own actions, choices, and alliances. As the knights marry, have children, assume greater responsibilities, and eventually die, there's plenty of scope for all manner of drama and intrigue. After a few game years, a Pendragon campaign practically runs itself, making it an ideal vehicle for referees with little experience of long campaigns.

As I said, I'm currently playing in a Pendragon campaign and having a great deal of fun. My first knight. Sir Adtherp, is nearly 40 years old now, having served first the Earl of Salisbury and then Arthur for close to two decades. He has several sons but none are yet old enough to replace him, so I expect, barring an unexpected turn of events, I'll be playing him for several more game years at least. On the other hand, if events should claim Adtherp's life, he has brothers whom I could play until Adtherp's sons come of age, or else I could create a new character entirely. Things are always happening in the campaign, which is humming along quite nicely, thanks in no small part to the remarkable design of the game itself, which is why I never cease to sing Pendragon's praises.

Retrospective: Snakepipe Hollow

The modern roleplaying game was born in the dungeon and the earliest RPG campaigns revolved around exploring them. 

For those of us interested in the history of the hobby, it's therefore something of a tragedy that none of those "tent pole" dungeons, like Castles Blackmoor or Greyhawk, ever properly saw print. Instead, what we got were smaller, more focused dungeons intended for limited use (which makes sense, since, in most cases, they originated in the nascent tournament scene). While many of these published dungeons are excellent and indeed iconic, very few of them are suitable for long-term play, particularly when compared to the founding dungeons of the hobby.

I mention all of this because I've lately been doing a deep dive into the early years of Chaosium's RuneQuest, with an eye toward trying to put my finger on why I much prefer its portrayal of Glorantha to that of contemporary RQ. An important piece of that puzzle lies in Snakepipe Hollow, a collection of adventures written by Greg Stafford and Rudy Kraft and first published in 1979. Its title refers to a region of Dragon Pass that's home to the three levels of the Caves of Chaos (no, not those Caves of Chaos, even though they also first appeared in 1979), inhabited by all manner of inimical beings, such as ogres, scorpion men, and broos, among many more.

At the start of the book, Greg Stafford pens a remarkable introduction, in which he explains the origins and purpose of both Snakepipe Hollow the product and Snakepipe Hollow the place within Glorantha. For that reason, I'm going to reproduce it in full here:

This scenario pack provides a setting, motivation, and cast of friendly and hostile characters for the referee needing or desiring to construct a RuneQuest adventure on short notice, or for the readers interested in Dragon Pass as a place for active fantasy.

This book presents a unique section of Dragon Pass geography in some detail. This form presents this material in the same way as we prepared and ran it in our own campaign; we believe it will fit well into many different FRP campaigns.

There are several scenario suggestions, including appropriate NPC (non-player character) stats, which offer opportunities for people to enter this wild and dangerous region. These may take them to a part or all of the sections here. Referees are urged to make up their own as well.

The scenarios are not specifically designed for any number or quality of player characters. However, due to the nature of the region, we suggest that there be a good healthy mix of types, with parties numbering six to ten player characters with NPCs tossed in to provide play balance where necessary.

This pack is designed for repeated play. It contains one wilderness and three interior maps, almost 200 monster stats and over 25,000 words of description presented in a modular and flexible format.

GOOD LUCK!

There are two points that stand out to me. First, Stafford states clearly that the material in Snakepipe Hollow derives from his home campaign and that it's presented "in the same way as we prepared and ran it." I take that to mean that it's not been notably altered from what he used with his own players. Second, he emphasizes that "this pack is designed for repeated play." Thus, this is not a one-and-done product, but instead something that's able to hold the players' attentions for an extended period of time. 

Viewed from a certain perspective, Snakepipe Hollow starts to sound, to me at any rate, as if it's another example of an early tent pole dungeon. I won't go so far as to call it a megadungeon, since there are fewer than 60 keyed locations within the Caves of Chaos. Further, I don't believe that a dungeon need be "mega" in extent to qualify as a long-term campaign focus, but that's a topic for another post. Nevertheless, I think a reasonably good case could be made that Snakepipe Hollow possesses the level of depth and complexity needed to occupy the center of an entire campaign, especially when one remembers that the Caves of Chaos sit within a larger wilderness area that is every bit as treacherous – and rewarding – as they are. 

If I could refer to Stafford's introduction just one more time, I'd like to note that he calls Snakepipe Hollow a "scenario pack." That's yet another bit of evidence in support of the idea that the Caves of Chaos and the area around it was imagined not just "as a place for active fantasy" – what an evocative turn of phrase! – but as the focus of weeks or months of regular play. In addition to keys for the wilderness and the Caves, Snakepipe Hollow presents multiple potential NPC patrons, groups, rumors, and "help wanted" notices, all of which provide the player characters with reasons for venturing into the Hollow beyond mere treasure hunting. This is not just useful; it's vital, since it'll help frame the characters' expeditions within the context of the larger world, which is exactly what's needed to keep a campaign humming along indefinitely.

Since I was never a player of RuneQuest back in my youth, Snakepipe Hollow is, frankly, revelatory in the way it suggests that the hobby's early emphasis on tent pole dungeons was still alive and well, even in California. More significant still is that the Caves of Chaos and their surrounds may be one of the few published examples of those early campaign dungeons. If so, I think Snakepipe Hollow needs to be more widely known and studied than it seems to be. I know I'll be spending a lot more time with it in the weeks to come.

White Dwarf: Issue #33

Issue #33 of White Dwarf (September 1982) features a strangely compelling cover by Andrew George. I'm honestly not sure what it's supposed to be depicting, but, whatever it is, I find it interesting. The issue contains quite a pair of Traveller articles, starting with "Weapons for Traveller," which is a collection is new weapons for the game submitted by readers. Relatedly, there is "Guns for Sale" by Steve Cook. Though brief, this is a useful article that looks at the availability of various Traveller weapons through normal channels, taking into account factors such as tech level and law level. My main complaint about the article is that, like others in White Dwarf, it makes use of percentile dice, which are wholly unknown in Traveller. 

Continuing with the Traveller theme, "Open Box" reviews Striker, giving 6 out of 10, which I think is quite fair when one considers its complexity and general utility. Also reviewed are all four modules in the "S;ave Lords" series, which are collectively given 7 out of 10. Chaosium's Elric boardgame receives the same score, as does Flying Buffalo's Grimtooth's Traps. Perhaps I am seeing something that's not really there, but I've noticed that the reviews in "Open Box" are becoming somewhat more critical than they had been at the start of the column. I think that's a good thing overall, since the whole purpose of reviews in my opinion is to discuss, as objectively as one can, the good and the bad of a product so that a reader has a solid basis on which to decide whether to buy the product for himself. I'll be keeping a closer eye on "Open Box" in future issues to see if indeed my sense of things is borne out.

Part III of Paul Vernon's "The Town Planner" series focuses on "Running Towns and Cities," with special attention being paid to government, local customs, laws, calendars, events, and urban encounters. Taken together, these topics are among the most interesting and immediately useful ones that Vernon has tackled in this series. Consequently, I really enjoyed reading his thoughts and ideas. "Rumble at the Tin Inn" by Michael Cule is a mini-scenario for use with RuneQuest that's explicitly inspired by Lewis Pulsipher's "A Bar-Room Brawl" from issue #11. Like its predecessor, it includes a map with cut-out counters and game statistics for all the potential combatants. 

Speaking of follow-ups (and Lewis Pulsipher), we get Part II of his "Arms at the Ready" series, the first part of which appeared in issue #31. Readers are treated to eight more weapons cards for use with AD&D. Oliver Dickinson's "Rune Rites" column looks at "Invisibility and Magic." In addition to presenting a magic item, "The Cap of Sight," the article includes a small piece written by Greg Stafford himself, entitled "Spells Which I Don't Use in My Campaign." Stafford explains that he finds spells like invisibility, concealment, and vision "make it hard for [him] to referee a decent game which includes drama and tension." For that reason, he does not make these spells "general available to regular people or adventurers." Fascinating!

"Brevet Rank for Low Level Characters" by Lewis Pulsipher is an odd article. The whole thing is premised on the idea that convention referees often encounter people who wish to join their adventure but who lack characters of sufficient level to do so. Pulsipher then puts forward a system by which the referee can "pro-rate" a low-level character so that he can participate in a high-level adventure. I have no particular objection to the guidelines Pulsipher offers, but why bother? Had not referees in the UK at the time heard of pre-generated convention characters? Chalk this one up to another installment in The Past is a Foreign Country.

"Fiend Factory" this month looks at psionic monsters with "All in the Mind." As is usually the case, the monsters are a mixed bag and include some truly bizarre creatures, like the Psi-Mule and Giant Mole (which is inexplicably possessed of several mental powers). More interesting, from a historical perspective if nothing else, is Zytra, Lord of the Mind Flayers, created by future science fiction author, Charles Stross (who also created the githyanki and githzerai). Finally, "Treasure Chest" is a true miscellany of material for D&D, from a new potion to a new spell to a system for handling wear and tear on armor.

All in all, it's a fine issue, with a good mix of material, though not quite as strong as the previous one. Even so, this coming issues match up with the period of my youth when I was an avid reader of White Dwarf. For nostalgia alone, I expect I'll enjoy re-reading them and, if my memories are not mistaken, they will contain a fair bit of material well worth re-visiting.

The Wages of Naturalism

I think it's fair to say that my post on Gygaxian Naturalism way back in the first year of this blog is one of, if not the, most influential posts I've ever written. I regularly come across people using the terminology, often with no knowledge of its origins, on blogs, forums, and elsewhere. I think that's terrific. I imagine most writers dream of creating something that becomes sufficiently widespread that their own role in creating is forgotten or, perhaps more charitably, subsumed by the creation itself. In any case, I take no small pleasure in having put a name to and explicated a concept that retains some degree of currency in unrelated discussions almost a decade and a half later.

Ironically, my own feelings about the consequences of Gygaxian Naturalism are in flux and with each passing day becoming more negative. To be clear: I'm still very much a proponent of consistent worldbuilding, which is what I think Gygaxian Naturalism is at its root. However, I increasingly feel as if many designers have mistaken consistency, which is generally an unalloyed good, for realism, by which I mean (in this case) operating according to rational – or even scientific – principles. In general, I don't think fantasy is very well served by most expressions of realism, as they will ultimately undermine the fantasy.

Maintaining consistency and coherence without toppling over into monomanical realism is not easy, so I try not to come down too harshly on lapses. Take, for example, this illustration (by Lisa A. Free) that appeared in the 1982 RuneQuest release, Trollpak, which is widely considered a masterclass in how to present a nonhuman species for use in a roleplaying game.

Taken in itself, this anatomical diagram of a troll is a wonderful piece of work that helps ground one of Glorantha's most fearsomely antagonistic species in an almost palpable reality – and that's part of my problem with it. As a setting, Glorantha has a (fairly) consistent tone, one grounded in myth. That's a huge part of its appeal to me. Illustrations like the one above, though, they detract from that mythic feel. Seeing one of the Uz laid out like, dissected and tagged like a cadaver from a Renaissance sketchbook, doesn't, in my opinion, add to the consistent worldbuilding of Glorantha, even if it does shed light on how trolls are able to eat anything. Instead, it actively detracts from any conception of trolls as weird or wondrous inhabitants of the Underworld.

Consider, too, this illustration from issue #72 (April 1983) of Dragon:

Almost anyone who was a reader of Dragon at the time should remember this piece of art, which accompanied "The Ecology of the Piercer" by Chris Elliott and Richard Edwards. At the time it first appeared, I absolutely adored this article and, judging from the fact that it inspired a regular feature in the magazine for many years to come, I suspect I was not alone in my feelings. Like the troll diagram, that of the piercer attempts to present a interpretation of a well-known monster that works pretty well on a rational, scientific level but that, in so doing, also undermines its weirdness and wonder.

Obviously, everyone draws the line of what constitutes "undermining" fantasy in a different place. But I nevertheless can't help but feel that the tendency toward describing fantastical beings by recourse to rationalistic, scientific categories is an error – an error not just in applying the principle of coherent worldbuilding that undergirds Gygaxian Naturalism but also in understanding fantasy itself. Once upon a time, science fiction was considered a species of the wider genre of a fantasy. SF took place in an imaginary world, as all fantasies do, but one whose imaginary elements were theoretically explicable by recourse to scientific axioms. The anatomical drawings above seem to be tentative examples of applying science fictional principles to fantasy.

I'm not yet convinced that the approach pioneered by Trollpak or "The Ecology of the Piercer" is the inevitable endpoint of Gygaxian Naturalism. At the same time, I could cite plenty of other examples down through the years that suggest that, for many people, consistency and coherence can only be understood in terms of rationalism and science, even when discussing a purely fantastical world and its inhabitants. I struggle with this myself, so I appreciate the difficulties, even as I regret the outcome. 

White Dwarf Interviews Greg Stafford

 As I mentioned in my recent post about issue #17 of White Dwarf, the issue contains a fascinating interview with Greg Stafford, creator of the fantasy setting of Glorantha and a founder of Chaosium. The interview was apparently conducted at GenCon XII (1979) by Ian Livingstone and covers a wide range of topics, with special attention paid to Stafford's thoughts about Glorantha, RuneQuest, and roleplaying in general. From the vantage point of 2021, I find the interview remarkable, not just for the topics it covers but for the answers Stafford gives, some of which are truly unique.

Livingstone begins by asking about the origins of Glorantha – or "the world of Dragon Pass," as he calls it throughout the interview – and Stafford replies at length:

There's a lot to unpack here, starting with the fact that Glorantha begin, much like M.A.R. Barker's Tékumel, as something Stafford created "for [his] own entertainment." More interesting is his partial agreement with the rude editor who claimed that "All S&S is the same hackwork." I hear variations of this claim a lot, particularly from those who dislike this blog's focus on the pulp fantasy antecedents of D&D and other early RPGs. Consequently, I was initially taken aback by Stafford's seeming acceptance of it, if only partially. However, as he seems to suggest in the second paragraph of his response, he recognizes the value of "standard S&S types." 

Stafford explains a bit about his own literary education, including the authors and stories that most influenced him.

None of what he says here surprises me, though why he singles out Vathek for opprobrium I can't be sure. More notable, I think, is that Stafford elevates Joseph Campbell, Mircea Eliade, Sir James Frazer, and Bob Dylan(!) to the same level as Tolkien and Homer in terms of influence upon him. That says a great deal about what Stafford hoped to achieve through the development of Glorantha. It also explains why I was frequently told, in my early days, that RuneQuest was "a hippy game" to be avoided by good East Coast boys like myself.

Interesting though all this is, the real meat of the interview comes when Livingstone asks Stafford about his thoughts on the popularity of RPGs. Stafford replies that he believes this popularity rests on four elements: "1. Communication with others; 2. Participation in a shared fantasy; 3. Exploration of our minds; 4. Exploration of the psyche." He expands upon each of these shortly thereafter:

A whole series of posts could no doubt be written teasing out the implications of everything Stafford says here. Perhaps one day I'll do just that. For the moment, though, I think it suffices to say that Stafford definitely has some genuine insight here into the appeal of roleplaying games. In particular, I think his comments about "shared fantasy" are spot on, at least as far as my own feelings are concerned. 

Later, Stafford returns to some of these same topics, when he offers his opinions on the future of the RPG hobby and what purposes roleplaying games might serve in the future.

I remember the late 1970s quite well; there was definitely a pessimism about the future in the air, much as there is in many quarters nowadays. That Stafford saw RPGs as a lifeline in difficult times is worth bearing in mind, regardless of whether one shares his gloominess. I can certainly say that I greatly value the games I play each week with my friends across the globe. The connection they provided during the last couple of years has been vital and I doubt I am alone in feeling that.

White Dwarf: Issue #17

Issue #17 of White Dwarf (February/March 1980) features a science fictional cover by Angus McKie. In my memory, one of the things that distinguished White Dwarf from, say, Dragon is that the former frequently boasted cover art that drew from SF or that mixed sci-fi with fantasy. As a huge fan of the genre, this always pleased me. 

The issue begins with an interesting editorial by Ian Livingstone, in which he talks about the perceived expense of a roleplaying game versus a more traditional boardgame. "Is this all I get?" he imagines a newcomer to the hobby saying upon opening his D&D Basic Set. Livingstone then suggests that, because RPGs are a niche hobby, they'll always be more expensive than their mainstream counterparts. The only way that will change is if roleplaying games were to appeal to a wide enough audience that mass market factors enter the equation. For that to occur, he opines, RPGs "would have to be modified out of all recognition and lose their appeal." I'm not sure that history has proven Livingstone wrong.

"The Fiend Factory" offers up six more monsters in this issue. Perhaps I am unusual in this respect, but I'm tiring of the "The Fiend Factory." I'd much rather see clever ways to use existing monsters – of which D&D already had an immensity in 1980 – than an endless menagerie of new ones. "Open Box" is mostly given over to Judges Guild product reviews, starting with Under the Storm Giant's Castle (5 out of 10) and Dark Tower (9 out of 10). These are joined by reviews of both Operation Ogre (5 out of 10) and Caverns of Thracia (9 out of 10). This is, I think, a fairly representative sample of JG's output over the years – plenty of forgettable mediocrity but a number of true classics as well. Also reviewed is Yaquinto's game Time War, which receives a score of 8 out of 10.

"My Life as a Werebear" is an unusual article by Lewis Pulsipher. In it, he delves into the question of playing a monster as a character in Dungeons & Dragons. Pulsipher then provides for monster classes for use with the game. They're an odd assortment, consisting of the blink dog, lammasu, stone giant, and titular werebear. While I'm unsure I'd ever allow such characters in my own games, I think the guiding principles behind Pulsipher's designs are solid and the end results are good (though why anyone would want to play a blink dog character is beyond me). Shaun Fuller's "The Magic Brush" is a lengthy article on the finer points of painting miniature figures. Not being a painter myself, I can't speak to its utility, but it is clearly thorough in its treatment of its subject.

"The Sable Rose Affair" by Bob McWilliams is a superb scenario for use with Traveller. The adventure is quite detailed and includes lots of maps and NPCs, all of which contribute to its overall excellence. More noteworthy is its presentation as a series of "modules," which are discrete sections focusing on specific events or locales within the overall scenario. Depending on the approach the PCs take, only certain modules are needed, which offers the referee flexibility in how he adjudicates the course of play. "Treasure Chest" details seven new artifacts and relics, after the fashion of the mighty magic items found toward the end of the Dungeon Masters Guide. They're fine, as far as they go, though none really stand out as memorable.

The issue ends with an interview with Chaosium stalwart, Greg Stafford. It's a truly fascinating interview, one worthy of its own post (which I'll write either later today or tomorrow), in which Stafford talks at length not just about the origins of Glorantha, RuneQuest, and Chaosium but also his general philosophy of roleplaying and related activities. There's some eye-opening stuff in the interview serves as a good reminder – as if we needed one – of why Stafford was truly one of the greats of our hobby.

All in all, this was another fine issue, one that brings the magazine ever closer to the one I remember from just a few years later.

Retrospective: RuneQuest Companion

About a year after the publication of original Dungeons & Dragons, its first supplement appeared. Subtitled Greyhawk, Supplement I offered up a grab bag of "new characters, new abilities, more spells to use, a horde of new monsters, heaps of new magical treasure, and various additions to the suggestions and rules for adventuring above and below the ground," most of which were drawn from Gary Gygax's D&D campaign of the same name. Two more supplements of a similar sort followed (Blackmoor and Eldritch Wizardry), thereby establishing a pattern for the way rules additions and suggestions were published in the hobby.

Chaosium was particularly prolific in producing supplements of this sort, though, rather than calling them "supplements," they called them "companions." Companions were published to support most of their RPGs, from Call of Cthulhu to Stormbringer to Ringworld, among others. Each of these companions presented a selection of rules and setting additions, expansions, options, and corrections. I've always appreciated this approach, since it both obviates the need for a new edition and gave the referee the choice of whether or not to include any of the new material printed in its pages.

The RuneQuest Companion, first published in 1983, is a good example of what I mean. Over the course of 72 pages, the Companion presents nineteen articles by a wide variety of authors, each of which offers new insight into some aspect of RQ and its setting, Glorantha. As explained by Charlie Krank in his introduction to the book, the Companion was published in the wake of the cancelation of Wyrms Footnotesm the semi-regular 'zine that had previously provided RQ fans with more information about Glorantha and its history, cultures, and denizens. (It's interesting to note that Krank's explanation for the demise of Wyrms Footnotes is quite simple: "it costs too much money." As the publisher of a fanzine myself, I am deeply sympathetic with Krank's perspective.) The Companion, then, was intended to fill this particular gap, with the promise – unfulfilled, as it turned out, but then that's nothing new in the history of RuneQuest – of a new volume of the Companion "whenever we have accumulated 64–96 pages of top-notch articles."

The articles are quite varied. There's Sherman Kahn's "An Index to RuneQuest Cults," Alan LaVergne's solo adventure, "The Maze of Shaxry Oborok," and Greg Stafford's "Holy Country" (complete with a remarkable map). Meanwhile, Sandy Petersen presents his "Species Spotlight: Unicorns," which gives a unique Gloranthan spin on the legendary beasts and "More on Trolls," expanding on the information in Trollpak. There's also a fair bit of fiction (and poetry) set in Glorantha and few rules additions. What makes the Companion remarkable, though, is its diversity. Its pages aren't devoted to a single theme or topic. Instead, we're provided with articles and essays on many aspects of the game and its setting, with a particular emphasis on the latter. Indeed, looking back on it now, what really strikes me about the RuneQuest Companion is how few of its pages are devoted to new rules. Chaosium clearly understood the main draw of RQ was its setting of Glorantha. That's probably why I look on this book so favorably even now.